I'll try to go through this point by point.
1. You were mistaken, or I wrote badly, or both, if you thought I was referring to the vegetation mats as sources of food for the animals off the Ark. They were the way insects, amphibians, and a number of plant types made it through the Flood. They would have provided insects for those Ark animals which would eat insects, but I don't think the plant life was a major food source -- although I could be wrong (my kids have informed me that I have been known to be....)
2. Vegetation mats can form in ANY body of water which is a) reasonably large, b) surrounded by vegetation which has been c) washed into the water by some cause. The log mats in Spirit Lake are not a vegetation mat, but show graphically what can happen during a catastrophe to the plant life which is near water. We see it in salt water marshes now, but also in the Pacific in the Far East, in the Everglades, and occasionally in lakes after a severe spring or autumn storm.
3. Although I have thought that the major food sources immediately after the Flood were the new grasses and leftover food from the Ark, you have put into my mind the possibility of the vegetation mats which became connected to land or were stranded upon land in marshy areas may well have been a food source for some.
4. I repeat, there is NO possibility for any plant life to have survived under the waters of the Flood. Even without the sediments piled on top of them, inundation for five months would produce root rot, stem rot, leaf rot, the whole works. Olive trees, especially, are from the Mediterranean climate, which is semi-arid!
5. Read this one: http://www.christiancourier.com/notes/oliveTree.htm First of all, the writer does not identify which northern California stream he saw that olive tree in. He does not state how long it had been in water. As a California native, and having lived the vast majority of my 56 years of life in northern California, I have a pretty good idea of where he had to be talking about -- along the coast, probably east of the Napa Valley area, which is subject to flooding of streams on a rather regular basis. The trees could well be flooded ten to twelve feet up occasionally, but the flooding recedes within days. The author also did not note that all the dove brought back was a leaf. The first note of a seedling is the leaves! The Bible gives NO indication that the dove found a tree, only a leaf.
6. Read this one: http://www.szgdocent.org/ff/f-wflood.htm. Rain forest flora is specially adapted to the conditions there. As the article noted, these conditions result in species found nowhere else. There was NO time for flora and fauna to adapt to conditions like these before the Flood. The rain forests also provide at least six months a year of relative dryness, when the waters recede. Noah's Flood did not recede enough for that. You are also forgetting the MILES of sediments the destruction of the old world left behind. Miles thick, not miles wide. Question: where else do you think the worldwide layer of carbon-rich sediments came from that we find under the Cambrian? Remember, unlike other sedimentary deposits, these are world-wide.
7. YOu then wrote:
To refocus the readers mind back to the point at hand here, it was a leaf from an olive tree left behind before the flood that the dove from Noah’s ark must have returned with, as there was no time for an olive tree to grow while the flood waters were receding. Therefore, the YE suggestion that the flood caused massive soil deposits must be wrong, and finding the rivers recorded in Genesis 2 to locate Eden is still possible.
It is true that men believe what they want to believe, regardless of facts! NO LEAF, which is soft tissue, will NOT rot after a year in water! Especially in scalding waters laden with tons of muddy debris! You are not even thinking when you are saying this. This was not a nice, quiet rising of the waters type of Flood -- the Deluge was a catastrophic outpouring of half of our oceans' waters in the form of massive geyser type eruptions that went on for a minimum of forty days and possibly longer! This was a ripping up of the world that was and the deposition of massive amounts of debris in which the life that was rotted. And there was certainly time for an olive seed to sprout, which is all that is needed for a leaf to be found!
Here is some information on propagating olive trees that may be helpful to your understanding: http://www.oliveoilsource.com/propagati ... _trees.htm
8. You wrote:
You need to find evidence for these super geysers carrying out the kind of depositional characteristics you’re describing here for these suggestions to be any more than conjecture. I believe that the fountains of the great deep were involved in the flood, but a geologist simply cannot put his finger anywhere in the stratographic record, and say, here is the depositional evidence for the flood. The water receded and left the land essentially as it was before the flood.
I have told you where that depositional evidence is, and I doubt very much you read the article or that you know much about geology in general! I'm sorry if that is insulting, but you are only parroting from others and not telling me anything that would convince me that you are, indeed, a geologist. The Bible, in the meantime, gives evidence of these 'super geysers' in its statement in Genesis 7:11. The verb there is not a gentle one that is translated into 'burst' -- the word is 'baqa' which means 'ripped open, split, burst forth, dashed to pieces, taken by storm'. The crust of the earth was ripped open, split up, burst, dashed to pieces, and taken by storm. It did not leave the earth the same in any sense of the word.
9. The igneous rocks in Grand Canyon were NOT covered when they were extruded, but open to the air. You seem to forget that I am not claiming Grand Canyon was layered in a year! I don't think any part of it was the result of the Flood! It was the result of subsequent geologic activities which took hundreds of years. So there is no problem with the rocks cooling in time.
10. As far as Glenn Morton is concerned, I agree with him about the model put forth by ICR, which is what he rejected. But he threw the baby out with the bath water. His objections only apply to the problems of the 'one flood did everything' model, which is not really a viable model. However, when we pay closer attention to the Bible, we find that there were not only two other catastrophes, but Job's ice age as well. We also find in Joshua's long day, the sun moving backward on the steps in the time of Hezekiah, and the sun going down at noon the day of the crucifixion, strong evidence for a series of wobbles caused by several changes in the earth's axis tilt through time. George Dodwell, government astronomer for South Australia for many years studied the last of these tilts which occurred in 2345 BC, finally ending the Ice Age of Job. Glenn acted in repudiation of one model, without trying to deal with only what he knew was wrong -- thus rejecting the entire idea of a young creation, which the Bible clearly talks about.
You wanted to discuss the whereabouts of Eden. ALL of this has to do with that, for Eden is somewhere miles down now. But you have your thesis to defend, so I don't expect you to be convinced by a few lousy facts of geology.
You will have a stronger case if you don't try to place the old Eden in Israel (which is definitely impossible as the Jordan Rift gives strong evidence of massive geological activity there in the past!), but rather simply present the biblical evidence that the center of the Millennial Kingdome will be there.