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A global flood? Really? Many people want to dismiss this possibility as unhistorical or legendary. As we said in the previous article, the Sunday School type of illustrations of a cartoon ark help foster doubts about Noah’s Flood really happening. So is there any scientific evidence out there that supports Noah’s Flood?
I would like to look at this in three parts:1. Evidences for a global flood, 2. If there was a global flood, how might it have happened , and 3. answering some objections that have been raised against the Biblical account of Noah’s Ark and the Flood.
The first part we will take in this article, namely, whether there are geological evidences for the Flood ( I will capitalize the “f” in Flood from here on when referring to Noah’s Flood). Many of these evidences are also relevant to the age of the earth question that we dealt with in the last series of articles, but I saved them for this series since they also tie in with the idea of a catastrophic origin for much of the geologic rock record, rather than a slow and gradual one. So, what evidence out there points to a global flood? Is belief in this Flood naive and un-intellectual?
Uniformitarianism vs. Catastrophism:
Right here, we have to define some models. The conventional model in much of science today is the idea of uniformitarianism, the idea that present day processes have always been going on in the past at the same rates as observed today. The belief that “the present is the key to the past” was coined by a lawyer in the late 1800’s, a contemporary of Charles Darwin named Charles Lyell. Because present day geological processes are often slow, such as rivers eroding a stream bed, the idea of millions of years of time to form certain geological features automatically follows. But Darwin’s assumptions may not have been correct-see article by geologist Steven Austin: Darwin’s First Wrong Turn
In contrast, the idea of catastrophism is put forth by creation scientists, who believe that there have been events in the past where geological processes such as erosion and deposition of water laid sediments occurred at a much greater rate than observed today, such as during Noah’s Flood, and some of the post-Flood geological activity as well. Actually, many non-creationist scientists are starting to postulate catastrophic processes for the formation of many geological features, because of the scientific evidence, as we shall look at below.
A good example of this can be seen in the case of the Lake Missoula flood in western Montana. Lake Missoula was a huge glacial lake that overtopped its ice dam and catastrophically emptied in a matter of days, pouring huge volumes of water across eastern Washington and northern Oregon. The water ran for about a week at speeds over 60mph and at depths of over 400 feet! It eroded 50 square miles of rock in total, producing what we call the Scablands today. One of the features it carved out was the Grand Coulee Canyon, which is 900 feet deep and 50 miles long.
When geologist J. Harlen Bretz proposed that a large flood was the explanation of the canyons and other features, his peers rejected and ridiculed his theory and wouldn’t accept it for about 40 years, believing that the canyons had to have been carved slowly in keeping with their uniformitarian bias. It wasn’t until the geological evidence forced them to accept a catastrophe that they changed their minds. (To read a complete account of “Bretz’s Outrageous Hypothesis” see The Missoula Flood Controversy [12] by meteorologist Michael Oard). Another article is Ice Age megafloods provide insight into Flood sedimentation Also see article: The Mystery of the Megaflood on whether the evidence supports one flood or many floods at this location.
The two views can be illustrated by two statements about how the Grand Canyon was formed; Either “in a lot of time by a little bit of water”, or “in a little bit of time by a lot of water”. As we will see, both uniformitarians and catastrophists are observing the exact same empirical evidence, but they each interpret it differently, colored by their worldview.
One of the best questions to ask here, is what kind of evidence would we expect to find if the biblical account of the Flood is true? Geologists and other scientists who believe the Bible have listed several types of evidence. Geologist Dr. Andrew Snelling outlines them {1}:
1. Evidence that ocean waters flooded over the continents
2.Rapid burial of all types of creatures and plants
3. Widespread rapidly deposited water laid rock strata
4. Long distance of sediment transport
5. Rapid or no erosion between rock strata
Let’s look at the first three of these in more detail: (The rest will be covered in part 3 of series)
Evidence that ocean waters flooded over the continents:
Most scientists, whether they believe the Bible or not, acknowledge that most of the earth’s surface was once covered by water, the conventional scientists believing it was a sea that slowly advanced and retreated many times over millions of years, and the creation scientists believing that it was a global flood. One of the reasons for this belief is the fact that even on the highest mountains, such as Mount Everest, we find marine fossils! Most scientists believe that the mountains were pushed up and formed after being covered with water, but as I will discuss in later articles in this series, the rate and timing of the mountain uplift is interpreted differently. For an article explaining this in more detail, see this article by Dr. Snelling: High and Dry Sea Creatures
Rapid Burial of all types of creatures and plants:
There are other evidences all around the world, where marine and other fossils appear to have been buried rapidly in large “fossil graveyards” in water laid sediments. Geologist Dr. Steven Austin has been studying one such fossil formation in the Redwall Limestone, a rock layer in the middle of the Grand Canyon. Conventional scientists will say that this layer in Grand Canyon was deposited by the advance and retreat of a calm sea over millions of years.
But Dr. Austin found squid-like creatures with pointed shells, called nautiloids, deposited in a massive fossil graveyard that gives evidence that it was rapidly formed. This formation containing these nautiloids was not just some small flood, but it is a 7-40 foot thick layer that not only runs through the Grand Canyon, but all the way to Las Vegas! The formation covers about 5,000-6,000 square miles, 25 cubic miles, contains an estimated 10 billion nautiloids that were smothered by sediment in a mass kill event. Many of them were buried upright, as if the bed “froze” rapidly before they could fall over flat, and most of the other shells were facing in the same direction, which would only happen if oriented by a strong , fast moving current. Austin did some experiments with sand flow, and determined that the nautiloids were trapped by a high speed underwater flow, at about 4-5 meter/second, over this huge area of the Southwest USA. {2}
Other scientists who at first criticized Austin’s research, retracted their criticisms and commended his research after performing an on-site investigation {2}. This evidence points to a large amount of fast moving water over a very large area that buried these nautiloids right in the middle of a formation that supposedly formed very slowly. It just doesn’t fit the conventional interpretation! For more on Dr. Austin’s research see his book Grand Canyon: Monument to Catastrophe {3}. Also see article: Geologic Catastrophe and the Young Earth Geologic Catastrophe and the Young Earth at:http://creation.com/geologist-steve-austin
This is by no means an isolated case. In Montceau-Les Mines, France, hundreds of thousands of marine creatures were found buried with amphibians, insects, reptiles, and spiders, in the same layers! Spiders and insects do not normally live with marine creatures. How and why were they all buried together? {1} [4}
In Florissant, Colorado, fossils of insects, fresh water mollusks, fish, birds and many different kinds of plants were found in a fossil graveyard, with meticulous preservation of the details of the fossils, such as in a fossil bee that was found. This kind of exquisite detail preservation would only happen in a rapid burial, before the creatures had time to decompose or be eaten. {1} {9}
In Tasmania, sea creatures were found buried with toothed whales and marsupial possums. These animals were not living together but they were buried together. That they were buried rapidly is evidenced by large boulders crushed together in the formation. {1}
Dinosaur fossils have been found in chalk beds. These could not be gradual burials or they would have rotted. Dr. Snelling theorizes that the Flood processes, which we will look at in more detail later, provided chemicals in the water that caused huge algal blooms, microscopic marine creatures that then died and buried the dinosaur and other fossils rapidly. {1}
Fossil fish eating another fish
We see preservation of fossil fish , with so much detail preserved they must have been buried quickly, since if they just laid on the bottom they would be quickly scavenged. Some fish have been buried in the act of eating other fish. A marine reptile called an Icthyosaur was buried in the act of giving birth to it’s baby! Again, only possible if rapidly buried.
In Australia, jellyfish, which if laid on a beach would disintegrate very quickly, were found in a mass fossil graveyard by the hundred, over 400 square miles! The geologist who found them concluded that they had to have been buried rapidly, in less than a day! What would bury hundreds of fragile jellyfish in one day over 400 square miles in the middle of the Australian outback? {10} When first presented, scientists who were committed to the slow and gradual models resisted the evidence: Fossil Jellyfish greeted with derision!
Also see article by geologist Dr. Andrew Snelling: The World’s a Graveyard
Dr. Snelling also describes detailed evidence of plant and animal graveyards in his book Earth’s Catastrophic past. {11}
I think the evidence shows that the oceans somehow flooded the continents, and rapidly, rather than slowly, buried the fossils we see today.
Widespread, rapidly deposited rock strata:
We also see in the rock record extremely large rock layer formations that are continent wide, and which also evidence being formed rapidly.
Redwall Limestone layer at Grand Canyon
Above, we looked at the evidence of the nautiloids for the rapid deposition of the Redwall Limestone Layer. We saw that the distribution of the nautiloids indicated a fast water current over a vast area {5}, and that the limestone containing the nautiloids looks like all the rest of the limestones in this layer {6}.
We can also trace Grand Canyon Layers such as the Tapeats Sandstone and the Coconino Sandstone right across North America. The Redwall limestone layer even shows up in England with the same fossils and strata. The Chalk Beds of the Cretaceous can be found on three continents including Australia, all with the same fossils in them and the same distinctive bed above and below them.
The Coconino Sandstone also shows evidence that it too was a water laid deposit, and not a desert deposit as some claim. The average angle of the formation of the cross beds agrees with what would be expected in underwater sand dunes, rather than in desert dune formation. In fact, underwater sand dunes of the same type can be seen under the Golden Gate Bridge in San Franscisco today. The sand grains are angular and poorly sorted, unlike desert sand grains that are normally rounded and well sorted. Even the animal footprints have been studied and shown to fit an underwater rather than a desert model{7}. From the height of the sand waves (underwater dunes), this 100,000 square mile formation can be calculated to have been deposited by very deep water traveling at about 3-5 mph. At this rate, formation would take days or weeks, not millions of years. For an article by a geologist who spent much hands-on time investigating the Coconino, see Dr John Whitmore’s article: Coconino Sandstone-The most powerful argument against the Flood? Also see:Do Sand-Dune Sandstones Disprove Noah’s Flood?
In Australia there is a giant sandstone bed called Ayers Rock or Uluru, which gives evidence of rapid, catastrophic formation. This formation is 18-20,000 feet thick, formed from sand grains of all different sizes (which indicates little time for separation of grain sizes) which have jagged corners (also indicating not enough time to be rounded off) and containing feldspar which disintegrates rapidly and so is not contained in most sandstones. The sand source is not local, but appears to have been eroded and transported from a source at least 60 miles away. All of these things indicate that Ayers Rock was formed by rapid transportation and deposition of sediment. The evidence points to this formation being deposited by a mixture of sediment and water called a turbidity current, traveling at a high rate of speed and depositing this formation in a matter of hours or days. {8}
For more on Uluru and similar formations called inselbergs, as well as other types of formations, see article: Geomorphology provides multiple evidences for the global flood
What these formations and others like them show, is that large rock formations were laid down rapidly, on a continent and even world-wide scale. And the uniformitarian model, holding that present formation rates are the key to understanding the past, has trouble here, since we do not see formations on this scale in the process of being formed today.
See comprehensive article on this evidence by Dr. Snelling: Transcontinental Rock Layers
So far we have seen three lines of evidence that point to a large, cataclysmic watery event in the past. In the next article we will look at several more lines of evidence.
{1} See video DVD by Andrew Snelling-Rock Strata, Fossils, and the Flood, 2007. Answers in Genesis-USA.
{2} see video: Geological Evidences for Very Rapid Strata Deposition in the Grand Canyon, Dr. Steven Austin, 2006, for much more detail on Dr. Austin’s research.
[3] Austin, Dr. Steven, Grand Canyon: Monument to Catastrophe, Institute for Creation Research, Santee, California, 1994, pp. 26-28.
[4} B. Heyler and C. M. Poplin, 1998, The Fossils of Montceau-Les-Mines, Scientific American, 259, (3) 70-76.
{5} Snelling, Dr. Andrew, Earth’s Catastrophic Past, Institute for Creation Research, Dallas, TX, Volume 2 , pp. 497-498.
{6} Ibid, page 498.
{7} Ibid, page 504-507. Also see L.R. Brand and T. Tang, 1991, Fossil vertebrate footprints in the Coconino Sandstone (Permian)of northern Arizona, evidence for underwater origin. Geology, 19: 1201-1204.
{8} Snelling, Earth’s Catastrophic Past,Volume 2, pp. 520=522. He gives many other examples of these types on pages 519-530.
[9] Theodore Cockerell, “The Fossil Flora and Fauna of the Florissant Shales,” University of Colorado Studies 3 (1906): 157–176; Theodore Cockerell, “The Fossil Flora of Florissant, Colorado,” Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, 24 (1908): 71–110.
[10]Reginald Sprigg, “Early Cambrian (?) Jellyfishes from the Flinders Ranges, South Australia,” Transactions of the Royal Society of South Australia 71, no. 2 (1947): 212–224; M. F. Glaessner and M. Wade, “The Late Precambrian Fossils from Ediacara, South Australia,” Palaeontology 9 (1966): 599–628.
[11] Snelling, Dr. Andrew, Earth’s Catastrophic Past, Institute for Creation Research, Dallas, TX, Volume 2 , pp. 531-575.
[12] Oard, Michael, The Missoula Flood Controversy and the Genesis Flood, Creation Research Society, Chino Valley, AZ, 2004.
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