Second Valley

Helen, nice pictures. You must have had a great time! God’s eternal power and divine nature can be observed in God’s creation; He’s wondrous!

O.E. creationists and even card carrying “Evilutionists” don’t assert that every formation took “thousand or millions of years” to form. The aspect of gradualism or uniformitarian does not preclude local disasters. Some events caused by volcanism, earthquakes, floods, among other events, are quite rapid. Creation Science promotes a single act of catastrophism to explain these phenomena. O.E. creationism can have numerous catastrophes of varying scale throughout history.

Rob

 

Neat pics! Post all the rocks you got, Nina is fascinated with them. (rocks show up in the bathtub, in the sink, in corners, in plants, on her dresser, IN her dresser, in her pockets, EVERYWHERE) LOL
Gina

 

Barry starts off by saying:

"Very often we are told that most rock-forming geologic processes and layers are the results of extremely slow processes. But there are a few places on earth where the evidence is very much to the contrary."

This is untrue. You have often been told that many rock forming processes are slow, not that most are. Also, there are not a few places on earth that provide evidence of alternatively rapid processes. There are many. And, believe it or not, mainstream geologists have actually noticed this.

The point is that rapid processes occur all the time in geology and have not gone unnoticed by geologists. Your problem is that, often, there are very long intervals between the rapid events, often consumed by slower events or hiatuses in the record.

Having said that, the evidence you cite from Second Valley is not evidence for rapid processes. In fact, quite the opposite could be interpreted.

The simple explanation for the convolute laminae in hard rocks is 'low strain rates.' Such rates of strain are quite capable of producing the features you have noted and they would require lengthy time intervals to provide the total strain evident in the rocks that you have observed.

In addition, the rocks you say must have been deformed rapidly had to have been:

1)deposited at some prior time, having an even older source area, and

2)eroded and covered by more recent sediments, that are

3)even now being eroded to expose the metamorphic exposures that you see in Second Valley.

And I dare say the the appearance of Second Valley has not changed much since the first humans visited. Hence, long times and multiple rapid/slow processes can be logically inferred.

Now, you might say, as YECs often do, that the rocks were really deformed while in the soft-sediment state. If so, you should explain to us how deformed metamorphic minerals occur, along with other metamorphic textures such as rotated porphyroblasts.

Barry goes on to say:

"It looks like what is seen here all formed at once, while all the materials involved were still plastic, and then hardened together at the same time. The slate is not cracking at the bends. Nothing is cracking at the bends."

Yes, all earth materials can be plastic under the proper conditions of temperature, confining stresses and strain rate. The fact that the crests of folds do not show brittle deformation attests to this. Rapid deformation would, in direct opposition to Barry's statement, result in rupture of the rock. I have even seen fracture cleavage developed during soft sediment deformation. Again, if the sediments were soft, the metamorphic mineral grains would show no internal stress or outward strain, as they often do in metamorphic terranes.

Having said this, I also have to say that I have not been to Second Valley so I cannot be certain just what the mineral textures tell us. However, there are thousands of similar locations, of very different age scattered all over the world, and I doubt that they are significantly different.