Difference between revisions of "Flood Geology"

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Flood geology is the study of the Earth's geology from the point of view that the Genesis account is true and accurate, and that evidence of the Flood can be found in the geology of the Earth.
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'''Flood geology''' is the study of the Earth's geology from the point of view that the Earth's geology was radically redefined by a [[Great Flood|global flood]] in the relatively recent past, as recorded in [[Genesis]], as well as the scores of flood stories in other cultures throughout the world.<ref>https://www.icr.org/article/570/</ref>
  
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Until the rise of uniformitarian geology in the early 19th century, most geologists accepted the Noahic deluge as part of geology. But James Hutton proposed in 1795 that geology ought to be based on the processes that we see happening now, thereby automatically ruling the Flood out of consideration. During the 19th century a number of "scriptural geologists" held out against the rising acceptance of Hutton's principles, but they fought a losing battle and interest in flood geology virtually died out by the end of the 19th century.
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== Genesis Flood account ==
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Genesis provides the most detailed account of the global deluge, including specific dates, measurements, and even some key geological events during the flood.  Consequently, flood geologists use it as a starting point for understanding the events of the deluge. Based on the Genesis account, flood geologists argue that the flood resulted from subterranean water erupting to the surface ("the springs of the great deep burst forth" <ref>Genesis 7:11, NIV</ref>), combined with 40 days and nights of rain. Although the rain stopped after 40 days, the flood waters continued to rise for 150 days, and lasted just over a year before Noah and the others on the boat were able to leave. During the flood, there was massive tectonic activity, including some land rising up and other land dropping, such that the waters ended up in newly deepened oceans. All the animals and birds (except those on the ark), and large numbers of sea creatures perished, and many of them were buried so quickly that they became fossils, accounting for the vast majority of fossils existing today.
  
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However, in the second half of the 20th century, interest was revived amongst people keen to show that the biblical account was correct, and a small but growing number of geologists are now studying this field again, although the vast majority of geologists still reject the idea of a global flood on Earth.
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== Evidence ==
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Flood geologists base their belief in a relatively recent global deluge on several strands of evidence.  While none of these strands alone is sufficient to ''prove'' that a global flood occurred, flood geologists argue that a global deluge is the most reasonable and [[parsimonious]] explanation for the evidence.
  
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Flood geologists propose that such a world-wide, year-long flood would have caused massive erosion, sedimentation, and geological movements, and leaving plenty of evidence in the geological record. Many propose that there was a single continent before the flood that broke up during the flood. The idea of tectonic plate movement was proposed by creationary scientist Antonio Snider in 1859,[23] although it was not until several other scientists had proposed similar ideas that the idea was adopted by mainstream scientists in the last few decades of the 20th century.
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=== Sedimentary rock ===
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Sedimentary rocks are formed by sand and other sediments which settle out of suspension in water, minerals which dissolve in water (which sand cannot do)<ref>http://pearsonkt.com/summaryStreetOT/texts/Sci-National-Grade-4/iText/products/0-328-34278-5/unitc/ch11/331.html</ref> and the hard parts of small aquatic organisms such as [[plankton]], which accumulate on the bottom of a body of water and undergo [[lithification]].  Although only about 8% of the earth's rocks are sedimentary, 75%-80% of the Earth's land area is covered in sedimentary rock.[http://honolulu.hawaii.edu/distance/gg101/Programs/program21%20SedimentaryRocks/program21.html] Therefore, geologists point out, there is irrefutable evidence that at least 75% of the Earth's land was once covered in water.
  
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According to flood geologists, the flood resulted from subterranean water erupting to the surface ("the springs of the great deep burst forth"—Genesis 7:11, NIV), combined with 40 days and nights of rain. Although the rain stopped after 40 days, the flood waters continued to rise for 150 days, and lasted just over a year before Noah and the others on the boat were able to leave.[24] During the flood, there was massive tectonic activity, including some land rising up and other land dropping, such that the waters ended up in newly-deepened oceans. All the animals and birds (except those on the ark), and large numbers of sea creatures perished, and many of them were buried so quickly that they became fossils, accounting for the vast majority of fossils existing today.
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=== Sufficient water ===
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There is enough water on Earth today to cover the entire surface to a depth of 2.7 kilometres (1.7 miles), if the surface was levelled out.<ref>[http://www.creationontheweb.com/images/pdfs/cabook/chapter12.pdf Noah’s Flood&mdash;what about all that water?], Chapter 4 of the ''Creation Answers Book'', Dr. Don Batten (Ed.)</ref>  Continents emerge because the average ocean depth is 3.7&nbsp;km.<ref>http://www.mos.org/oceans/planet/features.html</ref>  Flood geologists argue that geological activity during and after the flood lowered the ocean basins, causing water to flow from the continents into the basins, and leaving dry land.<ref>{{Bible ref|Psalms|104|6-9|version=NASB}} "You covered it with the deep as with a garment; The waters were standing above the mountains. At Your rebuke they fled, At the sound of Your thunder they hurried away. '''The mountains rose; the valleys sank down''' To the place which You established for them. You set a boundary that they may not pass over, So that they will not return to cover the earth."</ref>
  
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Flood geology also proposes that the flood waters swept together and buried large mats of vegetation ripped from the surface of the Earth, forming the coal beds that are mined today.  
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=== Fossils ===
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Fossilization requires rapid burial in a sedimentary solution, and subsequent rapid lithification of the solution.  Slow burial does not result in fossilization, because the remains decay prior to being fossilized.  Therefore, every fossil was buried in rapidly deposited sedimentary material which subsequently turned to stone.
  
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== Common Criticisms ==  
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=== Fossil fuels ===
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Fossil fuel formation requires the burial of enormous amounts of organic matter under a sedimentary solution, and the application of heat and pressure.  Slow burial processes do not produce fossil fuels, because the organic matter decays prior to conversion into a fossil fuel.  Therefore, all fossil fuels on earth were quickly buried under sedimentary material which subsequently turned to stone;
  
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Sceptics of a global flood have raised the following issues (This list is to establish that those criticisms have been raised, not to suggest they have any weight):
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Similar processes have been observed in [[Spirit Lake]] following the eruption of [[Mount St. Helens]] in 1980.
  
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Critics of the global flood suggest that the flood accounts are unrelated accounts of local floods, or stories influenced by the arrival of missionaries.
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=== Rock strata ===
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Most sedimentary rocks are layered, forming sharply defined lines at varying depths.  Were these formed over long periods, erosion would have softened these lines.  The sharpness of the lines implies rapid deposition and lithification.
  
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Other critisisms that have been posed by skeptics include:
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=== Pure sedimentary layers ===
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If sedimentary layers were laid down over millennia, they would have experienced mixing.  However, many rock strata are pure—for example, the [[St. Peter Sandstone]], covering 500,000 sq miles of the United States, is 99.94% pure silica.  While uniformitarian scientists state that it was deposited by the shore of a sea, they cannot explain how it remained so pure if it was laid out over a long period of time.  However, the sorting processes of [[liquefaction]], consistent with a global flood, can make such an explanation.
  
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1. Angular unconformities – Angular unconformities are where sediments are laid down in layers, then tilted and eroded, then new sediments are deposited on top. How does a global flood simultaneously deposit, tilt, and erode in the same exact place?
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=== Submarine canyons ===
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Canyons can be found under the sea at the end of many major world rivers, including the Congo, Amazon, Ganges, and Hudson. They extend for thousands of miles underwater, thousands of feet under the sea; they are as deep as the Grand Canyon in places, and although not well understood by the mainstream scientific community, they are generally understood to have developed when sea-levels were significantly lower than today. Flood geologists argue that as the continents divided and the flood subsided, these major rivers drained the new continents, and the water flowed into the new low-lying areas, which would fill to become seas, leaving the sediments to dry out of their [[liquefaction|liquefied]] state.
  
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2. Radiometric dating – All common forms of radiometric dating, including C14, K-Ar, Ar-Ar, Rb-Sr, Th-Pb, U-Pb, and fission track. The dates derived from these diverse methods, when properly interpreted rather than intentionally misapplied, show that all but the very most recent deposits in the geologic column is vastly older than any postulated flood.
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=== Land canyons ===
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As explanation for great land canyons such as the [[Grand Canyon]], flood geologists point to canyon formation events such as the catastrophic hot mud slides observed during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens. One particular hot mud slide at Mt. St. Helens carved a canyon 140&nbsp;ft. deep and 17 miles long in a single day. Only a thin creek remains at the bottom of the canyon today, which would likely be interpreted as having carved the canyon "over millions of years," if it were not known first-hand that the canyon was carved in a single day.  
  
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3. Fossil Sorting – The sorting of fossils in the geologic record is consistent with evolution and geology across all formations worldwide. There are basically no fossils of dinosaurs found with modern mammals, even when such dinosaurs could fly. There are no flowering plants in the Cambrian, no grasses, no mammals, and no birds. The overall sorting does not show any evidence consistent with a flood or settling in water.
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=== Ancient accounts of a navigable Atlantic ===
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Plato's ''Timaeus'' states:
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: "In those days the Atlantic was navigable; and there was an island situated in front of the straits which are by you called the Pillars of Heracles [Straight of Gibraltar] ... and was the way to other islands, and from these you might pass to the whole of the opposite continent which surrounded the true ocean; for this sea which is within the Straits of Heracles is only a harbour, having a narrow entrance, but that other is a real sea, and the surrounding land may be most truly called a boundless continent."<ref>http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/timaeus.html</ref>
  
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4. Varves – How does one create 20 million annual layers, each layer which would have taken at least a month to settle due to hydrodynamics as is observed in the Green River Formation? How does one explain seasonal of pollen grains found in the layers?
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=== Plate tectonics ===
  
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5. Sedimentation rates – Why would there be Precambrian rocks below ones feet in the Canadian Shield area, yet the entire geologic column in the Williston Basin in North Dakota? Why would a global flood scour down to the Precambrian in one place yet at the same time deposit tens of thousands of feet of sediment in another when it is exactly the same process? Giant post-pyramid ice ages are not an explanation as there is no written record or other evidence of increased historical glaciation to the extent needed to scour the Canadian Shield down in the last 4500 years, not to mention such Precambrian rocks elsewhere on Earth like South Africa.
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A clear problem with a global flood is that of repopulation: after the flood, very few non-marine species would survive. In particular, most of those observed today could not possibly have survived - this includes all insects, the vast majority of birds (Some species of albatross may have survived), the vast majority of mammals, and possibly freshwater fish depending on the salinity of the floodwaters.
  
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6. Lava layers with ancient soils between flows – How could lava forms which only exist with a land surface interface create interbedded deposits with paleosoils?
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Flood geology models include a means for these species to survive, most typically via artificial assistance - an Ark, as described in [[Genesis]].
  
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7. Ice sheets – Ice caps can’t reform in the time allotted since any global flood of 4500 years ago.
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An often-proposed explanation is that of continental drift - that the continents may once have been united in a single supercontinent, which broke into fragments and drifted into the formations seen today during the time between the start of repopulation and today. Continental drift in principle is nearly universally accepted by all geologists, with flood geology differing only in time: While conventional geology estimates the breakup of the supercontinent to have occurred over approximately sixty million years, flood geologists mostly claim that the process occurred during the flood year, whilst a few claim that it occurred at the time of [[Peleg]].
  
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8. Ice core data with correlated known volcanic events – Ice cores can be dated back by multiple methods nearly a million years, yet show no evidence of a global flood.
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Flood geologists propose several models which would explain how continental drift could proceed at the rapid pace required to allow the rearrangement of continents during or shortly after the flood, then slow to the currently observed rate. One of the best known of these is the runaway subduction model of Dr. [[John Baumgardner]].<ref>http://www.globalflood.org/platetec/about.html</ref>
  
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9. Ocean core data – Ocean cores would show unsorted piles of terrestrial life and different distributions in grain sizes than observed. They would also show little difference in thickness between the mid Atlantic ridge and near subduction zones, which is not what is observed.
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=== Total destruction ===
  
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10. Paleomagnetism – Because the Earth’s magnetic field has reversed polarity and has wandered over the globe in the past, certain igneous rocks show such preferred magnetic orientations when sufficiently cooled. By mapping these directions and reversals, which correlate with radioisotope dating and stratigraphy, it is easily shown that the vast majority of seafloor sediments, along with most volcanic rock, are way too old to have been deposited by any flood. In fact such measurements are one of the great evidences for plate tectonics, which alone invalidate a global flood.
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Flood geologists argue that the scale of destruction of the Flood, especially if rapid plate tectonics was involved, would mean almost certain total destruction of the pre-Flood world, including any evidence of civilisations predating the Flood, along with the destruction of the [[Garden of Eden]].
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After the Flood, and particularly after the [[Tower of Babel]], new civilisations developed, that either survive to this day or that we find archaeological evidence of today.
  
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11. Volcanism – According to ‘flood geology’ every igneous rock layer that overlays sedimentary rock would have to be less than 4500 years old. Yet, historical records indicate this tremendous amount of simultaneous volcanic activity could not have occurred in recent times because someone would have noticed, becoming extinct and all when the atmosphere becomes unbreathable. Such a position directly contradicts the existence of the Deccan Traps which are up to 2 km thick and 500,000 square km in extent, yet supposedly erupted in India despite any historic evidence, after such a flood.
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== Dating ==
  
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12. Ore deposit formation rates – Most ore deposits require a longer period of time to separate their constituent elements and then cool to create an economically viable source of minerals.
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Flood geologists date the flood to around 2350 B.C., based on [[biblical chronology]].
 +
They argue that archaeological dates which purport to show civilisations and artifacts being older than the Flood (see Criticisms) are incorrect because they are based on the presumption that none of these methods would be altered by the effects of a global flood in such a way as to render conclusions drawn from them invalid.<ref>One example is Carbon Dating which is calibrated according to known background levels of C14 in the atmosphere, but this calibration does not account for likely altered levels due to extensive volcanism during the Flood.  See [http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/5026/ Carbon dating into the future] (Creation Ministries International).</ref>  [[Christian apologetics|Christian apologetists]] state that the biblical flood would have occurred before the Egyptian pyramids were built and that the commonly cited Egyptian chronology is errant and built upon poor foundations.<ref>http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/2503</ref>  Also, Christian apologists argue that ancient Sumerian history supports the flood account given in the Bible.<ref>http://www.christiananswers.net/q-abr/abr-a009.html</ref>  In addition, ancient Sumerian literature speaks of a worldwide flood.<ref>http://home.comcast.net/~chris.s/sumer-faq.html#A1.6</ref>
  
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13. Evaporites – The existence of evaporate deposits thousands of feet thick are incompatible with any global flood as they are formed through evaporation rather than through the addition of fresh water.
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[[Creationism|Creationist]] scientists also state that the chronology used to dispute a worldwide flood based on tree rings is invalid.<ref>https://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=view&ID=381</ref><ref>http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/faq/docs/tree_ring.asp</ref><ref>http://www.biblicalchronologist.org/answers/c14_treerings.php</ref><ref>http://www.grisda.org/origins/21066.htm</ref><ref>http://www.creationresearch.org/crsq/articles/26/26_1a.html</ref><ref>http://www.creationresearch.org/crsq/abstracts/sum29_4.html</ref>
  
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14. Carbonates – The huge amount of CO2 in the atmosphere prior to being locked into carbonate rock would have made the planet resemble Venus. There would have been no life to drown.
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==Counterevidence==
  
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15. Microfossil deposits - Thick deposits of microfossils in limestone, diatomaceous chert, and chalk that could not settle to such a degree of thickness in the time allotted for any global flood.
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===Explanation of Geological Strata===
  
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16. Thick deposits of sand - Sand is the result of weathering and working of formally solid formations, requiring long long times to form and accumulate.
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Advocates of flood geology generally use the flood as an explanation for the existence of the geologic column, and indeed any geological phenomena or feature. It proposes that the age of the Earth as shown by rock strata is only apparently old, an illusion caused by looking at it through a secular worldview. Thus, while a scientist may spend years developing and testing theories through evidence, a flood geologist manufactures evidence to fit his theory.<ref>The following article explains how Christian geologists create explanations for the flood based on the Biblical account, instead of creating theories based on observed evidence like secular scientists do: https://creation.com/flood-geological-maps</ref>
  
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17. Aeolian sand deposits – Wind deposited sandstone is found above and below water deposited limestone. One example is the Cococino formation which is both overlain and overlies limestone.
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===Fossils===
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Fossils follow a logical pattern. The old ones are near the bottom, the young ones near the top. This is cited as evidence that a catastrophic flood could not have occurred, due to the fact that a flood powerful enough to create canyons in 40 days would also disturb the fossils to a point that they are no longer possible to date. Instead, the fossils follow a pattern predicted by evolution, where the fossils follow the pattern of old to young. Similarly, mass extinction events such as the KT boundary provide very fine lines that cut off the fossil record - this is incompatible with the idea that all rock sediment was laid down only a few thousand years ago in a massive flood.  
  
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18. Overthrust formations – the time and pressure required to cause overthrust formations is far greater than can occur in any post-flood historic time.
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===Erosion===
  
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19. Formation of geologic features such as mountains and valleys – How did something like the Himalaya Mountains form without anyone noticing all those earthquakes? How were valleys cut between such mountains in less than 4500 years?
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Erosion is a slow process in conventional geology - unless the rock is soft and the weather particularly severe, but these cases are outlying exceptions. This is all due to the hardness of rock and the fact that we can observe the rate that it erodes under rain now. The flooddidit idea proposes that despite this, all erosion features can be explained by the flood. This applies equally to rock that is eroded to rock that isn't eroded - a proposition that flies in the face of both science and good sense. The high levels of erosion seen in hard rock formations is chalked up to the speed of the flood waters. Indeed, fast water can be quite powerful and water cutting jets can slice through objects with high efficiency. However, the Grand Canyon, for example, isn't a small board of MDF being hit by a precise sub-millimeter wide jet of water traveling at hundreds of miles per hour. Even in a flood of global proportions, the water could not travel fast enough (it can only work under gravity) and the rock is simply not soft enough for it to form in anything less than millions of years.
  
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20. River meanders – River meanders incised in rock can only be caused by gradual uplift, not through a year’s worth of soft sediment deposition.
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Secondly, erosion due to the flood is incompatible with rock sedimentation being explained by the flood. A global flood that would explain both sedimentation and massive erosion would cause both processes to occur simultaneously. There should be more sediment put down at a near equal rate to the erosion removing it - therefore features where erosion has revealed the sedimentation layers should not exist. Conventional geology is able to explain that sedimentation occurs first and erosion cuts in afterwards to expose the layers, and also explains more distorted features such as uncomformities - which flood geology is unable explain.  
  
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21. Glacial weathering – glacial deposits and weathering such as U-shaped valleys require longer than 4500 years to form.
 
  
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22. Batholith formation – Why isn’t the Sierra Nevada granitic batholith still hot as it would have taken several million years to cool?
 
  
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23. Differential weathering – How could the Sierra Nevada and the Appalachians show such different weathering if each are the exact same age of only 4500 years old?
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==Creationist Scientists Defense of Flood Geology ==
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Creationist scientists assert that there are multiple lines of evidence from the field of geology showing that flood geology is correct.<ref>http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/faq/geology.asp</ref><ref>http://www.creationism.org/topbar/geology.htm</ref><ref>http://www.grisda.org/georpts/gr11.htm</ref><ref>http://www.nwcreation.net/geologylinks.html</ref><ref>http://globalflood.org/</ref>  Creationist scientists also state that there was enough water to cause a worldwide flood and various other objections to a worldwide flood are invalid.<ref>http://www.answersingenesis.org/Home/Area/AnswersBook/flood12.asp</ref><ref>http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/faq/flood.asp</ref>
  
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24. Banded iron formations and red beds – Banded iron formations can’t form in the presence of significant oxygen. Yet they were supposedly deposited in a flood which supposedly allowed animals to breathe both before and after.
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== Common Criticisms ==
  
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25. Water in confined aquifers – The chemistry of water may be measured as to its constituents, as any municipal water authority already knows. Under flood conditions, the water chemistry in a confined aquifer would have changed as lower elevation aquifers would contain more salt than higher aquifers as the flood waters diluted the salt content in the recharge zone. Not only is this behavior not shown by any known confined aquifer, but the age of such water according to the laws of physics is vastly older than any flood may have deposited.
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Critics claim that there is not enough water on the Earth to actually cause a worldwide flood, or ever has been; in addition, many archaeological records (notably tree-ring records and the records of various early civilizations, including Egypt and Sumeria) stretch through the period of time most often given as that of the Great Flood, without any actual reference to such an event.<ref>For a summary of other criticisms, see http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-noahs-ark.html</ref>
  
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26. Worldwide iridium layer – Although any worldwide flood evidence is lacking, there is a worldwide iridium layer at the K-T boundary where it exists. How could this iridium layer have been deposited among all those swirling waters in a flood?
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== History ==
  
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27. Deformed structures in metamorphosed sediments – There are areas in metamorphic rock where pebbles and even fossils have been stretched and deformed in processes that would have taken several times any 4500 years since a global flood.
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Until the rise of uniformitarian [[geology]] in the early 19th century, most geologists accepted the Noahic deluge as part of geology. But [[James Hutton]] proposed in 1795 that geology ought to be based on the processes that we see happening now, thereby automatically ruling the Flood out of consideration. During the 19th century a number of "[[scriptural geologist]]s" held out against the rising acceptance of Hutton's principles, but they fought a losing battle and interest in flood geology virtually died out by the end of the 19th century.
  
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28. Compression of all fossil life into too short a time period – If all species represented by fossils, coal, and petroleum from throughout the geologic record lived simultaneously, they would have been standing on each other, an ecological impossibility.
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However, in the second half of the 20th century, interest was revived amongst people keen to show that the biblical account was correct, and a small but growing number of geologists are now studying this field again, although the vast majority of geologists still reject the idea of a global flood on Earth.  At the same time, there has been a recent resurgence of [[catastrophism]] in geological interpretation.<ref>https://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=print&ID=84</ref><ref>http://www.grisda.org/georpts/gr11.htm</ref>
  
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29. Differential mineralization of fossils – Remains of buried humans in historic times show minimal mineralization. This increases overall with extinct mammals, then extinct dinosaurs, then extinct trilobites and ammonites.
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Interest in Flood Geology was stimulated by the 1961 publication of ''[[The Genesis Flood]]'', by [[Henry Morris]] and [[John Whitcomb]]. Dr. Henry Morris had a number of arguments for geology supporting a worldwide flood.<ref>https://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=view&ID=54</ref><ref>https://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=print&ID=84</ref><ref>https://www.icr.org/article/842/</ref>
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{{Creation vs. evolution}}
  
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== See also ==
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*[[Literalist Bible chronology]]
  
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30. Existence of soil after flood – Soil is a delicate mixture of organic and inorganic materials. How could any soil exist after an environment that was supposedly turbulent enough to destroy all the earth’s crust?
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== External links ==
 +
*[https://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=view&ID=54 Geology and the Flood] by [[Henry Morris]], Ph.D.
 +
*[http://www.creationism.org/symposium/symp3no2.htm Stratigraphic Evidence of the Flood] by Stuart E. Nevins.
 +
* [http://www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v14/i1/flood_models.asp Flood models: the need for an integrated approach] by A.C. McIntosh, T. Edmondson & S. Taylor.
 +
*[http://www.nwcreation.net/geologylinks.html#anchorgeologycreationist Global Flood Geology from Creation Science Perspectives]
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*[http://www.biblicalgeology.net/content/view/46 Biblical Geology: Properly Understanding the Rocks]
  
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31. Tectonic spreading rates – Observed tectonic spreading rates indicate that there is no evidence of any disturbance due to any global flood 4500 years ago.
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==References==
  
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32. Tar pits – If all petroleum was caused by some global flood, how can there be tar pits filled with land fossils that have not become coal or oil?
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{{Reflist}}
  
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33. Caverns – Caverns carved from dolomite such as exist in West Texas can’t form in as little as 4500 years.
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[[Category:Young Earth Creationism]]
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[[Category:Geology]]
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34. Multiple glaciations – There are at least four major separate evidences of glaciations in the geologic record separated by eons. How could all four occur during a flood while supposedly underwater?
 
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35. Meteoric impacts – For the evidence of meteoric impacts to be buried under sediments indicate that such impacts all occurred in the span of one year. Such a bombardment would allow for no life due to a lack of sun.
 
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36. Hydrocarbon formation – The amount of hydrocarbon deposits in the ground from organic causes represent a greater biomass than is possible to have formed within 4500 years.
 
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37. Conglomerates within conglomerates within conglomerates within conglomerates – Conglomerates are made up of diverse weathered rock that is eroded then recemented. In order to have a 4th level conglomerate there needs to be four episodes of weathering and recementation of rocks which are often impossible to form and erode in 4500 years such as when some within the conglomerate matrix are igneous or metamorphic rock.
 

Latest revision as of 01:30, September 20, 2021

Flood geology is the study of the Earth's geology from the point of view that the Earth's geology was radically redefined by a global flood in the relatively recent past, as recorded in Genesis, as well as the scores of flood stories in other cultures throughout the world.[1]

Genesis Flood account

Genesis provides the most detailed account of the global deluge, including specific dates, measurements, and even some key geological events during the flood. Consequently, flood geologists use it as a starting point for understanding the events of the deluge. Based on the Genesis account, flood geologists argue that the flood resulted from subterranean water erupting to the surface ("the springs of the great deep burst forth" [2]), combined with 40 days and nights of rain. Although the rain stopped after 40 days, the flood waters continued to rise for 150 days, and lasted just over a year before Noah and the others on the boat were able to leave. During the flood, there was massive tectonic activity, including some land rising up and other land dropping, such that the waters ended up in newly deepened oceans. All the animals and birds (except those on the ark), and large numbers of sea creatures perished, and many of them were buried so quickly that they became fossils, accounting for the vast majority of fossils existing today.

Evidence

Flood geologists base their belief in a relatively recent global deluge on several strands of evidence. While none of these strands alone is sufficient to prove that a global flood occurred, flood geologists argue that a global deluge is the most reasonable and parsimonious explanation for the evidence.

Sedimentary rock

Sedimentary rocks are formed by sand and other sediments which settle out of suspension in water, minerals which dissolve in water (which sand cannot do)[3] and the hard parts of small aquatic organisms such as plankton, which accumulate on the bottom of a body of water and undergo lithification. Although only about 8% of the earth's rocks are sedimentary, 75%-80% of the Earth's land area is covered in sedimentary rock.[1] Therefore, geologists point out, there is irrefutable evidence that at least 75% of the Earth's land was once covered in water.

Sufficient water

There is enough water on Earth today to cover the entire surface to a depth of 2.7 kilometres (1.7 miles), if the surface was levelled out.[4] Continents emerge because the average ocean depth is 3.7 km.[5] Flood geologists argue that geological activity during and after the flood lowered the ocean basins, causing water to flow from the continents into the basins, and leaving dry land.[6]

Fossils

Fossilization requires rapid burial in a sedimentary solution, and subsequent rapid lithification of the solution. Slow burial does not result in fossilization, because the remains decay prior to being fossilized. Therefore, every fossil was buried in rapidly deposited sedimentary material which subsequently turned to stone.

Fossil fuels

Fossil fuel formation requires the burial of enormous amounts of organic matter under a sedimentary solution, and the application of heat and pressure. Slow burial processes do not produce fossil fuels, because the organic matter decays prior to conversion into a fossil fuel. Therefore, all fossil fuels on earth were quickly buried under sedimentary material which subsequently turned to stone;

Similar processes have been observed in Spirit Lake following the eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980.

Rock strata

Most sedimentary rocks are layered, forming sharply defined lines at varying depths. Were these formed over long periods, erosion would have softened these lines. The sharpness of the lines implies rapid deposition and lithification.

Pure sedimentary layers

If sedimentary layers were laid down over millennia, they would have experienced mixing. However, many rock strata are pure—for example, the St. Peter Sandstone, covering 500,000 sq miles of the United States, is 99.94% pure silica. While uniformitarian scientists state that it was deposited by the shore of a sea, they cannot explain how it remained so pure if it was laid out over a long period of time. However, the sorting processes of liquefaction, consistent with a global flood, can make such an explanation.

Submarine canyons

Canyons can be found under the sea at the end of many major world rivers, including the Congo, Amazon, Ganges, and Hudson. They extend for thousands of miles underwater, thousands of feet under the sea; they are as deep as the Grand Canyon in places, and although not well understood by the mainstream scientific community, they are generally understood to have developed when sea-levels were significantly lower than today. Flood geologists argue that as the continents divided and the flood subsided, these major rivers drained the new continents, and the water flowed into the new low-lying areas, which would fill to become seas, leaving the sediments to dry out of their liquefied state.

Land canyons

As explanation for great land canyons such as the Grand Canyon, flood geologists point to canyon formation events such as the catastrophic hot mud slides observed during the eruption of Mt. St. Helens. One particular hot mud slide at Mt. St. Helens carved a canyon 140 ft. deep and 17 miles long in a single day. Only a thin creek remains at the bottom of the canyon today, which would likely be interpreted as having carved the canyon "over millions of years," if it were not known first-hand that the canyon was carved in a single day.

Ancient accounts of a navigable Atlantic

Plato's Timaeus states:

"In those days the Atlantic was navigable; and there was an island situated in front of the straits which are by you called the Pillars of Heracles [Straight of Gibraltar] ... and was the way to other islands, and from these you might pass to the whole of the opposite continent which surrounded the true ocean; for this sea which is within the Straits of Heracles is only a harbour, having a narrow entrance, but that other is a real sea, and the surrounding land may be most truly called a boundless continent."[7]

Plate tectonics

A clear problem with a global flood is that of repopulation: after the flood, very few non-marine species would survive. In particular, most of those observed today could not possibly have survived - this includes all insects, the vast majority of birds (Some species of albatross may have survived), the vast majority of mammals, and possibly freshwater fish depending on the salinity of the floodwaters.

Flood geology models include a means for these species to survive, most typically via artificial assistance - an Ark, as described in Genesis.

An often-proposed explanation is that of continental drift - that the continents may once have been united in a single supercontinent, which broke into fragments and drifted into the formations seen today during the time between the start of repopulation and today. Continental drift in principle is nearly universally accepted by all geologists, with flood geology differing only in time: While conventional geology estimates the breakup of the supercontinent to have occurred over approximately sixty million years, flood geologists mostly claim that the process occurred during the flood year, whilst a few claim that it occurred at the time of Peleg.

Flood geologists propose several models which would explain how continental drift could proceed at the rapid pace required to allow the rearrangement of continents during or shortly after the flood, then slow to the currently observed rate. One of the best known of these is the runaway subduction model of Dr. John Baumgardner.[8]

Total destruction

Flood geologists argue that the scale of destruction of the Flood, especially if rapid plate tectonics was involved, would mean almost certain total destruction of the pre-Flood world, including any evidence of civilisations predating the Flood, along with the destruction of the Garden of Eden. After the Flood, and particularly after the Tower of Babel, new civilisations developed, that either survive to this day or that we find archaeological evidence of today.

Dating

Flood geologists date the flood to around 2350 B.C., based on biblical chronology. They argue that archaeological dates which purport to show civilisations and artifacts being older than the Flood (see Criticisms) are incorrect because they are based on the presumption that none of these methods would be altered by the effects of a global flood in such a way as to render conclusions drawn from them invalid.[9] Christian apologetists state that the biblical flood would have occurred before the Egyptian pyramids were built and that the commonly cited Egyptian chronology is errant and built upon poor foundations.[10] Also, Christian apologists argue that ancient Sumerian history supports the flood account given in the Bible.[11] In addition, ancient Sumerian literature speaks of a worldwide flood.[12]

Creationist scientists also state that the chronology used to dispute a worldwide flood based on tree rings is invalid.[13][14][15][16][17][18]

Counterevidence

Explanation of Geological Strata

Advocates of flood geology generally use the flood as an explanation for the existence of the geologic column, and indeed any geological phenomena or feature. It proposes that the age of the Earth as shown by rock strata is only apparently old, an illusion caused by looking at it through a secular worldview. Thus, while a scientist may spend years developing and testing theories through evidence, a flood geologist manufactures evidence to fit his theory.[19]

Fossils

Fossils follow a logical pattern. The old ones are near the bottom, the young ones near the top. This is cited as evidence that a catastrophic flood could not have occurred, due to the fact that a flood powerful enough to create canyons in 40 days would also disturb the fossils to a point that they are no longer possible to date. Instead, the fossils follow a pattern predicted by evolution, where the fossils follow the pattern of old to young. Similarly, mass extinction events such as the KT boundary provide very fine lines that cut off the fossil record - this is incompatible with the idea that all rock sediment was laid down only a few thousand years ago in a massive flood.

Erosion

Erosion is a slow process in conventional geology - unless the rock is soft and the weather particularly severe, but these cases are outlying exceptions. This is all due to the hardness of rock and the fact that we can observe the rate that it erodes under rain now. The flooddidit idea proposes that despite this, all erosion features can be explained by the flood. This applies equally to rock that is eroded to rock that isn't eroded - a proposition that flies in the face of both science and good sense. The high levels of erosion seen in hard rock formations is chalked up to the speed of the flood waters. Indeed, fast water can be quite powerful and water cutting jets can slice through objects with high efficiency. However, the Grand Canyon, for example, isn't a small board of MDF being hit by a precise sub-millimeter wide jet of water traveling at hundreds of miles per hour. Even in a flood of global proportions, the water could not travel fast enough (it can only work under gravity) and the rock is simply not soft enough for it to form in anything less than millions of years.

Secondly, erosion due to the flood is incompatible with rock sedimentation being explained by the flood. A global flood that would explain both sedimentation and massive erosion would cause both processes to occur simultaneously. There should be more sediment put down at a near equal rate to the erosion removing it - therefore features where erosion has revealed the sedimentation layers should not exist. Conventional geology is able to explain that sedimentation occurs first and erosion cuts in afterwards to expose the layers, and also explains more distorted features such as uncomformities - which flood geology is unable explain.


Creationist Scientists Defense of Flood Geology

Creationist scientists assert that there are multiple lines of evidence from the field of geology showing that flood geology is correct.[20][21][22][23][24] Creationist scientists also state that there was enough water to cause a worldwide flood and various other objections to a worldwide flood are invalid.[25][26]

Common Criticisms

Critics claim that there is not enough water on the Earth to actually cause a worldwide flood, or ever has been; in addition, many archaeological records (notably tree-ring records and the records of various early civilizations, including Egypt and Sumeria) stretch through the period of time most often given as that of the Great Flood, without any actual reference to such an event.[27]

History

Until the rise of uniformitarian geology in the early 19th century, most geologists accepted the Noahic deluge as part of geology. But James Hutton proposed in 1795 that geology ought to be based on the processes that we see happening now, thereby automatically ruling the Flood out of consideration. During the 19th century a number of "scriptural geologists" held out against the rising acceptance of Hutton's principles, but they fought a losing battle and interest in flood geology virtually died out by the end of the 19th century.

However, in the second half of the 20th century, interest was revived amongst people keen to show that the biblical account was correct, and a small but growing number of geologists are now studying this field again, although the vast majority of geologists still reject the idea of a global flood on Earth. At the same time, there has been a recent resurgence of catastrophism in geological interpretation.[28][29]

Interest in Flood Geology was stimulated by the 1961 publication of The Genesis Flood, by Henry Morris and John Whitcomb. Dr. Henry Morris had a number of arguments for geology supporting a worldwide flood.[30][31][32]

v • d • e
Creation vs. evolution
Evolution
Hoaxes, Controversies, and Debates
Creation science and Creationism

See also

External links

References

  1. ↑ https://www.icr.org/article/570/
  2. ↑ Genesis 7:11, NIV
  3. ↑ http://pearsonkt.com/summaryStreetOT/texts/Sci-National-Grade-4/iText/products/0-328-34278-5/unitc/ch11/331.html
  4. ↑ Noah’s Flood—what about all that water?, Chapter 4 of the Creation Answers Book, Dr. Don Batten (Ed.)
  5. ↑ http://www.mos.org/oceans/planet/features.html
  6. ↑ Psalms 104:6-9 (NASB) "You covered it with the deep as with a garment; The waters were standing above the mountains. At Your rebuke they fled, At the sound of Your thunder they hurried away. The mountains rose; the valleys sank down To the place which You established for them. You set a boundary that they may not pass over, So that they will not return to cover the earth."
  7. ↑ http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/timaeus.html
  8. ↑ http://www.globalflood.org/platetec/about.html
  9. ↑ One example is Carbon Dating which is calibrated according to known background levels of C14 in the atmosphere, but this calibration does not account for likely altered levels due to extensive volcanism during the Flood. See Carbon dating into the future (Creation Ministries International).
  10. ↑ http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/2503
  11. ↑ http://www.christiananswers.net/q-abr/abr-a009.html
  12. ↑ http://home.comcast.net/~chris.s/sumer-faq.html#A1.6
  13. ↑ https://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=view&ID=381
  14. ↑ http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/faq/docs/tree_ring.asp
  15. ↑ http://www.biblicalchronologist.org/answers/c14_treerings.php
  16. ↑ http://www.grisda.org/origins/21066.htm
  17. ↑ http://www.creationresearch.org/crsq/articles/26/26_1a.html
  18. ↑ http://www.creationresearch.org/crsq/abstracts/sum29_4.html
  19. ↑ The following article explains how Christian geologists create explanations for the flood based on the Biblical account, instead of creating theories based on observed evidence like secular scientists do: https://creation.com/flood-geological-maps
  20. ↑ http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/faq/geology.asp
  21. ↑ http://www.creationism.org/topbar/geology.htm
  22. ↑ http://www.grisda.org/georpts/gr11.htm
  23. ↑ http://www.nwcreation.net/geologylinks.html
  24. ↑ http://globalflood.org/
  25. ↑ http://www.answersingenesis.org/Home/Area/AnswersBook/flood12.asp
  26. ↑ http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/faq/flood.asp
  27. ↑ For a summary of other criticisms, see http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-noahs-ark.html
  28. ↑ https://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=print&ID=84
  29. ↑ http://www.grisda.org/georpts/gr11.htm
  30. ↑ https://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=view&ID=54
  31. ↑ https://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=print&ID=84
  32. ↑ https://www.icr.org/article/842/
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