Image from ICR article.
Posted on 09/11/2013 11:00:27 AM PDT by fishtank
Up and Down Like a Cork? by John D. Morris, Ph.D. *
In a prior column, I pointed out that Earth’s strata, which often lay conformably one on top another, are believed to be separated by millions of years of time, according to traditional thinking.1 The dates—derived by radioisotope dating, the fossil content, or whatever means—often indicate that the top of one bed is much older than the bottom of the overlying bed. This age difference claim is made in spite of the fact that the layers are right on top of each other—clearly appearing like their deposition was continuous. The contact between them is frequently parallel and neatly stacked with no evidence of erosion or anomalous deposition at all in between the layers. Of course, there are some places where erosion has taken place or where the removal of an intervening bed is obvious, but I want to call your attention to the “layer-cake” stratification of multiple parallel beds similar to those plainly seen in Grand Canyon and other places.
Keep in mind that the layers are clearly underwater deposits and typically contain marine fossils. A few rare strata exhibit what might be proposed to be a terrestrial origin, but these are exceptions to the rule, and the claims concerning them are often quite controversial. Without a doubt, nearly all geologists conclude that the vast majority of strata were water-deposited.
As a general rule, if a surface is underwater, it receives sediment. Even in a calm ocean, a steady stream of sediments will collect on the ocean floor. But if the surface is above water, it normally undergoes erosion. Continental erosion incessantly gouges out stream beds and river valleys. It almost never produces flat pancake-like surfaces.
Exceptions to the rule involve fast-flowing water. Flat, past erosion surfaces imply “sheet erosion,” during which equivalent depths of large, rapidly flowing volumes of water rush over a wide surface, eroding it down to a common elevation. This seldom happens today except with devastating floods or hurricanes, and even then the affected area is local. Moving water erodes every geologic surface—even hard rock.
How then can we account for the near-ubiquitous presence of flat, parallel strata, especially where no evidence of erosion of any sort can be found? According to standard thinking, millions of years passed between the deposition of each of the individual layers, but where is the evidence of exposure and erosion? Where are the drainage ditches and the river valleys that should have been carved into the exposed sediment surfaces during all that time?
The uniformitarian model proposes that flat-lying sediment layers deposited underwater must have been uplifted above sea level and undergone neither deposition nor erosion, then down-dropped below sea level again to receive the next layer of sediment. This happened again and again with each surface experiencing simultaneous non-deposition and non-erosion while it was above sea level. In Grand Canyon, the flat layers must have been uplifted and dropped at least six times. Uniformitarians sometimes claim strata sequences like these must have “bobbed up and down like a cork” over millions and millions of years, all the while resisting deformation and signs of erosion and maintaining their flat and parallel geometry.
How realistic is it to propose exposure above sea level for millions of years without erosion? The normal weathering processes of rainfall and violent storms would have carved out channels and gullies across the exposed land surface, but we see no evidence that this ever occurred! Instead, we see flat layers upon flat layers as if they were neatly deposited one on top of the other—just what you’d expect in deposits from a continuous and global flood.
Once again, we see that uniformitarianism fails a simple geologic test. Rather than relying on human wisdom-based uniformitarianism, Bible-based catastrophism is a much better perspective within which to interpret Earth’s strata. The Grand Canyon “layer-cake” stratification is yet another sign of God’s handiwork.
Reference
Morris, J. 2012. Gaps in the Geologic Column. Acts & Facts. 41 (2): 16.
* Dr. Morris is President of the Institute for Creation Research.
Cite this article: Morris, J. 2013. Up and Down Like a Cork? Acts & Facts. 42 (9): 14.
Image from ICR article.
Really.
I guess he’s never heard of western Austrailia either. Some of the oldest dirt on the planet and flat as hell.
These YEC folks mean well, but really they ought to at least keep up with what conventional secular science is claiming before piping up about how they disagree. God is not a dunce!
I am a definite creationist and lean towards being an old-earth creationist. Hugh Ross (www.reasons.org) does a pretty good job of expounding many OEC tenets. My support for same has the great caveat that we have some hints in the biblical narrative about a possible change in METAPHYSICAL regime between the creation and now. That, of course, could render ALL physical science problematic when dealing with eras as far back as the creation times. However I stick my neck out for the usefulness of OEC because of Romans 1:20. To a perfectly secular scientist the creation should still be a witness of God’s peculiarly miraculous work. And Ross and other OEC advocates have done a good, if not perfect, job of showing how it is.
Is this John D. Morris, PhD a geologist? if so, he needs some additional coursework desperately.
I was at a presentation that Hugh Ross, noted old-earth creationist, gave. Ross characterized one of the advanced degrees associated with those folks (not sure if it was this fellow though) as “mail order.” Ouch. Hugh is not a guy to mince words....
Anyhow, it seems the main thesis is that a quasi-miraculously conducted flood. If the theorists have separated out what’s miraculous and what’s “scientifically” traceable, I’m unaware of it — but I’d sure be glad to hear if they have, I’m not putting them down gratuitously here. But the philosophy of YEC seems to be a much worse disorganized misch-mosch than that of OEC. OK, if the Lord did wash stuff all around this terrestrial ball 20,000 or so years ago with a global flood and did it by miracle power, then we might as well give up on the idea of using “science” as we know it to trace the consequences. At least to my beady little brain. It’s like asking about the ancestry of the rabbit that the magician caused to materialize in his hat.
[Anyhow, it seems the main thesis is that a quasi-miraculously conducted flood...] explains all geological artifacts today.
Got to proof read better!
However... a creation that took a long, long, long time (”bill-yuns of years” as Sagan might say it) to get to its current state doesn’t seem to me to bespeak any less of God, than the comparative size of Earth with respect to that of the entire universe does. The universe around us is big in space... big in time. And yet all the treasure is found upon a globe that is a mere speck in size, in activity that is a mere blip in time.
Now to me, that is worth a big ole Hallelujah with a Selah or two! Consider how important this “trifle” is when God plunged down into it... and died there for our sins! One might begin to get the idea that the size of our souls BEATS that of the universe.
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