March 1, 2007
My young earth creationist friend says: “We all have the same evidence. Our worldview defines how we interpret that evidence. Remember that not too very long ago we were being taught gradual accumulation. Now it is “lots of floods”. I think there is lots of global flood evidence. Keep in mind the earth’s surface is more than 70% covered by water.” Do modern geological theories really distort facts because of a “worldview?” Are “lots of floods” incompatible with “gradual accumulation?” Do todays oceans and local floods (e.g., tsunamis, monsoon floods, Katrina, etc.) support a past global flood. No, No, and NO! So what facts support flood geology? From the CESM FAQ page: Some of the facts which prove that the earth endured a worldwide flood include the sedimentary strata layers which comprise the crust of the earth. These layers found in a mixed order of deposition around the globe were laid down by water and have marine fossils throughout. Do sedimentary rocks really show the global demise of all fiat-created organisms save their Ark-borne representatives? Nah! Fossils appear in an order that is decidedly un-mixed. Trilobites are never found above Permian rocks, for example, while flowering plants are never found below. Ammonites and dinosaurs are never found above lowest Paleocene rocks, while large mammals are never found below. The number of sequentially appearing and disappearing organisms is actually quite large and mushrooms rapidly when you include micro-fossils like pollen and dinoflagellates (See UCMP web page). William Smith created the first geologic map in 1799. He noticed that strata were arranged in a predictable pattern and always in the same relative positions. Each particular stratum could be identified by fossils it contained; the same succession of fossil groups appeared in many parts of England. Between 1820 and 1850, geologists used this observation to produce the sequence of geological periods still in use today. This was before Darwin’s “Origin of Species.” The original framers of the geologic column were mostly creationists! In a very small fraction of cases, structural deformation or faulting overturns or offsets part of the sequence. When this happens, the tectonic context is discernible and presents no problem for basic stratigraphic principles. This is what YE creationists typically interpret as a “mixed order” that supports a flood origin. Nonsense! In the case below, for example, the rocks are in temporary reverse order (not “mixed” order) for obvious reasons. 
Recumbent Fold Are all sediments “laid down by water” as required by flood origin? Even if they were, does that mean they all indicate a global flood? No and No! Certainly, a lot of sediment transport is done by water even today. But last time I checked I was still breathing air. River and lake deposits account for much “water” sediment transport, but chemistry, grain sizes, shapes, and sorting differ radically from what you’d expect in a one-year global flood. For example, limestones are marine chemical precipitates of calcite from the shells of dissolved organisms. The current deposition rate in oceans is about a million times lower than needed to create ancient limestones in a single flood “year.” Moreover, the associated calcite formation would release enough heat to boil the oceans on the YE Creationist timescale. But not all strata are waterborn deposits! Windborn (”eolian”) sediments like Saharan dune complexes have quite distinct features and are easily identified in the rock record. The Coconino Sandstone in the Grand Canyon and the Navajo Sandstone in Zion Canyon are just two, but they are hundreds of feet thick. That’s hundreds of feet of eolian desert deposits laid down right in the middle of the flood. These and other land deposits show surface features like mudcracks, fossil tracks, salt casts, ripples, and dune structures that simply could not exist at the bottom of a global flood. What about the last point? Are “marine fossils” found “throughout” the rock record? They are frequent, but marine fossil layers are often interrupted by thick terrestrial sequences without marine fossils. These often have good assemblages of land-dwelling paleo-flora and fauna. Such evidence led Georges Cuvier (1769-1832) to shift from a single global-flood view to multiple limited floods and multiple creations some 200 hundred years ago! Today, we detect in the order of marine/non-marine fossils an ancient tale of rising and falling sea levels, punctuated with catastrophic extinctions. The Grand Canyon records three such in-and-out coastal migrations. This is absolutely contrary to what you’d get from a single one-year flood! In sum, modern geologists don’t reject global flood geology because of their wordview. They reject it because it is an inadequate explanation of geological data. Contradictions of flood geology are legion. For more detail, see OE creationist David Siemens’ Non-technical Problems with Flood Geology, Ed Babinski’s Creationist “Flood Geology” Vs Common Sense, and Mark Isaak’s Problems with a Global Flood.
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