Mud & Flood Lesson

In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. Genesis 7:11

"New research presented in Science magazine documents how, contrary to conventional wisdom, mud can deposit from rapidly flowing water. These findings cut across beliefs held by geologists for over a century and signal that ‘mudstone science is poised for a paradigm shift.’.... have shown that mud-sized material will deposit under much higher current velocities than previously thought.

For more than a hundred years, geoscientists have assumed that long periods of quiet water conditions are required for the deposition of

mud. Based on that belief, whenever geologists have encountered mud deposits in the sedimentary record they have interpreted them as forming in a tranquil deposition environment.

Alan Hayward uses the Haymond rock formation in the USA for this purpose, describing it as almost a mile thick, extending over a large area, and containing more than 30,000 alternating layers of shale and sandstone.

Hayward assumed the conventional geological beliefs about the deposition of mud as fact: ‘Shale is made of compacted clay. As most readers will have noticed, clay consists of exceedingly fine particles which take a long time to settle in water. Turbulence keeps them in suspension and consequently clay will only settle in calm water.’

He then uses these erroneous ideas to disparage the Biblical account of the global Flood: ‘How did the Flood bring in a thin layer of sand and deposit it over a large area, then bring in a thin layer of clay and all this to settle quietly—all in a matter of minutes? And then repeat the whole performance fifteen thousand times?’

He then mocks the scientific standing of Flood geologists. ‘It seems rather obvious that there is only one way in which a series of events could possibly occur. God would have to direct and control the whole process miraculously to achieve this result.’

In other words, Flood geology is not real science because it needs to invoke supernatural intervention to explain an otherwise implausible (in his view) position.

However, the latest research report in Science turns Hayward’s argument on its head. The fact that muds deposit from flowing water means that the whole formation could be explained by catastrophic deposition, possibly within days or hours." CMI