This thread [edit: the end, after it went wildly off-topic] masterfully shows how inconsistent flood geology is. While young-earthers begin by saying that a bunch of things buried in sediment is exactly what you’d expect a global flood to produce, the moment one looks closer, every detail belies that explanation.
Looking closer at the sediments, all sorts of layers speak of dry conditions or slow, calm deposition – or are carved and shaped by features that could only form after rock had been dewatered and compacted. None of that looks like what one would expect from a flood, but perhaps God miraculously arranged things that way.
Looking closer at the fossils, they’re arranged in a sequence that doesn’t follow any combination of size, density or mobility. Pollen and their respective plants begin at the same point. Creatures burrow, eat, mate, brood over young and make winding trails all through what are supposed to be flood layers. Again, not what we’d expect a global flood to do, but perhaps God created all the right havens for these things to happen and guided animals and plants to die in an order that looks like evolutionary succession.
Then there’s the matter of what was preserved on the ark and what was not. Apparently God arranged for the flood to be violent enough to not allow a single bird or land reptile or mammal to survive on any of the floating vegetation mats. But at the same time, some of those mats were protected so that every kind of invertebrate and most types of vegetation could continue without needing to be on the ark. Similarly, the waters were placid enough to allow pockets of fresh water to remain unmixed at the surface for creatures who need it while being violent enough to cause most of the geological features worldwide generally attributed to eons of local floods, volcanoes and tectonic plate movements.
In the end, rather than the world looking exactly as one would expect if a global flood happened, countless observed details require adding more miracles or more acts of divine providence that the Bible makes no mention of.
After all that, I’m left wondering why God commanded Noah to build an ark. In this thread, we’ve seen floating vegetation mats grow into floating islands that are “twenty five to fifty feet thick and included soil and remained somewhat intact, above the maelstrom below them.” With those, there’s no need for an ark. There’s no need to cram everything into a boat and scale up kinds to the genus level: these mats provide as much room as can be imagined. Obviously God can preserve all the right things and eliminate all the wrong things just using these amazing floating islands.
Young-earthers are quick to ask local flood advocates why Noah’s family and the animals didn’t just move. But they’re open to the same question: why didn’t Noah’s family and the ark animals just hitch a ride on the floating mats along with all the other living things that survived that way? They claim a local flood makes building an ark unnecessary, but so does their version of a global flood with life-preserving floating islands. A simple response would be “God said to build an ark so Noah obeyed,” except that they reject that answer from local flood advocates.
In order to defend their interpretation of Genesis, modern young-earthers end up creating a flood that bears little resemblance to the one in Genesis while also not resembling the story told by the earth itself. I know I’m not adding anything with this post that hasn’t already been said in more detail by others. I’m appreciative of all who have put time into those detailed answers. I have no idea how many will read much of this thread, but those who do are unlikely to come away thinking that flood geology fits the Bible or the planet.