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The Layman’s Guide to

The Amazing but Totally True . . . Scientific

Facts of Creation

By Wendy S. Scott

Updated 7/27/09

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Contents:

Geological Evidence

 

Geological Evidence. 266

The “Early” Earth. 267

Water 269

The Core Issue. 275

The Spread of Life. 278

The Earth on the Move. 281

The Age of the Earth. 285

Known Errors and Problems. 288

Interesting Facts. 291

Evidence for the Flood. 298

Dinosaur Extinction: 298

Chart of “Cretaceous/Tertiary” Extinctions. 303

Geologic Column. 305

The Evidence of Fossils. 311

Evolution’s Nemesis: Fossils. 316

Worldwide Sedimentary Deposits. 326

A Snowball’s Chance. 331

The Uniformitarian Premise. 336

The Evidence of Geological Formations. 338

Israel:  Rosh Hanikra. 343

The Dead Sea. 344

Other Formations. 349

Grand Canyon Depositional Evidence. 352

Grand Canyon Sedimentary Chart 355

Mount St. Helens. 363

Fossil Fuels. 368

BIF’s: Banded Iron Formations. 373

Prehistoric Climate. 375

Other Topography. 377

The Ice Age. 383

Migration. 385

Summary. 388

 

Geological Evidence: Brief List Of Facts

 

1) Earth is perfectly configured for life

2)No explanation for abundant water on the earth

3) Water is the most common chemical compound on the face of the earth

4) Water molecule bonds are broken at 2,000 degrees Celsius

5) Cool troposphere needed to permit water condensation

6) Oxygen is the most profuse element on the earth

7) Marine fossils prove the earth was once entirely covered by water

8) Fossil sea life covers every continent, and is generally mixed with terrestrial fossils

9) No way to measure the age of the earth

10) Radioisotope tests are ambitiously inaccurate

11) Radioactive decay applied based on unverified assumptions

12) Reliance on radiometric dating confirms entropy always existed

13) Radiometric dating is not scientifically verifiable and offers numerous errant or contradictory conclusions

14) Many facts support a young earth: Celestial, biological, chemical, coal and even T Rex bones

15) Population growth rates prove that the human population can only be about 4,300 years old

16) Iridium spike at K-T boundary points to massive worldwide volcanism at massive exterminations

17) Fossil evidence proves that all forms of life were abundant before “Cretaceous/Tertiary” mass extinction

18) Fossil evidence proves that birds were fully developed into major species well before dinosaur extinction

19) Mass extinction evidence only reveals that all these plants and animals died and were quickly buried

20) Only about 5% strata available for the supposed “Geological Column” at any given site around the world

21) “Geologic column” corresponds to mixed remains of ecological zones

22) Terrestrial and Marine “index fossils” are frequently and inexplicably mixed in the same location

23) Fossils are formed by water and sediments

24) Delicate fossil preservations (jellyfish, crinoids, insects, leaves, feathers, hair ) point to rapid burial

25) Terrestrial (land) animals are also buried in water borne sediments, requiring a “flood” type event

26) Massive fossil graveyards establish the effects of water cataclysm, showing great collection by cataclysm

27) Inconceivable circumstances are used to explain catastrophic mixed ages, mixed systems such as leaves or clams, bazaar burials, fish graves and mixed animal burials

28) Upright fossils such as trees and Polystratic fossils such as large animals, disprove uniformitarianism

29) Misplaced animals, plants, pollen and mixed age fossils disprove evolution

30) Vast sediment deposits confirm a world flood

31) The different types of worldwide sediments indicate their deposition environment: limestone (carbonate), sandstone, mud/shale, and conglomerate.

32) No evidence of surface exposure between era gaps

33) Rosh Hanikra formation absolutely proves a worldwide rapid deposit of limestone

34) Dead Sea basin proves that the ocean was once at least hundreds of feet higher

35) Mt. Sdom is a salt deposit from a massive water evaporation

36) Massive formations are eroded from sediments indicating vast water events

37) Grand Canyon was carved before uplift

38) Grand Canyon sediments are over a mile deep

38) Grand Canyon plateau exhibits numerous evidences of classic catastrophic flood traits

40) Rapid deposition indicated by contact points of layers, lack of erosion, and type of sedimentation

41) Breccia, conglomerate and mud confirm flood

42) Fossils of crinoids, Nautiloids, and amphibian tracks confirm rapid burial

43) Vulcan’s Throne lava flow into the canyon proves recent activity

44) Mt. St. Helens’ eruption demonstrates catastrophic effects: rapid deposition and erosion, petrification

45) Worldwide incomprehensibly vast fossil fuel deposits confirm an immense world-simultaneous flood

46) No uniformitarian conditions today will yield fossil fuels, indicating catastrophic conditions required

47) It takes 3-7 feet of organic plant matter to yield one foot of coal

48) It does not take millions of years to create fossil fuels—we can do it in a lab

49)  All coal deposits yield measurable Carbon 14 making them “younger” than the things that died in them

50) Requirements to create fossil fuels are the exact circumstances created by a worldwide Flood

51) Banded Iron Formations require a worldwide simultaneous cataclysmic waterborne sedimentation event

52) Innumerable volcanic rock and sediment formations indicate rapid underwater deposition

53) Mountains arose after worldwide fossil deposition, as seen in numerous fossils  

54) 70% of the earth’s surface is covered by water; would cover it by 1.7 miles without the mountains

55) Ice Age requires sudden cataclysm

56) No fact disputes a worldwide flood, but all indicate it is indisputable fact

 

 

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Disclaimer:

The author of this guide is not a research scientist.  This information has been compiled from an abundance of easily accessible and confirmed scientific authorities.  The majority of the information is common knowledge in the scientific realm, while lesser known facts are cited.  Do not quote the author as a scientific authority.  This guide is intended to systematically build the case for Biblical Creation through the logical alignment and application of the abundance of established scientific facts.

 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


True Blue

All undisputed facts in this guide are in bright blue. 

 

Geological Evidence

 

“Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?  Explain it if you have understanding.”  Job 38:4

 

 

According to all our observations, there is a stability within species and their biological processes today.  In spite of this evidence, the theory of evolution insists that in the unobservable past, biological processes operated much differently.  According to the same evolutionary model, though, geological processes are supposed to be dictated by the opposite assumptions about the past.  These scientists claim that the geological processes witnessed today are the same processes that operated in the past, despite evidence to the contrary. 

The difficulty with geological processes under the evolutionary model is that extremely long ages are necessary to allow for evolution to happen.  Because of this, scientists must view geological formations from the perspective that it took millions of years to create them.  The only way to do this is to impose the gradual, nearly imperceptible erosion processes we see today on all the world’s mountains, valleys, canyons, sedimentary deposits, and erosion zones, regardless of their catastrophic appearance.  Geologists call this uniformitarianism.  Unlike the other evolutionary fields, the motto for uniformitarian scientists is that “The present is the key to the past.”

Evolutionists disregard the implied contradiction between the predictability of uniformitarianism and the unpredictability of rest of the processes proposed for theory of evolution.  The fact is that these two concepts are mutually exclusive.  Scientists must contend that first the formation of the universe broke the laws of physics that we observe today, and they apply chaos as the mechanism for creativity.  They must also accept that biological operations in the past broke the reliable genetic patterns we observe today, utilizing chaos again as the creative force. 

All along, though, in these same conditions, the geological world created by this chaos is supposed to have immediately fallen into reliable physical operations, and the gradually erosive processes that have been completely maintained until today without globally catastrophic events.  If the evidence supports these assertions, then certainly such an interpretation would be acceptable.  The evidence does not.  Not only have we already seen that chaos could not have created the complexities of the universe and life, but this geological section will reveal that the destructive forces of erosion have not always been slow and consistent.  In fact, catastrophe is the best interpretation of the face of the world. 

In light of the obvious contradiction, the only compelling reason for evolutionists to hang onto these gradual processes over millions of years is that if one has complete faith in evolution, it would by necessity have taken millions of years to occur.  Otherwise, the geological record factually favors the Creation/Flood model.  In science, one ought to be able to observe the evidence and make logical conclusions without regard to whether those conclusions are contrary to one’s expectations.  In the instance of geological formations, however, the average person is capable of drawing such logical conclusions with little scientific background through casual observations.

This section proposes an appeal to logical thinking based on the natural processes we can observe in catastrophic events, the atmosphere, geological formations, and principles of hydraulics, sedimentation, erosion, mountain forming, and other information gleaned from the geological record.  In concert, these observations help us to interpret this record of our geological past, and to draw sound conclusions based on our first hand knowledge of geological processes. 

When we take the effects of known catastrophic episodes and compare them to the evidence of geological formations, there is a compelling resemblance.  The record clearly indicates, through the impressive topographical features of the world, a story of quick bursts of catastrophe, followed by uniformity of an indistinguishable period of time.  This evidence of catastrophe demonstrates how well the Creation/Flood model is supported by the actual geological features of the world. 

 

The “Early” Earth

 

          Creation scientists have a great deal of factual support for the model they trust in.  The evidence shows most logically that the world was formed, with all its unique features, intentionally.  The uniqueness of our planet attests to this in every way, and the uniformitarian faith in coincidence is shattered by the beauty and perfection of balance that the earth maintains. 

The earth is called the “living planet” not only because it has life, but because it has all the right physical and dynamic conditions to accommodate life.  The first section already discussed the earth’s cosmological perfection.  It is precisely the right distance from the sun, and the moon for temperature and tides, it has the perfect speed of rotation and tilt of its axis to engender tolerable temperatures and vital season changes. 

Additionally, the earth’s geological and chemical package is uniquely suitable for supporting life.  The earth possesses an enormous range of chemical and physical elements, and precisely meets the necessary conditions to keep these elements viable.  If the earth’s gravity were too strong, our chemical atmosphere would be harsh.  If the gravity was too weak, the necessary atmospheric chemicals would float away.  If the earth did not have a hot interior, our planet would grow cold from the inside, like Mercury, and lose the vital dynamic of a molten inner core.  If our planet were too hot, though, life would be impossible.  All the other bodies and planets within our observation usually fail to meet any of these requirements, and always fail to meet all of them. 

The earth exhibits so many factors of perfection that they all testify as facts of Creation.  Even evolutionary science books cannot help marveling at the hundreds of perfect factors that we enjoy on our remarkable planet.   This absolute edge of perfection is what is required to support life, which is unarguably more powerful evidence for design than it is for the instruments of chaos and chance.  It would be necessary to write an entirely separate book on earth sciences in order to discuss simply the incredible facts of perfection that perform the concerto of our living planet.  These facts confirm the careful planning of Special Creation.  Evolutionists do not argue that the planet is not incredibly and perfectly balanced for life; they simply feel that this perfection is an inexplicable accident. 

Even though these actual facts are indisputable, evolutionists offer subtle, but unsupportable explanations in order to fit them into their evolutionary perspective.  These rationalizations are only fulfilled in conjecture, and not in the facts.  For example, in the first section we discussed how evolutionists propose that the formation of the universe was the result of the Big Bang, and overstep the source of the materials.  Rather than simply accepting these forced scenarios, we need to stop and break down the total implications of each. 

Because evolutionists frequently misrepresent the true facts, or misrepresent concepts as facts themselves, the section that follows will have to address each of the evolutionary fallacies put forth about the formation of the earth, and its “early” state.  By raising logical scientific objections, it is possible to think through and factually disprove each off-shoot assertion, which leaves only the rational and factually supported Creation Model as the best explanation.  To do this, it is necessary to go back to the formation of the earth according to the cosmologist’s basic evolutionary model.    

          The main problem concerning these proposals about the “early” earth is that evolutionists cannot agree on what they believe these “early” conditions actually were.  After the Big Bang, cosmologists propose numerous possibilities for how the earth itself was formed.  Some say, unwaveringly, that the earth could have formed from a vapor of atoms that began to condense and heat up, leading to all the elements now melded together to form our planet.  Others say that the earth was created by already formed debris discarded from the sun, or even that it was formed by hunks of rock left over from another further removed occasion. 

No one knows which of these is the best option because these ideas are not based on the evidence, but on the faith that the universe was formed by itself, and therefore one of these ideas must be true.  There is no evidence to clear up this important matter about the past because we only have the evidence of the scientific principles we observe today to guide us.  These observations conflict with all these naturalistic assumptions, forcing evolutionists to create confusing scenarios in an attempt to account for everything. 

 

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Water

 

The earlier section on Physics discussed in detail the difficulties with the formation of our planet after the Big Bang.  If one brushes aside these problems, the next set of problems is just as crucial.  One of these issues, which is unexplainable within Big Bang parameters, is the incredible abundance of water on the earth.  Frankly, there is really a lot of water.

The problem with the presence of so much water on the early earth is how it got here.  There is no agreed upon, or even feasible, explanation of how so much water came to the earth.  Water is the most common chemical compound on the face of the earth, and covers 70% of our planet’s surface, totaling about 326 million cubic miles (one cubic mile has about a million, million gallons in it).  This is not counting the water continually in vapor form above the planet.  There are more molecules in one drop of water than the number of visible stars in the sky, and each molecule (just like every star) had to have a cause for its existence.  If one believes that our planet was the result of the Big Bang, then a truly remarkable explanation is required for this incredible presence of water. 

Because water poses such a difficulty for evolutionists, the explanation for this abundance of water must be geared to each scientist’s perception of the most realistic scenario for the formation of the earth.  Depending on who you talk to, therefore, the water formed as a natural product of the Big Bang and either it was released as gas from a very hot earth, or it seeped out as water and vapor from beneath the planet’s cool crust. 

The most humorous proposal has been that after the earth was formed, our profusion of water was delivered from outer space, by hitching a ride on a comet or some such extra terrestrial vehicle.  Of course, this would be quite a lot of water to be hitching a ride, making this third concept absurdly unrealistic, and so common sense will simply be the argument against it.  What a coincidence it would be for all that water to form in outer space somewhere, and then come to our nice planet for us.  Imagine how huge that hunk of ice would be at 326 million, million, million gallons.  Not only would it have left an incredible dent, but if there was any kind of atmosphere on the earth when it came, it would likely vaporize much of the water before it could reach the planet.  Altogether this proposition is scientifically unreasonable, and only demonstrates the difficulty evolutionists have in explaining this abundance of water on earth.

There is good reason for the difficulty because the facts don’t allow a naturalistic explanation. Here are some factors to consider if we approach this from the evolutionists’ perspective: 1) the earth should have been very hot when it formed, or at some point, evidenced by the still hot mantle and core 2) the early earth would have had an unstable early atmosphere, from which evolutionists must exclude oxygen 3) we know that no new water is being significantly formed.  These are some of the factors that make it difficult for evolutionists to come to a scientifically coherent explanation for the water on our planet.  This little chemical wonder is quite a mystery.

Water is not an atom, but a molecule.  Cosmologists might feel safe in saying that all the chemical elements of the universe formed naturally, and without further explanation, we are supposed to accept this.  But water is a bonded molecule, not a single atomic chemical element (such as lead, or helium.) Though oxygen is a chemical element, and hydrogen is a chemical element, water is not an element.  The water molecule is held together by a weak hydrogen, and chemical bond susceptible to breakdown.

Scientists must argue that the molecular bonds that form all the water that now resides on the earth came as a direct result of the explosive forces of the Big Bang, and survived the chaos of forming a new planet.  The miracle of such a molecule is unfathomable. Though there are many chemical elements that scientists could argue resulted from the Big Bang, atoms could not possibly find each other and bond into molecules until after matter formed and began to cool.  The formation of water molecules would depend on the right conditions—the Big Bang and the extreme heat are decidedly not suitable, and would only serve to drive the atoms apart.

Most evolutionists believe that the “early” earth began at some point as a ball of condensed molten elements, either as discarded from the sun, or when it miraculously heated up to bind and form the molten core.  Despite the impossibility of water molecules forming and surviving such heat, they contend that they already existed within the molten planet.  This theory proposes that out of this molten planet, pre-existing water molecules (and it would have to be a lot of them) were released as gas, and became part of the atmosphere, where the water vapor later returned to a cool earth as rain. 

It is remarkable that these scientists propose that it was possible for the molten earth to contain water molecules, but that the simpler, more common component of water, oxygen, was not present.  But these conditions are so stringent for a reason.  Evolutionists must adhere to such unreasonable standards, because if oxygen was available to facilitate the formation of water, then oxygen would have been freely present in the atmosphere.  Remember from the section on biology, though, that scientists know that if oxygen was in the atmosphere, then it would have completely prevented the right chemicals from bonding and evolving into life.  Evolutionists, therefore, cannot allow for oxygen in the atmosphere, and must believe that the water molecules must have somehow already existed chemically within the heat of a molten planet, and without the benefit of oxygen to form it. 

If one chooses to unwaveringly accept this irrational hypothesis, then it is necessary to explain how any water vapor within this ball of molten elements did not break down immediately.  If the planet was indeed molten hot when it first congealed, then the water somehow would have had to survive as gas.  This is impossible.  Again, the water molecule bonds are broken at 2,000 Celsius, and the core of our planet even today has only cooled down to 4,000 Celsius.  It is actually only necessary to go 10% into the earth’s crust to reach 2,000 Celsius.  The water molecule could never survive in a molten planet, and therefore (if one must have a naturalistic cause) it could have only formed on a cooled planet by combining oxygen and hydrogen in the atmosphere—which is death to evolution.  Therefore, it would be impossible to somehow form this abundant water on the planet, but to have no free oxygen in the atmosphere. 

Yet, we will take this vein of thought to its final conclusion.  Even if we disregard the indisputable fact that the water molecule would have broken down, and allow water vapor to exist, the delicate molecules would still somehow need to remain present in the atmosphere while the planet cooled, so it could eventually turn into liquid water.  But because the atmosphere would have been unstable, and because there would be no ozone layer yet for diverting solar radiation, the planet’s gases would remain too hot, and the water vapor would have boiled off (Venus demonstrates this principle).  However, the solar radiation alone under the proposed conditions would have certainly been sufficient to break the molecular bonds, decomposing the molecules into hydrogen and that very oxygen that evolutionists are trying to avoid in the first place. 

 

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This concept was discussed in the section on biology.  Many evolutionists disregard the incomprehensible notion that the water molecule could form and survive under the proposed traumatic conditions, but also recognize that mere solar radiation could split up the same water molecule and form the ozone molecule with the freed oxygen. Clearly, evolutionists recognize that the water molecule is susceptible to destruction, while at the same time it is expected to perform chemical miracles in surviving all of that heat and radiation without ever breaking down and freeing the oxygen until it is convenient to form the ozone. 

The scientists who believe that the water molecules could have survived the solar radiation attribute even more miracles to the molecule.  They suggest that the water vapor released from the molten earth actually returned to the earth as rain and helped cool the planet’s surface.  The simple principles of convection, however, refute this concept.  A cool troposphere is required for water vapor to condense and fall back to earth as precipitation.  Warm air pushes water vapor up, so the heat from the planet would keep the vapor far from the earth, preventing it from condensing into rain and returning to cool down a hot earth. 

A cool troposphere is essential for cloud formation and precipitation, and the hotter the planet, the further away the vapor would have to rise to cool down.  It is not possible for water vapor to condense into rain high above the earth and then return to the hot surface under these conditions before it evaporated.  The best that one could hope for is a reduction in the heat of the solar radiation from the canopy of water vapor, which would actually serve to trap in the heat of the planet.  Hmmm . . .

Because of the destructive forces of such extreme heat and radiation on water’s delicate molecular structure, there is no way for water vapor to have mysteriously come as part of the “early” earth’s chemical package, or be retained by the molten planet until it cooled.  Any scenarios that assume that the earth was hot at any time must explain the formation and survival of a delicate molecule under such caustic conditions—and do it without the benefit of free oxygen. 

Many other scientists believe the complete opposite of these ideas, asserting that the earth started out essentially as a cold planet.  The image that the planet started with a cool crust seems like a more favorable environment for maintaining abundant water. The reality, though, is that at some point all matter in the universe would have had to be hot if it came from the Big Bang, and there is no feasible alternative for the creation of heavy elements without some form of baking process, as in the sun.  We must disregard this reality in order to play out the cold planet scenario. 

For the earth to begin cold, then, the planet could not have been cast off in a chunk from a sun process, because then it would begin hot.  It had to have congealed from already cooled debris.   Oxygen and hydrogen would have already combined into water and were present in the debris before the planet formed—a lot of it.  Then, somehow the remaining oxygen would have been blown away (assumedly along with all the other gasses not trapped in the debris).  Of course, oxygen would have to be trapped in the debris as well if the other gases are, which will be a problem later when all the gasses are freed.  

A first problem arises at this point in that the original debris would lack the gravity to hold onto the gases necessary for forming water to begin with.  How would bits of debris keep oxygen and hydrogen hanging around until water formed when small planets can’t manage to do it?  There is no way to put the moment of water formation on the uncongealed debris, before the planet congealed, and then somehow also get rid of the remaining free oxygen.   That would mean that the water formation would have to be removed even further to a situation previous to that.  There is not much hope for finding a way to form water without oxygen tagging along.

Even if water had formed on some much larger body, and then that body broke up and carried the water, like comets, into this debris field that will be the earth, then there is still a process that will disrupt that.  Somehow, at some point, the planet must heat up again in order to congeal and eventually have a molten core.  This process would be all consuming, in that the surface is clearly solid and compact, and a molten state would have been necessary for separating the elements so that the heavier ones, like nickel and iron, sank to the center.  This is how we have an active mantle and circulation of material just below the crust.  However, this process would necessarily have raised the temperature in all the debris above 2,000 Celsius, destroying the water molecules, and bringing the planet back to square one.  Free oxygen.

Realistically, this mass of rock we call earth, at some point, would have had to be molten to allow for a purely naturalistic formation.  Proposing that the earth was initially cold doesn’t make it any easier for water to form—it just fast forwards over some difficulties.  Evolutionists do not fully follow the natural consequences of their hypothesis, which are only superficially reasonable, but always result in a scientific dead end. 

Although evolutionists need the earth’s atmosphere to be void of free oxygen, they dismiss the fact (discussed in the section on biology) that oxygen is the most profuse element on the earth, and has been combined with many other elements.   It is clear that oxygen has always been available in order to form these bonds.  Substances that contain oxygen in their molecules are found in everything, including the earth’s crust, and could not be infused later from the air.  The very granite and basalt rocks that our continents are founded on are silicates, which require abundant oxygen as a chemical component.  

Again, even the very biological forms that would be prevented from evolving in an oxygenated atmosphere all contain oxygen as a main component in their amino acids.  Moreover, attempts to explain the current abundance of atmospheric oxygen as discussed in the section on biology, presents further problems in the formation of water.  Evolutionists must assign the duty of producing this remarkable abundance of atmospheric oxygen to very industrious cyanobacteria and other imagined culprits. 

Cyanobacteria, like plants, produce oxygen by releasing it from water when they split the molecules in photosynthesis.  Therefore, evolutionists must believe that all the oxygen that was not at first in the atmosphere, became so abundant (and it really is a whole lot) when it was obtained from water through the splitting of each molecule.  This means that before plants started to photosynthesize, and release all that oxygen, there must have been even more water than there is now.  A lot more. 

The Troposphere contains most of the atmospheric oxygen, but not all.  It is about nine miles high all around the earth, but the ocean is only about seven miles deep at its very deepest point.  Since oxygen makes up about 21% of the atmosphere, imagine how much water would have been necessary originally before the cyanobacteria started converting it?  When we also take into account how much oxygen has permeated the entire planet, down into the very rocks, it would have taken even a lot more water for this amount of oxygen to be released. 

Whatever evolutionists would like to imagine the initial state of the earth was, there are too many known scientific factors that cannot be worked out in their hot planet/cold planet configurations.  If the planet was ever molten, then water molecules could not have formed until after it cooled below 2000 degrees Celsius, which would require a highly oxygenated atmosphere.  If the planet began cold, then there is still no explanation for how water molecules formed without oxygen being present at some point.  Even so, the planet would still have to become hot to the core, breaking down the bonds of the water molecule, which still releases the oxygen. 

Evolutionists consider several options for how so much water was created on the earth not because the options are so good, but because there are so many problems with them.  Oxygen is disallowed from the early earth theories not because of evidence, but because the natural laws dictate it in order for scientists to give evolution a chance.  The abundance of water on our planet further discredits these scenarios when we try to imagine how much would have necessarily been lost in any of these transformations.  Water is the most common substance, or chemical compound on the face of the earth, and oxygen is the most common element on earth—facts that are impossible to explain through these naturalistic theories. 

 

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The Core Issue

 

These concepts of a hot planet and a cold planet are so opposing, and yet there is no evidence to support either, or to allow for them within testable scientific principles.  Under the hot planet scenario, evolutionists propose that the molten earth sweated the miraculous water vapor, and when the planet cooled, the vapor returned as rain.  Under the cold planet scenario, evolutionists propose that the earth’s crust was cool, but somehow there was a hot core.  This inner heat expelled all the gases, water, and water vapor, into the atmosphere where it condensed and began to collect in the ocean.  Ignoring the obstacles just discussed, these proposals sound quite reasonable on the surface until one begins to ask logical questions. 

Whether or not these theories are feasible, evolutionists must follow certain assumptions from this point depending on their view of the formation of water.  In fact, this issue is so significant, it influences everything that could possibly follow.  After one assumes the earth had initially formed, one of two things should have happened.  Either there was little water on the surface of the earth, or the surface was completely covered in water.  There is no agreement as to which is true.  It depends on whether one believes that the earth started hot, or cold, and therefore whether the water was released from the molten planet to the air, or contained under the surface of the crust.  This leads to two completely different perspectives on the initial configuration of the earth, and ultimately should impact how the earth behaved geologically.  Unfortunately, because evolutionists do not always play out the logical implications of their theories, most pick and chose which phenomenon occurred regardless of their causational relationship.  

          Instead of dealing with the details of a cold planet, most evolutionists have invented a “goldilocks” temperature for the initial state of the earth that could not exist.  They would like it to have been cold on the crust, and hot in the core, but as already discussed, it would have necessarily all been hot at one point.  If we go ahead and simply allow the assumption that this state was possible initially, they theorize that with an essentially cool crust, and a hot core, the water vapor could have been ejected from beneath the surface into the atmosphere through volcanism, and natural seepage.

Here, it collected on the surface, or condensed as rain and returned to the surface of the earth.   Since this is intended to be an explanation for how water appeared on the earth, it could not have materialized until this point.  This means that, by necessity, the outer crust had already formed and cooled, and the water had surfaced and pooled when the circumstances and temperatures were optimum.  The image of water ejected onto a cool crust is the most popular among scientists, despite the fact that it doesn’t fit with the problems mentioned earlier, or the projections that follow. 

The problem with believing that the water was ejected from volcanoes, and other vents in a cool crust, is that this means that the crust was already formed, so the major continents and continental plates would already have to be established.  Theoretically, in this case, the water would have slowly filled in around the rocks.  With the majority of the continental plates already formed, tectonic activity would have already been building mountains along with the necessarily active volcanoes. 

The number and size of the volcanoes required to expel the amount of water that now exists on the planet, indicates a great deal of mountain building would have been part of the scenario.  The water filling in around the mountains and continental protrusions would have caused ocean basins to form with the growing weight. Additionally, the space left beneath the crust as the water was vacated, would facilitate the depressions that could hold and contain the water.  Once the water was essentially expelled from the earth’s crust, any future rise in the water levels is extremely difficult to explain through this theory since the mountains would have already been built up.   

Geologists frequently must defer to the invasion of vast, “ancient” seas on continents in order to explain geological and fossil evidence, but under this scenario, there is no justification for these drastic changes in the sea level.    Evolutionists believe, based on fossil evidence, that this early time was when the sea level was at its highest.  However, once the original sea level was established under this scenario, there would be no cause for the ocean to again rise and then fall numerous times, and invade continents numerous times over hundreds of millions of years.   

Because of these limitations, water expelled from the already formed crust of the planet is not the preferred conception of the early earth.  Evolutionists need the continental crust to move all around the world, and up and down, and to be flooded, and drained numerous times in order to have an opportunity to explain the fossil and geological evidence without conceding to a worldwide flood.  For this reason, it is necessary for continents to come and go, and to crush together and separate under evolutionary schemes.  This is not the sort of thing, though, that happens so erratically if the crust is already cool before the water is expelled from beneath the surface. 

However, evolutionists cannot have the water come from volcanoes unless there are volcanoes protruding from the crust, and water cannot pool on the surface of the earth unless it is cool enough so that the water doesn’t evaporate.  If the crust is already cool when the water is expelled, and the water collects on the surface of essentially established topography, then the subsequent erratic desirable geological movements necessary are unjustifiable.  Because of all this, the other model is more fitting for the movements evolutionists would like to impose on the continental crust.  

Now we must go back to the optional explanation for the presence of so much water on the earth.  Here we will assume that the earth was initially a molten ball, and that all the water molecules somehow already existed intact within the molten ball.  In this case, the belief is that the water vapor was emitted from the molten ball and it was mysteriously retained in the hot atmosphere until the earth began cooling.  Eventually, the crust would have to cool enough so that whatever water had miraculously remained could condense into clouds and fall back to the earth, and so the water could stabilize on the surface. 

However, because the water vapor would have been ejected prior to cooling, and the surface would be cooling before and during precipitation, volcanic and mountainous formations would not have necessarily formed on the earth. Under these circumstances, the surface of the earth would likely be a relatively smooth sphere with very little geological formations yet at all.  Without mountains, valleys, and oceanic basins on the earth, based on the tremendous amount of water, the surface of the earth could be completely covered by water once it returned to the earth.  More on this will be discussed later.

Under this scenario, the resulting geographical features would deepen and rise gradually through tectonic and volcanic activity as the hot mantle continued to be fluid beneath the surface and adjust to further cooling.  The continental build up would be slow, and mountains, valleys, and oceanic basins would take time to form through this process.  This would allow for the evolutionists’ preferred vision of the early earth, and its plastic continental crust.  On such an earth, the continental plates could be undefined and in constant metamorphosis, supposedly allowing for the complex movements of continents that are proposed by many evolutionists. 

There is certainly some scientific rationality to this idea that the earth’s crust could undergo changes as the molten mantle beneath continued to move in a convection style effect.  But this bit of rationality ventures beyond our scientific experience, and subtly crosses into unsubstantiated mayhem.  As the continents built up, and depressions in the crust began to form ocean basins, uniformitarians believe that these continents would be free to converge and divide, split and fuse continuously in bizarre and unimaginable movements by mere geological whim. 

Additionally, this initial geologically featureless configuration also allows for the continents to gradually rise out of the water through continued volcanic and tectonic activity.  By beginning featureless, the earth’s crust is able to rise and form continents haphazardly, and evolutionists use this gradual buildup of continents to power their ever transforming world landscape.   This image of a pliant crust for our budding planet is precisely the one that most uniformitarians acquiesce to in order to explain so much of the fossil and geological evidence throughout the earth.

Evolutionists believe that this flexible model will allow for the necessary presence, recession, and influx of continental ancient seas in order to explain the abundance of marine fossils all over the world.  Although most evolutionists prefer to imagine the early earth spewing the water vapor out from a cool crust, as in the last scenario, they necessarily need to believe that the geographical features arose in this fashion with the water covering the earth entirely. Without this scenario, there is no way to justify the emerging (and submerging?) pre-formed continents and their erratic movements through long, non-catastrophic geological activity.  And without these erratic movements, there is no rationalization for the geological and fossil evidence that will be discussed later.

 

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The Spread of Life

 

The major issue, however, that evolutionists must consider is specifically, again, the phenomenon of abundant fossilized sea life.  The only reasonable explanation for how these marine fossils cover the face of the whole earth is to agree that the whole earth was once entirely covered by water.  But again, when scientists suggest this, one may wonder why this does not confirm the Flood.  In order to avoid this fact, scientists must insist that these fossils are the remains of life from the “early” earth, when they believe the continents were first emerging from under water.  If these creatures had evolved and were deposited while the earth’s continents had not yet fully emerged from the water, then they believe this explains how they were fossilized throughout the world on what now forms the continents of dry land. 

One important problem with believing that the earth was completely covered by water before the first leap into life is that life could not possibly invent itself in the hostile environment of the deep, open seas.  It is statistically impossible for even two delicate amino acids to form from all the necessary chemicals and then run into each other in the open sea before they were destroyed under such conditions, so a complex protein would certainly never form, and so on.  One cannot have the earth completely covered by water, and contend that life formed in these adverse conditions when we still cannot do it in the safety of a petri dish. 

Even if evolutionists contend that life formed after a very long time, after land first began to arise somewhere, there would need to be a pocket shelter from a turbulent sea in order for all those amino acids to get together before they were destroyed.  This would be tricky, though, because, as discussed earlier, any bourgeoning life, would certainly be destroyed by the bombardment of the sun’s radioactivity, being so close to the surface, without the benefit of an ozone yet. 

Currently, evolutionists are considering how rocks and clay minerals could have been the birthing-place of life rather than water.  This concept, however, would pose these obvious difficulties:  1) extreme exposure to solar radiation 2) limited mobility for amino acid assembly.  3) no innate connection to the ocean where the rest of life supposedly evolved. One would do well to keep in mind that the emergence of a new theory best serves to expose the mystery of evolution rather than the certainty of it.  The reason for a new theory is because of the problems inherent with life evolving from chemicals.  There are just as many obstacles whether life tries to evolve on land or in the sea.

 Another challenge to evolving in the vast ocean is that most of the life forms from the remarkably diverse (yet stable) worldwide Cambrian explosion are relatively shallow water creatures, and could not tolerate deep-sea conditions.  The Cambrian system is believed to be the first stage of evolutionary development, and evidence of this incredible abundance is left in the rocks of all the continents. 

Most of these species required relatively shallow conditions to survive, from cyanobacteria to snails, and all the species that depend on them.  These fossils cover every continent, and are found anywhere from the center to the edge.  Therefore, evolutionists are forced to imagine impossible scenarios about precisely how much land was exposed to offer protection, on every part of every future continent, despite the fact that the whole of each continent is covered by these early marine fossils. 

The typical depiction of this early time proposes that islands of the crust began protruding above sea level at numerous places throughout the earth as volcanoes built up over hotspots, or tectonic activity uplifted the bedrock.  These baby continents then gradually began to move and submerge at will all over the earth.  Supposedly, as these land-masses became more exposed, the Precambrian microbes, and then the worldwide Cambrian explosion of species theoretically occurred simultaneously as demonstrated in the abundant fossils, throughout the entire world. 

Since Cambrian life lives almost entirely in shallow water, we must ask, therefore, if the ultimate impossibility occurred.  Scientists must suppose essentially one of two unlikely scenarios for the spread of life throughout the planet under these harsh conditions.  One is that the delicate microbes of new life managed to cross the turbulent seas and spread everywhere (deep seas, no ozone), and fill the planet with oxygen.  Then whatever of these lucky contestants was first to move up would rapidly evolve into the whole spectrum of the Cambrian system in one part of the world.  From there it had to spread again over the turbulent seas throughout the world, and so on for each stage, yet giving the impression that life occurred simultaneously worldwide. 

The alternative is, incomprehensibly, that evolution miraculously gave birth to life several times, and followed the same developmental pattern at different locations all over the world, producing the exact same abundant species in the shadow of every emerging continent.  Again, evolutionists are not able to feasibly work out the details of implausible conditions that they are dictating.  These assumptions are not based on fact, or even the best interpretation of evidence, but on necessity in order to allow for evolution.  The only fact we know is that the world was completely covered by water and life, and that marine fossils prove it. 

Evolutionists would like to limit these deposits to the Cambrian system, when the water would have been its highest, and it would be most reasonable for such deposits to be worldwide, but they cannot.  In fact, fossilized marine life throughout all the subsequent “geologic systems” (Silurian, Devonian, Permian, Cretaceous. . .)   is prevalent on every continent, telling us that science cannot possibly limit these deposits to the “early” stages of the earth.  Evolutionists’ basic knowledge of many marine systems is based on these fossils found on what is now dry land, in the middle of continents worldwide.  This preservation of sea life throughout all supposed evolutionary stages is why uniformitarians must invoke the frequent, and inexplicable invasion of “ancient seas.”  More on this will be discussed under the uniformitarians section.

Evolutionists use this very abundance of marine life to aid in assigning geological periods and establish evolutionary progress, but no one questions how paradoxical it is that even the sediments that are assigned to the evolution of land animals is still marked by abundant marine life—no matter where the site is—dinosaurs and clamshells buried together.  The worldwide preservation of marine fossils throughout all supposed geological eras still only confirms one fact—that the world was once under water.  The need for a pliant early earth, and the need for continents and ancient seas to come and go is so that evolutionists may explain the inexplicable.  Upon close examination, though, we can see that even their own concepts conflict with other pieces of the puzzle.

Altogether, there are too many difficulties with these conditions to believe that they were likely inducements to life.  Even so, to believe that the earth began as a molten ball, scientists must still overlook the impossibility of water molecules pre-existing in this fiery planet.  They must also disregard the impossibility of the molecules surviving under these conditions in order for the water to return to the earth in such enormous quantities.  Beyond these obstructions, this model must have precedence over the cold crust model if evolutionists hope to explain subsequent geological, and fossil evidence.  However, simply having a flexible model does not necessarily lead to self-explanatory geological activity. 

 

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The Earth on the Move

 

Uniformitarian geologists impose such incredible acrobatics on the earth’s crust, that they amount to a geological free-for all—chaos and unexplainable movements being the rule.  At any given point in this scheme, part of Africa can be joined with South America, and North America can be joined with Australia, and half of one continent here, and two other parts over there.  Very little evidence seems to be required in order to allow for these interpretations.  Subsequently, these erratic movements are available to account for any number of fossil or geological phenomenon that conflict with evolutionists’ geological hypothesis—chiefly the fossil sea life, and sedimentary deposits, which will be discussed in more detail later. 

In order to explain various geological phenomena, uniformitarians have mapped the different stages of continental “progression” based on their interpretations of the evidence.  Though these theories may vary among geologists, they outline the essential movements believed necessary to explain the geological evidence.  Evolutionists who rely on these movements must hold to the concept already discussed, that the molten bedrock of the earth’s crust began nearly completely underwater, and that geological activity was responsible for the emerging continents and their paths. 

These theories rely on continuous continental alterations using concepts such as, “uplift,” “rift,” “convergence,” “divergence,” which they impose liberally on the earth’s crust in a confusing ballet of geological motion, unlike the simple and unilateral activity zones proposed for plate tectonic movements today.  The forces of this arbitrary activity bring the same continents together, that they would later turn and rend apart.  This theory raises them, then lowers them, and has them gallivanting all over the globe to the most astonishing choreography without any accountability as to the cause. 

Although plate tectonics is used as the vehicle force behind all these movements, under this scheme the presumed direction of movements fluctuates and even reverses constantly, negating any possible legitimate geological tendencies.  Uniformitarians believe that these movements and the build up of continents eventually converged to form the super continent of Pangaea.  The formation and then separation of this continent is timed to coincide with the evolutionary perception of when certain worldwide explosions of terrestrial species occurred.  This scheme facilitates explanations of a worldwide simultaneous explosion of plants and animals without having them travel across oceans and throughout all the continents to accomplish it. 

After about 100 million years, this incredible continent supposedly broke up again into the opposite direction by the very forces that had initially brought it together.  Then the fragments would have fractured along new boundaries, and zipped apart in all directions at about than an inch a year before the new continents finally came to the positions they are in now.  There is no authoritative evidence to substantiate this nomadic model in a way that excludes other scientific interpretations, including Flood evidence.  The assumptions about the erratic restlessness of the continents lack credibility because they are based on an attempt to explain difficult fossil evidence, not because they are the natural conclusions drawn from undeniable evidence or comparable observations of today’s geological movements.  It is simply the only way to maintain the evolutionary theory in the face of the pervading facts.   

In addition to explaining sedimentation and other fossil evidence, uniformitarians believe the rise and shift of continents can allow for magnificent swings in climate that seem to have occurred in different parts of the world.  These climatic fluctuations are evoked with little causational relationship to known phenomenon, and are clearly based on conjecture and preconceived ideas of evolutionary timelines rather than on geological evidence.  A great deal of speculation is used in assessing not only the position of the continents at various times, but how these positions (though hypothetical) and geological activities would result in certain climatic effects. 

This flexible system is manipulated at will to explain remarkable phenomenon such as extinctions, a perceived Ice Age in Africa, tropical forests in the Arctic, deserts in North America, and other evidence of atypical vegetation, animal life, and geological phenomena throughout the world.  The reader can decide the feasibility of such pliant interpretations, and whether or not the evidence justifies it, by researching these theoretical movements.  Many textbooks and encyclopedias on science and nature (including the Atlas of Life on Earth by Barnes and Noble, 2001) offer maps that plot these proposed continental changes from the “earliest” stages.  Any further discussion that would address this topic in minutia would be both productive and enlightening, but again, another book.

Altogether, necessity is indeed the mother of invention, and the conditions of the early earth as envisioned by evolutionists lead further down the path of rationalization and away from the reality of scientific fact.  Each concept runs into another scientific contradiction, and all these theories are proposed without substantiating proof that excludes other interpretations.  The objective of this investigation was to point out the fallacies and assumptions that are embraced by evolutionists in order to justify their theories.  They separate discussions about the geography of the earth, from the chemistry of the earth, from the physics of the earth, from the biology of the earth, and frequently ignore their interdependence.  But we cannot—they are too interwoven. 

Evolutionists impose an initial state on the earth without regard for the necessary details in chemically accounting for the abundance of water.  They ignore the irrationality of the existence of water molecules without the presence of oxygen, and then evoke enough oxygen from the cyanobacteria to fill every part of the planet and form the ozone.  The sudden explosion of marine life worldwide, as recorded in the rocks and sediments on every continent, obligates evolutionists to construct their implausible crustal movement theories around the evidence instead of in line with the true facts and observation. 

Additionally, the result of evolutionary scenarios concerning the “early” earth are a faith-based scheme fantastically orchestrated on whim in order to keep evolution from being nullified by geological difficulties.  The following topics will not discuss the intolerably numerous and complex continental movements as proposed by uniformitarians.  One would have to address each and every movement and attempt to align them with the actual geological evidence in order to properly demonstrate the unnecessary and capricious nature proposed through an initially molten earth and its mobile crust. 

The concept of Pangaea will be discussed later, but the main difficulty concerning this theory is not in Pangaea itself, but in the randomness of continental movements proposed from the onset of the “early earth.”  The uniformitarian concept of this unpredictable activity still cannot reasonably account for all the geological evidence.  Instead of clarifying the relationship between theory and evidence, this subjective geological activity has become a generic defense for difficult issues, even when the explanations themselves cannot be justified.  

Under this scheme, “ancient” seas are free to come and go, land rises, and lowers, converges and divides, the climate is drastically altered, continents are renovated, and anything is possible as long as it is not a worldwide flood.  From the formation of water to the formation of the continents, the “truth” about the “early” earth depends on one’s perspective and aim.  Overall, there are too many conflicts to call any of these scenarios a fact—if the facts could be determined by the evidence, there would not be such differing views.  In fact, the evidence itself is the problem.  These theories about the creation of water, and the configuration of the earth all conflict with actual evidence and testable science. 

This very same geological evidence, though, is easily understood under the Creation/ Flood model.  God created the earth, water included, just as it is.  Though some water indeed was evidently stored underground, it is this breakup of the ground and release of water (undeniably much in the same manner as proposed feasible by “cool crust” uniformitarians) which brought the Flood and the death we now observe in so much sediment and fossil evidence. 

Nothing scientific disputes the Creation model for the formation of the planet.  On the contrary, all the elements of the Flood are elements acknowledged in the evolutionary geologists’ theories, just in a different order.  While the specific theory of the continent of Pangaea is not eliminated by the Bible, all the cosmological and geological proposals that lead to Pangaea through uniformitarian schemes are scientifically arbitrary.  If Pangaea existed, it was created that way, and then was torn apart in the processes related to the Flood, which will be discussed later.

 

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The Age of the Earth

 

Here is the geologist’s dilemma.  There is no incontrovertible proof of the ages of rocks or of ash and lava flows, or of any geological episode not recorded by humans.  The fossils are used to date the rocks in the geologic column, but the rocks and strata in the geologic column are rarely if ever used to date the fossils--only confirm.  No geologist is able to irrefutably date rock strata with radiometric dating methods without relying on presumed dates from fossils based on assumptions about the evolutionary timeline. 

This means that if a biologist thinks it would take 100 million years for a fish to turn into an amphibian, and a paleontologist finds an amphibian fossil, then that fossil is dated the corresponding age.  Then the paleontologist tells the geologist where that sediment layer is in the geologic column according to the assumed evolutionary order of life, and the geologist ensures that the dates derived from the corresponding rock coincide with the paleontologist’s assumption of age.  Vary rarely will the geologist’s final assessment contradict the assumptions of the paleontologist because when an undeniable disparity arises, the paleontologist has the final say in the assignment of the date.  In this way, geologists generally rely on the paleontologist for an idea of the rock’s age to begin with if (and there usually are) there are fossils associated with the layer. 

This is best summarized by Derek Ager (interesting name), professor of Geology at University College, Swansea, Wales in his 1983 article in New Scientist.  He states:

 

 . . . fossils have been and still are the best and most accurate method of dating and correlating the rocks in which they occur. . . .  As for having all the credit passed to the physicists and the measurement of isotopic decay, the blood boils!  Certainly such studies give dates in terms of millions of years, with huge margins of error. . . .  I can think of no cases of radioactive decay being used to date fossils.

 

Most people assume that geologists can pinpoint the age of rocks with relative accuracy.  They don’t realize that people have not been around long enough to really know what rocks and various topography would look like after millions of years.  People have this idea that rocks have some intrinsic discernable date on them, and are further convinced of the fallacy of evolution.  Geologists depend heavily on the use of the highly limited radiometric dating, which as stated, is not self evident, but relies on the preconceptions about age in local fossils for verification. 

Radiometric dating is so inconsistent that evolutionists themselves must regularly reject the dates they yield.  Most detrimentally, as we will see, when these tests have been run on artifacts from known geological episodes, radiometric tests have failed in excess of hundreds of thousands to more than a billion years too old.  The equation for radiometric dating requires an unquestionable presumption of hundreds of millions of years in order to interpret the reading to begin with.  However, there is no verifiable technique for validating the accuracy of these assessments other than by the fossils, which in turn receive their ages from a presumption about an evolutionary timescale. 

The method of radiometric dating in itself is flawed.  Geologists use the principle of radioactive decay in rocks and ash exposed to the earth’s surface to date how long ago they came out of the earth (generally through volcanism).  The problem is that although it is possible to measure present isotope ratios in mineral bearing rocks, there is no way of knowing what the initial ratios were in order to calculate the age of a rock.  Dates based on this method must begin with a preconceived age in order to calculate the initial ratios, then use those ratios to calculate the age.  This method essentially calculates the remaining percentage of radioactive nuclide when the initial amount at the time of surfacing is unknown.  The only way to arrive at an answer is to make an assumption about what it started with, without any way of verifying it. 

More alarmingly is that this method is applied despite the fact that radioactive decay in rocks is assumed to take hundreds of millions to billions of years to reach half-life.  Uranium-lead is estimated to reach half life in about 700 million years, potassium-argon in about 1.25 billion years, and rubidium-strontium in about 49 billion years.  This means, as scientists openly acknowledge, that the potassium-argon dating method is “useful” for dating qualified rocks beginning at one million years ago and older.    The Uranium-lead dating method is “useful” for dating rocks at 100 million years and older, and the Rubidium-strontium test is useful for dates beginning at 1 billion years and older. 

Based on their own data, it would not be possible to date the age of the earth by any radioisotope method if indeed it is only about 10,000 years old.  In fact, it would have to be at least 100 million years old to obtain any type of interpretable reading.  This is like counting the lifespan of a flea in millennia.  If one insists upon answering a question within an unanswerable context, the answer will not be correct.  Scientists have already decided how old the earth is.  Radioisotope dating is a façade without a framework to anchor it.

In reality, this dating method cannot be corroborated since no one has actually ever lived a million years to verify it. Unlike carbon 14 dating, which decays at a much faster, more measurable rate, radiometric dating relies on decay that is so slow, the method is not genuinely verifiable within our lifespan, even if it is properly applied.  We are unable to factor in every possible variable that could affect these levels.  Moreover, the three most common methods used are uranium-lead, potassium-argon, and rubidium-strontium, which assume that one actually decays into the other.  However, it is not possible to accurately factor what degree these “decayed” element exists independently as contaminants.  Like many other evolutionary assumptions, radiometric dating is not verifiable, yet evolutionists propose that it is infallible evidence. 

What a lay person like myself wonders is, if each element (argon, potassium, uranium, lead . . .) presents a different level or rate of decay, and as it would happen, rocks sometimes get all mixed up, how can anyone really believe that their radiation isn’t effecting each other?  Aren’t they assuming that there was none of the supposed “decayed” versions or elements (lead, argon) at the initial formation of the earth?   Additionally, one would assume, just like anything else, the circumstances of the extrusion would also affect the rates of decay.  As my Mom put it “Hey, if I take a teaspoon of ice cream and a scoop of ice cream, they are not going to melt at the same rate because one has more cold stored up.”  I think you have a valid point Mom. 

It is fair to say that no one knows exactly how various circumstances would affect such rates.  No one can say for sure what factors even compel elements to decay, so we cannot presume to know what factors can influence their rates and ratios.  The amount of the sample, catastrophic circumstances, extrusion under water, massive extrusion quickly, slowly, a hot environment, cold environment. . . obviously any of these factors could affect the decay rate.   Regardless of whether or not these factors would have an effect, we are still left with the conflict that the method presumes long ages in its equation.

What is so interesting about this method is that it relies entirely on the recognition that decay in rocks is inevitable and assumes it has been happening for hundreds of millions of years after the formation of the earth.  As an aside, this very reliance on rock decay as a dating method exploits and corroborates the undeniable fact that the 2nd Law of thermodynamics, the law of increasing entropy, is an active force.  This confirms that evolutionists really do recognize entropy would have always been in operation even before evolution would have started.  In the minds of evolutionists, it must be possible for entropy to be fundamental while the reverse of entropy would also have been acting, even dominating, in order for evolution to prevail.  These are contradictory forces, needing separate universes in order to operate simultaneously.  Regardless, the method is still dramatically inaccurate.

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Known Errors and Problems

 

Perhaps the most condemning indictment against radiometric dating is its reliable unreliability.  Geologists generally usually use more than one method wherever dating any site, and these three methods almost always offer vastly differing dates for the same site.  One must wonder how a scientist decides which of these dates to accept when the three can vary by hundreds of millions to even a billion years difference among them?  This makes radiometric dating completely unverifiable because not only do the testing methods not even confirm each other, but they cannot even accurately date known events.  

Geologists have performed numerous radioisotope dating tests on geological features whose dates are known, such as Mt. St. Helens, and they have failed convincingly.  The radioisotope dates calculated for the Mt. St. Helens eruption exceeded the actual date by 250,000 years.  Mt. Ngauruhoe in New Zealand had five lava flows between 1949 and 1975, but the radioisotope tests dated it up to 3.5 Million years old.  Another example will be discussed in the Grand Canyon section with equally convincing errors.  Moreover, geologists must frequently adjust dates to paleontological finds, such as in the case of skull 1470 mentioned in the section on the “Descent of Man.“  Despite these and many more examples, scientists still insist the method is accurate on older dates, which cannot be verified. 

Any scientist, evolutionist or Creationist, should agree that this is a dubious method, which is believed only to accurately date unknown episodes, but exceeds the dates of known episodes by millions of years.  Errant calculations have even been excused as referring not to the extruded rock that was tested, but to what was already calculated for the mantle itself.  This would not be helpful at all for dating the age of an exposed rock ever.

By all common sense, this cannot be considered a reliable dating method.  It is an oxymoron to continue to use a scientific dating method as verification of evolution when it itself cannot even verify the known facts, and it is a non-falsifiable measurement.  If you ask a geologist about this inaccuracy, they will tell you it is complicated, and you don't understand.  There are many more dramatic instances of inaccurate dating, and reassignment of dates because of conflicts.  Despite the truth, society’s ill-founded faith in radiometric dating is so established, that most people concede to the mystique of this geological illusion, and assume that it is a demigod of fact. 

Alternative dating methods are no better.  As mentioned in the fossil section, carbon 14 dating (radiocarbon dating), which is used on organic matter, can only be measured reasonably accurately within about 5,700 years of the death of the organic matter.  The sample becomes too degraded after that for a trustworthy assessment.  Evolutionists know that anything over “50,000” years should yield no measurable carbon 14.  In light of this, an embarrassing fact is that there is a measurable presence of carbon14 in all coal deposits—a complete contradiction to the millions of years attributed to coal formation. 

In fact, a new method, Atomic Mass Spectrometry (AMS) has found a quarter of one percent of modern levels of Carbon 14 to be remaining in coal samples dated by evolutionists to be 100 million years old.  At 100 million years old, there should not even be one atom of Carbon 14 remaining.  This percentage of Carbon 14 found in coal is much closer to a deposition about the time of the Flood, taking into account the effects that such a massive catastrophe would have on all Carbon levels.

This remaining quarter of a percent of carbon 14 would also make “ancient” coal deposits, which are deep under thick layers of “millions of years” of sediment, tens of millions of years more recent than the supposed evolution of mammals and humans attributed to the top layer.  Wood has even been found in “Upper Permian” rock that still contained measurable amounts of carbon 14, when it should have been 250 million years old.

Even the samples less than 5,700 years old are not always reliably dated.  Every test depends on several assumptions, which cannot be unquestionably verified.  Scientists must assume that carbon 14 always degrades at a consistent rate regardless of external circumstances, and that the ratio between carbon 14 and carbon 12 also remains perfectly consistent.  These assumptions disregard any possible fluctuations due to catastrophe, or different atmospheric or environmental conditions in the unrecorded past. 

Moreover, dates older than 5,700 years rely on further evolutionary assumptions for verification.  Evolutionists have tested the living bristlecone pine which they believe to be about 5,000 years old (not too much older than what Creationists would accept), and have used it to calibrate their tests on older samples.  However, scientists admit that since the tree is still alive, they have to apply a theoretical curve to account for continued life, so this test is not a standard carbon 14 verification.  They have also tested wood from Egypt’s Pharaoh Zoser’s tomb, which dated it at about 2,600 BC.  Evolutionists believe that this proves that the dating method is reliable. 

However, since this date can be projected to a degree by some written records, and is within the acceptable range of relative accuracy of 5,700 years, this is not good evidence that the method is reliable beyond that time.  Other similar attempts to calibrate this process to much older dates rely exclusively on evolutionary assumptions of when that civilization existed.  In other words, they would use the assumed date of the civilization to calibrate the carbon 14 test, and that same carbon 14 test would then be calibrated to confirm the date of the civilization.

The crux of the Creationist argument is based on the fact that not only has the use of Carbon 14 testing overstretched its plausibly reliable application far beyond the 5,700 years, but even on known artifacts, wrong dates have been assessed.  There are many examples of unacceptable dates in all directions, demonstrating that there are simply too many factors that we may never fully comprehend that can influence sample levels, readings and interpretations.  There are examples of recently dead animals testing at thousands of years old, and that famous “100 million year old” oil dating at only 50,000 years old (supposedly about the time of Neanderthals).  These dates are blatantly inaccurate regardless of which side you are on.

When evolutionists themselves derive these unacceptable dates, they are quick to deploy a litany of reasons for the errors.  They confess that contamination was to blame, in both directions.  Some have blamed too old dates of recently dead animals on a contamination of “old carbon,” which increased the ratio of Carbon 12 to Carbon 14, giving the older date.  Given evolutionists’ quick excuse of inaccuracies, other factors that could affect Creationist predictions should be equally considered. 

Since fossil evidence indicates that the pre-Flood world was temperate, and lush, there could easily have been a higher ratio of Carbon 12 to Carbon 14 before the Flood.  Additionally, post-Flood carbon 14 may decay faster due to less protection from solar radiation after the rain canopy collapsed.  Given so much evidence supports a global Flood event, the post-Flood world would unquestionably have disrupted carbon levels of both types of carbon, affecting every prediction.  Moreover, all carbon levels would be catastrophically affected, from increased levels of decay (evident in the vast oil and natural gas resources) to vast carbon outflow from volcanic activity.  This would undeniable be a world of catastrophe in which every prediction would be haphazard, while uniformitarian presumptions must incorporate steady, non-catastrophic carbon levels that would not fluctuate because that is their entire premise for dismissing catastrophe to begin with.

Evolutionists, however randomly apply their rationalizations to suit the situation, and don’t see this as reason to reduce the stock they put in carbon dating.  Sometimes they reason that radiation emitted from surrounding rocks or environment can affect carbon levels.  However, this presumption is not afforded to Creationists concerning their predictions.   Evolutionists even claimed in one instance that water which flowed through carbonate rock effected carbon levels of a sample.  Does this mean that if limestone is around, it could affect organisms buried in or living nearby that Creationists might point out?  No, because contamination, adjustments to expectations, and contributing factors in general are only allowable for the “real” scientific model, but for the Creationists, they are just excuses.

Many, many inaccuracies are available as an indication of how easily this dating process can be disrupted.  The obvious problem becomes, which dates will be accepted?  Anthropologist Robert E. Lee stated in his article in the Anthropological Journal of Canada in 1981:

 

          The troubles of the radiocarbon dating method are undeniably deep and serious . . . It should be no surprise then, that fully half of the dates are rejected.  The wonder is, surely, that the remaining half come to be accepted.

 

          From the Creationist point of view, the tool of Carbon 14 dating is interesting, but not reliable, even though it frequently confirms Creationist models.  They know that in the pre-Flood world, the atmosphere, the carbon levels, and the radiation levels that create Carbon 14 out of common nitrogen, all of these factors absolutely would have been different.  These factors would have a profound effect on the initial Carbon 12 to Carbon 14 levels, as well as the rate of decay.  Additionally, the catastrophe itself would bring innumerable factors that we are not capable of calculating or testing beyond speculation. 

Creationists see that these factors are reflected in the carbon readings of today, but since the calibration would be based on assumptions about the Flood, just as evolutionists use the readings to justify their assumptions, they prefer to rely on other, testable factors as evidence.

 

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Interesting Facts

 

The Creation scientist will find there are numerous and reliable dating methods that favor a young earth.  There are scores of interesting trivia to confirm the Creation model, all of which can be methodically verified.  For instance, the evidence in space tells us that things are decaying too quickly to be billions of years old.  All our observations about rates of heat loss in celestial bodies, the breakdown in matter, like comets and Saturn’s rings, and the slowing rate of earth’s rotation tell us that the universe cannot be more than thousands of years old.  Those who try to explain why these observations do not confirm even millions of years old, let alone billions, will resort to imposing potential factors for which there is no evidence. 

Even the dust in space has been measured to gather on the moon at an approximate rate of 2.7 inches per million years, but there is only about a half an inch on its surface now.  If we assume that the moon was squeaky clean when it formed, it still couldn’t be more than 200 thousand years old, but not billions.  In fact, scientists were so sure that there would be several feet of dust, that they designed the Apollo lunar landing gear with a type of snowshoe for landing in the thick dust, and made the ladder 18 inches short from the ground, forcing the astronauts to jump. 

On the earth, we observe many curiosities even in the natural sciences.  For example, the oldest living organism is a bristlecone pine in southern California at 4,300 years old.  Experts who watched the Great Barrier Reef rebuild after WWII destruction, concluded that this oldest reef in the world was only about 4,200 years old.  The Sahara Desert, the largest in the world, has been dated at about 4,000 years old based on observed expansion rates.  Why? 

Why is it that all these things, which can be gauged and tested with reasonable accuracy, don’t date into at least the tens of thousands of years?  Is it because the flood was only about 4,000 years ago?  Why is it that the oceans contain only about 3.6% salt?  If there was absolutely no salt in them to begin with, the current rate of deposition of salt minerals from the land into the sea (where it is left after evaporation) is estimated at about 5,000 years or less of deposition.  How does a scientist account for long ages within this kind of scientific evidence? 

Another example is that at current rates of erosion, the continents would erode flat in about 14 million years from now.  Even when we take into account uplift of the continents, this fact contradicts the existence of fossil layers hundreds of millions of years old, that are still above sea level.  We must assume that the same erosive processes were acting in the past, yet instead of being eroded away, they supposedly only built higher and higher.  This poses two problems.  The erosion of mountains do contribute to the sediment layers, but even the current mountains would erode flat in 14 million years, therefore fossil layers exposed today that are many times older than that should have already been stripped away long ago.  Since the very fossils we have been privy to today are supposed to be up to several hundred million years old, how did all those layers avoid the erosion that is so prevalent today?  

The only way this is possible is if there was no erosion for the first several hundred million years while all the subsequent fossil layers were added on top (by water deposition, of course, so this no-erosion thing will be tricky).  This is not realistic, though, and doesn’t fit with the uniformitarian model of steady processes.  The only real possible explanation for so many layers to be deposited by water, but for the water to cause no erosion to the current layers, is if the sediment deposition happened all at one time, instead of numerous times, or continuously over hundreds of millions of years. This, of course would be by Flood.

It would actually work out better for geologists if they conceded to this because of all the mountains, like the Himalayas, that have a lot of marine fossils on them.  All that erosion supposedly led to the deposition of these fossils, but on the other hand, now that they have supposedly been above sea level for about 15 million years, all that erosion should have washed away those hundred-million-year old fossils a long time ago.   Why on earth are they still there after 15 million of years if uniformitarians are going to rely so much on gradual deposition of eroded materials?  Geologists can’t have fossils result from gradual burial by eroded sediments and not have any erosion going on somewhere to create the sediments the fossils are in.  And on top of that, the erosion never affects the actual fossil beds for millions of years after that.  Only the Flood can explain the enormous deposition and erosion of materials that created these fossils because it would be a recent, one-time deposition that has only been exposed for a few thousand years.

Perhaps more telling statistically is our ability to verify the age of humanity.  Many people are aware that there is a lack of written language known to date older than 5,000 years.  Though scientists may ignore the significance of this statistic, the estimated population growth rate itself is not disputed among scientists.  Today, the earth contains about 6 billion people.  As recently as 1985, the world contained 5 billion people—a rapid development in about 20 years, but the trend continues.  In 1977 there were 4 billion people, in 1962 there were 3 billion, and in 1930 there were 2 billion.  It took only 70 years to triple the population of the earth.  A mere 200 years ago, there were only 1 billion people in 1800, a blink in the evolutionary eye.  There were only about ¼ of a billion people at the time of Christ.  It had taken just 2,000 years for the population to grow by nearly 25 times. 

If we take these known estimated populations, and continue to calculate back, we very quickly run out of people.  Just 1,000 years before Christ, even if there had been only a ½ percent growth per year, the world could not have contained much more than 2 million people.  Since Christ, the average worldwide growth rate has been over one percent per year, and presently it is at about 1.4 percent with the poorest countries having the highest growth rate.  This rate of increase would lower the earlier population even more.  Evolutionists tell us that modern humans evolved over a hundred thousand years ago.  The population growth rate, however, puts the start of humanity at just over 4,000 years ago, about the time of the Flood. 

Population growth rates are so reliable because they are testable, and there is a long history of growth rates that can be verified by unquestionable mathematical calculations.  Scientists can take known population estimations, compare them to estimations from another time, and easily calculate the yearly growth rate.  Even if extremely high mortality rates, and extremely low reproductive rates are generously factored in, it would be ridiculous to double this estimation to 8,000 years ago—yet this exaggerated figure utterly rebuts evolutionary timelines. 

We have 2,000 years of reliable population estimations in order to calculate steady rates, and there are certain reasonable limits to how low this rate can be.   The ratio of human survival rates to death rates, even in extremely harsh conditions, has never been witnessed in human history to hold steady at zero growth.  There has always been growth.  For evolutionary timelines to be true, humans would have needed to hold to no detectable growth for over 190,000 years.   

Hominid development would have required a large ancestral base, and therefore would have developed from a large, widespread population, with numerous simultaneous and consecutive “almost fully human” generations.  Otherwise this unprecedented revolution in the animal world would have emerged through evolution at near extinction rates.  Then this weak and endangered (yet astonishingly remarkable) new creature suddenly got a foothold just a few thousand years ago at a time in civilization that evolutionists consider as recent as yesterday.  This is exactly what the undeniable evidence presents based on these undisputable population growth rates.

 

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In order for scientists to justify something as dramatic as human evolution in light of this reliable evidence, they need to assume that there must have been a strong evolving human population that thrived and dominated for over 200,000 years up until just a few thousand years ago.  Then, to explain the low population growth data, they would need to invoke a catastrophic event that wiped out all but a few thousand “fully modern” humans.  Such a concession, of course, removes any possible corroboration for evolution, since there is no traceable evolutionary link through such a constricted barrier. 

Once a catastrophe is necessary to explain the current low population, the evolutionary premise loses a scientific advantage over the model that simply asserts the human population is young.  There really is no other way to explain this insufficient human population except through a catastrophe, and having no evidence of one other than the Flood, every other assertion is speculation.  Even the found remains of humans confirm this, as the earth should be filled with graves and bones, but there is a notable lack of such confirmation that this number of people ever lived.  If evolving humans have been living and dying for hundreds of thousands of years, one might reasonably ask where all the bones are.   

Most remarkably, scientists working in another area, genetic “mutation” rates have come to the same conclusion about the world’s population.  People around the world are so genetically similar, that it is impossible that humans had evolved all over the world for hundreds of thousands of years.  Because their data on mutational differences indicate such a close common ancestry, and limited “mutational,” or genetic differences, scientists must assume that modern humans came from a recent stock of humans, contradicting evolutionary assumptions. 

A program on the Discovery Channel introduces this dilemma while talking about the destructive power of volcanoes.  The May 6th, 2002 airing of “Supervolcanoes” suggests that a giant volcano was responsible for a sudden reduction of the population, and in turn explains the narrowing of genetic differences worldwide.  Though these scientists propose their population-narrowing catastrophe happened more than 5,000 years ago, their opinions about the timing are based on evolutionary assumptions rather than actual datable artifacts.  For instance, evolutionists continue to use the terms genetic “mutation” and genetic “variation” interchangeably.  They guesstimate how long it would take for a gene to mutate and develop into a new characteristic (though no one has ever witnessed such a thing). 

These “mutation” rates are then applied to the genetic differences between populations, and calculations are made about how long it would have taken for them to diverge.  Again, since there is no evidence that different characteristics are the result of mutations, then these differences come from built-in genetic variations.  Because of this, evolutionists project an excessive amount of time on the progress of civilization to allow for these mysterious mutations to occur.  Even allowing the evolutionists’ assumption, though, their own calculations still arrive at a shockingly recent the population growth. 

Although Creation scientists would call these differences genetic variation rather than mutation, the remarkable genetic similarities worldwide confirms a recent population growth since the Flood.  Whether one calls this data “mutations” or “variations,” it so undeniably indicates a recent descent from common ancestors, that scientists must invent an explanation.  In the program, they suggested that there must have been a massive population reduction on the scale of near extinction.  Again, one might suggest that a worldwide Flood could accomplish such a thing.  Evidence like this overwhelmingly demonstrates the credibility of the Creation/Flood model. 

 

In addition to these bits of trivia, there are also numerous geological dating methods that validate the Creation model.  Unfortunately, for both sides of the debate, there are scores of methods that have attempted to gauge the age of the earth, but they all rely on assumptions that cannot be verified.  This is why all the different chronometers (aside from radioisotope dating) date the earth the full spectrum between 100 years (influx of iron into oceans via rivers) and 500,000,000 years old (influx of magma from crust to form mantle) or more.  All of these scores of estimates are based on assumptions about steady rates of measurement gathered within a few generations of scientists. 

Since evolutionists always assume that current rates have been the same since the past, and Creationists believe the evidence supports sudden Creation and planet maturity along with a worldwide cataclysm, some of these methods may never be verified to everyone’s satisfaction.  There are simply too many factors that we are not knowledgeable enough to account for, and too many disagreements on all sides.  But the point is, considering the assertions evolutionists make, if very few of these methods agree, then how can geologists arbitrarily decide which ones they will accept?  There is no sure way to verify the earth’s age. 

All the uniformitarian assessments assume millions of years for evolution, but the evidence does not require that interpretation.  When something is a fact, it means that there is no reliable refuting evidence, or possible alternative interpretation.  The rate evidence, such as the population growth is, reliable and verifiable, and indisputable.  But while the information just discussed is compelling, the geological record itself also provides competent, reliable evidence that not only completely allows for the Creation/Flood model, it is typically best understood through the Creation/Flood model.  Our actual observations and collective historical experiences make the most sense under a young earth Creation/ Flood scenario when we consider what we know about observed catastrophes, rock formation, hydraulic erosion, and even fossil anomalies.  All of these phenomena support the Creation model.

A last example is taking what should be an evolutionists’ weapon of evidence, that actually reveals how indisputably young the earth’s history is.  Let’s call them, un-fossils.  As discussed earlier, there are a growing number of examples of fossil specimens that should be tens of thousands to millions of years old that show no signs of the long years of decay they should have undergone.  Millions of year old bacteria have been cultured to life.  Carbon 14 has been found in all samples of coal and fossil fuels despite supposedly being millions of years older than it could possibly survive.  Similarly, DNA has been extracted and analyzed from “Neanderthal” bones.  Since carbon 14 would not even last 50,000 years, certainly uncorrupted DNA from Neanderthals of about the same age should never survive. 

More telling than this is the remarkable discovery of red blood cells found in T. Rex bone.    This is impossible if dinosaurs died millions of years ago.  This fact defies the whole foundation of evolution, and is further proof that the more scientific research that is done, the more evidence points to the Creation model.   We are grateful for those intrepid scientific explorers.

Paleontologist Mary Schweitzer has engaged in some unusual work with fossils.  She is the first paleontologist to examine fossil bone fragments under the microscope, and has found heme (the protein of hemoglobin) and red blood cells in several specimens.  The latest was from a femur of a T. Rex found encased in massive amounts of sandstone in Montana in 2000 by researchers from the Museum of the Rockies.  Since the large femur was broken in the process of transporting the specimen, the museum sent fragments to Schweitzer for her research. 

This specimen appeared so well preserved that blood vessels and blood cells are evident, intact with several nuclei, as well as actual soft tissue.  Despite supposedly being 68 million years old, the bone wasn’t even fully fossilized with mineral, and the tissue actually became elastic after hydration, indicating the lack of degradation of these proteins. 

The May 2006 article in Smithsonian entitled “Dinosaur Shocker!” quotes fellow paleontologist Thomas Holtz Jr. as stating the obvious on page 55.  “Schweitzer’s work is showing us we really don’t understand decay.”  Well you certainly don’t understand something.  Until now, no one even thought blood cells and tissues could be preserved by fossilization even 10,000 years, let alone 68 million years.  Since such an short window of time would completely discredit evolution, real science must acquiesce again. 

Despite claiming to be a Christian, Schweitzer is frustrated by Creationists pointing out how impossible this preservation of blood cells and soft tissue is.  She says “They twist your words and they manipulate your data.”  It is not necessary to manipulate data when the researchers themselves are astonished by their findings.  It speaks for itself.  Although perhaps there are still some mysteries about the extent that organic material can be kept viable under these circumstances, this fossil is certainly a poor example to promote the concept that T.Rex was killed 68 million years ago.  The fossil simply cannot be that old. 

Even after being sealed off from organisms and oxygen, this does not keep the tissue and the cells from chemically degrading or turning to stone.  Moreover, the protein collagen has been indicated in the samples, which is particularly telling since it should completely degrade in less than 30,000 years.  The only explanation uniformly offered by researchers for this amazing preservation is that it must have fallen into some sort of preserving chemical solution in its burial.  Clearly, scientists recognize how extraordinary these findings are, they simply refuse to consider the implications.  Instead, the discovery goes a long way to substantiate the Creationist timeline of death by The Flood just thousands of years ago. 

The author of the article, Helen Fields, goes on to illustrate the exact assertion of this book—that scientists who adhere to the evolutionist perspective will completely ignore blatant contrary evidence.  She explains Schweitzer’s thoughts on pg 55:

 

For her, science and religion represent two different ways of looking at the world; invoking the hand of God to explain natural phenomena breaks the rules of science.  After all, she says, what God asks for is faith, not evidence. . . “I think that God designed it so that we’d never be able to prove his existence.  And I think that’s really cool.”

 

God has given us all this really cool evidence that the Bible is true, and the people who could verify it are committed to a science that makes it illegal to recognize God.  Wow.  Science.  The feasibility of evolution is completely intertwined with their timeline of millions of years.  Regardless how scientists would like to guard the evidence, it continues to substantiate the Creation/Flood timeline.

 

 

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Evidence for the Flood     

Dinosaur Extinction:

 

As discussed in the introductory chapter, the most crucial aspect of the Creation model, the one that typically receives derision, is that of the Biblical account of the worldwide catastrophic flood.  Despite the perceived fantastical aspects, the geological evidence for the Flood is so remarkable that it is bewildering how blatantly geological hypotheses ignore the possibility.  In attempting to solve the mysterious and catastrophic global extinction of the dinosaurs, scientists have entertained theories of the bizarre, including asteroid or meteor impacts, draught, disease, earthquakes, radiation, massive volcanic activity, and even dinosaur blindness, but never a worldwide flood. 

Is this because there is no evidence for a flood?  No, there is infinitely more evidence for a worldwide flood than for any of the other theories.  This is especially true when we realize that we only know about the existence of dinosaurs at all because they were entombed in water borne sediments as fossils, which will be discussed more. 

In trying to solve the mystery of dinosaur extinction, scientists have only recently entertained the possibility of a flood in any form, generally as localized floods, or coastal floods caused by a meteor impacting the ocean.  This reluctant admission is a result of logical conclusions drawn from the geological evidence of tremendous and sudden depositions of waterborne sediments.  The theory considers the evidence of regional massive sedimentation and geographical features in the Yucatan Peninsula as the basis, theorizing that a giant meteor may have impacted the region, sending tidal waves for thousands of miles. 

These scientists propose that the waves could have reached as far as 700 feet inland for surrounding coastal areas.  Some argument is made over the validity of the so-called impact crater, but there is agreement about the undeniable evidence of regional flooding.  According to these researchers, massive sedimentary deposits are apparent on the coasts of all surrounding regions, particularly noted by these scientists in Cuba.  The problem with this theory is that it only considers the area surrounding what is proposed to be an impact crater, when in actuality this massive coastal sedimentation phenomenon is worldwide. 

Scientists, seeing the potential of this explanation for the demise of dinosaurs, are willing to concede that these massive sedimentary depositions are indicative of rapid verses gradual deposition.  They site that these deposits contain no evidence of animal boroughs or root intrusions typical to lengthy passage of time in between gradual depositions.  Scientific supporters of this theory contend that such a flood disaster could have global effects, and rightly so, but how could a single tidal wave wipe out dinosaurs in every part of the earth (but left all other kinds of animals) regardless of their proximity to the coast? 

Most scientists recognize that this theory cannot adequately account for the extinction of the dinosaur, but acknowledge the evidence given.  Even in this limited scope, however, they are reluctantly giving credence to a worldwide flood because one must assume that if the evidence reflects one kind of flood, it could reflect another.  The implication that dinosaurs could have been catastrophically killed by flood, also confirms that the evidence shows that they were buried in sediments. 

Instead of focusing on the flood evidence, though, the majority of the evolutionists place their faith in the atmospheric effects of a possible meteor, or asteroid impact.  As children, most of us were taught that the dinosaurs were eradicated when one or numerous asteroids struck the earth raising a huge cloud of dust that covered the earth, choking the atmosphere.  This dust is supposed to have blocked out the sun, which theoretically brought a draught, killing all the vegetation.  There was a very popular animation that illustrated this theory, which made the public education circuits, and depicted this dark and violent world of dinosaurs.  Since then, there have been several revisions to the same event, but the essence is the same. 

The popularity of this theory persists due to the discovery of a band of rock that has a high iridium content located between the supposed “Cretaceous” and “Tertiary” systems (or the K-T boundary, which is considered the dinosaur/ mammal boundary).  Iridium is rare, and known to be found abundantly only in outer space, or under the surface of the earth.  Scientists believe that the presence of this iridium layer supports the asteroid theory for the demise of dinosaurs.  Scientists also know that this spike in iridium could be caused by worldwide cataclysmic volcanic activity.  Evolutionists often consider volcanic activity in their scenarios as an alternative explanation because a great layer of volcanic ash would produce this worldwide spike even more effectively than simply clouds of dust scattered by one or more asteroids. 

Massive volcanism, however, is part of the Creation scenario, and corroborates the anticipated factors of the Flood account.  Scientists point to the worldwide layer of ash-like iridium spike, and also consider the possibility that massive volcanism may have occurred in the past, which subsequently blocked the sun, and disrupted the climate with added moisture and ash.  When they do this, they are pointing to evidence of the cataclysm associated with the Biblical Flood. 

According to the Flood account, volcanic activity in the oceans and on land discharged a great deal of the subterranean water as part of inducing the Flood.  The geological turmoil caused by the Flood perpetuated the upheaval.  This volcanism continued as part of the mountain building process that assuaged the Flood waters off of the land.  There are only two possibilities for explaining this iridium layer: asteroids and volcanoes.  One validates the Creation model, and the other, as we will see, doesn’t fit the evidence.  

When examining the demise of the dinosaurs, there are several difficult issues that scientists must account for in their theories.  These issues are so problematic that evolutionists are forced to create complicated and unsupported scenarios in trying to explain them.  Yet these same difficulties for the evolution model are simply resolved when we view the facts from the context of a worldwide flood.  Scientists that will not accept the Flood evidence must explain what kind of catastrophe would eradicate the dinosaurs of all sizes and ecological niches, and yet other types of life would have had to obviously survive even until now.  If this disaster wiped out the dinosaurs, it should have wiped out all terrestrial animal life, yet clearly it did not.

 

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Though they had different body types than mammals, the dinosaurs were vastly diverse, ranging from gigantic to very small, carnivores, herbivores, scavengers, as well as insectivores.  There were even the dinosaur type sea creatures like the plesiosaur.  Supposedly, none of these survived, though mammals would have depended on the same types of environments that they did.  As discussed in the section on mammals, most evolutionists profess that the mammal population at this time was limited to basically the shrew, and perhaps other small mammals until the dinosaurs were wiped out.  In the event of proposed dramatic atmospheric disturbances (such as meteors or asteroids raising clouds of dust), evolutionists suggest that these small mammals, waiting in the wings to take over the world, managed to hide underground until the danger passed.

If this were the case, however, it is certain that the death of the dinosaurs through this means would take many months.  How did only these sensitive mammals survive no more than a few feet below ground with their environment, air,  and normal food and water supplies thoroughly corrupted, while the most dominant and versatile creatures to ever live, big and small, perished in this earth shattering disaster?  If it were possible to survive at all, why didn’t scavenger dinosaurs survive off of all that carrion until the conditions changed, the way animals underground would have to survive until things changed? 

It is as if evolutionists are comparing short-term disaster events, such as fires or local floods, with what would be a very long term global disaster.  Mice have been known to survive short-term limited disasters, but even mice drown on a sinking ship.  Being a few feet underground does not protect one from an epic, atmospheric disaster for long.  Evolutionists seem quite comfortable with dictating the timing and survival of mammals.  According to many records, we know that dinosaurs and a great diversity of mammals actually did coexist in the Cretaceous, making the dictates of what and when mammals survived and evolved a thin line of subjective distinction.

The survival of mammals is only slightly baffling compared to another survival tale.  This scenario cannot explain how gracious and delicate birds inexplicably survived in the same environment that killed all the dinosaurs.  The fully formed Archaeopteryx (as discussed) has been designated by evolutionists as part of the Jurassic system—supposedly before the grand appearance of “true” mammals, but while dinosaurs were at their strongest.  The “true” bird must have been close behind. 

The fossil site already mentioned in Dinosaur Provincial Park, as you recall, lists fossilized “true” birds among the dinosaur finds.  Las Hoyas in Spain is dominated by excellent “true” bird fossils preserved in limestone (of all things), as well as a few medium-sized dinosaurs.  These are further examples that negate the speculation that dinosaurs evolved into birds in order to survive the great extinction. Evolutionists must believe that birds were already fully established by the time of the extinction of the dinosaurs, but they must also believe that birds were compelled to evolve from dinosaurs under the selective pressure of extinction. 

This early establishment of “true” birds raises two problems.  First, since birds supposedly began to evolve while dinosaurs were at their peak, then the disaster itself later could not have provided the environmental or survival impetus to evolve.  The second problem is that birds are even more vulnerable to atmospheric changes than the whole range of dinosaurs would be (canary in a coal mine?).  They live in the air and trees, and could never have survived a disaster that wiped out all the resourceful dinosaurs worldwide.  If this were possible, why did not the array of flying reptiles survive? 

Any such worldwide disaster would have far reaching consequences that would affect the whole spectrum of life.  Additionally, there would need to be the necessary recovery time for the air to clear, the hydraulic cycle to pick up again, and the plants to begin to grow.  If dinosaurs, the most resourceful animals, could not survive anywhere in the world because of the disaster, how could anything survive?  It would have to wait a long time to breathe and eat, and drink in safety in order to thrive.  Scientists cannot reconcile the fossil and geological evidence with a feasible theory for the sudden extinction of the dinosaurs that is consistent with the evolutionary model. 

Even many evolutionists acknowledge that there are difficulties with the traditional extinction scenario.  Instead of a cataclysmic cause, the Atlas of Life on Earth proposes on page 229 a possible gradual extinction of the dinosaurs through an unexplained temperature drop.  Of course, this wouldn’t explain how they got buried in all that sediment, but that will be discussed later.  The Atlas kindly lays out the figures for extinction rates of different animals during this event by comparing fossils of life that existed at the time of the extinctions to today’s life.  Evolutionists have long maintained the impression that there was little more than the shrew that needed to survive the catastrophe, but this book flatly acknowledges the clear evidence that there was a wide range of all life that the fossil record captures at this exact time of supposed transition. 

This concession makes theories about the dinosaur extinction even more strained, as a much more diverse group of animals across the board would have had to weather the disaster that brought all dinosaurs to an end.  According to their interpretation of the evidence, there have been some surprise survivors of this extinction based on comparing what fossils are found at this perceived Cretaceous/Tertiary (K-T) boundary, and what is known to survive today.  Therefore, according to the evolutionary interpretation of the fossil record, all of these categories are represented to the extent that their post “K-T extinction” survival can be compared.  Among the survivors are birds (of course), crocodilians, all amphibians, 95% of lizards and snakes, 85% of the placental mammals, and only 25% of the marsupials.  Since evolutionists can take great liberties as to when fossils are assigned in the timeline, the evidence must unavoidably demonstrate this arbitrary “mass extinction” managed to zero in on all dinosaurs (regardless of size).  

Just as interesting is the assessment that about 70% or more of marine species also became extinct at this time although only about 15% of fish specifically went extinct.  This further complicates a sufficient cause of the mass extinctions if a worldwide sediment-bearing Flood is excluded as a possibility since burial, not ecological or environmental, best explains their deaths since these species tend to be floor dwelling, or low-mobility species, while the majority of fish survived.    Strangely, though these statistics argue that only 25% of birds survived, the chart about bird development two pages later explains: “By the end of the Cretaceous, the birds had evolved into the major groups known today.”  That means that birds were fully developed before the massive dinosaur extinction that closed the “Cretaceous,” and therefore could not have been the event that spurred their evolution.  In fact, birds would have been very strongly developed for a supposed 25% extinction rate to have hindered their speciation so little. 

This chart demonstrates the hypocrisy of the extinction/progression scenario:

 

Chart of “Cretaceous/Tertiary” Extinctions

 

Despite the fact that evolutionists use the dinosaur extinction as the impetus for ushering in a new era of birds and mammals, all of these animals not only lived contemporaneous with dinosaurs without the help of extinction, but they apparently survived what only the dinosaurs could not.  There is no opportunistic relationship implied in the fossils, which simply confirm that there was a great disaster that killed massive amounts of animals, and destroyed ecosystems as well, evidenced in the vast entombed remains.  Once again, the fossil record only demonstrates what had died and was buried, not all that has lived.  It is the same today.  We can dig up a graveyard from the old west, and get an idea about the types of people that lived in that town, but there is also a lot of room for misinterpretation depending on what we dig up.  One could easily assume that mostly old people lived there, or only really sick people lived there.  If there had been a measles epidemic, one might think that it had been a town made up of only small children, or if one digs up the jailhouse cemetery, one would think people had weak necks back then because so many of them were broken.  This is how it is to interpret the fossil record.  All we know is what died, and what was buried.  We only really know what survived by what still lives today. 

Perhaps if evolutionists did not confine their conclusions to fit their evolutionary expectations, they would discover that a great variety of animals lived at the same time prior to the extinction, and the reason they cannot explain why some survived while others did not is because the rocks only tell one story—what died.  They do not tell when they died, or how long between, or even a particularly accurate order. 

The only real geological evidence for the extinction of the dinosaur is that something buried all these dead animals, including the mammals and birds in adjoining layers.  We know this happened for a fact because that is what a fossil is.  Nothing more can be derived from this fact other than that these species were buried, and quickly, because their preservation in the rocks is the only evidence that they existed at all.  The true scientific query should be why were they all buried?

 

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Geologic Column

 

When evolutionists go looking for evidentiary support, their entire model is based on the order of species found fossilized in the rock strata.  Scientists contend that, here the sedimentary rocks have preserved the story of evolution.  Fossils beginning at the lowest level are supposed to represent a sampling of the early, simple micro-biotic life, moving up to simple sea life, toward more complex sea life, to lowland life, to more complex terrestrial life, to dinosaurs, to mammals and birds, to the life represented today and man.  They call this the geologic column, and in the evolutionist’s mind, it is the perfect picture of life’s progress from the sea to land and up from there.  The fossils, they believe, are the key. 

The problem is that this geologic column is not complete anywhere, and is frequently uncooperative.  According to the uniformitarian model, if the column were complete, the span of 600 million years of life would require 130 miles of sedimentary rock to record it in.  The worldwide sedimentary layer does not generally exceed seven miles depth in any one place.  This leaves the uniformitarian scientist the responsibility of deciding which of the 600 million years are actually represented in the maximum 5% of the supposed strata available.  This subjective dating method, though pliant in the geologist’s speculative imagination, still frequently does not fall in line with evolutionary expectations.

Quite often, as mentioned before, species are actually found out of order.  Not slightly out of order, but dramatically.  As mentioned in the fossil section, frequently, uniform rock formations will bear two species that are believed to be sequential, at the same level or in reverse evolutionary order.  In these dramatic instances, there is no visible break in the laying down of the sediment, and no apparent physical explanation for the fossils to be laid down in inverse evolutionary order. 

Such inexplicable evidence mortally wounds the concept of evolutionary ascent from lower forms, making scenarios unimaginable.  Again, this phenomenon is so common that geologists employ a plethora of incredible approaches to explain them, many of which do not fit the on site evidence, and seem to the mind mechanically impossible.  They impose sedimentary shifts and intrusions of newer sediments, and even a sort of flip flop of layers regardless of the uniform appearance of sediments.  Rather than take the record for what it presents, these scientists explain why the evidence does not fit their expectations.

          The geological presentation of the fossil record does not need to be explained to validate the Creation/Flood model, and the Bible was written long before anyone knew how to gather such evidence and manipulate the account to fit it.  When the Bible was written, people probably didn’t bother to study the sedimentary layers and fossils, yet this new scientific research confirms the Bible.  On the other hand, it is the inconsistency of these fossils and sedimentary layers that cause today’s evolutionists to readjust their theories. 

The very evidence at the heart of evolution doesn’t actually prove evolution at all.  The different strata that evolutionists would like to use to demonstrate the stages of evolution also correspond to the preservation of different ecological zones if they were to be somewhat mixed and frozen in time in the Flood (factoring in the sorting action of water on different bodies).  This is what evolutionists term the “geologic column,” but this evolutionary timeline is more harmful than helpful to the paleontologist, and it is not even the best, supportable, interpretation.

What we find from the lowest rocks to the highest rocks in this “geologic column,” are these fossil snapshots preserving fully formed and ecologically established species.  No transitions, and no explanations.  Predictably, the sediment sometimes preserves a wide variety of fossilized life natural to a general ecological zone.  The “column” does not sufficiently demonstrate every stage of evolutionary development, but the evolutionist’s perception of this ascent from the sea is actually consistent with living ecological zones.  

This obvious parallel interpretation is evident beginning with the lowest section in the evolutionists’ column, which contains sedentary mud dwelling micro-biotic life and worms and such.  The next section up bursts into more complex sedentary life (trilobites, sponges and clams), to soft bodied low propulsion life (like jellyfish and nautiloids).  Then more mobile life is preserved as the strata goes higher from the base, revealing vertebrate fish, then up to amphibians, and then to reptiles, then mammals and birds. 

Not surprisingly, life today is organized in generally the same manner: the lowest being simple life in the mud on the sea floor (called the benthos) or in lake bottoms, to complex vertebrates, from bottom dwelling fish to more surface fish (called the nekton), up the shoreline to amphibians, into drier zones, reptiles, smaller mammals, up to larger mammals depending on the local topography.  The fossilized plant and tree life are often grouped in similar zones as well.  This demonstrates that fossils preserved life according to its regional relationship, and according to the different biomes like tropical forests, coniferous forests, temperate forests, deciduous forests, and grasslands. Perhaps one reason the geologic column is incomplete in any given area is because not all kinds of life live in the same ecological zone. 

Each era on the evolutionists’ geological column can reasonably be correlated to these ecological biomes.  The benthos correlates to the Pre-Camrian/ Cambrian/ Ordovician eras.  The nekton correlates to the more mobile Silurian/ Devonian/ Mississippian eras.  The grasslands and swamps correlate to the Pennsylvanian/ Permian eras.  The conifer and tropical forests correlate to the Triassic/ Jurassic eras.  The deciduous and temperate forests correlate to the Cretaceous/ Tertiary/ Quaternary eras.  The actual fossil record itself does not perfectly reflect this evolutionary concept of geologic systems, but it is what evolutionists have agreed the fossils demonstrate in general.  In reality, the conditions appear to be more turbid than paleontologists like to admit, but the evolutionists’ concept of a geologic column correlates so well to natural biomes, that it gives a great deal of credence to the Flood model.  The Flood model would expect that many regional species would be buried together, along with a lot of lingering marine life that had been swept inland.

If one were to imagine a catastrophic flood today, one would expect to see essentially this same pattern buried within the sediment.   Some fossils would be created during the Flood, and some as the Flood stood, and some as the Flood receded and left new deposits.  This would lead to multiple marine fossil layers.  Additionally, sorting would be natural in these different zones among creatures with a wide range of mobility. 

The larger animals and the more mobile animals, and air breathing marine animals (turtles, whales) would escape longer from the steadily rising waters.  Birds could perch in trees, avoiding drowning longer.  More significantly, animals that floated best would end up dropping into the sediments later.  This is exactly what is reflected in the supposed geologic column, allowing for any amount of intermingling and sorting by the physical properties of the plants and animals, as expected in a flood.  Many animals, including humans, could cling to vegetation, or float extensively, exposing them to ordinary decay, and leave no trace. 

 

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Interestingly, scientists confirm this “picture” of ecological zones frozen in time.  Many books on how to find and identify fossils will discuss the conflicting mix of evidence at any site through this encapsulation of ecological zones.  Snails and horsetails have no business in the same strata if snails only represent the Cambrian era, and Horsetails only represent the Pennsylvanian, supposedly being separated by millions of years.  The fossil hunter, though, recognizes their ecological relationship and will discuss the sites based on the expectations of certain zones and the fossils they are likely to produce such as marine, wetland, tropical, forest, and so on. 

It is clear to them what kind of environment is represented by the sediments and the site, and appropriately characterizes it.  They do not seem to consider that another site, hundreds of miles away, which also lay in the same strata, reveals a completely different fauna.  Although related strata is generally recognized as the same period, new explanations for the burial of those fossils may need to be conjured if it is not environmentally reasonable. 

In one region of the strata, marine fossils are found, and in another, large terrestrial fossils are found.  The same sediments cover them both, but they do not acknowledge that both sites capture ecological zones more rationally than geological periods. Rather than realize that all fossil sites are subject to ecological zones, regardless of where they lie in the strata, they still typically characterize the age of a site based on key fossils that they believe indicate a particular period of evolution. 

When we read the descriptions of certain evolutionary time periods, like the Jurassic, or the Cretaceous, we are told about their climate and vegetation as if they were distinct to those times.  The Triassic is borderline wetland and tropical, marked by ferns and horsetails, and conifers along with other similar moist-climate vegetation.  The Jurassic is considered fully tropical with ferns, tropical conifers, and similar biota.  The Cretaceous is marked by the dramatic appearance of angiosperms (flowering plants and trees) deciduous trees, and a slightly drier climate. 

Finding each of these fossils is very important to evolutionists because they believe that they mark major epochs and shifts in evolution.  But because evolutionists wrap all their ideas up with their sense of when things existed, they are ignoring the obvious difficulties with this limited perspective.  Since fossilized flora and fauna must obviously reflect an entire ecological zone, it isn’t really possible to designate it to a specific time period.  The majority of ecological zones today are marked by specific biota, therefore one would understand that the same applied in the past.  But since evolutionists are married to the timeline, every flower indicates the Cretaceous, but a fern can indicate almost any time.   

Moreover, many species seem to appear in a geologic system, never to be heard from again.  Evolutionists acknowledge mass extinctions at every geological age.  From the Cambrian to the Cretaceous, animals have been showing up in the sediment of their supposed geologic system, but not in “later” sediments.  While evolutionists are constantly trying to explain the source of these numerous extinctions, creationists offer a simple explanation. 

Instead of recording geologic ages, the sediments are essentially recording a peak at the ecological zones that the animals lived in when they were killed.  Although, again, the sediments do intermix (which paleontologists avoid acknowledging), any discernable pattern of extinction is more simply understood by the Flood concept.  Everything was buried at once, and some things never made a comeback.  There will be more on this at the end of the book.

When evolutionists see the kinds of fossils that fit one of these eras, they place that stratum in that pre-conceived period.  If it had the right tropical markers, it would be placed in the Jurassic, along with its approximately 60 million year span and all the evolutionary ideas that are wrapped up in this timeline.  Today, when we find the same types of vegetation ascribed to the Jurassic (which of course we have lots of) we do not call it an evolutionary era, and limit the vegetation to a particular time in evolution.  This would be ridiculous because these conditions still exist.  Why do evolutionists apply this reasoning to the past then?  Along with the zonal vegetation also typically come specific animals and insects.  You don’t find bears in the swamp, or frogs in the desert very often. 

These same zones are found thriving all over the world today, with considerable intermingling, but they have nothing to do with evolution.  This is why the evidence for the geologic column is so uncooperative for the evolutionists.  There are many anomalies within the strata that confound the evolutionary schemes, but make sense in ecological schemes.  This is also why evolutionists perceive a layer of sediments to represent one geologic system in one part of the United States, but the same layer represents another system in another part. 

It should not be possible for the same level of strata to demonstrate different evolutionary time periods.  Systems like the Devonian should not be exposed while the Triassic is still exposed, and with no detectable difference in the levels of strata.  This only makes sense if they are different ecological zones.  Additionally, there is a great deal of fossil sea life throughout all the levels.  This is a baffling intrusion into terrestrial regions under evolution, but the phenomenon is easily explained by their influx due to high flood waters, and receding water deposits.

Because the strata are dated based on these faulty assumptions about the fossils they contain, the whole geologic system is wide open to errors in judgment and manipulation according to evolutionary expectations.  When annelids (worms) are found at the same site as ferns, evolutionists do not say that the worms are from the Cambrian period and the ferns are from the Mississippian.  Clearly they existed at the same time. 

But what about the times that only the worms are found, and no ferns?  Then the geologists would be guessing at the time period and, by their own timescale, have more than a 200 million year time period to play with.  If this can happen within one ecological zone, what evidence is there that all of these fossil discoveries cannot be from the same time just like today’s ecological zones exist all at once?  The paleontologists are deciding what system is being uncovered based on previous assumptions made by other paleontologists about when species evolved and lived.

Without any way of verifying if these assumptions are correct, evolutionists rely on their so-called “index” fossils to help them assign an age to a site.  Dependence on this system has lead to many inconsistencies.  One convincing example is in ammonite cephalopods.  Paleontologists use these squid creatures (like the Cambrian level Nautiloid, and the living form, the nautilus) as index fossils.  Index fossils are fossils that evolutionists believe lived during specific geologic systems, and when they see them, they automatically date the whole site according to that pre-determined system.  This, of course is again, circular reasoning because this determination causes evolutionists to be closed to the possibility that the species could have lived later than expected, or earlier than expected. 

In the case of ammonites, this is a fatal problem because the age specific relationship to each species does not hold up under what is termed “condensed beds.”  This is the evolutionist term for too many unique species from different geologic systems, or times, appearing in the same strata.  The existence of the term demonstrates the frequency of the problem.  “Condensed beds” should only happen under the uniformitarian scheme, never.  That is, not ever.  “Condensed beds” mean that millions of years that are supposed to happen between species, did not.  There are numerous examples of this occurrence in ammonites, including sites in the Himalayas and the Alps.  Condensed beds of ammonite index fossils is only one type of the frequent examples of fossil evidence that should be impossible under the evolutionary doctrine. (Studies in Flood Geology, pg 101)

What is more ridiculous is that these marine index fossils often appear fossilized in strata simultaneously with terrestrial index fossils, which naturally would have lived on dry land.  Permian floras, or plants, which live on dry land appear in Spain, France, England, the Midwestern and Eastern United States and East Asia, all in the same locations as Permian corals, which would require a salty sea of up to 100 feet deep.  Jurassic Floras and dinosaurs are found in Spain, England, France, and North Africa, in the same areas as the ocean going ammonoids.  The Tertiary mammals are also found abundantly all over Western Europe, and North Africa, along with Tertiary foraminifers (mini shells from aquatic life). 

The close regional occurrence of marine and terrestrial inhabitants around the world is ridiculous.  Evolutionists cannot reasonably impose so many influxes and retreats of the sea just because of this evidence.  But they do.  These two ecological environments could not exist at the same time, or even in close relationship to each other, yet this is exactly the type of unreasonable interpretation evolutionists must impose to hang onto their theory. (Studies in Flood Geology, pgs 144-148, figures20, 21, 29, 30, 31, 33, 34).      

Evolutionists limit all future finds of a region to their preconceived conclusions drawn from index finds, even when subsequent finds discredit their assumptions. This is why the time periods of strata are frequently adjusted by paleontologists to fit evolutionary expectations, and the numerous anomalies of extinct species found out of place are typically ignored.  Once evolutionists decided what the evolutionary progress was, each species is relegated to its assigned geologic system without any evidence to confirm that the system has any meaning. 

The geologic column, which is supposed to represent the progress of life from the bottom of the sea, reflects known ecological zones so well that one wonders why it is readily accepted as evidence for evolution rather than the Flood.  If the need for distinct geological time periods were not necessary for evolution, one would naturally conclude that these numerous and differing sites are representatives of the same kinds of varying ecological zones we still have today intruded upon by flood effects, and not sequences in evolution.

 

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The Evidence of Fossils

 

Regardless of when evolutionists believe the fossils were deposited, logically the sediments would record ecological zones of some form.  If one detects these zones at all, it could both mean the evolutionists’ timeline, or it could mean natural zones like we find today.  The problem for evolutionists is that the fossils frequently record evidence that is inappropriate for the evolutionary scheme.  The evidence completely substantiates expectations of the Flood model, though, making this a better interpretation. 

Although the fossil record frequently suggests ecological zones, there is also this intermingling of zones (or eras), and (like the previous example) the jumbling of marine life with terrestrial life, characteristic of catastrophic deposition.  This is impossible within the uniformitarian model.  Once a geologic system has been buried, something from two systems later, or from a different environment should not appear in that same, unblemished strata because it would already have been compacted by millions of years of succeeding systems. These anomalies are frequently found around the world, which refute the evolution model outright, and affirm that torrential water is the best catalyst for this worldwide fossilization. 

The Flood explains this intermingling of specimens, which would otherwise be from different evolutionary time periods or environments.  As mentioned in the earlier section, it is not unusual to find bits of twigs, leaves, pollen, wood, bark and seeds from “late” system plants and trees buried among the “earliest” deposits, including the Cambrian, when they could not possibly have evolved yet.  This is exactly the sort of debris we might expect to find if we dug into the strata of a mudslide that could preserve fossil specimens.

There are also fossil deposits that are not explainable without a catastrophic flood.  One notorious example is the 1½ foot wide coal seam in Yallourn in Victoria, Australia, which consists of 50% pollen—only understood through collection by water.  Not only would water be required to tear up the vegetation, but to gather the pollen together, until it sank, and then was buried by sediments.  

          Most people do not understand what a powerful testimony the mere existence of fossils is for a worldwide flood.  Scientists know that the creation of fossils in sediment rocks is unique, and only occurs when an animal or plant is suddenly covered by water borne sediment before it can decay or be consumed.  Some scientists try to contrive the circumstances of these conditions, saying that the soft tissues of the specimens dissolve first, and then some time later the specimen’s hard parts become buried.  However, when scavengers and decay destroy the soft tissue, the bones typically become disarticulated, making them easily separated—especially with smaller animals and animals in the water. 

Additionally, the bones must still be buried by sediments at some point in order to preserve them and allow for mineral intrusion.  Attempting to dictate when the waterborne sediments cover the specimen reveals the threat that these requirements pose to uniformitarian concepts and the foundation of evolution.   The bones should have already been disarticulated by decay and scavengers after just a few weeks had passed, so burial would still need to quickly follow in order to explain the abundance of intact specimens.  The uniformitarian dictates of these situations are unable to convincingly draw attention away from Flood evidence. 

So many fossilized animals are preserved whole as if they were in the immediate state of death.  Evolutionists recognize this and must contrive strained sudden, local flood scenarios to explain them.  Otherwise, if the animal had been dead for any length of time when the water came, the sudden rush of water and sediments necessary for fossilization would disarticulate the body even more.  When the fossil bones are found disarticulated, they are frequently associated with mass graves, and jumbled up with fossils inappropriate to the environment, like marine fossils, as we will discuss with Dinosaur National Monument. 

The uniformitarian scenarios for fossilization don’t adequately account for two typical characteristics.  The first phenomenon is seen in the preservation of hundreds of thousands of delicate plants and soft tissues, including fine details that alter soon after death.  These specimens absolutely have to be buried suddenly and either immediately after death, or actually causing the death of the organism. 

The other phenomenon is that frequently no vegetation is preserved with a massive burial where there should have been a great deal.  For instance, sites where abundant dinosaur fossils are found often yield little or no vegetation to demonstrate the environment or circumstances of their demise.  Both scenarios make sense when assessed under the turbulent conditions of the global Flood, where the sudden rush of water could either instantly bury specimens, (as in the case of the entombed dinosaur nests, eggs and all) or lift them up into the torrent to be deposited in the sediments later according to the hydraulic affects.

One article in the December, 1998 National Geographic credits a massive collection of entombed dinosaur eggs and nests directly to flooding, which was evident.  The indications are undeniable, as there is no other explanation for nearly a square mile of these treasures to be jam-packed in 16 feet of silt. Rather than giving a nod to The Flood, the article assumes that the thousands of shells that they found in the Rio Colorado formation of Argentina, were set in a floodplain.  According to the author on page 38, the flood “. . . made it possible for the soft tissues to fossilize before decaying, an extremely rare occurrence.”  Not that rare in the fossil world. 

Fossils do not testify to a slow build up of sediments over millions of years since fossils are only found in these rapid sedimentary deposits.  The burial is so rapid, that escape trails have been found for bivalves and other such animals, proving that they were still alive (briefly) as the sediments piled upon them.  Fossil conditions are so unique, that very little of today’s life forms will be preserved, and those that are, will in all likelihood be under catastrophic circumstances.  Common sense tells us that any specimen left uncovered for more than a day or two will start to lose its form, and soon fall victim to scavengers, insects, and decay from the sun or water.  Only vast, rapid deposits of sediments can explain the enormous amounts of fossilized life, from large mammals and gigantic dinosaurs down to small insects and delicate plants.

Paleontologists get very creative in trying to explain these impossible preservations.  On page 242 The Nature Company Guides Rocks and Fossils demonstrates their prognosticating abilities concerning the remarkable preservation of hundreds of soft bodied organisms in the Burgess Shale:

         

          The reason so many different types of delicate organisms were preserved seems to be that the area was originally in very deep water just beyond the continental shelf.  Animals living on the shelf would occasionally be swept over the edge and settle into the soft, fine grained mud at the bottom where the water was too deep for scavenging animals to destroy their delicate bodies.

 

This explanation requires many factors that cannot be deduced from the evidence.  The proposition that this location was once a vast chasm that stretched even beyond the reach of light, is not reflected in the inland environment of this present day 7,000 foot Rocky Mountain region.  One must stretch beyond the imagination to accommodate this notion.   Scientists believe that the nearby preservation of certain features associated with reefs support this theory, but such features also bolster claims of the Flood.  Reefs live in shallow waters abundant with life, and contradict any usefulness in promoting a deep sea environment.  This area would also require frequent landslides as well in order to preserve the fallen biota.  A flood would be more convenient. 

In addition to this mountainous, inland area once being in the depths of an ocean rift, this drop-off was supposed to be so deep that no life existed there to consume the hundreds of creatures that fell there.  Even in the ocean today, life is so abundant for this purpose of consuming dead material that many deep sea animals, like sea urchins, shrimp, and isopods, living over 2 miles deep, feast on the manna of such fallen prey.  Many other animals like spider crabs, eels, angler fish and other fish live off of this deep sea ecosystem as well.  This chasm, therefore, would have to reach more than two miles below sea level before such delicacies would go untouched—this place which is now a mountain range of course. 

Though there is no geological evidence (aside from the fossil sea life) indicating how such a formation could exist at this location, complicated and unmerited scenarios like this are commonplace from evolutionists in order to account for these mysterious fossils that could never be preserved under present day conditions.  Because decomposition destroys bodies so quickly, long periods of slow uniformitarian geological time cannot explain all this miraculous preservation.  Instead of recognizing the evidence of a rapid, sediment bearing flood, these scientists frequently propose such impossible scenarios, that even the now high mountainous region near the middle of the continent was once under a deep sea, and somehow this is not recognized as further evidence for a flood. 

Moreover, such contrived situations propose that these delicate fossils formed under a small, incidental covering of sediment—while still underwater, which is unfeasible.  As long as the encasing mud or sand is still wet, destruction is eminent.  Only a tremendous amount of sediments can provide enough pressure to squeeze out the water and oxygen, and infuse the specimen with minerals.  Because of this, if anything is buried through proposed uniformitarian “normal” processes under water, and it is covered by only a light load of sediments, and if that specimen also remains underwater for any length of time, it will not be preserved.  This is especially true for the noted delicate tissues of specimens such as in the Burgess Shale.  The water must be drained or squeezed out in order to keep the specimen from disintegrating and disarticulating, and to preserve its form so precisely.  Ordinary circumstances do not accomplish this.

When we look at fossils, we see them packed in all this sediment.  We might be fooled into believing how natural it is for sea life to be embedded in mud, (though, again, they are not actually preserved this way today) but fossils are certainly not limited to just sea life.  All fossilized terrestrial life is encased in sediments as well.  Within the uniformitarian scheme, this leaves some issues.  On one hand, uniformitarian scientists will say that the vast layers of sediment were laid by ancient seas, like that found in the Grand Canyon, so this explains the massive amounts of sediments.  On the other hand, all this terrestrial life is also encased in these vast plain formations of sediments, reaching up to thousands of square miles.  One must logically wonder how a terrestrial dinosaur or a terrestrial mammal, and especially terrestrial plant life, got into the middle of this ancient sea in order to be suddenly buried under this massive and uniform sediment. 

Instead, these scientists are forced to say, “Here was an ancient sea, and after it retreated, all these terrestrial animals came here and died, and drown in a river, or got buried in local floods, or covered in a landslide (no hills in sight), and sometimes the ancient seas returned, and this happened numerous times over thousands of square miles.”  The evidence, in reality, indicates one massive episode.   Only an immense, sediment-bearing flood could quickly cover all these specimens so thoroughly in order to encase them and preserve them, and these thick, uniform sedimentary layers demonstrates this. 

Additionally, these very same sediments not only cover, but are a part of the uplifted mountains, including the great Rockies and Himalayas, and the mountains of every continent in the world.  The whole world follows this same pattern of deep sedimentation, abundant marine and terrestrial fossil deposits, and fossil covered mountains.  Despite this worldwide phenomenon, fossils are rarely produced through today’s geological processes, and these are always catastrophic.  Logically something cataclysmic happened to create them.

 

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Evolution’s Nemesis: Fossils

 

There are many sites around the world that demonstrate the fallibility of evolutionary timelines and scenarios.  One does not have to be a paleontologist to have access to “secret” finds and mysteries.  The fossil books that have been mentioned here are generous to give these details that conflict with reason.  One might not realize that Archaeopteryx and many other terrestrial animals have been fossilized in limestone, of all things, in the Solnhofen site in Germany.  Pages 226-227 of A Guide to Dinosaurs, tell us that hundreds of fish were fossilized here, but the “bed of the lagoon could not support life.” 

So lizards, terrestrial plants, dinosaurs and all kinds of things that don’t belong in the water, mysteriously dropped into the middle of this very large “lagoon.”  And although there were all these fossilized fish that clearly once lived there, supposedly the floor of the lagoon specifically could not support life.  This condition is imposed on the site to explain how all these creatures fell in the water and were fossilized instead of eaten and destroyed.  Such a contrived scenario doesn’t hold up because the fish would have gladly eaten these clumsy creatures.  The evidence otherwise indicates that only a catastrophe could kill so much life in one place, and then bury it quite effectively. 

It actually takes very little research on the web, as well, to find such incredible fossil sites.  A quick look under the topic of fossil whales yielded three interesting finds.  Yahoo! News published a story on June 26, 2004 that a whale was found fossilized in eastern Virginia. The existence of this whale so far inland proves awkward for evolutionists because it imposes a knife edge timing on the scheme.  It must find its place in the evolutionary scheme without disrupting the timeline dictating the earliest that true whales are allowed to evolve, and yet before the invading inland sea that left it receded.  Since terrestrial animals about this time were also left (not being aquatic animals), the whale has to be deposited before the terrestrial animals could live there (and subsequently die there). 

The having both a fossil of a modern whale and terrestrial species from the same era  preserved at this location forces one of these three elements to give way.  This time evolutionists had to admit that this whale “Suggests that almost modern-looking whales lived considerably further back in time than scientists realized.”  This puts even a tighter squeeze on the already fast-track whale evolution.  However, it was better to allow that “true” whales existed earlier than thought possible than to concede that whales did not evolve, but were buried in the Flood along with all the other life preserved in the sediments. 

There was also a “very large whale” found in 1999 according to the Australian Associated Press.  It was discovered in the middle of a park in southern Australia.  Apparently this news that a whale could be fossilized so far inland invoked the response that it “could unlock secrets about Australia’s past marine life.”  Using uniformitarian scenarios about the topography at the time, the reporting paleontologist, Dr Bone (sounds suspicious) offers, “It probably got beached because that’s close to the shoreline and it would have needed to get buried rapidly for it to survive.”  I am not sure anyone has ever witnessed the type of event that would quickly bury a giant whale on the shore under tons of sand just after it died—and it would stay buried.

Another search online (touregypt.net) actually found an adventure company in Egypt that advertises excursions to a fossil rich area of mid-northern Egypt, west of the Nile, called El Fayoum.  One of the pages handily lays out many of the different fossils that can be found in that area.  Despite the fact that this site assumes the evolutionary/uniformitarian scheme, the diversity of animals listed and their supposed geologic systems demonstrates that fossils do indeed offer evidence of one time deposition verses a gradual succession of evolution. 

Although paleontologists would not agree, this evidence is actually better evidence for the Flood.  There is a great mix of eras, flora and fauna and marine with terrestrial fossils in the same general region, and in related strata.  These specimens supposedly could not live in the same system or locality, and they crowd the evolutionary timeline with complications.  These circumstances require complex scenarios to be devised and timed. 

The website for the region lists a wide range of fossil mammals from all different geologic eras including numerous ungulates of all kinds, an “early” hyena, extinct elephants, insectivores, marsupials, primates, and bats.  Many of these mammals would occur very late in evolution, such as bats and primates, but some were quite early, like the creodonts (“primitive” hyena).  However, this same region has also yielded sea cows and, of all things, the 80 foot long Basilosaurus, which as you recall are thought to be primitive whales.  Now depending on what you believe, Basilosaurus either evolved from the Mesonyx (a wolf) or artiodactyls like a sheep or hippo. 

The controversy here is that Basilosaurus would have evolved from the very types of mammals that are already been buried in the region.  Then the sea that brought Basilosaurus inland (called the Tethys Sea by uniformitarians), had to invade the land after these mammals lived and were buried there.  This dramatic invasion of the sea had to be so massive that it supposedly suddenly covered the entire area containing the terrestrial mammals.  This is the only way to explain how they and marine animals appear in the same relative strata. 

Strangely, though, the fossil mammals of this area could just as easily have lived after the Basilosuarus was buried there because they are all considered part of the Eocene epoch.  Evolutionary wise, they existed at the same time.  Their own timeline doesn’t even dictate this interpretation of the sequence.  Not only this, but the designation of “early” forms given to these mammals is arbitrary since bats still exist, primates still exist, insectivores still exist, rodents still exist, and many of these forms of ungulates still exist.  The designation of primitive is only necessary for removing time conflicts with whale evolution and the invasion of the sea. 

Another mystery is presented by the perfect preservation of these enormous marine animals.  Paleontologists are perplexed over how the serpentine Basilosaurus, up to 80 feet long, came to be fossilized in such necessarily shallow water.  If the water was deep so far inland, then it would have had to be deep across the continent, which conflicts with the scheme.  If the “whales” were beached, then they would have been torn apart by predators and the tides and elements, and never would have been preserved wholly the way they are.  Since leaves have been found also fossilized with Basilosaurus (not indicative of a salt-marine environment), either Basilosaurus hauled itself up a river, or it was buried in a cataclysm.  The interpretation that best fits the evidence is that these fossils of every kind were buried in a flood high enough to completely encase the enormous animals, and the terrestrial animals, at the same time in tons of sediments. 

 

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In addition to this mix of oceanic creatures in the same region as land animals, the rocks that these fossils are found in tell another story as well.  Geologists are careful to date and characterize these sedimentary deposits, but, as we will discuss in the section on sediments, the type of deposits that are laid indicate what type of depositional environment produced them.   The land surrounding the Nile River in Egypt alternates sediments sporadically between sand, mud, limestone, dolostones, marls, reefs, and various foraminifers. 

These sediments shift so unpredictably, that geologists often find themselves having to explain why one type is on top of another with a confusing schedule of influxing and receding seas.  The circumstances that cause of these deposits range from fast water deposition to deep sea deposition in the same proximity, which overlap in alternating layers.  One could more logically conclude that all this strata had instead been left by the different stages of a single catastrophic Flood, rather than by capricious geological forces.  Egypt’s fossils offer powerful evidence for the Flood.

The frequency of large fossil deposits found all around the world are a powerful indictment of uniformitarianism. These virtual graveyards of diversity are powerful evidence against evolution and uniformitarianism, and are indicative of what would necessarily be enormous water borne burial incidents.  In addition to the testimony of missing transitional evidence, these large collections of fossils in one area evoke impossible scenarios about their mass preservation in fossil form. 

In fact, these and other similar finds reveal hundreds of different animals so close together in their deaths that it appears as if they were swept into a pile.  Paleontologists readily concede to the fact of these frequent mass burials, but are unable to explain them through the evolutionary model without imposing speculative conditions not provided by the evidence.  This type of fossil evidence does, however, perfectly fit the kind of evidence Creation scientists (any scientist) would expect to find as the result of a great flood.

There is a tremendous mammalian fossil site called Lake Messel near Frankfort, Germany.  This site has exposed hundreds of specimens of fully formed species in an enormously diverse array.  It divulged a large collection of these “advanced” mammals of more than 40 species from rodents to marsupials, to hoofed animals (ungulates), lemurs, pangolins (armored anteater) and bats.    This astounding array reveals mammals that are virtually indistinguishable from modern forms, yet they appear suddenly and fully formed.  So suddenly that evolutionists must say that they had immigrated to Europe from somewhere else in order to explain their lack of developmental history.  The highly specialized features of bats, and anteaters, hedgehog and primates already developed by the Eocene are difficult to explain within the evolutionary scheme.

Moreover, they are remarkably well preserved.  Hair, skin, stomach contents, and the whole outline of bodies are all easily perceived.  The incredible amount of perfectly preserved fossils belies current uniformitarian scenarios.  But never fear.  Under the pressure of evolutionary expectations, a means will be devised.  According to paleontologists, these fossils were created when they fell into this deep lake so full of mud that it could not support the life that would normally destroy them. 

This is a familiar theme.  Though this German site is reminiscent of the Solnhofen site, these incomparable circumstances are assigned to all similar finds. Never mind (again) how terrestrial mammals got into the middle of the lake before drowning and floating, and got buried with all the others that suffered the same fate.  This lake must have been a death trap.  Or, the more natural interpretation could be that they were all suddenly buried under a massive load of mud from a flood.

There are many such remarkable sites that defy rational explanation.  Some are simply too large to dismiss.  There are numerous, large Jurassic fossils found in the great Morrison formation located from the Rocky Mountains and eastward.  Once again, we have both terrestrial and marine fossils buried under massive amounts of waterborne sediments. 

Some of the greatest and largest examples of dinosaurs have been uncovered here, of more than 70 different species.  Additionally, a great deal of “Mesozoic” life (much more “recent”) was also preserved, seemingly out of step with the rest of the dinosaur dominated period that is represented, including “small mammals.”  This incredible display of specimens is such a diverse mix of life, evolutionists are stretched to formulate the exact type of environment that would preserve the variety of fossils from marine life to giant dinosaurs and small mammals, both from the dinosaur and the mammalian age, in the same relative strata. 

Uniformitarians must assume that this plain had already been uplifted to some degree, to allow for the land to be high enough to support terrestrial evolution.  This conflicts, however, with the overwhelming indications of abundant water.  Therefore, in order to account for the profusion of marine life, the area is given the full spectrum of marshes, rivers, floodplain, and left over ancient seas.  In this, they are hoping that, as the water rose, receded, bogged, evaporated, flooded, and dried, there would be an opportunity to bury all those gigantic dinosaurs. 

This complex scenario does not provide the type of water intrusion that could bury these large creatures.  The location and uplift of the region do not allow for a sudden intrusion of another vast ancient sea.  This is a great deal of criteria for uniformitarians to account for.  The simple answer is that a single flood buried all of the life that lived in that plain, mingled with marine life that was swept up in the waters, and that the subsequent uplift of the mountains drained the land.  

Fossils are often found in clusters, sometimes piles.  These fossil collections are common, and typically when one fossil is found, that area reveals abundant fossils encased in large beds of uniform sedimentary deposits.  This is so well known that paleontologists rely on these remarkable collections of fossils when they go fossil hunting, but ignore how unnatural such abundant preservations are—a sure testament to a watery cataclysm. 

There are numerous examples of fossil graveyards such as in Agate springs Nebraska, the 1907 site in Tanzania, Africa, the Karroo Beds (also in Africa) containing perhaps 800 billion vertebrates, and there are incredible sites of collected fossilized fish, such as those of Fossil Butte National Monument in Wyoming.  Ordinary circumstances can’t explain how hundreds of fish could be buried in immediate association with death, but are clear signs of a catastrophe. 

A mass grave of fossilized Centrosaurus has been found in Alberta, Canada containing the remains of at least 300 individuals of all sizes and ages.  When evolutionists discuss this remarkable find, they speculate that all these cow-sized creatures were crossing a swollen river when some of them (300?) were swept away.  Evolutionists have used this and similar examples not to comment on the remarkable burial, but as an example of dinosaur behavioral herding patterns.  The public hears only what it is told.

 

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There is also a large site in Montana that stretches for over a mile that contains the bones of at least 10,000 Maiasaura, believed to have been overcome by volcanic ash.  Maisaura are about 30 feet long.  This incredible find suggests that the disaster was extraordinary, and overpowering, and likely related to a catastrophic event enabling the complete entombment of so many large specimens. 

This site, as well as sites in the Gobi desert, Mongolia, frequently capture not only nests of un-hatched dinosaur eggs, but in one case, even the 10 foot long mother was reportedly still crouched over them at the moment of entombment.  What a grand and sudden flood that must have been.  The Flaming Cliffs region offers dozens of astonishing fossil finds.  According to page 237 of A Guide to Dinosaurs, one Protoceratops was found buried in an upright position, and a Veloceraptor and a Protoceratops were found interlocked.  

The explanation for such unusual finds is that “The site seems to have preserved the animals like snapshots in time as huge sand and dust storms buried them rapidly, without warning.” The evidence does not actually support this kind of fossilization by dust storm, but that is the easiest explanation for evolutionists.  One wonders what would attract these two dinosaurs so far away from water and vegetation into a dessert of such enormous amounts of loose sand that they could not simply crawl out of the pile.  This doesn’t seem to nag at evolutionists though.  Moreover, water still was necessary to create rock out of the deposit.  This and scores of other examples, that apparently occurred simultaneously around the world, actually tell the story of a worldwide sudden water catastrophe.    

Another famous example of massive burial is Dinosaur National Monument in Utah, part of the Morrison Formation, which extends over 700 thousand square miles of fossil bearing sediments from New Mexico to Canada (Hoesch and Austin).  So far, of the thousands of jumbled bones, at least ten distinct species of dinosaurs have been identified.  All together in one place!  The abundant giant sauropod bones are so incredibly intertwined with smaller species, such as stegosaurs, that they were clearly piled up in a massive waterborne deposit. 

A large portion of the deposits is exposed in hundreds of feet of sandstone as seen in “the wall” in the Quarry Visitors’ Center of DNM, making plain the enormity of the expanse.  The trench like formation that is seen in the sediments of the deposit of this region is characteristic of a fast moving river bed.  Not only does it cut into the surrounding strata that had been previously laid, but the large sandstone grains require fast moving water, and could not have been be laid by calm seas. Evolutionists envision that these giant dinosaurs were buried in a large, powerful meandering river, and then deposited on a sandbar where their bones piled up (a Guide to Dinosaurs pg 215). 

That would be quite a powerful (noted flood conditions) river to drown and actually move and pile up hundreds of tons of dinosaurs.  One may wonder how so many dinosaurs were unaware that they could not swim and were overtaken by the meandering, yet powerful (flood condition) river.  Instead of accepting this restricted combination of conflicting phenomena, we can recognize that the great collection of giant carcasses strongly emulate the large train cars and trucks piled up as debris after powerful catastrophic flood events we have actually witnessed with our own eyes.  Catastrophe, when considering these massive graveyards, is hard to escape.  

Other places in the Morrison Formation offer a different sedimentary medium, requiring further evolutionary gymnastics.  Incredibly, the bones in these locations are entombed in huge volumes of volcanic ash and mud, (like the deposits that will be described in the Mt. St. Helens, eruption) along with vast numbers of clams.  Not only are these clams mixed in with the dinosaur bones, but many of the clams are still in the state of articulation, or closed together.  Most clams (and especially this species) will open up shortly after death as the muscles relax, so clearly these were killed in the swift burial.  The combination of ash and mud deposited so rapidly and in such large volumes to entomb these giants are inescapable evidence of a catastrophic flood. 

Another example of massive burial, briefly mentioned previously, is Dinosaur Provincial Park in Alberta, Canada.  This 28 square mile park represents only a small portion of the over 400 foot thick sediment deposits, which again range from sandstones to mudstones and siltstones.  Scientists recognize that the incredible burial sediments were only exposed by the powerful erosion of massive amounts of water cutting through the layers.  They attribute the erosion to melted glacial waters, but once again we see the two inescapable elements of massive water for burial and massive water for erosion.

The park has uncovered at least 36 different dinosaur species, 250 of which were completely articulated skeletons.  This again establishes the rapid burial of all these giants since they would have decayed and disarticulated from scavengers if exposed for more than a few weeks.  All together 300 different fossil species of plants and animals have been recorded from this “late Cretaceous” site.  The list includes 84 species of fish, frogs salamanders, turtles, lizards, crocodiles, pterosaurs, and—yes, incredibly—mammals and birds.  (a Guide to Dinosaurs, pages 220-221).

These types of burials are not uncommon among fossils, but highly uncommon in the natural world.  Even the language of evolutionists cannot omit the obvious evidence for the Flood, so it is redesigned into a more acceptable package. The book Rocks and Fossils makes this concession on page 145:

 

The dinosaur graveyard at Dinosaur National Monument, in Utah, is in sandstone that accumulated during several flood events. 

 

Here, scientists concede to the need for floods as the catalyst, and they recognize that the site is a giant graveyard.  While evolutionists are constantly shifting explanations and water deposition environments to account for the thousands of square miles of sediments and their fossils, Creation/ Flood scientists see the evidence plainly. All these elements are evidence of a catastrophe.  Even within the evolutionists’ own interpretation, there is no tangible objection against the Flood. 

These examples (among the hundreds of other types of mass burials around the world) are logically explained by the cataclysm of the Flood, but are irrationally viewed by evolutionists as hundreds of non-extraordinary large local flood and burial events.  Uniformitarians refuse to acknowledge the unlikelihood of the coincidental formation of hundreds of mass gravesites of animals great and small of all kinds, buried about the same time throughout the world. Instead, they gloss over the tremendous events that could have allowed such remarkable burials of the largest land animals to ever exist, as if they were ordinary occurrences today. 

Again, the nature of fossil preservation is that each specimen must have been completely buried in life, or immediately upon death, or else the exposed portions would have deteriorated and would not have been preserved.  It is imperative to acknowledge this in order to understand what all these incredible fossils mean.  When was the last time you heard of an elephant involved in a fossilization accident, and yet elephants are much smaller than many of the dinosaurs and whales that have been discovered.  Large-scale burials of animals and plants are commonly found around the world, like the tree found in Tennessee (Studies in Flood Geology, pg 213).  It was buried completely upright in 15 feet of sediments, prompting geologists to concede that it was certainly buried rapidly to prevent decay.  The frequency of these examples should convince any logical person that the sediments that cover the entire world were from a mass deposition.

Even the layers of deposition betray the long ages assumed by evolutionists when large specimens are found embedded across the strata of more than one supposed time period (called polystratic fossils by evolutionists).   This means that a specimen (whether an animal, tree or giant coal seam) crosses either a visible line in the sediment, that scientists had used to establish the different geologic eras, or into the range of fossils assigned to a different era.  This is impossible if the sedimentary lines and their fossils represent the passage of millions of years during a shift in the environment. 

Creationist Ken Ham has frequently pointed to the example of the fossil trees discovered in Joggins, Nova Scotia.  These remarkable trees have been found in erect position, penetrating through layers that are supposed to be millions of years old.  This defies uniformitarian assertions about gradual sediment deposition.  How could half of a tree be in the Jurassic, and half of the same tree be in the Triassic, and both halves look the same?  Only a tremendous flood can explain how numerous tree fossils and even gigantic dinosaurs and other animals, were suddenly and completely covered by sediments.   

One famous example is that of the upright whale.  This fossilized baleen whale was discovered in Lompoc, California by miners in 1976.  It was buried in tons of diatomic sediments, which is the small glassy cases of microscopic algae that live in the water.  These shells are typically deposited at a very slow rate as they gradually die and fall to the ocean floor.  The baleen whale, which is likely about 80 feet long, was found in this pure, undefiled diatomic deposit, upright, with its body extending down below.  It was exposed gradually as the miners carefully mined the diatomite, and preserved the remarkable fossil.  Scientists have concluded that the whale may not have been buried upright originally.  Creationists agree that the whale was likely buried in a horizontal position, and then later movements in the earth tilted it into an essentially upright position.

Whether or not it was buried upright, the enormity of this fossil directly discredits assumptions about gradual burial, and forces uniformitarians to acknowledge that only a catastrophe could lay down all that pure diatomic sediment around a gigantic whale before the body decayed and was disbursed.  Every scientist knows that it would take hundreds to thousands of years to lay down that type of sediment millimeter by millimeter, but it would certainly not be possible to perfectly preserve the whole whale uncorrupted, and in proper form that period of time.  One evolutionist was willing to argue the absurd when he learned that some scientists were suggesting that a catastrophe “on the scale of the Genesis Flood” was the best explanation for the evidence.  Scientist Harvey Oleny hung doggedly onto his assumptions rather than accept the obvious as he wrote in his letter to the editor of Chemical and Engineering News in 1977, vol 55:

 

Everybody knows that diatomaceous earth beds are built up slowly over millions of years as diatom skeletons slowly settle out on the ocean floor.  The baleen whale simply stood on its tail for 100,000 years, its skeleton decomposing, while the diatomaceaous snow covered its frame millimeter by millimeter.  Certainly you wouldn’t expect intelligent and informed establishment scientists of this modern age to revert to the outmoded views of our forefathers just to explain such finds!

  

Even if the whale was in a horizontal position when it was buried, a catastrophe would be necessary in order to deposit such an enormous amount of diatoms.  It would take at least a 15 foot deposit all over the ocean floor in order to cover the whale and preserve it.  Despite the abundant conflicting evidence, evolutionists ignore the fact that under these conditions, a specimen could never be preserved after being exposed for thousands to millions of years while all the sediment from the next era accumulates around the exposed portion.    Numerous adjustments to theories and geological events are required to fit the evidence into the evolutionary scheme, making it a tiring and fickle process lacking the integrity required for scientific study.

 

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Worldwide Sedimentary Deposits

 

Another fact for the Creation model is simply the profusion of tremendously deep sedimentary layers that cover over ¾ of the earth’s land area (volcanic rock extrusions into these layers account for a good portion of the rest).  As touched on earlier, sediments are generally little grains of sand, mud, limestone or similar water borne deposits.  These can be collected and deposited by water, and then dried into hard rock formations.  Scientists know that only water could have deposited these sediments that have formed rocks and fossils. Though some scientists contend that desert sediments can form rocks, even in circumstances of continued, undisturbed deposition, water would still be needed to cement the particles.  Geologists agree that almost all sediments were originally deposited and eroded by water, even if subsequent wind erosion takes place.

Because water is necessary for eroding, bearing and depositing sediments that would form rocks and fossils, this means, logically, that every place where sedimentary rock has been deposited, there also had to be at least that much water present in order to transport it there.  The majority of the world is covered by these solid, often continuous plateaus of sedimentary rock up to seven miles thick, spreading for hundreds of miles in all directions. 

In the United States, one of these sheet-like formations is the well known Morrison formation mentioned in the last section.  This formation is an unbroken layer of thick sedimentary rock that extends all the way from New Mexico up to Canada, and east to Oklahoma.  What could possibly account for such a uniform layer of sediments all across the western United States other than by water deposition that covered the same area, all at once?  

The fact that similar layers occur globally speaks to their relationship in a worldwide event.  In most cases, the sediments of these deposits could not have even been supplied by the erosion of local mountains.  The vastness of the sediments would require archaic mountain ranges of unrealistic height as their original source.  This will be discussed more in depth later.  Geologists are aware of the difficulty that all these formations present to a model that avoids catastrophism. 

Because the evidence indisputably indicates the presence of abundant water worldwide, scientists must invent hundreds of “ancient seas” and “swamps” to explain it all.  The improbability of all these formations occurring separately is further enhanced by the scientists’ disregard that these bodies of water would have obviously to be immense.  Yet they do not consider the feasibility of a worldwide flood.  The erratic processes that they envision in explaining all these formations are not happening now, and there is nothing to substantiate that these schemes are the legitimate application of the evidence rather than a worldwide flood.

          Evolution scientists agree that these sediments were deposited by water, and that these sediments cover the entire earth up to seven miles thick, yet they still contend that there is no evidence for the Flood.  Although they do not argue that water was not the cause of these formations, the question really seems to be how one desires to characterize the water that brought all this sediment.  Considering the worldwide profusion and thickness of these sediments, it is difficult to argue against the Flood from the point of “lack of substantial evidence.”  Although this is what uniformitarian geologists contend, the sedimentary evidence clearly points to a massive, dramatic influx of water erosion and transportation. 

Uniformitarian scenarios also seem to leave out the necessary cause and source of these sediments as well.  Part of what forces these scenarios into difficult corners is the immensity of each of these deposits all over the world.  One example is the large chalk formations that have been made famous in England, and limestone deposits in the western U.S, Israel, and countless other locations around the world.  These deposits are always laid in warm, calm seas, but the enormity and uniform nature of these deposits indicates an immense, continuous presence of water.  Since these hundreds of feet of deposits are uniform, with little intrusion of mud or decayed matter, they can rationally be attributed to a continuous, catastrophic deposition. 

Many other sediment rock layers, like shale, were formed from small grained mud deposits, which typically filter down and settle in still water.  They are the lighter grains that float longer, and frequently are the last of the transported grains to settle when the water slows down.  These deposits, sometimes mudstone, or slate, or in metamorphic forms, are found abundantly around the world exposed in locations such as deserts, or at the base of folded mountains. 

However, a great deal of the rock is comprised of much courser grains, like sandstone and conglomerate.  As mentioned before, sandstone is a clear indication of rapid moving water because the larger grain size requires swift moving water for their original erosion, transportation, and deposition (and then post-deposition erosion).  Sand sized grains are common in deltas, or anywhere that the water suddenly slows, or spreads out and becomes shallow to allow deposition.  The world is covered with enormous deposits of sandstone, one of the most common sedimentary rocks on every continent.   

We can verify the type of water environment that transports these sediments even within the stretch of one river.  Many rivers that have their source in the mountains display most of these environments.  Here, the runoff from rain or melted snow typically has a fierce and powerful start because of gravity from the mountainous height.  A river that begins in the mountains will cause a lot of erosion.  First, the soil is carried away, and then smaller grains of sand, and then the rocks themselves begin to erode and break into smaller rocks and grains. 

Typically, where the fastest current in the river is, the bed of the river will be covered with very large rocks and boulders, sharp, and jagged, and very little smaller grained sediments.  At this stage, the water is moving so powerfully, it will transport smaller rocks much further, while the larger rocks only travel short distances with the current’s bursts of power.  As the river spreads out, the water depth cannot support the rocks, and they begin to get caught and deposit on the river bed.  Some of these rocks, which have tumbled further, may be more rounded.  A good indication of the power of a moving body of water is the size of the rounded rocks it transported because they were brought further.

As the water begins to slow its descent, and as a shoreline develops and the river course meanders, larger grained sand particles will be deposited.  Typically, the main course of the river will still be rapid enough to maintain an erosive channel, but a mixed sandy beach may develop through the fluctuations of the height of the river.  As the river’s descent slows further, and becomes less powerful, larger grained mud will deposit, and erosion will decrease.  Slow moving rivers are often murky because their course is eroding the bed of soil, but mud deposition is still occurring on the shores.  Of course, rapid water, or flash floods are murky because they are stripping the soil afresh. 

A lack of current, or receding water levels are necessary for mud deposition, as currents would keep these light grains aloft.  Rivers that terminate in lakes will typically deposit a great deal of mud.  Lakes that have an outlet may maintain enough of a current to affect the amount of mud deposition, while lakes that have only a small, or no outlet will likely build up more mud as the water is standing long enough to allow the lightest grains to filter down and settle.  So mud is indicative of standing water, receding water, and the shoreline where the water can deposit the light grains.

Calcite deposits, such as chalk or limestone, typically occur in warm, calm water environments, and generally require salt water.  Geologists, for a time, have argued that the immense limestone deposits in the Grand Canyon and other locations indicate a long time span to allow for deposition because of the current rates at which limestone typically accumulates.  However, in other instances, in order to fit certain evolutionary timelines, geologists have recognized that a type of fine limestone mud can be accumulated without an organic source.  This would eliminate the necessity for time-consuming life-cycles for massive deposition. 

Limestone has been noted to catalyze chemically in circumstances that combine warm water temperatures with the appropriate levels of carbonate.  While some limestone deposits are clearly accumulated by the shells from living organisms, many of these large deposits are composed of mud-like grains that are notably lacking in organic shell remains.  The uniform deposits of organic calcites could easily accumulate rapidly through the catastrophic deaths of millions of organisms.  However, this lack of shells in massive layers of such pure strata is a better indication of a rapid deposition as the result of chemical processes rather than gradual deposition, over eons, which would be contaminated with other environmental deposits.   

The Flood is the only feasible mechanism to explain how all these different environments occurred and left their deposits in such massive quantities.  All of the sediments just discussed are found covering the earth in unfathomable quantities.  Every exposed surface of the earth that has not been eroded away has hundreds to thousands of feet of one or more of these sedimentary rock layers overlaying the basement rock.  Most of the time, two or more of them blend from one to the other, as seen in the Grand Canyon.  Blending indicates that these sites, and by default the world, were covered in a water environment that provided the opportunity for all these types of deposition in one related episode.   When we factor in the marine environment necessary to create calcite sediments, these worldwide alternating deposits are a tall order for uniformitarians to fill. 

Again, the Flood is the most fitting source of these enormous layers of uniform depositions around the world.  It is not simply that mud and limestone and sandstone layers cover the earth, but unmistakable evidence of flooding is contained in these deposits.  These layers are not only comprised of small particles, but frequently bands of deposits contain both the unweathered and tumbled conglomerate, which indicates deposition by torrential and rapidly moving water.  The term conglomerate refers to sedimentary formations that contain larger sized rocks and boulders that were carried with the sediment during deposition. 

Geologists concede that massive amounts of fast moving water are required to transport large, heavy rocks along with the smaller, lighter grains.  This means that every level of moving water was present, beginning with rapid powerful torrents to break down and transport these large rocks.  But the cracks between these rocks were not just filled in later with the smaller grains, they were actually transported and mixed in with the smaller grains, like a slurry, which can only occur in powerful flood conditions. 

These conglomerate layers cover hundreds of square miles, proving the extent of the flood waters.  Such formations are widespread and easily spotted in exposed environments like rocky desserts such as the Olgas of Australia, and deserts in California, Nevada, and west Texas, and many places in Africa, Australia, and the Middle East.  This phenomenon can be frequently seen in California road cuts, canyons, and sea cliffs.  Each instance of these common layers worldwide would require a separate cataclysmic incident involving massive amounts of torrential water for their deposition.  This is not a characteristic indicative of uniformitarianism, but of catastrophe. 

As touched on earlier, there is an additional problem for uniformitarians with the abundance of sediments.  The worldwide sandstone deposits are so immense that it would require unrealistically high mountains on every continent in order to provide these sediments for regional deposition.  The sandstone sediments for these vast formations had to erode from some original rock source, and uniformatarians would like to point to large, ancient mountains, as in this comment in Atlas of Life on Earth, pg 132:

 

To account for the volume of sediment, there was even a suggestion that a vast continent, now submerged, existed in the region of the Atlantic Ocean.  Geologists have often tried to calculate the height of the Acadian-Caledonian range by measuring the volume of Old Red Sandstone derived from them, and have reached unrealistic conclusions.

 

  Geologists have invented these mountains, and a continent referred to as the Old Red Sandstone continent just because of the need for them, which one might propose is circular reasoning.  The name of the continent alone should be a tip off to the difficulty uniformitarians have in explaining such tremendous sandstone deposits, so they simply made a continent out of it to get rid of the problem.  This is not the only place where explanation is needed. 

Such enormous source mountains would have to exist at several locations in the “old world” to account for all the sediment that would have eroded and become deposited across the continents and ocean floor.  These incredible mountains would be unlike any we have today.  More importantly, this concept does not fit the uniformitarian need for low continents continually flooded by ancient seas.  Neither is there any evidence of these continents and mountains except for the need for them.  Geologists wouldn’t need a local source of sandstone for each continent if they simply acknowledged that a worldwide flood would cover all the continents and land at once with an eroding power sufficient to redistribute the existing rock and new volcanic rock to account for all the sedimentary deposits.

Additionally, sandstone is made up of mostly quartz, which is a crystal that only forms when melted rock slowly cools underground.  This specific condition means that these supposedly oldest of mountains, and their sandstone product, could not have emerged directly from the watery world that uniformitarians envision of the early earth.  Mountains that rise out of the sea come from underwater extrusions, which produce basaltic flows, and contain no quartz, such as with the Hawaiian Islands. 

Uniformitarians generally propose that the continents gradually rose out of the sea, but these new continents would have to be basaltic, and would not produce quarts.  Therefore, based on the evidence, it is not possible for so much sandstone to be produced in accordance with the early stages of uniformitarian geology.  There is no evidence that lava extruded underwater could produce such an abundance of the quartz that we find in all these massive sandstone deposits.

Instead, a more complex series of stages would be necessary for building the mountains in order to form quartz.  The newly formed continents would have to undergo additional transformations, or be subject to additional processes in order to satisfy the scientific requirements of how quartz is formed.  Since these deposits are admittedly ancient, and the source mountains would undeniably have been much more ancient, uniformitarian timelines (and certainly discussions) don’t account for this additional phase.  Creationists, naturally, are able to trust that the earth was created in a mature state with a wide variety of geological facets.  The Flood only eroded this original state, and whatever volcanic extrusions preceded the Flood.  The Flood best explains the erosion, and unique deposition of sediments around the world.

 

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A Snowball’s Chance

 

The widespread existence of conglomerate is apparently quite a mystery for geologists.  This phenomenon is so common around the world, and yet so difficult to explain outside of Flood geology, that it has spawned a bizarre theory by a group of intrepid geologists, lead by Paul Hoffman.  This theory demands discussion, if only to show how desperate evolutionists are to explain the geological evidence.  The 2003 book Snow Ball Earth, written by Gabrielle Walker, illuminates this concept with story telling detail, and is available through the Discovery Channel and other bookstores. 

Although this theory is intended to address a geological puzzle, it also tries to incorporate an explanation of the mysterious Cambrian Explosion, as discussed in the section on fossils.  These geologists recognize what a quandary it is to explain this sudden evolution of the incredible scope of complex life after single celled life supposedly languished for thousands of millions of years.  This problem was in the back of Hoffman’s mind as he began his worldwide geological exploration. 

Hoffman discovered in his geological expeditions, cathartically, that many sediment deposits defy uniformitarian explanation (hello).  The phenomenon he observed on several trips had been noted by other geologists as well throughout the world in regions like southern Australia, Nambia, Svalbord Norway, the Kalahari Desert, and numerous other regions.  This phenomenon was widespread and present in numerous places on every continent.  Here, in the rock layers of uniformitarian country, they frequently found a prominent combination of small-grained mud, silt, or carbonate sediments, embedded with large rocks and boulders of every kind.  As stated earlier, it difficult to explain how large beds of fine sediments and large boulders and rocks came to be layered together in the same strata within the uniformitarian scheme of gradual deposition in calm, ancient seas. 

It is even more difficult to explain the additional phenomenon that a great many of these rocks are of a different character than those of the immediate locale.  How could these rocks be deposited so far removed from the original source?  It would seem logical that recognizing this dilemma would be the first step in acknowledging the clear evidence for the power of a massive worldwide flood.  Instead, like all evolutionists, Hoffman and his fellow believers devised an alternate theory that could salvage the basic uniformitarian scheme.  Their theory, however offbeat from the rest of geology, is that the world at one time was utterly encased in a ball of snow, top to bottom, without any mechanism for such a catastrophe.  What an amazing conclusion.

This snowball supposedly began at some point millions of years before the Cambrian explosion, as the poles incomprehensibly began to freeze toward the middle until even the equator was frozen.  Theoretically during the time of this deep freeze, glaciers covered the earth, ripping up rocks, and carrying them to new locations, where they were dropped as the glaciers melted.  Such large deposits are called “dropstones” because they were not dragged across the landscape, but dropped from floating glaciers. 

To these geologists, the evidence indicates dropstone deposition because the stones are out of place from the local topography.  They also appear to have dropped into the soft sediments and became enveloped as if the sediments were wet at the time of the deposition of the larger rocks.  All the locations that this team observed had these characteristics.  They believe that after the glaciers ripped up the stones, they floated on the “ancient sea” (there it is again), until the stones dropped into the soft sediments, creating the characteristic dent beneath them.

Remarkably, they believe that it was this Snowball Earth that triggered was supposedly the Cambrian explosion 600 million years ago.  The little single celled organisms that survived the deep freeze were apparently inspired to do greater things, and this relief from the oppression of ice, capriciously instigated the greatest leap in evolution (to that point).  One wonders how such unfounded speculation can come from reasonable scientists, when the obvious solution fits this same evidence. 

A massive flood would also rip out giant boulders and other stones, sweeping them through the raging water with a mix of sediments, and leave them in these soft deposits. Then the receding water would erode the sediments and expose the anomalous boulders.  In fact, the current would even help form this characteristic “dropstone” dent in the sediments, the way a receding wave digs out the sand from under our feet at the beach.  All of these characteristics, from giant boulders, to smaller rocks, to whole sedimentary layers of conglomerate, are signs of water deposition.  Not only is the anomaly of the Cambrian explosion a problem for evolutionists, but so is this sedimentary evidence.  Both can be reasonably explained by the Flood, which has a scientific, and a historical basis.  The Snowball Earth does not.  

The author admits that this is a controversial view.  In fact, it seems that the closed-minded uniformitarian community has struck again.  While creationists find the theory amusing, it at least carries the acknowledgement that these noteworthy sediments commonly occur worldwide.  They clearly are not explainable through the uniformitarian scheme, and the characteristics of these locations are so similar, that they apparently have a worldwide correlation.  In fact, uniformitarians simply have no genuine explanation for these abundant occurrences. 

One may wonder if this snowball team had considered Noah’s Flood as a possible explanation for these distinctly water formed features.  According to the book, however, it was not, and without any scientific justification.  The author tells us on page 146, that the “father of geology,” James Hutton, recognized this same evidence, and used it to help formulate his own hypothesis about the history of the world.  He thought the evidence clearly demonstrated that the earth was at one time covered entirely by water, leaving this mix of sedimentary deposits.  The author of the book goes on to say, “This biblical interpretation has been swept aside for a more rational approach.”  Apparently the Snowball Earth is just such an approach.  Of course, the foolishness of this assertion is evident in that the Snowball earth would still require a worldwide “ancient sea” for the glaciers to float on.

There are also many conflicts between the Snowball Earth and the uniformitarian scheme, which cause problems for evolutionists.  Timescales and assumptions for the two theories do not fit together.  Because the Snowball earth theory floods the world before the Cambrian, it requires the African and the European continents to become connected hundreds of millions of years too early to account for the evidence.  This disrupts everything uniformitarian from the breakup of Pangea, to when the continents were flooded by ancient seas, as well as the explanation of fossil formation and species disbursal in light of the adjusted timescale.  The presence of fossils from “later” geological ages in the same area as these “pre-Cambrian” glacial deposits, forces one of these evolutionary interpretations to be incorrect.

 

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Uniformitarians would not like this obscure theory because it lifts up the skirt of geology, and publicly exposes non-uniformitarian evidence.  Despite the Snowball Earth’s careful avoidance of the Flood, the evidence that has forced these geologists to formulate such a drastic explanation is actually evidence that validates the Flood.  Pages 52-53 begin to describe Nambia, which is one of the typical sites these researchers have noted for being full of uniformitarian contradictions. The evidence here of these large boulders embedded in small grained gray siltstone, is what first convinces Hoffman that they had been deposited by icebergs—in the middle of desert Africa. 

 

Everywhere Paul went in Nambia, he spotted signs of ancient ice.  He would be hiking up a gully and suddenly he would see a huge white bolder embedded in gray silt stone  . . . The bolder, a “dropstone” must have fallen from a melting berg up on the sea surface. . . 

As Paul looked more closely, he would see a medley of rocks appearing in the siltstones, all shapes and sizes, and colors; fractured and rounded, pink, brown, tan, white and gray, granite basement, quartzite, and carbonate.  This mad jumble had somehow become bound up in the fine gray silt.  Like the boulder, these rocks were interlopers.  Something had gathered them up from the mountains and gullies throughout Nambia.

 

          Would it be too fantastic to propose that water had been the catalyst of this tremendous gathering?

Moreover, the theory proposes conflicts with other geological factors that can absolutely be determined about these sites.  Another geologist, Brian Harland, had initially begun to toy with the theory when faced with certain evidence in the Svalband archipelago north of Norway.  Harland knows that the sediment here was formed at a warmer time, under tropical shallow seas (there’s those ancient seas again), because of the great depth of the carbonate rock deposits.  As explained, warm water is required for both types of limestone formation.  Either the water must be warm to support the kind of life that forms carbonates like organic limestone, which comes from the shells of dead animals and reefs, or it must be warm to facilitate the release of carbonates in the chemical reaction that can also form these sediments. 

Because these sediments had to be deposited in warm seas, Harland is confused by the interrupting layer of mud and conglomerate.  This is the same type of layering that would be noted at the other sites, containing the same conglomerate mix.  Despite the fact that a pre-Cambrian warm sea carbonate formation would have to immediately precede and follow the contrasting glacial environment of a Snowball Earth, this is the conclusion Harland draws from the evidence.  Even in light of such clear contradiction, the snowball theory is the most palatable explanation within the limited options of a uniformitarian earth.  

It was Harland’s conclusions that first spawned Hoffman to put it to use in his similarly inexplicable observations.  Together, they do not accept the more logical deduction that all of the deposits (limestone, mud and conglomerate) were made in a worldwide sea that was characterized by alternating episodes of both calm and turbulence.  This of course would be fitting since these researchers already recognize that there was once an ancient sea over each of these sites. 

The geological evidence used to propose the Snowball Earth not only conflicts with logic and experience, but with the only theory that offers a reference point for evolution.  When faced with evidence that shatters the uniformitarian timeline, these scientists refuse to step back and re-examine their stand.  Instead, they concede to the more radical proposition that at some point these tropical seas were suddenly disrupted by catastrophic glaciers.  One must assume it is because the alternative is unthinkable.

 Overall, this peculiar hypothesis is another example of the typical evolutionary avoidance behavior.  It goes out into the mix of theories, and whether or not it makes sense geologically, or disrupts the rest of the evolution timeline, it is another option that props up evolution.  In reality, it helps very little in explaining all the features of the earth in uniformitarian terms because of its proposed early occurrence.  It must fit into this early period because nothing could have survived a worldwide deep freeze had it happened later.  Additionally, the types of “later” fossils demonstrate that the world had been temperate for the duration of life that existed up until the very recent Ice Age.

No corroborative evidence has been offered to substantiate the required stages of this theory.  This strange hypothesis proposes that the earth was initially warm enough to spawn the abundant single-celled organisms, but then it inexplicably froze, only to defrost again and warm up so thoroughly that it stimulated the broad ranged Cambrian explosion.  Most significantly for this section, it could not possibly explain the sedimentary features we observe today.  Uniformitarians need many more things to happen to the world after the pre-Cambrian, over hundreds of millions of years, which would have certainly altered, and likely erased, the ancient Snowball Earth topography in the process.  The world’s features are too tortured under the uniformitarian scheme for this presently exposed surface layer to be the result of the basement, pre-Cambrian deposition.  This topography is on top of many layers of geology, and one wonders how an evolution geologist would not have recognized this.

 

The Uniformitarian Premise

 

According to evolutionists, the layered sediment formations found covering the earth are gradually laid down over eons through “various” deposition processes.  As discussed earlier, the principle uniformitarian vehicle for these sediments is the gentle influx and retreat of calm, ancient seas.  Each layer represents a different era of time, and a shift in strata is believed to indicate when the sea retreated, and up to  millions of years later, returned.  As discussed earlier, geologists find it handy to assume that in the “early” stages of the earth, the majority of the “new planet” was initially underwater.  The slow build up of continents would seem to provide the best opportunity for these ancient seas to linger and periodically re-flood the landscape.  There are many difficulties with these assumptions, though, as an explanation for much of the worldwide sedimentary deposits.

This book has already discussed how vital it is to uniformitarians for these seas to be on standby, ready to invade the continents.  The clear evidence of the marine fossils preserved worldwide in miles of sediments requires an explanation.  Since this evidence proves that the world was under water, and that marine animals were buried in sediments that now cover the continents, scientists are saddled with unmistakable confirmation of the Flood.  Rather than recognizing this, however, they have rewritten the obvious interpretation, and created the Cambrian system to suit evolution.

The Cambrian system is handy because it uses the abundant marine fossils to propose how life initially began on a watery planet, and soon evolved to fill the vast seas. From here, the ocean levels must have risen and fallen numerous times in order to strand the bodies of these animals on land, encased in sediments.  The misrepresentation in the evolutionist scheme is that the existence of these fossils on land is seen as confirmation of evolution, when they have nothing to do with evolution.  Evolution does not benefit from the complex scenarios necessary to explain the location of this evidence.  The rising and falling seas only serve to explain the strangely abundant marine fossils that cover every continent.  The presumably erratic geological activity would have no effect or influence on any evolutionary process.    

The Cambrian is not the only system represented in the fossils.  Once again, we must recognize that all of the fossils from every geological “system” that are now deposited on dry land were once formed underwater.  This means that although fossils seem to be the only evidence to indicate there is indeed a mysterious history of life and death on the planet, they themselves require a complex explanation within the uniformitarians scheme—one that has no material effect on whether evolution occurred at all or not.  Aside from the injection of random fossilization “accidents” from swollen rivers and “local” flooding, the majority of the fossils from every “system” are explained by uniformitarians through the fluctuation of these “ancient seas.” But can these erratic seas be justified geologically?

When we assume that all the marine fossil-bearing land (essentially all land) was under water initially, the steady processes that we observe today cannot enlighten us about how all the continents repeatedly emerged and then submerged to the whims of “ancient seas.”  The amount of water on this planet has remained the same.  Uniformitarians propose that one factor is a cycle of numerous Ice Ages in the past that repeatedly froze and released the water, which affected the sea levels.  They also propose that as glaciers melted, the land became more buoyant and raised up, which caused the water to drain.

There is certainly clear evidence of at least one giant submersion, and one great Ice Age.  But uniformitarians use this evidence to invoke whatever number of Ice Ages are necessary to explain sedimentary deposits in any given area. 

These Ice Age schemes, however, are bogged down with the complexity of their explanations, and the actual evidence breaks these theories down under scrutiny.  Nevertheless, even Uniformitarians must recognize that Ice Ages cannot explain every rise and drop in sea level because the concept does not correspond with the types of life fossilized at those times.  In fact, all fossilized life prior to the recent Ice Age indicates a temperate climate, which eliminates legitimate claims about Ice Epochs contributing to any fossil evidence prior to the supposed appearance of mammals.  And without a justifiable cause to explain every supposed continental flooding, then the uniformitarian basis of fossilization around the world is illegitimate. 

 

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The Evidence of Geological Formations

 

Explaining continental flooding is a particularly evident problem when considering the massive build up of these layers.  There are many obvious examples of sediment deposits that are layered much higher than sea level, such as in the Grand Canyon plateau (to be discussed in detail later).  The entire region of thousands of square miles would have been deluged and then exposed repeatedly over the period of hundreds of millions of years to lay these layers of sediments.  However, each subsequent deluge would necessarily have to be higher, in order to submerge the previous layer, and add a new higher layer on top by water submersion. 

It is clear that while the sediment layers would have been getting higher, the level of the land would have to be dropping lower in order to allow for the next level to be added.  It would have to be like those spring-loaded plate racks that restaurants use.  In order for the next plate to fit on top, the other plates must go down.  The layers on the continents have the same problem.  The uniformitarian explanation could not be justified by the rise and fall of the seas alone, but must require the continents themselves to rise and fall, and in increasingly more dramatic increments in order to account for the depth of thousands of feet, of fossiliferous deposits to accumulate, and then eventually be fully uplifted above sea level.

After considering the issues with the repeated influx and retreat of ancient seas, there are further difficulties with explaining the massive, worldwide sedimentary deposits through eons of geological capriciousness.  There should be evidentiary indications that these different deposition layers were laid over the course of millions of years.  However, there is remarkably no evidence to substantiate that any two of these adjoining sedimentary layers are so different in age.  Millions of years are supposedly represented at these lines or shifts in strata where the lower layer of sediment was no longer under water before the next layer was brought in by another ancient sea.  Despite the eons of time, these layers, worldwide, lack the expected signs that they were exposed to the surface for any apparent period of time. 

Indications that a layer was ever exposed to the surface should be preserved at this boundary in the strata where the two ages.  Examples of such signs of exposure should be evident in water erosion (little grooves for drainage), accumulation of soil formation, animal burrows, plant material, and root invasion.  All these things would leave their scars in the layers, but instead these eras meet almost meticulously, without the characteristic water eroded grooves and signs in between them that so prominently mar the surface of today’s exposed sediments. 

It is difficult to explain how geologically long, steady periods could produce such uniform water born sediment formations, without any recognizable breaks in continuity supposedly through eons of inescapably constant erosion.  Instead, we see massive deposits of uniform sediments that have been eroded and shaped post deposition. 

When we go to the sandstone cliffs at the beach, there is typically a large plateau of sediment overlooking the ocean, with huge erosion zones and gullies, where drainage and rivers have carved into it.  Clearly, water has been working on these deposits, leaving its scar.  But when we look at the different lines of strata below the top layer, we see that there is no wearing away where these layers meet, although they supposedly accumulated over millions of years.  How is it that today erosion can carve through all the sedimentary layers, but there is no erosion between sedimentary layers if each layer was actually exposed to the surface for hundreds of thousands to millions of years?

Sedimentary formations around the world typically have huge era gaps in their strata.  Geologists don’t know what time period they are working in until they find fossils to tell them.  Hundreds of millions of years are defined not by the apparent age of the layers, but purely by the fossils they contain.  A road cutout may reveal fossils on the lower level from the Ordovician system, and three feet above that the fossils may supposedly be from the Tertiary, and yet you would never be able to discern with your eyes that the lower rock was about 400 million years older. 

You would probably barely detect a subtle line of color change, and that would be where the geologist claims that the sediments were supposedly exposed to the surface for 400 million years, but it took an expert to explain that to you because you would never know it.  Though there is sometimes a shift in the strata from limestone to shale or sandstone, often there is nothing more than this little line at best to indicate the shift.  In some cases uniformitarians rely on erosion by the intruding sea to explain the levelness of strata contact, but this evidence that the layers were ever exposed is never found.  It is as if the new invasion could fastidiously remove all erosive and depositional signs of millions of years of exposure, but leave the uniform sediments only.  Frequently, (as discussed before) one can even locate something embedded across the line, making the millions of years of exposure fantastic.  

  A global flood, however, is perfectly consistent with the evidence of these formations—so perfect, one wonders at the scientists who would deny the possibility outright.  We can easily grasp through our own common sense and experience, how a great flood could have caused such spectacular sedimentary formations.  One can visualize a present day sea cliff, with the sandstone rising uniformly for hundreds of feet, with very little variation in the lines of the strata. 

Imagine a flood, higher than that, stretching all the way back across the continent.  Deposits showering down through the water would lay down the strata in the direction of the current.  Each layer would be laid across the land according to the stages of the Flood leaving abundant alternating sediments like sandstone, mudstone, and limestone, which sometimes blend together at the boundary. Then imagine the effects of the water draining into the sea, depositing more sediment (as seen in river deltas), and then carving away the sediment into valleys and cliffs through sheet, and river, and shoreline erosion. 

The California coastal areas offer clear evidence of this grand scale deposition and erosion.  These sandstone deposits, so indicative of deltas, stretch far inland and form the majority of the topography. These sediments were evidently eroded away in the same event as the deposition, leaving the large scale signature valleys, hills, canyons and cliffs.  Today’s surface layer is clearly protected by vegetation, which scales back erosion.  The overall topography of the land, however, was obviously shaped at once on a grand scale, which formed these large hills, canyons and valleys before the vegetation re-grew.

 The seaside cliffs around the world are also strong confirmation of the Flood model.  Many beaches have these cliffs of sandstone (or limestone in England) that come right up to the sea.  These sediments are waterborne, yet they rise much higher than the sea level, so what conditions lead to these deposits?  The uniformitarian premise dictates that any continent flooded by the sea would gradually drain through eons of gradual uplift of the land.  But many of these cliffs around the world defy gradual exposure.  Once again, sandstone is transported by rapidly moving water, and cannot be carried by slow currents.  That means that all the high sandstone cliffs around the world were deposited by this rapid drainage. 

Since late Cretaceous/early Tertiary fossils are laid into these very same sediments in the Rocky Mountains, the majority of the uplift could not occur until after that.  Uniformitarians suggest that uplift had already gradually begun way back in the Jurassic, but of course the Rockies could not have uplifted above sea level until after these deposits were laid.  How are gigantic, dinosaurs that lived later than the Jurassic preserved in the same sediments that cover the Rocky Mountains?  Since sandstone makes up a majority of the west coast sediments, this draws a clear picture of the entire western United States draining rapidly. 

If any uplift had already occurred, then how were these sediments laid from the west coast, over the Rockies, and throughout the mid-west region?  And yet without some uplift above sea level, the very dinosaurs that are entombed in these blankets of sediments could not have land to live on (before they were suddenly buried).  This problem of sediment distribution, frequent fluctuations in order of deposition, type of fossils contents, and large, time limited deposits such as dinosaurs are a constant puzzle to evolutionists.  They must continually revise events and impose local incidents on the sediments exposed in mountains in order to explain all the evidence that cannot be accounted for through broader regional evolutionary scenarios.  Such guesswork, confusion and revision is commonly evident in geological research of the Cedar Mountains, and the Rockies stretching all the way through North America, as well as many other locations.   

The complex schedule of events required to account for all the sedimentary and fossil evidence is only promoted in order to maintain the evolutionary timescale.  When we examine each factor in detail, from the cliffs of California, to the Grand Canyon, to Zion Canyon, the Rockies, and the plains, all the sedimentary and fossil evidence contained in them provoke conflicts with the uniformitarian assumptions, making a feasible scenario impossible.  The natural and rational conclusion can be easily drawn even when one is not aware of the Flood account.  These conflicts between evidence and uniformitarianism rage throughout the world.

The obvious conclusion, again, is that the  continents were entirely covered by water.  The water killed every terrestrial creature and covered the continents with fossils and various sediments.  The majority of the mountains arose after the sediments were deposited, which drained the land.  Various sediments record the various stages of deposition.  The deposits demonstrate the various stages of the Flood through the depositions left from the initial deluge, the erosion, the standing water, the rising mountains, the drainage and deposition of eroded materials toward the sea, and continued incidents of uplift, deposition and drainage as the planet settled geologically.  Sediment deposits at the sea were some of the latest as the last of the land was drained. 

The Ice Age that was triggered by the catastrophe (to be discussed later), caused the highly active hydraulic cycle to bind up much of the water in polar ice caps, keeping the ocean at a level lower than today.  As the temperatures evened out, the Ice Age ended, and the ice caps began to melt.  The water that was released began to gradually raise the ocean level, chipping away at the coastal deposits, which formed cliffs in many sediments around the world. 

In vast, coastal carbonate deposits, such as in Dover, England, a rapid series of events is the only logical explanation since chalk requires standing warm water.  The land would need to be standing underwater, undisturbed during the entire deposition in order to lay hundreds of feet of uniform strata.  Then the land would have had to be exposed above sea level quickly to preserve all of the island’s deposits.  All the deposits in England become nonsense under evolutionary scenarios since these chalk deposits are so great.  How could Cretaceous dinosaurs exist on one part of the island, along with Devonian terrestrial deposits also in the south, just around the corner from hundreds of feet of pure, Cretaceous, water accumulated chalk? 

Uniformitarians claim that these chalk cliffs were deposited when the ocean was higher, but this tiny island has recorded a lot of fossils and geological features in its small space.  An unfathomable history of geological turmoil would be required in order to deposit all of the fossil eras that are found in England including abundant marine deposits representing every geological system, and abundant terrestrial deposits representing every geological system.  One wonders how it managed to be flooded and so thoroughly dried out frequently enough to allow for the existence and the fossilization of all these life forms. 

Wouldn’t all that flooding have cut England off from the mainland?  How did the Cretaceous dinosaurs and Tertiary mammals get there if the sea was hundreds of feet higher at the time, and that little island had so little space for them to live on?  When we consider how long it would have taken to accumulate the Dover Cretaceous chalk at the same time that the terrestrial animals were thriving on the rest of the island, this type of activity becomes ridiculous.  The simpler solution is that the whole thing, and by default the whole world, was under water while all these fossils were being created.

          Because of the overwhelming presence of sediments and fossil sea life in every part of the world, paleontologists are forced to summon their “ancient seas” or “swamps” at will regardless of the logistics.  It is astonishing to hear the frequency with which these large bodies of water are invoked.  It is widely known that even the tallest mountains of the Himalayas were once at the bottom of an “ancient sea” (prior to tectonic uplift) evidenced in the otherwise inexplicable abundance of these marine fossils.  If even the highest mountains, or the most remote locations throughout the world were once under an “ancient sea,” then one might wonder what there is to prevent scientists from declaring that the entire world was once under an “ancient sea.”  The answer would be nothing.  At least nothing scientific.  There is no proof that any part of the world was never under an ancient sea, because worldwide evidence of sediment and fossil sea life testifies to the historical presence of abundant water, making it a fact.

There is no geological evidence against the hypothesis of a worldwide flood, yet scientists refuse to consider it because of its implications.  Although the planet Mars does not presently have any measurable amounts of water on its surface, scientists have been quite certain until recently that certain formations indicate it once had been covered by vast amounts of water.  Interestingly, though, the earth, which has a surface water ratio of 70%, supposedly could not have once been covered by a flood, despite all of the geological and fossil evidence. In the face of renowned scientific skepticism, the following topic discusses common geological formations found throughout the earth, which are best explained by a catastrophic flood.

 

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Rosh Hanikra Evidence

  P1010909.JPG                  P1010862.JPG

Figure 1 Close up of the embedded rock                 Figure 2. 200 ft. Rosh Hanikra cliff face of chalk with

                                                                                       the embedded volcanic rock deposited throughout

Israel:  Rosh Hanikra                                             

 

          One simple example that shatters the uniformitarian scenario is that of the chalk cliff formation of Rosh Hanikra on the northern coast of Israel.  This chalk formation rises 210 feet above the current sea level, visually uniform in deposition from the bottom to the top, and without any apparent banding in the pure white strata.  The chalk deposition appears undisturbed and uninterrupted for the entire 210 foot cliff face.  However, further evidence that the deposition was rapid and continuous comes from what is imbedded throughout the deposit, from the bottom to the top.

Throughout the deposit is an abundance of globular shaped obsidian-like rocks of various sizes.  The grain size of these brownish-red rocks is extremely small, and glass-like indicating rapid cooling.  The shape and grain size of these rocks strongly indicates a volcanic eruption that deposited the lava into a water environment while still hot.  Moreover, since the rocks are abundant throughout the chalk deposit, no other circumstance is possible.  However, since this same rock is abundant and uniform from the bottom to the top, the formation had to have been a rapid deposit, of both the chalk and the volcanic rocks, otherwise the same volcano would have needed to erupt continuously, in the same productive manner, with the same mineral composition for millions of years.  The evidence, logically and without bias, clearly indicates a rapid deposition.

         

The Dead Sea

 

          The Dead Sea is truly dead.  At about 50 miles long, and up to 11 miles wide, this remarkable body of water that lies between the eastern edge of Israel and the western border of Jordan, can be easily seen from orbit around the earth.  Aside from being the lowest point on the surface of the earth, two things are remarkable about the Dead Sea—its size, and its salt content.  Like many lakes in the world, the Dead Sea is nestled in a rift between the mountains, which keeps the water in a sort of basin. 

Although at 400 square miles it certainly is not one of the largest lakes in the world, unlike most lakes, it receives virtually no rainfall due to the high Israeli mountains to the west.  The only notable influx of water comes from the Jordan and two other smaller rivers.  Although the volume of the Jordan River has been decreased to supply water for Israel, it has never been a very spectacular river.  All this is to say, “How did the Dead Sea get so big?”  When you see just how big the basin is with your own eyes, way out there in the dessert, one can’t help asking, “How?” 

The Dead Sea is situated at the base of the Judean Desert, which are mountains that stand between 2,600 and 3,200 feet above sea level.  Then the terrain drops in the space of just 13 miles, all the way down to the Dead Sea at 1,300 feet below sea level.  The Dead Sea stands in a virtual desert, which receives less than 6 inches of rain a year, while the mountains to the west receive about 28 inches a year.  The water that does manage to run off the ridge of the mountains into the Dead Sea leaches the minerals from the land and deposits them into the lake. 

The yearly influx of water from rain, run off, and the rivers does not compensate for the profound evaporation rate of the Dead Sea.  This evidently long isolation from an abundant source of water is why the Dead Sea is called dead, with essentially nothing more than some hearty little brine shrimp living in it.  Because of thousands of years of evaporation, the Dead Sea contains not 3.6% salt, like the ocean, but about 30% salt, which makes it the saltiest body of water on the earth.

At one time the Dead Sea must have ten times the size it is now when it was trapped by the mountains in order for it to reduce to nearly 30% salinity through evaporation.  The evidence in the Dead Sea basin clearly indicates that indeed this was initially a very great body of water.  The most obvious indication is on the surrounding rock walls where the decreasing water lines of years past are visible, showing a drop of hundreds of feet just since it was measured a century ago by a geological survey team. 

Currently, the lake is dropping about 39 inches a year, and has lost 20% of its volume in the 25 years before the year 2000.  This extreme rate is partially due to the reduced influx from the Jordan River, but the evaporation rate was evidently quite rapid even before the recent diversion of water.  This is clear mathematically, since the larger the surface exposure, the faster the evaporation would have been, and the process of evaporation in the Dead Sea seems to have prevailed throughout human history.  The 3,500 years of written history records this body of water as the Salt Sea, demonstrating that the process of evaporation has superceded the influx of water for thousands of years. 

Moreover, this evaporation rate has clearly prevailed over all subsequent influxes of water because although the lake is captured in a mountain basin, its surface has evaporated down to 1,300 feet below sea level.  This prevalence of the evaporation rate over all influxes of water limits what possible source of water could have originally formed the Dead Sea.  Not only would this source need to account for the present great volume of water, but at least ten times the current amount according to the evaporation rate and surrounding physical evidence.  This was originally a great body of water that would not only fill the current footprint, but because of the length of the valley, any rise in water level would actually fill the basin northward by necessity.  North of the Dead Sea, the valley stretches all the way to just above the Sea of Galilee, which is 686 feet below sea level as well.  Based on geological and sedimentary evidence, whatever source of water filled the Dead Sea basin, also apparently once filled the Jordan River valley northward about 100 miles to the Galilee.  This is a lot of water.  Rain, rivers, and run off could not have supplied this original volume of water for several reasons. 

First, the surrounding geological evidence demonstrates that the water was once much higher than it is now.  There are steep, sheer cliffs that line the west coast of the Dead Sea, which resemble the cliffs of a shoreline at the ocean.  It is evident that water had eroded this earlier shoreline, but the height of these cliffs demonstrates that the water was at least 600 feet higher.  They are the last step down from even higher mesas above, which also indicate the presence of a large volume of water.  Even though this shoreline would still be 700 feet below sea level, the volume of water necessary to raise the level even just this high would mean that the whole body of water stretched up to 100 miles further up the valley.  The volume of water required to originally fill this basin could not have been supplied by ordinary rain, rivers or runoff.   

Secondly, the only way for the water to be trapped in this basin at all, obviously, is if the mountains were already raised.  These mountains, however, are the very obstacles that prevent the rain clouds from passing over and dropping rain into the basin.  Fortunately, uniformitarians do not believe that rain or rivers created the Dead Sea either.  Although they are a little vague on what they believe did create the Dead Sea, Creationists can accept uniformitarian’s general interpretation of the area’s geological activity—except for the insistence of millions of years.

Geologists propose that volcanic pressure and plate tectonics are responsible for the mountains and the Great Rift Valley that the Dead Sea occupies.  They believe that this volcanic pressure raised the mountains, and continental separation caused the rift that formed the valley.  This does not, however, explain how so much water came to be there.  For this factor, geologists simply assert that the Dead Sea was once connected to the Red Sea to the south.  Creationists agree.  The Dead Sea was once connected to the Red Sea.  The uniformitarians, though, do not have the benefit of a worldwide flood to explain it. 

The Red Sea and the Dead Sea are not connected now.  If the uniformitarian interpretation of the rift theory is true, then the valley should be getting bigger and deeper, and these two bodies of water should continue to be connected.  Therefore, there should be more water inundating from the Red Sea now, not less, and by reason, it should not demonstrate such a long history of evaporation.  The valley formation and deposits southward from the Dead Sea leading toward the tongue of the Red Sea does show that at one point the water was indeed present in the valley.  However, from the Dead Sea, in the space of about 100 miles, the elevation rises toward the Red Sea until it is about 600 feet above sea level.  This means that in order for the Red Sea and the Dead Sea to have been joined, either the sea level was once higher over the land, or this barrier was raised hundreds of feet after the inundation.  Creationists accept both factors.

Not only are the Red Sea and Dead Sea not still joined, as one would logically assume in a an ever rifting valley, but there is as additional problem for uniformitarians.  According to the book Smithsonian, Earth, on page 251.  “The Dead Sea achieved its greatest extent about 10,000 years ago, and has been shrinking slowly ever since.”

Okay.  So if uniformitarians believe that the Dead Sea was at its height 10,000 years ago, and the rift valley leading to the Red Sea would have been even less extensive than now, the sea level had to be higher in order for the two to meet.  But is that possible within the uniformitarian scheme?  Not according to their timeline, which is evident when one turns to page 430.  Here we read that because of the “last” Ice Age, the water levels 15,000 years ago were about 400 feet lower than today. 

This timeline is a sort of trap for uniformitarians.  Because of the region’s geological features, fossils, topographical features, and the Dead Sea’s evaporation rate, this recent timing that cannot be avoided.  The uniformitarian timelines about the movements of the continents in conjunction with the worldwide evolutionary and Ice Age timelines also place limits on any alternate explanations.  The Dead Sea must have formed about 10,000 years ago in uniformitarian terms, and in their schedule, the Ice Age was just ending at that same time. 

Tying up nearly 400 feet of the ocean’s water in the polar ice caps unquestionably prevents the inundation of the valley at the prescribed time.  According to their own interpretation, there has actually never been a better opportunity for the Red Sea to be connected to the Dead Sea then there is today.  The ocean levels are at their highest, and presumably the rift is the deepest and biggest it has ever been—yet they are still not linked.  They certainly could not have been linked when the ocean level was 400 feet lower.  The uniformitarian scheme is not able to demonstrate a realistic explanation for the great volume of water that must have become trapped in the Dead Sea basin.

The only realistic scenario that fits all these factors is that the mountains were raised while the water levels were higher, trapping the water.  This event was both the birth of a lake, and the death of a lake since it began to evaporate as soon as it was cut off from a sufficient replenishing source.  Regardless of how the mountains formed, and how the valley widened, the mountains had to be raised before the water could be trapped, while the water covered the land.  In order for the water to cover the land in this location, at this time, the water had to be higher all over the world.

 Just as discussed before, the Flood water covered the land, and then the mountains were raised on every continent, draining the land.  Although the valley that rifted created the Dead Sea basin, the uplift also apparently cut it off from the Red Sea.  The sediments south of the Dead Sea show how the water retreated up to the basin, and the sediments north of the Red Sea show how the water retreated southward.  A small jag in the valley between them locates the uplift separation that began the rapid evaporation.  The original shoreline that is apparent at 700 feet above the Dead Sea seemingly began so much lower than sea level because today’s higher sea level has the full benefit of the world’s drainage post-uplift, and the melted polar icecaps.  All this happened not 11,000 years ago, but less than 5,000 years ago.

Clearly, the evidence shows that the water originally reached even higher than the apparent 700 foot shoreline.  It not only once covered the surrounding mountains, on both the west and the east, but it actually made these mountains.  The hills and mountains all around the Dead Sea, and even far beyond, are mainly composed of sediments.  The mountains on the western side in Israel are composed of limestone, which is deposited in warm, calm water, and sandstone is on the east side, which is deposited in turbulent conditions.

Additionally, both the sandstone and the limestone layers are interrupted by frequent layers of conglomerate interspersed throughout the deposits, establishing periods of turbulent conditions.  No geologist will deny this, but it is the timing of the water deposition, and the raising of the mountains that is of most interest.  The only feasible way for the water to be trapped in this basin is if these sediments were deposited while the land was covered by water, and then raised into mountains while still under water, in the same incident, rather than two separate complex incidents.  The features of these mountains and hills show that the powerful erosive forces occurred post-deposition and post-uplift. 

The entire region was indisputably once underwater, and the surrounding valleys and hills exhibit the unquestionable evidence of massive water erosion, even though it receives insufficient rainfall and runoff to cause these features.   All the topography of the area demonstrates the classical sedimentary layering deposited by abundant water, and the dramatic erosion establishes a massive evacuation of water, not just the scars of yearly runoff.  A deluge of water evidently formed these features from the high, flat top mesas like Masada, cutting through gorges, and down through the low hills, rounded by powerful erosive forces.  These features may now be emphasized by today’s run off, but they were not originally shaped by it.   

Evidence for this is clearly seen in the hills and mountains surrounding the lake.  Not only were the mountains formed by water deposition, but the water was evidently still present as the hills were raised.  The abundant caves and other erosion factors prove that the mountains were still briefly under water even after they had risen.    The surrounding mountains and hills above the Dead Sea are also covered with abundant snail shells and other marine evidence just lying on the surface. 

This evidence indicates that the whole region had been covered in water, and that very little rain has been falling since, or these shells would have washed away.  These mountains could not have been formed under some ancient sea, and exposed for millions of years.  The delicate snail shells would not still be there, the salt mountain could not have been created, the caves would not be there, and most importantly, the Dead Sea could not have been trapped there unless the mountains had risen while still under water.

In fact, there was originally enough water trapped in the basin that the evaporation deposits formed an entire 760 ft mountain of pure silt-covered salt, Mt. Sdom, (sometimes Sodom) which stands to the southwest of the Dead Sea.  Wedged among the very mountains that trapped the water, this grand monument to the Flood is inexplicable under uniformitarian schemes.  This time-sensitive salt mountain could not have withstood many millennia of erosion, and testifies to a recent deposition by evaporation of a massive body of water.

The Flood is the best explanation for the Dead Sea, and it accounts for all the sediments, erosion features, marine evidence, geographical features, rates of evaporation, and influx of water.  One would have to work extra hard to manipulate a storyline to fit the uniformitarian scheme, and it still would not be the best interpretation of the evidence.  It would actually not be able to take into account all these factors, without affecting some other necessary uniformitarian timeline.  The Dead Sea is not the only place, however, to show signs of a massive presence of water.  This type of erosion evidence, though sometimes less dramatic, is common throughout the earth.

 

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Other Formations

 

Formations all over the world demonstrate the effects of this worldwide flood.  Every valley and canyon in the world, large or small, is immense compared to the streams and rivers present in them, testifying to a time of a great volume of water.  Most regions of the world have this type of topography, with some kind of valleys, canyons, plateaus, caves, or other large features eroded from sedimentary deposits.  The tremendous forces required for depositing and carving out these enormous formations cannot be generated by today’s inadequate processes, or by the water sources available.  Clearly there was a time when these vast beds of sediment were laid by large volumes of water, and afterwards the valleys, canyons, plateaus, and caves were eroded as the receding waters stripped the layers away.  We have verifiable evidence that such erosive forces are the best explanation for modern day topography. 

These features are so common, we don’t even think about them anymore.  Everywhere we go we live among these vast sedimentary deposit and erosion features.  We notice the deposits most at the coast, in valleys, road cuts, and in canyons.  These formations are composed of large piles of sand and mud that have been carved away by enormous water forces.  Look at them, and ask yourself how all those sediments got there.  Check out the broad valley that the little river runs through.  How much water would it have taken to erode the land all the way down to the bottom of that valley?  It is strange how small that little river looks, all settled into its niche, compared to the work it is purported to have accomplished.  What could possibly create the unusual hills and ripples and grooves in the land just as if massive water had run across it, eroding it away? 

A casual survey of most regions will turn up these features, so we can all conduct common sense research on our own.  Uniformitarians try to convince us that these features were formed from gradual processes, slowly laying down the sediments over millions of years with each calm, ancient sea.  But, as mentioned, the sediments are too high, and they are consistent with a one-time, verses periodic, deposition.  Many features undeniably are too spectacular to have formed through this long-term, imperceptible process of uniformitarianism.  The only time that these schemes fit the evidence is when evolutionists concede that a large-scale evacuation of an “ancient sea” had laid and carved the deposits—and that, naturally, is confirmation of the Flood.  We know enough about catastrophes to recognize the evidence of one. 

Aside from the well studied effects of the Mt. St. Helens eruption that will be discussed later, there are geological features of known origins that demonstrate the erosive power of massive amounts of water.  One example is the channeled scablands of the Colombia Plateau in eastern Washington State.  Geologists now believe that this 16,000 square mile region of cliffs and canyons was not the product of eons of time, as it might appear.  This 200-foot channel was carved out of basaltic rock in a matter of days when a giant ice dam broke at the end of the Ice Age, flooding the region with a rush of lake water at approximately 100 miles per hour.  Even within our lifetime, we have seen the destruction of massive flooding.  Clearly, eons of time are not necessary for creating grand scale topography, and monumental catastrophe is a better explanation for the earth’s abundant water formed features. 

The abundance of these features worldwide discredits elaborate uniformitarian explanations for each.  The absence of sufficient, present day water sources (often none is available in arid regions) in comparison to the grandeur of these common features, begs to be logically considered.  Some examples of dramatic sedimentary formations that are clearly carved by water are the Badlands National Park in South Dakota, Ayers Rock in Australia, Mammoth and Carlsbad Caverns, and the National Parks in Utah of Zion, Bryce, Canyonlands and Arches.  

The immensity of these features, like the 1,142 foot Ayers Rock, require that the water that deposited it would have been that high.  Water that high in one place means that it was that high everywhere.  Since the same water that deposited these features was also clearly responsible for their erosion, the complex scheme of gradual deposition and uplift once again is an arbitrary tale.  Every similar feature around the world would experience its own schedule of “ancient seas,” swamps and gradual localized uplift to explain what is evidently a worldwide pattern of deposition and erosion. 

These incredible canyon, pillar, and giant arch formations, carved from massive uniform sedimentary deposits, are certainly not evidence testifying to uniformitarianism.  The majority of these features are formed in sandstone, which again is transported through rapid moving water.  How can uniformitarianism actually hope to explain hundreds to thousands of square miles of massive sandstone deposition, and then large canyon, pillars, and arches carved out of them without a catastrophic flood event?  After all, what is the difference between an “ancient sea” that inundates the land with massive amounts of rapid moving water, and a worldwide Flood that inundates the land with massive amounts of rapid moving water?  Since most of these features now stand in regions that are presently deserts and wastelands, very little water is available to carve the dramatic erosion features after the “ancient sea” has evacuated.  This leaves all the work, again, to the sea itself—confirmation of the Flood.

The clear evidence is that some enormous amount of water laid all the sediments, and then carved them into these tremendous erosion formations—some of the most spectacular geological features in the world.  Attempts to construct histories for these vast, impressive formations, without a flood, boggle the imagination.  If this kind of blatant evidence were available for evolutionists, everyone would happily accept it, but because it supports Creation, it is reinvented.  Explanations should not replace facts, and doctrine should not compromise observation.

 

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Grand Canyon Depositional Evidence

 

When geologists look at the vast carved valley in Yosemite, and at the wonder of such power, they know that something tremendous happened.  No little stream cut that gorge out of the solid rock.  Scientists know that a giant glacier came through, and ground the formation out of a rift in the rocks.  Helpful evidence of this is that glaciers still exist.  But what if no one had ever seen a glacier, or had conceived of one.  Then, a scientist might conclude that the little river, not even visible from the top of the valley, had done all that work, for millions of years.  A work imperceptible to the modern observer.  Now, there is a great deal of evidence that this could not be true. 

There are large boulders deposited in the valley that could not have been transported by the little river.  There are great moraines and piles of debris, giant drag scars, jagged rocks and the U shaped valley, none of which are characteristic formations eroded by a small river.  But despite this, if scientists did not have enough experience to imagine the concept of glaciers, the evidence would likely be compromised to suit the assumed hypothesis.  This is why the “scientists” of days past thought the earth was flat, and motionless, and that everything else moved around it.  At that time it seemed ridiculous to think that the earth was moving, certainly we would feel it, or we would fly off of it—this despite all the evidence to the contrary.

          The same problems apply to scientists today.  Because of the spiritual implications, the evidence of a worldwide flood is ignored or rationalized away, even if the replacement theory is scientifically misapplied.  Scientists cannot accept the worldwide Flood interpretation of the evidence because it would be confirming the entire Bible.  The worldwide flood is such a phenomenal event, that to acknowledge it would take the legs out from under the naturalistic paradigm, and leave no viable refutation for the claims of the Bible.  Just recognizing this position evolutionists are in, sheds light on the motivation behind disregarding the obvious interpretation, and denying geological Flood evidence.  Confirming the Flood does not only eliminate the evolutionary interpretation of fossil evidence, but validates all the claims of the Bible, historically and spiritually. 

Just like the Yosemite Valley, we can examine the evidence of the Grand Canyon, and notice certain remarkable characteristics that we are compelled to take into account.  When we look at the plateau of the Grand Canyon region, we notice the immensity of this, broad, flat plain.  We can stand at the top of the rim and look all the way down into the canyon, but we will barely detect the little river at the bottom.  This river has been credited with carving out that extraordinarily vast, canyon.  Try to imagine how that little Colorado River managed to create a rift in the hard packed sediment up to 18 miles wide, when it is no more than a few hundred feet at its widest point (even before it was dammed).  

Due to the vast deposits of sediment, evolutionary geologists concede that this expansive area was once covered by “ancient seas.”  They must actually resort to believing that numerous placid ancient seas came and went over millions of years, building these vast deposits.  Then, only after these seas finally receded for the last time, and the region uplifted the layers, could the little stream begin its magnificent work—remarkably, for millions of years more. 

Moreover, the river would have had to work contrary to the force of gravity since the uplift clearly occurred before the carving began.  The plateau is so high, though, that the river today enters the canyon from its long journey through the northwest at its present level of 3,000 feet above sea level, while the top of the north canyon looms high above it at 8,000 feet above sea level.  This river does not begin to cut the canyon by starting from a higher elevation, and then gradually descending through the canyon.  Instead, it grandly enters the gates of the steep-walled canyon as one who travels through it, not as one that created the passage. 

The river would have needed to start higher than the 5,000 foot cliffs above it in order to have carved down through the sediments to create the canyon.  How did the river ever climb to the top of the canyon in order to start carving it down?  Even uplift of the region would have certainly displaced the river, and caused it to go around.  Water seeks to go down hill in any fashion, and this river would have either remained at its natural level 5,000 feet below, or it would have been cut off from its source. 

Evolutionists are also puzzled about how this could be.  There is still a great debate about how the river could carved through the wall, where it really originally entered, and all sorts of possible theories that do their best to exclude a catastrophic inundation.  If one weren’t tied to certain expectations, one might conclude that the river is a residual of a vastly greater flood of water, which had both laid and carved the grand feature in the aftermath of a catastrophe.  As we will see in the Mt. St. Helens discussion, this “ancient sea” may have had some unexpected effects. 

No uniformitarian explanations are given within the scientific evidence for how or why these proposed numerous and immense seas arose and retreated so far inland with gaps up to millions of years between, before they finally withdrew.  These numerous seas are necessary to account for deposition of all the impressive strata in the Grand Canyon, and all the Geologic Ages they supposedly represent. Uniformitarians have a lot invested in their interpretation of the Grand Canyon history because the sediments of that region, and by default the fossils that they contain, stretch across most of the western United States.  This is why they propose such a complex, but unjustified, schedule of numerous shallow, placid, ancient seas for the region and rely on the earnest efforts of the little river for all the impressive erosion. 

Again, one might wonder how a geologist can admit that vast ancient seas once covered so much of the continent, but outright reject the Flood, despite the clear evidence.  Careful to characterize the ancient sea as calm and not calamity related, they are undaunted by the fact that an ancient sea that could leave sediments as high as the Grand Canyon, would necessarily cover the entire continental US, including the Appalachian Mountains (which are also, by the way, sedimentary).  Not including the additional uplift, the remarkable depth of the sedimentary layers alone is evidence of the Flood.  From the top of the canyon to the little river below, there lies an astonishing sedimentary deposition of one mile deep, indicating that the “ancient seas” had to rise at least this high—over 5,000 feet. 

Though uniformitarians recognize that the entire continent was once entirely under water, they must believe the area of the Grand Canyon, including the broad Morison Formation, would require multiple inundations of water.  Uniformitarians claim that these ancient seas have come and gone while other parts of the continent were above sea level.  The incredible depth of the sediments, regardless of when uplift occurred, makes this impossible.  In order for an area of thousands of square miles of sediments 5,000 feet deep to be laid in the middle of the continent, it would need to be one of two things—either a deep-sea trench, or spring-loaded, again like the plate rack. 

Since a 5,000-foot trench absolutely does not fit the evidence, they must assume that the region, and only that region, is spring loaded.  This means that every time an ancient sea wanted to come in, the land would have to be below sea level to allow it.  But then the land would need to rise above sea level to drain it and expose the sediments.  But when the next sea wanted to come, then the land would need to ratchet down below sea level again to permit it, and then rise again to drain it, exposing the region.  But wait, here comes the sea again, and we don’t know why, but the land must courtesy again, and before we know it, this magnificent process has managed to shove the first layer of exposed sediments all the way down one whole mile so that the top and last layer can be inundated again.  And all of this activity would occur with the same amount of water in the world as when it began, and with the continents continually building up. 

The scheme is further complicated by the fossils of shoreline, fresh water, and terrestrial life captured in these sediments, which keeps evolutionists from allowing for an entirely deep-sea deposition.  Between that, and the pattern of sedimentary deposition, they must cling to this concept of shallow seas, and perhaps the spring-loaded land.  And still, these theories do not escape conflicts with the evidence.  Even the alternating types of sediments require varied environments of deposition, rather that a strict repetition of episodes, forcing the seas to be alternated with swamps, and sea-swamps.

Here is the uniformitarian interpretation of the layers of the Grand Canyon:

 

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Grand Canyon Sedimentary Chart

 

    Chart of Grand Canyon Sedimentary Layers

                                                      

Rounded Rectangle: Triassic-Quaternary not represented—assumed to have been erodedRounded Rectangle: 250 mya	Permian Kaibab Limestone     Type of marine fossils indicate total ocean submersion

     
Rounded Rectangle: 260 mya	Permian Toreweaf Sansdstone/Limestone  Alternating costal and submerged

Rounded Rectangle: 270 mya	Permian Coconino Sandstone     Sand dunes
    
Rounded Rectangle: 280 mya	Permian Hermit Shale   Plant fossils indicate partial/ near shoreline environment

Rounded Rectangle: 300 mya	Pennsylvanian Supai Group         Largely above water, costal deposits

Rounded Rectangle: 330 mya	Mississippian Redwall Limestone       Very thick layer requiring a long submersion

				Very thick layer requiring a long submersion

Rounded Rectangle: 408-360 mya 	Devonian  Temple Butte Limestone

Rounded Rectangle: 505-408 mya      Missing Ordovician and Silurian Representative strataRounded Rectangle: 		Tapeats Sandstone

Rounded Rectangle: 		Bright Angel Shale 

Rounded Rectangle: 570-505 mya	Cambrian  Mauv Limestone

 

Uniformitarians impose amazing expectations on this region, which is presently hundreds of miles from the sea.  The radical progression strains the imagination alternating from full inundation, to exposure, to partial inundation, to exposure, to terrestrial shoreline (not indicative of life that lives near the ocean), to extensive desert, to coastal submersion to total submersion.  It is arguably unreasonable to accept these characterizations as the best model in the face of no supporting evidence other than the fossils and sediments themselves.  Too many factors rationally negate these scenarios.

There simply is no coherent geological evidence to explain how these divergent environments were actually evoked in order to pile up these 5,000 feet of deposits other than by catastrophe.  One thing is certain—the sediments are this high because the water was once that high.  The uniformitarian explanation for how these enormous and varied sediment deposits were laid so far inland is not logistically plausible.  No matter how this concept is propped up, the evidence defies every rationale for rising and sinking land and seas. 

Every aspect of the uniformitarian reasoning is discredited by some infallible fact of the evidence.  If the western half of the United States didn’t rise and fall in order to achieve over 5,000 feet of sediments, this leaves us with the more obvious interpretation that accounts for all of the evidence.  The water had simply risen that high.  Therefore, at a minimum height of 5,000 feet above present day sea level, this “ancient sea” could not possibly be local, but would have to be worldwide.  Water cannot pile up in one place.  It always seeks to be level. 

Today the average land height worldwide is 2,757 feet above sea level, and this is after the majority of mountain building has occurred.  Scientists know that the uplift that formed the present day mountains occurred after the water covered them because fossil sea life is found on the tops of the highest mountains of the world.  The evidence is undeniable, and any other interpretation ventures outside this evidence.  The Grand Canyon was carved out of sediments.  These sediments were transported by water. 

Water then once entirely covered the Grand Canyon Plateau and beyond.  At 5,000 feet of sediments, the water had to be a minimum of 5,000 feet high to deposit the final layer.    And the sediments do not end there.  That is simply the line of where a particular formation is perceived to end.  One again, sediments cover the entire United States; they are simply best exposed in the famous wound of the Grand Canyon.  The Grand Canyon evidence alone demonstrates the depth of the water, but these same sediments correspond with sediments around the world, bolstering this unmistakable conclusion.       

Furthermore, Grand Canyon rock strata evidence is more consistent with a uniform, one- time deposition than with numerous episodes separated by millions of years.  Some of these concepts were discussed in part in earlier sections.  Evidence for one time, or related timing deposition is visually apparent in every way.  Although evolutionary scientists believe these shifts in strata represent time gaps of up to hundreds of millions of years, several types of evidence at the point of contact between these layers tell another story. 

For instance, where there should be a clear separation of the two layers because of the length of time between deposits, there is frequently instead an inter-fingering of materials.  This is when the overlaying layers are blended at the boundary with the lower layers.  If they were actually separated by millions of years of exposure, this would be impossible. The next layer should sit right on top instead of the materials blending together.  Instead, this indicates that these different sediments were deposited at about the same time period, as the particle composition shifted content and grain size.    

Additionally, as each “ancient sea” receded, it would have left the new deposit exposed to the elements for a time period of between hundreds of thousands of years up to over a hundred million years.  During that exposure, one would expect certain things to happen that evidently did not.  One, as mentioned before, is that there is no evidence of erosion over this period of exposure.  This concept is confirmed by the uniformitarian term “paraconformity,” which is an unexplainable lack of erosion evidence at strata boundaries.  This is when two sedimentary deposits that represent two different geological eras, meet without demonstrating the typical signs of erosion or evidence of the passage of time in between.

The underlying strata throughout the canyon lack the characteristic “V” shaped drainage erosion features.  As discussed earlier, there should naturally be grooves and channels cut into each layer after the water drains and exposes the sediments to the surface.  Erosion of this nature would be evident after just a few years, let alone a hundred million.  This erosion is completely missing at all the sediment contact points throughout the canyon, which is undeniable evidence for a one-time continuous depositional event. 

These features are called “unconformities” because they fail to demonstrate evidence of the deposition or erosion expected over millions of years of exposure that supposedly elapsed between depositional layers.  Two powerful examples of unconformities are where the Coconino Sandstone overlays the Hermit shale in precise contact.  Since shale is soft, one would expect a great deal of erosion to occur before the next layer is laid millions of years later, but there is not.  Again, the assertion is that this sandstone was deposited in a desert environment, which would bring in the sediments without water.  Since the shale should have easily turned into soil and clay from exposure, this evidence should also have been preserved as the dry sand covered it, but there is none.

The other example is where the first layer of sediment contacts the bedrock at the “Great Unconformity.”  This feature is so named by evolutionists because of the dramatic levelness of the underlying rock which had evidently been scoured flat prior to the deposition of the first layer of sediments.  Ordinarily rock layers are not naturally as level as a table, and clearly the invasion of the new sediments was a powerful event that eroded into the rock.  Otherwise, this contact point is supposed to represent more than one billion years of exposure to the elements.     

There is also a complete lack of chemical erosion in the underlying strata of the Grand Canyon.  When water or other agents sit directly on top of sediments, they affect the underlying layers through seepage altering the color and texture.  This is a typical indication of any significant passage of time, yet it is absent between the Grand Canyon strata.  Even at the point where the two strata meet, there is no mature decomposition or clay metamorphosis to demonstrate any exposure.  Certainly if these process can be witnessed within our lifetime, it should not be absent after millions of years. 

Plants and trees should grow in the interim as well, sending roots down into the sediments, and animals would burrow into the ground. Each exposed layer should display this evidence before the next layer was added.  There should be soil building up on the surface as the exposed sediments would break down, and organic material was laid and decayed.  Most of us have this kind of soil build up in our yards because we live on this soil layer that sits directly on top of these sediments.  Instead of evidence for these natural processes having taken place during exposure, a rapid succession of deposits is evident, as the shift in strata that should signal a passage of time is completely undetectable.

This deficiency is made more evident by the gaps between the time periods that the layers represent.  When geologists evaluate the steep walls of the Grand Canyon, they recognize that several geologic eras are missing, including every era after the Permian.  Between the “earliest” geological era, the Cambrian, and the next represented era, the Devonian, two significant developmental eras are missing, the Ordovician and the Silurian.  Together, these gaps represent 100million years.  We should wonder what factors caused thousands of square miles of inland sea to retreat for 100 million years, and then crawl back again to the same great expanse.    Uniformitarians have to believe this, though, because according to their own timeline, this great gap in the strata is undeniable.  However, now this immense passage of time is neither demonstrated by evidence of erosion in the exposed layers, nor by the deposition of fossil evidence that represents this time period at all.  

To a geologist, though, this fact is not discouraging because the Grand Canyon is considered the best model of the geologic column in the world, although half of the systems are missing.  If you were to take a tour of the Grand Canyon with a uniformitarian geologist or paleontologist, they would confidently point to the Cambrian layer, and then point to the layer on top of it and say “This is the next represented geological period, the Devonian, and the place where they meet represents a gap of 100 million years of erosion.”  And you will look at that place where the two periods meet, and let your eye follow that juncture for miles, all the way around the wall of the canyon, and you will not detect so much as a ripple to indicate that 100 million years of erosive forces had been working on that underlying layer. 

Not only is there a gap between geologic eras, but there appear to be compressed eras as well.  The most baffling of these deposits represent the Permian era.  Evolutionists must designate these deposits as Permian because of the type of terrestrial fossils they contain, but remarkably, the sediments of this one era are all different.  As a reminder, the book Rocks and Fossils clarifies the cause of these different types of deposits.   Limestone, as described on page 147, is deposited in warm, calm waters due to the calcium carbonate discussed earlier.  Page 51 tells us that mudstone is very small grained and is deposited in still lakes and deep-sea ocean environments.  Sandstone is larger grained and requires fast moving water, like a river. 

This means that in the span of one geological era, shale was deposited in still waters, sandstone was then deposited in rapid waters, and then limestone in a calm sea.  If we were speaking in evolutionary terms, first the standing sea water that formed the Hermit shale would have somehow become a deep, rushing current from north to south (based on the severe cross bedding) to lay down the Coconino sandstone over that, and then turn suddenly into a calm sea to deposit the Toreweap and Kaibab limestone.  How can all of this dramatic activity be explained by gradual uniformitarian standards, when clearly it would require rapid shifts in topography to instigate it all?  

The current cross-bedding in the sandstone indicates drainage toward to sea, not an inundation from the sea, so the water level should be draining to leave this type of deposition.  Even if the theory of sand dune deposition is rejected, and a water invasion is accepted, this evidence still conflicts.  How would a sea be invading the region if the water is draining toward the sea?  However, the moving water was evidently deep enough that at some point the current settled into standing water and deposited a thick layer of limestone above it. 

Despite this assertion that the sandstone layer was deposited in a desert, not by water, the depositional and fossil evidence clearly points to water.  Additionally, the Permian is considered later era deposits, so it is difficult to justify the appropriate topography that would accommodate the non-ocean, shoreline deposition of mud, to sudden desert conditions, and then an inundation of calm water limestone above that.  Since all three types of sediments were necessarily laid during one geologic era, uniformitarians must construct another complex schedule of events in order to account for these deposits.  

An interpretation more fitting of the Grand Canyon evidence is that the different sedimentary elements (limestone, sandstone, shale) were laid rapidly, and in rapid succession, while sifting occurred according to their physical properties.  As the waters invaded and receded during the geological upheaval of the Flood, a different type of sediments would be deposited.  We can see these stages in the progress from the bottom bedrock upward.  The canyon is essentially composed of sandstone, shale, limestone, shale, sandstone, and then limestone.  The layers testify to the many stages of the Flood from inundation, through standing water, and associated geological events, to recession.

 

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In the pattern of the Grand Canyon, we can see how the initial inundation of sandstone could come from the first great erosion and from the run off rain.  Then the shale or mud indicates that the water had risen above the local topography and the mud it created filtered down to the floor.  The limestone next tells us that the water was warm, and standing for some time.  The following layer of mud indicates a churning up of sediments possibly by currents or changes in the topography. 

This is when the sandstone layer is laid again, indicating more fast moving currents and possible tectonic activity that may have shifted the drainage. Then layers of limestone are near the top indicating a possible blockage that caused standing water for a time.  The uppermost layers reveal that materials have been eroded away into a flat mesa, where a recession may have begun during the further uplift of the region.  This rapid evacuation may represent the breakthrough of a large water damn that suddenly cut through the sediments into the canyon. 

Scientists must recognize that many of these layers require fast moving water.  This also explains the level evenness of the vast plain that the Grand Canyon is carved into.  Stretching for hundreds of miles, the flatness of the deposition in the Grand Canyon area perfectly resembles the scouring effects of a large body of moving water.  This is called sheet erosion, and occurs when wide bodies of moving water rapidly transport sediments of all grain sizes, scraping the bottom with its leveling action.  A sudden wash in the desert looks like this.  Altogether, when viewed with a critical eye, the Grand Canyon is a testament to the powerful presence of a massive volume of water. 

In addition to the impressive visual evidence, there are other features in the rock strata to verify the presence of an enormous quantity of rapidly moving water.  In fact, the deposition of large breccia (jagged rock fragments) intermingled with the sedimentary muds, indicates that a fast moving current tore them from their original sites, and transported them quickly with the muds.  That the breccia are embedded within soft, small grained sediments, and transported uniformly across certain strata, is not indicative of slow deposition in a calm sea.  Clearly violence is required to dislodge all these jagged rocks, which were deposited in the slurry of a rapid current, without sufficient time to tumble off the sharp edges.  Additionally, conglomerate and boulders of various sizes were transported as well, and are also inexplicably and abundantly present among the smaller sediments. This clear evidence cannot be explained within the placid sea model, but is characteristic of a dramatic event of torrential waters reaching far back into the land.  There is no other way to interpret this phenomenon.

Even the hundreds of Nautiloid fossils that are present in the Grand Canyon Redwall formation demonstrate through directional orientation that there had been a swift current.  Nautiloids are those squid-like creatures with the long, straight shells, which tend to point in the direction of currents.  In calm seas, these creatures would die and fall to the floor in random directions, but the hundreds of fossils found in the Grand Canyon are oriented in a similar direction.  There are also as many as 25% of them buried standing on end, a sure indication of a disastrous and overwhelming sediment deposition. 

An abundance of delicate soft-bodied animals (such as Crinoids and Bryozoans) were also exquisitely fossilized.  These creatures collapse and decay quickly in the water after death, but the pristine preservation of their fragile parts in the Grand Canyon demonstrates that they were alive at the time of burial.  Their complete burial had to have been rapid in order to perfectly preserve the features of their very tender tissue in the rock.  The indication at these sites is that the delicate creatures were ripped up in a torrent, and then quickly frozen in the encasing slush.  Our own scientific observations tell us that this is not a natural occurrence under the normal deposition conditions of a calm sea where such creatures would quickly decay and dissolve.

When we examine the terrestrial evidence from the Grand Canyon Permian strata, we see delicately fossilized fern leaves, dragon fly parts, tree stumps and remarkably amphibian animal tracks, along with other terrestrial plants and animals that indicate that system.  Evolutionists would point to these fossils to bolster claims of the progress of life.  Common sense, however, tells us that these things have no business in the middle of vast open waters that clearly covered the region for hundreds of square miles.  Moreover, these delicate preservations, again, testify to circumstances of rapid burial.  Fossils in the Grand Canyon tell the story of cataclysm despite uniformitarian efforts to use them as evidence for evolution. 

One final point involves the use of radiometric dating of lava flows present in the Grand Canyon.  There is a pocket of basalt underlying the lowest layers of the Grand Canyon, with all the subsequent sediments deposited over it.  This pocket of lava has been subjected to the three standard radioisotope methods mentioned in the Age of the Earth section.  Their results date its outflow between 1.7 and .7 billion years old.  This wide range of a billion years alone should raise flags of doubt about the accuracy of the method.  However, there is a large cinder cone called Vulcan’s Throne at the top of the Grand Canyon, which is the core remnant of a Basaltic volcano.  This volcano once flowed from the top, down into the Grand Canyon, down the walls that had already been carved by the water, to the very bottom of the present day canyon.  There the lava blocked the river enough to create a little side pool.  

Clearly, this flow is at the oldest, only a few thousand years old, or the canyon would not have been formed yet in order for it to flow into the deepest carved portion of the Grand Canyon.  Not surprisingly, though, the same isotope methods dated this flow at 1.23 billion yearsas “old” as the Basalt rock embedded below the lowest sedimentary strata of the Grand Canyon, and approximately 600 million times the possible actual date. 

How could rock that came in from the top of the sediments be as old as the rock underneath all that sediment when it took billions of years to lay them over it, and then carve out the canyon?  This absolute impossibility demonstrates how utterly this method has failed, and it should never be considered reliable.  How legitimate can it be when the most common radiometric dating methods consistently present a wide range of dates on the same samples, and do not agree?  Why would any such dates be accepted?  

The Grand Canyon offers a visually and geologically sound testimony of a worldwide flood, and it gives us exactly the sort of evidence we ought to hope for to support the Biblical model. Only if there were no such evidence of an unquestioned presence of vast amounts of water, could an evolutionary geologist then rightly disregard the model.  But despite the clear evidence, evolutionists somehow have turned the example of the Grand Canyon, and other remarkable canyons, seaside cliffs, natural arches, thousands of valleys, sedimentary caves, and enormous worldwide sedimentary deposits, into testimonies for uniformitarianism, even when the mind cannot imagine how it was done.  All the features that corroborate a worldwide cataclysmic flood and the associated geological activity are present in the Grand Canyon.  However, when uniformitanians attempt to re-interpret this clear evidence to support evolution, it becomes a complex distortion of elements that must be rationalized, rather than proven.

 

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Mount St. Helens

 

While no one has seen a little stream actually, patiently carve an enormous canyon out of solid sedimentary rock, we have witnessed the results of catastrophic events.  Creation scientists were pleased, but not surprised, by the marvelous effects of the cataclysmic eruption of Mt. St. Helens in Washington State on May 18, 1980.  Radioisotope dating on this very eruption proved a fatal inaccuracy of the method by over dating the ensuing ash by hundreds of thousands of years.  Like a marvelous laboratory experiment, scientists witnessed in a real world setting, the principles of volcanic power, ash deposition, catastrophic mudflows, hydraulics, atmospheric disturbances, and the effects of such cataclysm on the ecology.  This scale model beautifully displayed the enormous destructive potential of even just a single event.

          Creation Scientists are interested in studying all the effects of events like the Mt. St. Helens eruption, since so much of the Creation model involves the various impacts from such catastrophes.  There was a sufficient forewarning of the event for scientists and photographers to well document its stages and the effects.  A more detailed study of the eruption and aftermath would do it justice, but as an overview, several significant principles were demonstrated: 1) that the massive water, ash and mud deposition precisely mimic the different strata seen in sedimentary rock, 2) that dramatic canyon formations are quickly created from catastrophic conditions, and 3) that ecological effects of such conditions can explain certain worldwide phenomena.

Additionally, Creation scientists were interested in the environmental impact of massive volcanic activity because of the evidence in the Bible of global volcanism pertaining to the Flood.  One such scientist is geologist Steve Austin, whose extensive research and documentation of the Mount St. Helens disaster has demonstrated how well its impact applies to the Flood.  The information provided here was mostly based on the Institute for Creation Research 1993 video produced about his findings called Mount St. Helens, Explosive Evidence for Catastrophe.

          When Mt. St. Helens erupted, the effects were awesome.  On the morning of May 18, 1980, a large earthquake signaled the beginning of the eruption, and dislodged the summit and northern slope of the mountain.  The top 1,000 feet of elevation came crashing down the northern and western slopes, uncorking a powerful blast of volcanic steam and ash, equivalent to 20 million tons of TNT across the landscape.  This steam and ash blast blew down millions of trees like matchsticks for 150 square miles.  The landslide crashed down the northern slope into Spirit Lake, causing the water to displace up onto the opposite bank, and reach almost 900 feet into the forest.  This wave scoured the bank of about one million trees, which were then swept off the slope and deposited back in the lake.  Down the western slope of the mountain, the landslide blocked the Toutle River drainage basin with tons of land and debris from the mountain, completely altering the topography, and preventing natural drainage.   

None of the lava flowed out, but as the day passed, a massive, hot pyroclastic cloud blasted several miles into the air, darkening the landscape and spewing steam and ash for nine hours, with an energy output equal to one Hiroshima bomb per second.  The toxic 500 degree cloud lingered in the atmosphere, blanketing and smothering everything it alighted.  The eruption’s tremendous impact on the atmosphere was demonstrated in the weather satellites that show from the first cloud of eruption, until it spread out and distributed its material into neighboring states.  Noon became as dark as night under the pyroclastic atmosphere. 

Clearly, just this one eruption transformed the region for miles, altering the landscape, soil content, effecting all plant and animal life, and the atmosphere, adding layers of ash, and other evidence of its passionate display.  Such unmistakable indications of eruptions and ash deposits in the past are noted in the layers of the geological record around the world.  Ash layers are particularly evident in remarkable erosion zones like the Grand Canyon, which lays open the past for us, revealing that these cataclysmic events are an inseparable part of interpreting the geological evidence.  The aerosols from this one eruption, and the desolation of the landscape demonstrate factors that could have lead to the post -Flood Ice Age, which will be discussed later.

          But the spectacular Mt. St. Helens eruption itself did not hold all the surprises.  After the blast of the initial eruption, there continued to be pyroclastic and ash deposits along with pumice and fine volcanic debris.  In three major events from the initial eruption, up to 600 feet of strata were deposited at the north base of the mountain from steam and ash blasts and cataclysmic mudflows.   That is two football fields high of layered strata deposited in events that lasted just a matter of hours.  This stratum is fine grained, and shifts in color and layers, not because they were deposited in shallow ancient seas, or because they were left exposed for millions of years between events, but in the natural course of rapid deposition, shifting wind, environmental exposure and pulsating eruptions.   

One of the most spectacular events was in the June 1982 eruption that disbursed more ash in a pyroclastic flow.  The ash landed on glacial ice on the mountain, which melted the ice and released a massive mudflow.  This torrent hit the blockage of the Toutle river basin, and broke through producing a flow of ash, and mud and debris which deposited more strata.  As the torrent continued to drain, it cut through all the strata and formed a miniature Grand Canyon up to 100 feet deep.  Not in millions of years, but in hours, rerouting the drainage basin, and causing the natural drainage to follow the new canyon in a little stream through the bottom.  Somehow, though no one knows exactly by what agent, this event also carved deep into existing solid rock, forming a new network of spectacular canyons. 

When we see how uplifted the Grand Canyon plateau is compared to surrounding levels, as pointed out earlier, one wonders how a little river could fight gravity and cut up through the plateau like that.  Through the Mt. St. Helens demonstration, we can now see the possibility that as the torrent of Flood waters receded, an enormous blocked drainage basin could break through and dramatically create an effect as spectacular as the Grand Canyon.  Such a tremendous breakthrough would flow over the entire area, scouring the land, leaving new deposits, and then cut deep down into the all layers of strata that had been laid by both the breakthrough and the Flood.  

Just as fascinating was the steam implosion pits that formed when the hot ash trapped the glacial ice, which melted and escaped as steam.  When gravity gave way at the edge of these fine deposits, they sank down dramatically, leaving relief -type edged canyons and gullies exactly like those seen in the Badlands, but formed only in moments.  No one could have imagined this effect, and we can see now how much better this model is than mere eons of erosion for explaining such features. 

All of the spectacular deposition and erosion features of the world are consistent with the scale model demonstrated by the catastrophe of just this single, small, cataclysmic event.  Knowing these grand and powerful effects catastrophes have on the topography, one wonders why uniformitarians insist that catastrophes did not form such awe inspiring formations in the past.  What is this insistence based on when real geological models prove that catastrophe absolutely is an agent for such formations?    

All the theoretical effects of a worldwide flood were perfectly demonstrated in this one example, and showed scientists the incredible reality of its impact.  The layering revealed in the mini “Grand Canyon” mimics that of the real Grand Canyon.  The walls of the canyon also became hard enough to stand on in just a few days, showing the quick processes that take place to transform sediments into rock under such conditions.  Rapid deposition and drainage would also be ideal conditions for fossilization. 

One would expect that if there were any organisms that had not been destroyed in the previous steam blast two years before, it might easily have been fossilized in the ash and mudflow.  No one has seen the types of layering that uniformitarians ascribe to millions of years of sedimentation, but we have an excellent example in the Mt. St. Helen’s aftermath that proves such fine layering is absolutely consistent with catastrophic deposition.     

          In addition to the dramatic sedimentary formations, Mt. St. Helens also confirmed a few theories about the ecological effects of such a flood.  Scientists could see in the effects of water inundation after the eruption, how a great flood involving mud and ash could lead to tree petrifaction.  As the wave of water from Spirit Lake tore the trees out of the ground, it left most of the roots behind, and then dumped the trees back into the lake with the mud and ash.  The four square mile lake was then filled with two square miles of floating logs, which were pushed around the lake by the wind.  Creation Scientist Steven Austin then began to make a few incredible observations.   One observation was that some of the logs weighed down by water-logged root balls, began to float in an upright position.  It turns out that these logs would sink, upright into the sediments, and stick there in the mineral rich water.  This phenomenon resembles the situation in which petrified trees are found.  

When uniformitarian geologists explain the process of petrifaction, they recognize that the trees were saturated by waterborne sand, mud or volcanic ash, and the concentration of minerals in the water invaded the cells of the wood, turning them to stone.  The elements required for wood petrifaction, however, would also be present in the Flood. Uniformitarians have claimed for years that the Petrified Forest in Yellowstone is evidence of millions of years because many of the upright trees appear to have grown out of different levels of forest, which represent different ages. 

However, even if a standing forest had been petrified in an upright position, this would still be clear evidence of flooding because dozens of feet of water, ash, and mud would need to invade the previously dry region in order to inundate the entire forest with the mineral solution.  Additionally, many of the trees, both in Yellowstone and in other petrified forests, lay in piles horizontally on top of and within the sediment they were deposited in, indicating mass transportation by water.

Creationists find many problems with the uniformitarian theories about standing petrified forests. Several phenomena demonstrate that these forests could not have been petrified where they stood, in successive eons on different levels.   There is no bark on these trees, indicating that the bark might have been scoured off during rapid water deposition, like the trees in Spirit Lake.  More problematic is that these trees, though they appear to be standing in their original positions, have no more than broken off root balls to anchor them, rather than the entire roots reaching into the ground.  Uniformitarian theories cannot explain this. 

The concept of multiple forests on successive levels is disputed by logic alone.  Uniformitarians suppose that these successive levels are separated by millions of years, and yet there is typically just a few feet difference between them.  This is impossible because of the height of these logs.  For a new forest to grow only a few feet higher than the ground level of the previous forest, a large portion of the first level of trees would remain exposed to the elements for millions of years.  Clearly, a tree is not capable of withstanding such exposure without decay.  The whole standing forest would need to be fossilized at once to satisfy the unique process of petrifaction.  A separate preservation of each incremental level of forest is unfathomable.  There must be a better explanation.   

In fact, a group of Japanese scientists conducted a series of experiments concerning petrified wood, and the rate of silification in the Tateyams Hot Springs.  They reported their conclusions in the July 2004 issue of Sedimentary Geology.  According to their studies, the silification of wood can and does occur very rapidly, not requiring the long ages, but merely tens to hundreds of years under the right natural conditions (Acts and Facts January 2005).  They included among these likely conditions volcanic ash beds and sedimentary strata in volcanic regions inundated by hot flowing ground water with a high silica content. 

Now, the real life science laboratory of Spirit Lake, shows us a more realistic possibility.  We see that the Flood could easily have swept up trees in the torrent, which floated until they became heavy at the broken root ball, and sank upright into the sediment.  There both the upright logs, and the prone logs, could become inundated with mineralized water.  Continued sedimentation would likely seal in and petrify the logs until the receding water eroded the sediments, revealing the newly planted fossils. 

The Mt. St. Helens catastrophe demonstrated how easily many of the features of today could have been formed in the Flood.  Because uniformitarians rely on imagined processes rather than documented processes, they are unable to provide realistic explanations for these features without paralleling Flood elements.

 

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Fossil Fuels

 

Another remarkable phenomenon following the Mt. St. Helens eruption was the unexpected amount of floating vegetation that remained when a million trees were ripped from the ground and deposited into Spirit Lake.  Creationist Steve Austin had had a theory about fossil fuel formation, and his research and documentation of the Spirit Lake log deposits confirmed it.  We know that coal is made up of compressed layers of vegetation, but a good deal of these layers typically include bark.  Austin believed that these layers may have been organic matter that drifted down from vegetation mats that floated on the surface of a large body of water.  These layers of organic material would then be covered by a rapid sediment deposit, which provided the pressure required to create coal.

Spirit Lake’s large body of floating logs offered an actual demonstration of how this would work, and it showed the surprising amount of vegetation that could have amassed and remained afloat after a large flood.  As mentioned before, these floating logs rubbed against each other, scouring off the bark, which drifted down, along with other organic particles, and collected in the sediments on the bottom of the lake.  There, divers discovered peat and bark deposits two feet deep, mimicking the layers detected in coal.  Further sediment deposits into the lake showed how the organic matter could be covered during the recession of the Flood, and pressurized into coal.  Based on these studies, the Flood would offer the most appropriate factors that could generate the abundance of fossil fuels that exist today.  This model could include the collection of many types of organic matter by water, such as the pollen-laden coal mentioned earlier. 

Considering coal seams can run for hundreds of miles, the uniformitarian model cannot possibly explain these extensive fossil fuels.  Uniformitarians, by definition, must construct slow, gradual processes to explain them, but there are no conditions in the world today to validate these models, or demonstrate that they are more plausible than catastrophe.  Miles of fossil fuels could not be the result of normal, natural processes through eons of time.  A catastrophe would offer the best opportunity to form these massive deposits.  It is a significant geological fact that fossil fuels are abundantly present in every part of the world.  Oil, coal and natural gas are present on every continent, including the arctic and Antarctic, and they are even found in the ocean.  This is bewildering under the strained scenarios of the uniformitarian model. 

Under the uniformitarian model, coal, oil and natural gas were formed when plants and organisms gradually accumulated over eons in oceans, ancient seas and swamps, without dissipating in the water.  Then, in hundreds of these locations worldwide, through various local scenarios, this organic matter was completely covered by hundreds of feet of sediments, and compressed into the fossil fuels—each, miraculously, at different sites in unrelated incidents.  This is not a process we see operating today.  We do not find slow, gradual conditions today that will eventually lead to fossil fuels unless catastrophic conditions intervene.  It is well known that catastrophe is actually the best catalyst for fossil fuels simply because the geological record can demonstrate a correlation between catastrophic events and large vegetation deposits. 

There is historical evidence of this in the fossil record.  Evolutionists have noted a significant increase in Carbon 12, most commonly attributed to rotting vegetation, in the strata where the Permian extinction is assigned.  The Discovery Channel presented a program “The Day the Earth Nearly Died,” which discussed this increase in Carbon 12, and the obvious worldwide sudden loss of life during one of many supposed evolutionary extinctions.   The increase of Carbon 12 at this level, though, indicates that there were specific circumstances involved in this record of massive death.  A worldwide record of rotting vegetation could only happen during very moist conditions, and the immense collection of vegetation at this level indicates that it was not disbursed. 

All the evidence indicates that a great deal of vegetation, simultaneously all over the world, was either ripped up or otherwise killed under very moist conditions. Then it was covered by sediments before it could be broken down and consumed by the usual forces of sun, rainfall, and insects.  It would only take a few years for it to breakdown or dry out if it was not covered.  We do know that it was covered, though, because the sediments lay over this layer now.  How did so much vegetation all over the world suddenly die, and begin to rot, and then get covered so completely that it was preserved in the geological record?  Evolutionists also believe that many, many animal species also became extinct at this Permian level, demonstrating how significant the catastrophe had to have been to cause it.

Evidence that these catastrophes could have formed fossil fuels must be ignored under the uniformitarian theory in order to keep up the pretense of long ages.  Swamps and shallow seas, however, still do not provide the circumstances necessary to create fossil fuels.  Today we see that the great amount of organic material needed to form coal does not accumulate in areas where influxes of great loads of sediments are possible. 

Swamps and bogs can accumulate abundant organic matter because their shallow water is sedentary, and receives little movement to dissipate the organic material.  However, if there is not enough influx and motion of water to dissipate the material, there is also not enough influx of sediments to cover the organic material.  There must be a great accumulation of sediments over an incredible amount of organic material to create a fossil fuel. In fact, it takes from 3-7 feet of organic plant matter to make one foot of coal.  We occasionally see the organic transformation of plants in peat bogs into the first stages of coal formation, but it will not become coal under present conditions because it is necessary for this great load of sediments to accumulate over the material, before it dissipates, in order to compress it into coal.

It is possible for peat to accumulate in a bog, but a uniformitarian would need to propose that after this great accumulation, the bog was uncharacteristically inundated by sediments.  There are situations where a pond or body of water that does not receive fresh influxes of water may fill in with vegetation.  Moss and sedges can encroach in on the pond from the edges, and these floating mats will deposit organic material beneath it into the water.  This material can evade complete decay in the poorly oxygenated water, and it will begin to fill in, eventually forming peat as the water is absorbed.  This sort of accumulation mimics the floating vegetation mat proposed by Austin.

Under the uniformitarian theory of gradual growth and gradual deposition, the body of water must remain calm for eons in order to amass the necessary plant material.  In a calm sea or swamp, the only way to accumulate the hundreds of feet of sediments that are always found covering fossil fuels, is for a unique event to bring them in, which would be a catastrophe.  Not enough sediments accumulate by a gradual rise in water because moving the heavier sediments necessary would dissipate the organic material.  So we see that even if the materials did accumulate in a swamp or calm sea, they would still have to be buried by hundreds of feet of sediments in a unique event, giving credence to the Flood model. This gradual process is further discredited when we consider how abundant fossil fuels are worldwide, necessitating all these ancient seas, mini floods, catastrophes and impossible requirements for each site.  Such deposits clearly indicate the more logical catastrophic Flood model. 

One example is the Ekibastuz coal field in the former USSR, which contains a seam that is 487 feet thick, requiring approximately 1,700 feet of peat to be deposited before some influx of water brought hundreds of feet more of sediments to compress it (Studies in Flood Geology, pg 204).  This unfathomable accumulation of organic matter is illogical under the peat bog scenario, which would require the original depth of the water to be at least 1,700 feet deep, just to accumulate the matter, which is never a stagnant pond.  The sediment covering alone would necessitate a tremendous, and catastrophic inundation of water inexplicable to the area.  The frequent worldwide occurrence of enormous coal deposits nullifies gradual uniformitarian scenarios. 

Additionally, the uniformitarian interpretation that dictates millions of years to create these formations is not because it actually takes millions of years to make fossil fuels.  No one could possibly know that.  In fact, scientists are able to duplicate the necessary factors in the lab and actually create fossil fuels.  Evolutionists simply require this process to take millions of years to allow for the long ages of evolution. If a single worldwide flood could explain all fossil fuels, then none of the sediments were laid over millions of years, and so none of the fossils were made over millions of years, and therefore there is not enough time in the history of the world to allow for evolution. 

Evolution would take a very, very long time.  This is why uniformitarian scientists insist upon the slow accumulation of small plants and algae and other organic material over millions of years under calm, steady conditions, and the equally slow deposition of sediments, as their devise.  They confidently explain all their scenarios, but offer no evidence that they are possible, or even likely, let alone factual.  Since their own, beloved Carbon 14 tests, again, reveal a measurable amount of carbon in all coal deposits, the most they could be is thousands, not millions of years old, making them theoretically “millions of years” younger than the things that died to make them!      

Scientists don’t discuss the discord between their scenarios and the evidence concerning fossil fuels.  If all the organic material accumulated first, and then the tons of sediments were gradually deposited, what evidence is there to explain that these thousands of sites suddenly shifted from lush, calm environments to regions rapidly flooded with sediments?  But if on the other hand, as is sometimes proposed, gradual accumulations of organic matter are alternated with gradual accumulations of sediment, why are there so many large dykes of coal dozens to hundreds of feet thick, and sometimes hundreds of miles long? The enormity of the formations themselves testifies to the enormity of the disaster.

Moreover, the formation of fossil fuels in the ocean also poses difficulties.  Today, it would be a unique incident if a vast quantity of organic matter accumulated in the ocean, and then tremendous load of sediments quickly deposited onto it.  Where would it come from?  Organic matter does not accumulate in large quantities over millions of years in the ocean because the water would dissipate it, and the animals would consume it.  Once again, one would need to call upon another deep oceanic trench in order to keep the animals and oxygen from consuming the organic material.  But of course, then there would be no reason for the organic material to gather there so abundantly.

These necessary conditions are not known to be met anywhere in the world today, as vast amounts of unconsumed food do not just lie around the ocean floor accumulating.  Add to that the second requirement of hundreds of feet of sediments suddenly covering it.  When explorers discovered the wreck of the Titanic, nearly 100 years old, what did they find?  Scarcely any sediment accumulation, and virtually no organic compounds remained. No clothes, or bodies.  The wood was gone—it was not covered and fossilized because the ocean doesn’t work like that. The thousands of barrels of oil found in the oceans of the world are unquestionable evidence of a global disaster. 

Nowhere in the world do we see the right circumstances that produce fossil fuels, and certainly not on such a grand scale.  If we do not see them even in one place, how can evolutionist explain the incredible abundance of fossil fuels worldwide?  Uniformitarians believe that if they simply use key phrases like “accumulation over millions of years,” they do not have to work out the details.  What we have really learned about geological processes is that only extraordinary events, as seen in at Mt. St. Helens, seem to duplicate the conditions necessary to create fossil fuels.  These events don’t demonstrate slow, calm or steady processes, but the effects of a catastrophic one.  Fossil fuels clearly cannot be created without a catastrophic event of some sort.

 

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The uniformitarians will tell you that you do not notice the processes that make fossil fuels today because they are too slow.  Despite the lack of evidence, and unimaginable complexity and compounding series of unusual geological events that they use to explain the formation of fossil fuels, uniformitarians insist that these processes happened, at hundreds to thousands of sites throughout the world, and continue to happen in different forms. Nonetheless, they still must necessarily concede to all the conditions that are comfortably satisfied by the Flood.  The known requirements for creating fossil fuels are: amassed organic matter, a large body of water, the lack of opportunity for the matter to dissipate, and the influx of heavy loads of sediment.  The rapid processes of the Flood most fittingly account for this, and there is no evidence that it was not possible. 

The process required to create the abundant fossil fuels worldwide is best explained by a global flood, and it is exactly the kind of evidence a Creation scientist would expect to find to corroborate the event.  A global flood would tear up masses of vegetation around the world that could float and redistribute as it sank.  Then the Flood could easily provide heavy loads of sediment to cover the matter before it could break down, (or cover organic material where it originally grew) and subsequently submit it to tremendous pressure of the water and sediments. Additionally, many scientists believe that animals like dinosaurs are part of the organic material in oil and natural gas.  The immensity of these deposits confirms the likelihood of large animals as part of such a vast collection of organic material, and a massive, powerful flood best explains how animals and plants large and small could be collected and buried so thoroughly before they were dispersed. 

Fossil fuels are not evidence against the Flood model, but on its behalf.  They are, in the same measure, something that uniformitarian geologists must explain, and do so in complicated and unfeasible scenarios, for which there is no evidence of support to the exclusion of the Flood model.  The abundant floating vegetation as the result of the Mt. St. Helens disaster verifies the plausibility of the Flood effects. 

Minor flood events throughout the world demonstrate these principles, while practical knowledge of hydraulics, and other common natural processes that can be studied and tested, verify the plausibility of the Flood model.  They also demonstrate that the uniformitarian model lacks the validity to explain such geological features.  The advantage for Creation scientists is that the expected effects of the Flood model are confirmed and demonstrated for us in the arena of the actual geological world, not a virtual world.  The uniformitarian model, however, is not afforded the luxury of real geological demonstrations of the theory, and relies solely on mind exercises to construct the various, self amending formulas to explain its incongruence with the actual observed geological evidence.

 

BIF’s: Banded Iron Formations

 

          Geologists are baffled by a worldwide geological phenomenon called banded iron formations, or BIF’s.  This is a deposit of sedimentary rocks that alternate in thin bands between chert (in most cases) and iron oxides.  Geologists assign the formation of BIF’s to the very early earth based on the associated rocks, and the fact that they are found in abundance on every continent.  This could only happen while every continent was under water.  We have studied BIF’s intently because they have provided the most accessible and useful iron deposits on every continent and throughout history.  Without BIF’s there would not have been an iron age, and still today we rely almost completely on these abundant formations for our steel industries worldwide.

There are several types of BIF’s, which vary slightly in composition, but the essential elements are the same.  All were deposited under standing water where a local sediment composed of some form of silicates: chert, shale, carbonates, or volcanics which alternate strikingly with an iron oxide deposition layer.  These alternating thin layers of sediment and iron oxide defy all uniformitarian explanation because geologists agree that the formations occurred in conditions that have never again existed on the earth, and they are still not sure what the conditions were.

Here are the main difficulties in explaining BIF’s: the deposits must have occurred in the very “early” earth (Precambrian), they were all deposited in standing water—most believed to be very deep standing water— , the iron oxide and silicate deposits indicate the presence of abundant free oxygen, and they occur throughout the earth, indicating a globally linked water-borne phenomenon bearing a sudden excess of iron ions during a sediment deposition episode.

Since the deposits must be assigned to the Precambrian, there is a conflict with the prescribed free oxygen levels of the early earth.  As discussed earlier, free oxygen could not exist in the early earth because that would prevent any attempt at chemical evolution.  Therefore, how did so much free oxygen become available, all over the earth in such abundance so early? 

The scenario put forth is that this occurred just as oxygen producing “primitive” blue-green algae were changing the world with all their excess oxygen, and the free oxygen was binding to the iron ions, causing them to fall out of solution, and become deposition layer.  Then, for some reason, the oxygen levels dropped (various scenarios are offered) and a layer of silicate is deposited, and back and forth until the very large banded deposits were formed.

BIF’s have been used as evidence to put forth some bazaar theories, including the snowball earth, mass proliferation, and then extinction of blue green algae worldwide, and so on.  However, a full understanding of the mechanism behind BIF’s is still elusive because of the massiveness of the phenomenon under some very unusual conditions.  In addition to the problems with the obvious abundance of free oxygen so early in the earth’s history—before plants or even multi-celled creatures are supposed to exist—there are other great uncertainties. 

Why, for instance, was there a sudden massive influx of iron ions into the seas?  Geologists have admitted that the best source was from weathering of continental rock containing iron.  However, since every continent has a vast deposit of BIF’s, which indicates they were under water at the time of deposition, what is the source of continental rock?  What knife edge scenario could one concoct to suit all the elements of both weathering of exposed rock, on a submerged continent, that could still rationally deposit BIF’s on every deposit?  No matter how the land masses were connected, there had to be both a great exposure of source rock, and great depths of submersion for deposition.

Moreover, weathering is the best explanation for the alternating layers of silicate.  Some may have occurred near hydrothermal vents, but a clear influx of sediment, or in cases the formation of carbonate from solution indicate a vast, worldwide erosion catastrophe.  This unusual combination of circumstances rationally indicates a world wide catastrophic flood event of limited duration.  The rain and flooding provided weathering of base rock, releasing the iron and silicates into the water, where it combined with the oxygen to cause it to fall out of solution and deposit on the continents during the period when the Flood was standing water before the recession. 

The varying composition of the silicate layers depend on the local conditions, including volcanic, or hydrothermal.  Perhaps more research with this most logical scenario as the premise will likely produce the exact causes of the actual banding process—whether it is related to the chemical solution and precipitation conditions of these compounds, or some other cause.  Regardless of the supposed limitations on the “new earth’s” oxygen levels, all of the minerals involved contain oxygen as the decisive element in their composition.  Once again, oxygen, water, erosion and deposition are unavoidable evidence of large scale phenomenon in the earth’s history.  

 

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Prehistoric Climate

 

All of the presently extreme climates of the world were once covered in luscious forests and vegetation.  Scientists know this from the abundant fossil fuel deposits and other fossil and geological evidence in present day desert regions, and in the Arctic and Antarctic.  Although one may accept that a desert was once a forest, it is considerably more difficult to explain lush forests of conifers and ferns in the Arctic and Antarctic under the uniformitarian model.  What possible scenario, under the assumption of slow steady geological processes, could allow for a worldwide tropical climate, and then account for the drastic shift to a dramatically colder global climate if not by catastrophe?

As discussed previously, many scientists believe that there was once an ancient single super continent they call Pangaea.  They propose that all the continents of the world were once joined in one landmass, which began to break up about 200 million years ago based on the dictates of fossil evidence.  While Creation scientists acknowledge the possibility of this super continent prior to the Flood, how, when, and under what interpretation this theory is applied is debatable. 

Naturally, Creationists view this 200 million year old continental break up as arbitrary.  Again, if the fossils were laid in one event, the evolution dating system is meaningless.  The evolutionary timeline tries to account for the numerous fossil anomalies around the world to dictate when Pangaea broke up.  Although much of the evidence is still difficult to explain (dinosaurs on England), evolutionists must adhere to this basic timing.  One of the factors evolutionists must consider in their estimations is evidence of the lush forests and warm climate species of fossils found in the Arctic and Antarctic. 

However, even with their best projections, the most likely configuration of this super continent does not help explain these unusual fossils.  Both the Artic and Antarctic regions are already very extreme according to evolutionary models at the time that these species would have lived.  Dinosaurs and flying reptiles have been found in Antarctica, along with very large coal deposits, demonstrating how much warmer and lush these regions would have been.  The Canadian Artic has revealed large conifer forests, angiosperms, and mammals, such as tapirs and lemurs.  These regions, so close to the poles, should require further reasoning to allow for the warm climate species fossilized there, but they are simply assigned a warm climate without causational explanation.  

The problem with Pangaea is that since the uniformitarian scheme puts time restrictions on the fossils found throughout the world, this interpretation dictates at what stage in evolution the continents had to break up.  Many species (like dinosaurs) existed simultaneously throughout the world, so the super continent helps explain most of the locations of these widespread fossils, and helps them avoid transportation issues.  Additionally, sediments around the world are so similar, that the best way to explain them and deflect from a worldwide flood is to assume that the continents were joined at certain places and times. 

Although some of the geological evidence does seem to point to a time of a single continent, the proposed breakup of Pangaea around the Jurassic still strains the existence of numerous fossil species globally, certain geological formations, and the location and schedule of all those ancient seas.  This break up is just the last of the many complex geological schedule of events necessary to maintain the evolutionary presumption.  Once again, the evidence does not dictate the story, but the evolution story manipulates the evidence.

Pangaea may have indeed existed, and was broken up by the geological activity associated with the Flood.  However, the Creation/ Flood model still has several advantages over the uniformitarian model.  First of all, Creationists do not have to worry about explaining how certain species lived throughout the world simultaneously prior to the Flood.  God filled the earth initially, and there would have been no need for them to spread.  Also, regardless of whether there was a single continent or not, a global flood would explain common sedimentation around the world without crucial timing for the breakup or confusing ancient sea schemes.  Thirdly, the Flood model answers questions about the pre-flood climate with scientifically sound principles. 

The Bible describes the period of time prior to the Flood when it didn’t rain, but a mist arose from the ground, and likely a water canopy held much of the atmospheric water.  Conditions described in this environment indicate there would be a globally mild climate, which would have allowed the tropical vegetation to flourish. Later, the Flood would have ripped up and buried this vegetation, leaving the abundant fossil evidence of the pre-flood climate. 

After the catastrophic volcanic eruptions of ash and water, massive rain clouds likely persisted over the geothermally warmed oceans, bringing a shift in global weather and temperature.  The suddenness of these effects induced the Ice Age.  Under the Ice Age, and new global weather patterns and loss of the water canopy, the lush forests would not be able to reestablish in the extreme climates.  The uniformitarian model strains to explain how, in a non-cataclysmic, geologically steady world for hundreds of millions of years, the entire planet suddenly went from a single continent, to seven, and from these tropical forests to an Ice Age.

 

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Other Topography

 

There are also numerous other unique formations around the world that are better understood within the framework of the global Flood event. Certain rock phenomena demonstrate that the world was once inundated by water.  One very telling example is the lava flows found in Washington, Oregon and Idaho known as the Colombia River Basalt Group.  This ancient flow is so large, it covers about 65,000 miles. 

In comparison, the largest eye-witnessed lava flow was in 1783 in Iceland, and it only covered about 200 square miles.  The magnitude of this ancient flow alone is convincing evidence of cataclysm in the past, and this is just one example.  The interesting factor is that these miles of basalt must have been laid under water based on the pillow basalt formations.  Additionally, the lava overlays a layer of fossil bearing sediments, which clearly indicates that the area was underwater before it was covered by the lava. 

The best interpretation of this evidence is that there was a catastrophic flood, and as part of the continued geological imbalance, great fissures poured lava out of the earth.  This interpretation is confirmed by the frequent occurrence of sedimentary dykes and pipes rising through overlying layers of volcanic rock at many of these sites, including the Appelachian Plataue, Illinois, and in Ireland (Studies in Flood Geology, pg 201).  Solid layers of sedimentary rock could not squeeze into the lava unless the sediment was still wet when the lava was laid. 

This evidence establishes that these massive layers of sediment and lava were laid in a watery and cataclysmic environment.  In fact, nearly all the ancient basaltic rocks throughout the world were apparently laid under water, based on the characteristic “pillow” formations.  Since the majority of the rock that makes up the continents is granite, these extrusions of basalt should have occurred after the continents were built.  Therefore, regardless of the desired uniformitarian interpretation, ancient pillow basalts exposed on continents prove that these extrusions occurred under water—powerful evidence for the Flood. 

Additionally, some of the more spectacular rock formations can be best explained by the presence of water.  Columnar jointing is an unusual formation that demonstrates the dramatic effects of sudden cooling on fresh lava flows and ash deposits.  Most scientists believe that lava or welded ash deposits require rapid cooling in order to cause the deposits to fracture into right angles.  This is what creates the long polygonal columns in these famous rocks.  Others have supposed that the formation is from is slow cooling, but slow cooling is natural, yet columnar jointing is rare. 

Since rapid cooling typically causes cracking and exfoliation in rocks, the evidence of rapid cooling is most suitable for the phenomenon.   One explanation for the cause of such dramatic cooling in these massive deposits is inundation of the deposit by tremendous amounts of water.  In some locations, these formations currently meet the sea or other body of water, as with the Giants Causeway on the north coast of Ireland, and along the Columbia River Gorge, in Washington, as well as several other locations.  

Perhaps these examples demonstrate that water is the best activator for the rapid cooling that could produce this phenomenon.  Since columnar jointing apparently requires such an unusual circumstance to activate the geometric cleavage, water most reasonable offers that opportunity.  Given this likely condition, not all of the columnar jointing sites are presently near large bodies of water.  The on-site evidence therefore can tell us a lot about the circumstances of the formation. 

Of the locations not currently near water, Flood evidence can be discerned. In many cases, the amount of water that would be necessary to produce this effect, defies the imagination.  The Devil’s Tower, in Wyoming is one of these, which is evidently the core of an old volcano, rising 865 feet up from the ground.  Clearly, water was present at this site since not only is the region covered in sediments, but the core has been stripped entirely of the sediments that it had once penetrated through. 

This on site evidence indicates that water had been present, and that the core of lava had pushed up through the previously laid sediments in order to be deposited.  However, the amount of water necessary to deposit this evidence would have been immense.  The height of the formation indicates that in order to initially lay the sediments, and then strip them, as well as cool the entire formation, the volume of water would  be an inland sea covering most of the continent. 

The fact is that most lava deposits do not result in this phenomenon, and rapid cooling by air would be insufficient to penetrate these massive volcanic formations and create the fracturing.  We know that water can rapidly cool under the right conditions, so the evidence points to an influx of massive amounts of water laying sediments near the time of volcanic activity which also cooled the lava in the cone, and subsequently stripped the sediments around the cone.  Water, is similarly a rational cause of all these formations.  Several other examples of this columnar jointing are found at Cape Raoul, in Tazmania, the Palisades, New York, and the Devil’s Postpile in California.     

Another interesting geographical feature is that there are mountains on every continent and most islands (which actually are mountains), and there are oceanic trenches along the continents.  The uniformitarian model and the Creation model hold to similar mechanisms for mountain building through the effects of the collision and movement of plate tectonics.  Though modern theories about the arbitrary movements of prehistoric plate tectonics, and a shifting magnetic field are still in question, clearly a shift in the earth’s crust is required for building mountains.   Creationists would add that the geological turmoil caused by evacuating volumes of underground water, and adding this weight to the surface, would produce a great deal of unsettling activity.  Both models agree that volcanoes certainly build mountains quickly. 

 

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For the rest of the topography, however, the uniformitarian model asserts a generally slow, gradual process of mountain building through the theory of plate tectonics over thousands of millennia.  The Creation model essentially asserts that a rapid process created the majority of the mountains, primarily in conjunction with the geological activity associated with the Flood.  Aside from the volcanoes that still build mountains, the gradual principles that may move plates today are slow processes that do not adequately explain all the dramatic worldwide topographical features that appear to have sudden, cataclysmic origins. 

Most non-volcanic mountains today are made up of underlying rocks uplifted in a sharp angle relative to the land.  Frequently, one large block of rock has been disjointed skyward intact, though it was once obviously parallel to the land.  These mountains and mountain ranges look like tables, or rows of tables that have been pushed hard from one side against the land, causing the other side to tilt up.  In these instances, tectonic pressures had formed the mountains gradually over hundreds of millions of years, then instead of these sharp, dramatic angles, and preserved lines of strata and rock layers, we would likely find jagged crumpled, and piled rocks, like from a bulldozer.  In fact, some mountains do have such crumbled attributes.  But many mountains have these sharp angles, so difficult to explain by gradual processes, and instead demonstrate quick bursts of power.

The evidence of sudden geological uplift in conjunction with the Flood, and immediately post-sedimentary deposition, can also be seen in the effects of rapid geological activity on the overlying sedimentary layers.  One example is the frequency with which thick layers of strata that represent hundreds of millions of years are split into two levels on a fault tine.  It supposedly took hundreds of millions of years to lay those uniform layers, but there is no sign of stress disrupting the layers until suddenly geological movement fractured all the layers and displaced them by several feet?  This is rational evidence of onetime deposition of sediments, and then geological uplift.

Worldwide, common sediment evidence is powerful, and hard to dismiss.  Numerous mountainous and dramatic uplift formations are covered by uniformly curved or wavy layers of sedimentary rock that were uplifted and contorted post-deposition.  These layers of sedimentary warp are often smoothly contoured to the formation, indicating that the deposits were still wet when the activity occurred. 

This is seen, in fact, in numerous formations around the world.  Such dramatic examples are at Eastern Beach, Aukland, New Zealand, Hammersley Gorge in Western Australia, Stair Hole at Lulworth Cove in Dorset, UK, and the Buda limestone formation at Big Bend National Park in Texas, and throughout the Andes, Rocky Mountains and Alps.  These sediments follow incredible folds and ripples bending sometimes into nearly 180 degree contortions.  There is, however, a particularly spectacular example in the Eastern area of the Grand Canyon.  This formation warps upward about 3,000 feet, with the flexing strata extending for hundreds of miles. 

It is difficult to imagine that solid sedimentary rock will bend so smoothly around this strenuous geological activity.  Our experience has actually been that rigid rock will break in response to such stress.  If these rocks had been deposited as sediments, but had already turned to stone over eons of time, how did they manage to bend so uniformly around the tectonic activity?  These thick layers of bent solid rock don’t show any indications of heating or any other agent of transformation, though these examples exist as well.  Such heating will typically metamorphose the sediments into marble and similarly recrystallized formations, yet many of these formations have retained their granular, sedimentary form.  This should never happen under the uniformitarian model.

We can deduce that these geological formations indicate sudden, dramatic, mountain building activity within the span of time it takes for sediments to harden, or while still under water. Uniformitarian geologists simply put their energies into arguing how their model could be viable instead of accepting the natural conclusions of the evidence.  Anyone looking at the evidence would logically conclude that the sediments were wet when the activity occurred. 

By its catastrophic nature, the Flood model would necessarily anticipate such dramatic tectonic activity.  The Bible also reveals a very scientifically sound reason for mountain building after the Flood.  Biblical scriptures in Psalm 104:8-9 indicate how God caused the waters of the flood to recede through natural means. 

[the waters retreated,]. . .as the mountains sprang up and the valleys descended, to the place which you have reserved for them.  You have set a boundary which they cannot pass; they shall never return to cover the earth.

 

In fact, the mountains and valleys actually are what keep the water within the oceans.  If there were not such grand mountains, and the corresponding tremendous trenches and ocean basins to contain the seas, the earth would be completely covered by about 1.7 miles of water.  The mountains and hills on every continent today still provide the impetus for the drainage of the water off of the land into the seas.  Why is it that nearly all rivers return to the ocean?

There is a great deal of substantiation worldwide in this concept that the mountains arose soon after the sedimentary deposits from the Flood.  As discussed earlier, even the top of the Himalayas, as well as most other mountain ranges, are covered with marine sediments and marine fossils.  Additionally, as mentioned, there are numerous examples of terrestrial fossils imbedded in sediments deposited on the slopes of present day mountains.  One prime example is the Morrison Formation, which reveal large dinosaurs imbedded on the Rocky Mountains. 

Irrefutably, fossils and sediments are not deposited on the sides of mountains, and therefore evolutionists are forced to recognize that these mountains arose after the massive terrestrial fossils were deposited.  Since the Rockies are so grand, reducing their timescale to a mere 60 million years ago, and forcing a tight schedule of mid continental flooding, rapid uplift of the entire Rocky Mountain range, and diverse mini-catastrophes to explain fossil evidence.  Evolutionists must constantly formulate their timelines around otherwise clear evidence for the Flood.  There continues to be much dispute among geologists in marrying evolutionary assumptions with the fossil, sediment and rock formations of just the mountain ranges of the United States, let alone throughout the world.  

It is a remarkable fact that the world would be covered by so much water if there were not these high mountains and deep valleys to contain it.  This takes the idea of a worldwide flood out of the realm of make-believe, into the realm of complete scientific feasibility.  The presence of this abundance of water on our planet points to two possibilities.  Either the world once had to be under water before the slow process of mountain building separated the water and land, or a great deal of the water was once in reserves under ground. 

Scientific acknowledgement of both scenarios validates each aspect of the Flood model.  Many scientists, as mentioned earlier, must believe that the continental crust has been undergoing a process of constant change, and that the earth was at one time nearly completely covered by water in its early history.  The worldwide marine fossil evidence discussed earlier forces this type of explanation.  But if one kind of flood is necessary to explain the evidence, then how is one to say that there is no evidence for the other kind of flood. 

Uniformitarians concede that the world was basically covered by water in its early history because of the undeniable evidence.  From this point, both models agree that, whether catastrophic or gradual, mountain building through tectonic activity, and volcanic activity, raises up the land.  If one is open to the interpretation, the very evidence that uniformitarians use in their hypothesis is the same evidence that supports the Biblical account, but the Biblical model better suits the evidence and geological predictions.  Regardless of the interpretation, the acknowledgement of such evidence corroborates a world once covered by water.  According to the Biblical description, much of this water was contained underground in great subterranean reserves prior to the Flood.  Geologists can see the feasibility of this, knowing that even today, a high percentage of a volcano’s product is water, and there are still numerous oceanic hydrothermal vents.

According to the Biblical model, (corroborated by geological projections of such a cataclysm) a great deal of tectonic activity occurred in relation to the Flood.  According to the account, the water was not just released from the clouds, as one would assume, but violent geological activity released great amounts of water from within the earth as well.  According to Genesis 7:11 “. . .the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.”  The “breaking up”  indicates severe geological activity that caused subterranean water to steam out of the ground, or out of the ocean floor.  This activity would certainly produce other tectonic effects as well.

As the waters flooded the earth, this geological activity continued, raising mountains, volcanoes, and creating rifts and valleys in the ocean floor from the violence.  Later, as the rifts in the ocean floor deepened from persistent activity, and the mountains that border the seas rose, the waters would drain off of the land.  With the increased weight from the massive volumes of water, depressions would deepen in the sea floor, forming basins to further contain the water.  Interestingly, as discussed earlier, many scientists envision almost an identical process to explain how water was first extruded into the oceans soon after the formation of the earth. 

 

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The Ice Age  

 

After the Flood, according to Genesis 8:1 “. . . God made a wind pass over the earth, and the waters assuaged.”  We now know that wind currents help drive weather patterns, and help water evaporate into the clouds.  The hydraulic cycle ties up a great deal of water on the earth, and the start of this cycle would dramatically shift the global climate.  After the Flood, clouds of pyroclasts, steam and ash would also linger from the many eruptions.  We know by several recent global eruptions that these aerosols can thoroughly block out the sun, which would drastically drop the global temperature.  Scientists have been able to record the effects of volcanic activity, noting a one-degree drop in global temperatures from just a single cataclysmic eruption, as with Mt. Pinatubo, Philippines in 1991. 

Global volcanic activity on a massive scale would not only justify the worldwide iridium spike of ash at the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary, but also help create the conditions that induced the Ice Age.  We know that people lived during the Ice Age, which is further evidence that extreme shifts in climate do not need millions of years to occur.  In fact, as discussed in The Revised and Expanded Answers Book, only a sudden shift in climate could induce the Ice Age.

Scientists know that the conditions necessary to induce an ice age are specific.  The Ice Age was not simply caused by a cold trend, but a cataclysmic shift in climate.  This shift caused a tremendous amount of glacial ice to build up in the northern hemisphere and Polar Regions.  In order for ice to build up so dramatically, there must be an increase in precipitation without the opportunity for the ice to melt.  Abundant precipitation can only happen through rapid evaporation from the ocean, and ice can only build up when the land is cold. 

In order to meet these conditions, the ocean water must be globally warm, and the temperatures on land must be globally cold.  These conditions are so unique, that a gradual change in temperature could not induce them.  Based on the steady temperatures witnessed today, and the principles of thermodynamics and the hydraulic cycle, it is not possible for the land to gradually get cold over a long period of time, and the ocean to stay warm.  Any factors that might induce a gradual temperature drop on land would also eventually influence the ocean temperature.  Only a drastic change in the global atmosphere could produce cold weather on land, allowing the oceans to stay warm by not giving the large bodies of water time to adjust. 

In the Flood model, after the water receded, the oceans would still be warm from the previously mild climate and geothermal warming from oceanic volcanic activity.  But the land would begin to suffer heat loss from many factors.  First, the collapse of the water canopy would remove the earth’s insulation.  Additionally, the clouds of ash and steam from volcanic activity, and the massive rain clouds would block the sun and quickly cool the global land temperatures, reflecting back a majority of the sun’s radiation.  The new landscape would be one that was stripped barren and covered in sediments, including ash and lava from continued post-flood volcanism.  We know by dozens of cones, extrusions and ash layers that there was a great deal of volcanic activity after the Flood, as the geologically disturbed earth settled into a new equilibrium.  This stark landscape would also reflect solar radiation away from the earth, causing the cooler land temperature to continue. 

The newly established global weather patterns would cause the still geothermally warmed ocean water to evaporate into great clouds.  When the clouds are carried over land, the precipitation would drop as snow, and perpetuate the cold weather.  A land desolate of vegetation, and covered in ice and snow further reflects solar radiation, preventing significant melting in between precipitation layers.  Snow would fall, year after year, building up ice, until the oceans cooled enough to reduce the evaporation rate and gradually reduce the precipitation process.  If there is little melting, these continual snows would build up into glaciers stretching from the north toward the more mild latitudes. 

Uniformitarian non-catastrophic processes could never lead to an Ice Age because an Ice Age is not caused by trends.  Without a warm ocean to generate evaporation, and cold land to build up ice, an Ice Age can’t happen.  These elements are necessary to induce an Ice Age, but are perfectly fitting of predictable models concerning a catastrophic global flood.

 

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Migration

 

Additionally, the Ice Age that followed the Flood explains the evidence of some other ecological phenomenon.  As the waters froze into glaciers and polar caps, the gradual advancing Ice Age in the north globally lowered the ocean level about 330 feet from present day.  During this time, there would be ice and land bridges connecting the cooler northern hemisphere, allowing migration of post-flood animals from the Mt. Ararat area.  This explains why a less diverse cast of characters seems to appear on the world stage, now dominated by mammals, and how so many previously warm climate species may have been filtered out of the ecosystem with the new colder climate. 

Animal migration also likely pushed into the southern hemisphere through Asia and down through Indochina, crossing the exposed land from water lowered between the islands of Indonesia, to Australia (today, these waters can be as low as a few hundred feet in depth).  There are many theories about how the majority of mammals in Australia came to be marsupials.  We know from the fossil record, however, that marsupials had previously existed in many other parts of the world, but only in Australia have the living forms dominated. 

Examples of these marsupial fossils are abundant in South America, but they are also found in North America and Europe.  According to the fossil evidence, Marsupials once had a worldwide distribution, and placentals once lived on the landmass of Australia.  This demonstrates that it was not any sense of isolation that caused marsupials to evolve, since their history is not limited to Australia.  Creationists do not need to explain the fossil evidence of global diversity, as the individually created forms would naturally be preserved in the Flood sediments. 

Many evolutionists believe that the breakup of the super continent, Pangaea, (beginning about 200 million years ago) can explain how Marsupials evolved and ruled Australia.  Perhaps only early marsupials were swept away with this break up of the great continent, but this does not explain all the factors.  Since diverse marsupials existed worldwide, then Pangaea does not help explain what caused the drastic physiological divergence between marsupials and placentals.  According to the evolutionary timeline, marsupial fossils “appeared” worldwide no earlier than about 80 million years ago (fully formed, of course).  The breakup of Pangaea earlier than that poses problems for when these unique mammals developed, and then found their way to Australia, as well as the rest of the world. 

Even if Australia broke off more than 120 million years after the major breakup of Pangaea, allowing for marsupials to develop prior to the break up, this doesn’t solve the problems of Australia. Since fossil marsupials are found in abundance in South America, they were clearly widespread before they could have developed in isolation on Australia.  Some evolutionists would like to have a connection between Australia and South America to facilitate the marsupial migration, but most hypothetical timeline maps must put Africa between them just prior to the breakup.  Regardless of when Australia broke off from Pangaea, clearly marsupials were already widespread, and therefore there is no reason for their evolution on Australia, or their isolation from placentals.    There is nothing in this hypothesis to help explain why only marsupials seemed to find their way to Australia, leaving other, equally developed placental mammals behind.

The question of how such an abundance of marsupials ended up in Australia after the Flood, however, is intriguing.  There are a few theories, but one in particular seems to logically fit the evidence.  After the Flood, all the animals would have begun to reproduce and spread out.  As they dispersed, perhaps the nature of marsupial reproduction afforded them continuous mobility, while placental mammals need to stop and bear, and nurture their young.  Marsupial off-spring develop in the pouch, and do not need to reach a certain maturity before they can move on.  This would give marsupials several months’ advantage every generation. 

This mobile group may have established in Australia before most placentals reached it, and especially before carnivorous placentals arrived en mass.  Carnivores require even more time for gestation and maturation of their young than non-carnivores.  In this case, it would seem that only the native dingo succeeded as a placental carnivore (though there is debate about his nativity).  As the receding Ice Age released frozen waters, Australia and New Zealand would soon be isolated by the rising sea, allowing them to succeed in genetic isolation, and away from placental competition or predation. 

This model more realistically explains marsupial dominance in Australia than the evolutionary concept of the break up of Pangaea, which does not address why only marsupials were swept away on the rogue island.  Additionally, the time period mentioned earlier that puts the break up at 200 million years ago, would be over 100 million years ahead of when such a widespread development of marsupials could have existed.  At 200 million years ago, the Jurassic, or age of the dinosaurs, was just getting under weigh.  If a small band of “primitive” mammals was swept off on Australia that later developed into marsupials, then how did the marsupials develop on the other continents?  But if the marsupials had already developed, and spread to South America, how did they manage to inhabit Australia before the breakup, and no placentals?  None of the timing works for the evolutionist.  Whether one accepts the Flood model or not, evolutionists still need to explain the marsupial evidence, and the Ice Age, while both become good scientific evidence for the Flood.

As discussed in part during the section on the Snow Ball Earth, the scientific evidence of the Ice Age is contrary to the uniformitarian model, despite scientists’ eagerness to embrace the opportunity it presents to propose long ages.  Long ages do not improve the conditions for producing an Ice Age since rapid change is necessary, and best explained by a global catastrophe.  The evidence of abundant sedimentation, confusing strata patterns, large gravel and rock deposits mixed in with mud and limestone sediments, inexplicable vegetation and masses of dead vegetation have lead the steady uniformitatians to declare dozens of ice ages, all of which have no apparent cause.  Much of the geological evidence used to proclaim so many ice ages is best understood through a single global Flood interpretation.  Many of the “dropstone,” “varve,” and “tillite” evidence offered in these instances are associated with limestones and other sediment formations consistent with massive warm water deposition. 

  Furthermore, uniformitarians cannot offer a feasible explanation for how even one Ice Age could have been triggered within the global context.  Since uniformitarians believe that no global catastrophe occurred (which would lend credibility to the flood) they are not able to offer sufficient scientific basis for its cause.  When trying to untangle the uniformitarian maze of hypotheses and explanations for the evidence concerning the Ice Age, one may not realize that no explanation has truly been given for what brought about these unique conditions.  Generally, scientists simply say that the climate changed in some uncertain way, bringing “glacial epochs,” but very little attempt is made to explain the cause of these climate changes. 

There simply is no explanation for the Ice Age within the uniformitarian model, and they do not claim to actually know what specifically caused it.  The Creation/ Flood model is the best perspective for interpreting the evidence and for providing the appropriate conditions to induce the Ice Age.  In addition to the effects of the glacial ice on the land, the previous action of the flood on these sediments aids in understanding the erosion and deposition evidence.  All evidence, in conjunction with the Flood deposition evidence, indicates that there was only one Ice Age, and that it was relatively recent. 

We can even understand “global warming” trends through the recent Ice Age.  While the pollution we create unquestionably effects the environment, it is not the only explanation for this perceived phenomenon.  Naturally, once the Ice Age ended, all the polar icecaps would begin to melt, and continue melting as they released the water in the post Ice Age climate.  Any trend post Ice Age would be a global warming trend.  

Even the Biblical book of Job refers to the significantly colder conditions at his time (believed to date back to about 4,000 years ago).  It makes several references to snow, ice, frost, and hail in the Middle East—a part of the world not known for its cool weather.  The Bible is so remarkable because although it is considered so primitive and fanciful, it manages to keep revealing a perspective and history of our world that withstands the scientific evidence, and rings truer than current ideas.  The abundant evidence indicates that there is no mystery in the Ice Age when interpreted through the context of a worldwide flood.  The Ice Age is inexplicable, though, outside the framework of catastrophism, and provides a challenge for, rather than evidence for, the uniformitarian model of geological interpretation.        

 

Summary

 

Worldwide, there are endless geological formations that reveal the immense deposits of sediment and the massive presence and erosive action of water.  There are countless spectacular canyons, cliffs, arches, plateaus, and valleys.  All of these are formed in great deposits of sedimentation, and eroded grandly beyond the capacity of available sources, as indicated by the uniformitarian model.  No geologist denies that these worldwide sediments were deposited by water.  When we can see with our own eyes how deep and widespread these sediments are, it is apparent that these deposits required an enormous deluge.  Additionally, there are large scale formations eroded out of these sediments that were clearly carved by floodwaters higher than present day sea level.  The 5,000 foot sedimentary plain that the Grand Canyon is carved out of proves by the necessary height of the water, that this was a global incident. 

Scientists confine the public view of geological evidence by insisting that the age of the earth is in fact, billions of years old.  However, the radioisotope tests currently used to determine the age of the earth have actually been proven wildly inaccurate every time—from hundreds of thousands up to a billion years over—yet this is the scientific evidence these scientists rely on to confirm their theories. 

Despite the manipulating of age, remember that even radiocarbon dating betrays evolutionists by gleaning a measurable amount of carbon 14 from all coal deposits, which, again, is impossible after just 50,000 years.  That would make coal (which is buried deep in the sediments) younger than mammals and humans (top layer of sediments and above).  As mentioned, recent C-14 tests on numerous fossils also yielded measurable amounts, on specimens that are supposed to be up to hundreds of millions of years old.  Something is wrong with the evolutionist perspective when it conflicts with itself, and they don’t even regard it.

There are many trustworthy indicators to confirm that the earth is only thousands of years old, such as population growth rates, loss of heat and mass rates for matter in the universe, biological time clocks, and geological rates such as erosion and oceanic salt ratios.  The age of the earth cannot be accurately assessed by its fossils, because the assumption of evolution is what dictates the interpretation of their age.  If one did not assume that evolution had taken place, there is nothing inherent in the rocks and fossils that indicates long ages.  The evidence convincingly demonstrates that all this sediment buried the specimens rapidly, which is the requirement for forming fossils, and a sign of catastrophe. 

The geologic column is built on assumption, not evidence, because a flood would produce the very evidence that we find—rapid burial of ecological zones, with considerable intermixing.  Uniformitarian scientists cannot say that a flood would not leave the kind of evidence, but Creation scientists can say that this evidence frequently conflicts with evolutionary assumptions.  Additionally, there is powerful evidence of the Flood in mass extinctions, fossil fuels, and the Ice Age—all of these phenomena are not rationally explained by evolutionary/ uniformitarian schemes.  Since all of this evidence corroborates the expectations of the Creation model, it is not only as valid as the uniformitarian model, it is actually a more comprehensive interpretation of our observations.  It ought to persuasively be considered the only model that is based on the facts. 

Setting aside speculation about when, how, and to what degree the water came to be in all these places, the geological world reveals exactly the kind of evidence a scientist would expect to find to demonstrate the validity of the Creation/Flood model.  There is no evidence to dispute the worldwide Flood described in the Bible other than a refusal to apply the obvious and clear evidence out of prejudice.  What more evidence would a scientist require to corroborate a global flood than these grand scale sedimentary deposits, the massive fossilization and global burial, inexplicable erosive formations, and a sudden change in global climate?  There could be no more persuasive evidence to clearly illustrate for us the image of a world destroyed by water.

 

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