this is from creationanswers.net
When sediment is deposited in STILL water, one horizontal layer and then the next, it can give this kind of pattern in the rock strata, with the bottom layer being the first to form and the top being the last. This does apply in some locations. But there seems to be a problem in the standard approach of evolutionary geology that this model of sedimentation has been over applied to too many locations. In Flood geology, catastrophic processes would produce circumstances in which powerful water currents would exist. Indeed even the daily tides can produce significant currents along the margins of the continents, not to mention many flood-related processes associated with volcanism, earthquakes, impacts from space, etc. The Berthault experiments show that when there is one layer of one type of particles separated from a different layer under it, that does not necessarily mean they formed one after the other in time. They can actually all form at the same time, in a horizontal progression rather than a vertical progression.
As a sedimentologist, I can tell you that this is partially true, but in geology, it is a relatively rare occurrance and the resulting layers of sediments, sometimes called "tempestites" in no way resemble the vast majority of sediments. Also, if there had been a worldwide flood, then there would be an easily correlatable layer of tempestites deposited worldwide. I promise you, no such layer exists.
As for the Grand Canyon, a simple visualization will show you that the catastrophic model is wrong. Think of what a flood looks like. It would cover the entire area. It would NOT follow a single channel, but rather would fill some areas, scour others, change directions and leave cut-and-fill deposits everywhere. Also, the debris would be scattered with a wide variety of recent remains of terrestrial animals. As we know from examination of the Grand Canyon, terrestrial deposits are limited to creatures, mostly extinct, that would be expected in rocks of their age. Since the last rocks that we can see in the canyon were formed about 200 million years ago, you would expect that they contain no examples of recent life forms, and indeed that is the case.
Certainly the geology of flood deposits is very complex, what with channelization of old deposits, but the rule of superposition still holds true except in the
extremely rare case where an entire series of beds are overturned, and when that happens, they are always fractured and crumbled in places, which is never the case in the Grand Canyon area. But the geology of the Grand Canyon is relatively straighforward. Uninterrupted beds of sediment stretch for miles with no evidence of disruption, save for one large down-cutting stream which reveals the undisturbed nature of the sediments. We also have examined the sediments that were eroded from the canyon into the ocean deltas and they appear to have been deposited quite normally and regularly, certainly not by floodwaters.
You want me to go on? I can. It is true that we don't know everything about the formation of the Grand Canyon, but it is also true that it certainly was not the result of a single catastrophic flooding event.
