But they are not like tsunami pulses nor waves of strong flows. They are, instead, just like layers gradually deposited over long periods of time. You keep claiming that they layers fit some sort of flood model without ever dealing with the geological reality.
As sea level slowly rises over an eroded landscape, higher and higher rocks are getting hit by waves. Sand erodes off the land, down the rivers and into the ocean; it’s also produced by breakdown of rocks on the shore. The gradual buildup of sand (with the occasional larger rock if rock was handy), followed by clay-mineral mud and then carbonates is what a gradual transgression of sea level over millions of years should produce. Boulders can be eroded loose by stronger waves from storms, or just the accumulated effect of gradual erosion along a rocky shore. In contrast, a tsunami will produce a distinctive pattern of highly jumbled pieces. The lightest-weight pieces will be carried the farthest inland. But in the Sauk transgression, the sand comes first with the finer clays behind, as produced by slow changes in sea level. The layers are not jumbled, and they show long-term changes in the types of fossils, in various isotopes, and other markers of the passing of a lot of time. The rocks directly on top of the Sauk unconformity are not all the same age, which they would have to be if they were produced by a global flood.
CMI and ICR claims that the Sauk transgression fits better with a global flood that with conventional geology are unsubstantiated and untrue. You need to research the primary sources rather than repeating their vague claims. In fact, both a tsunami model and a rain model for a global flood require enough heat to melt the earth, so the rock record clearly contradicts current flood geology models. If you also claim that a significant portion of the geologic record was produced during the Flood, you’re speeding up plate motion from centimeters per year to over 70 km per hour, which would vaporize the earth rather than just melting it. As Genesis does not record Noah being cooked, incinerated, or vaporized, global flood models are not a good match for either the biblical data or the geologic data.
“So…who says some sedimentary layers were deposited “during, before, and after”? They were ALL deposited by the Flood. Who has said otherwise?”
You did, for one. If the base of the Sauk transgression was the start of the Flood, then all the sedimentary layers under that had to be deposited before the flood. If buried, partially disarticulated ichthyosaur skeletons had started to disarticulate before the flood and then got buried, then all the sedimentary layers under the ichthyosaur skeletons had to be deposited before the flood.
Various young-earth sources claim that various sedimentary deposits were deposited before or after the flood. For example, many suggest a brief glacial interval after the Flood as a way to account for Pleistocene glacial deposits. (That doesn’t actually work to explain the dozens of advances and retreats of the glaciers across thousands of miles during the Pleistocene, not to mention all the older glacial deposits, but it admits that the deposits exist and came from glaciers.) Glaciers make sedimentary layers. Kurt Wise admitted that hardground deposits (such as reefs) could not form during the young-earth flood, which means that fossil reefs must be either pre-flood or post-flood.
Lake and river deposits are some other sedimentary deposits that can’t form during the young-earth flood.
The Bible indicates that most sedimentary deposits are pre-flood, as it locates Eden with regard to the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, which are on top of extensive sedimentary deposits.
Again, this demonstrates that you do not have a coherent model but are just saying “the flood did it” without checking for consistency with yourself, with other young-earth claims, or with the evidence. You need to take seriously the task of building a solid, coherent model rather than simply repeating the same bad arguments, if you hope to make a credible case.
