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In this article in the series we will address some of the common geological objections to the reality of Noah’s Flood that we haven’t already covered in the previous four articles.
Objections to the Flood fall into two main categories. First, there are objections concerning the geological evidence, some of which we have covered already, and more will be covered in this article, such as , dinosaur nests and tracks in multiple layers, varves, chalk beds, petrified trees, and other formations that supposedly must take millions of years to form.
Second are the objections to the Ark itself, including supposed problems with boarding and caring for all the animal passengers, as well as the idea of such a large wooden boat and the conditions on board, and also how plants and fish would have survived during the flood . These doubts are certainly fueled, as mentioned before, by the “cartoonization” of Noah’s Ark, in illustrations for Sunday school and children’s books. How can people take the story seriously? Is it being un-intellectual to do so? Let’s take a closer look at some of these objections.
Objections concerning the geological evidence:
Question: Where did all the water come from, and where did it go? Did it have to be high enough to be over 7 miles deep to cover Mount Everest?
Answer: The water came from what is called in the Bible “the breaking up of the fountains of the great deep”, which in the Catastrophic Plate Tectonics (CPT) model discussed in the last article would be:
Violent supersonic steam jets propelled steam from the ocean floor and continental rift zones that go around the whole earth (the fountains of the great deep, Gen 6;). These steam jets from the splitting of the ocean floor pull along with them ocean water and carry it into the atmosphere where it eventually falls back to earth as intense global rain (the windows of heaven opened, Gen 6: ). Hot rock has water in it, and also interacts with ocean water to get steam and pull cold ocean water up with it.
As we also noted, the new ocean floor would be less dense and so sea level would rise, and at the end of the process as discussed under the CPT model, the ocean floor would then cool and sink down, causing the waters on the continents to drain off, back into the newly formed ocean basins. As far as Mount Everest is concerned, it would have been pushed up to it’s present height during or after the Flood, as even uniformitarian geologists acknowledge that mountain building occurred as a result of the collision of tectonic plates. This is how they explain how marine fossils are found on top of Mt. Everest.
See article: How did the waters of Noah’s Flood drain off the continents?
Question: What about varves such as the Green River Formation? Aren’t they proven to be millions of years old?
Answer: Varves are thin layers of shale, also known as rhythmites, that are deposited in lakes such as in the Green River Formation of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming. Each layer has been interpreted as annual, and since there are millions of layers this formation has been interpreted as being millions of years old. Each layer is thought to be a summer/winter cycle with a darker and lighter portion being the winter and summer deposit, respectively.
Varves
The main difficulty with this dating method is that it is impossible to know if the layers are annual or not. Many other things such as variation in sediment load and flow from the streams feeding the lake would cause a layer of larger particles followed by the finer particles which would leave similar looking layers. Other possible causes are changes in type of sediment and rate of accumulation of these, caused not only by varying current but climate changes such as periodic storms. In fact, they are called rhythmites precisely because of this uncertainty that they are annual layers.[1]
The Green River Formation has some additional problems besides the difficulty in determining whether the layers are annual. Andrew Snelling comments: “…Near Kemmerer, Wyoming, two tuff beds in the Green River Formation …are separated by 8.3 to22.6 cm of shale laminae at two different localities, and the number of laminae between the two tuff beds varies from 1,089 to 1,566, with an overall increase in the number of laminae (up to 35 percent) and laminae thickness from the basin center to the basin margin. The organic content of the shale laminae also changes, so these laminae cannot represent annual depositional layers, as there should be the same number of varves between the two volcanic ash layers, and the laminae should be of consistent thickness and organic content if that were the case.” [2]
There is also a problem with how fossil fish, birds, and other fossils could have been so meticulously preserved in the Green Formation under the varve model: “It has been shown experimentally that, even on the muddy bottoms of a marsh in oxygen-poor conditions, fish carcasses decay quite rapidly, all flesh having decayed, and even the bones becoming disconnected, after only six and a half days…birds have hollow bones that tend not to be well preserved in the fossil record, so how then did these birds lay dead on the bottom of a lake protected from scavenging and decay for thousands of years, until a sufficient number of very thin annual varve layers had built up to cover them?” [3}
For more articles on varves, see: Varves: Proof for an Old Earth?,
Refuting Biologos: Do Japanese Varves Prove an Old Earth?
Do Varves, Tree Rings, and Radiocarbon measurements prove an old earth? (technical article)
In summary, these shales likely accumulated rapidly.
Question: But don’t many layers in rocks such as in the Grand Canyon mean that the rocks were laid down over millions of years, and not rapidly by a Flood?
Answer: We have already looked at some evidences for rapid deposit of Grand Canyon layers in the 2nd and 3rd installments of this series, such as flat contacts between strata, bent rock layers, the nautiloids in the Redwall limestone as well as many other examples of rapidly buried plants and animals, rapid and widespread deposition of rock layers such as Ayers Rock, polystrate fossils, and others. But how about the laminae in the rocks themselves?
The Redwall Limestone with the extensive nautiloid formation, as well as the sandstone formations such as the Coconino Sandstone, were discussed in the previous article (Part 2 of series. The shale layers in the Grand Canyon are said to have been laid down by calm waters. However, there are several formations of known young age that contain laminae similar to those in the Grand Canyon shales. For example, Hurricane Donna in 1960 flooded the Florida Coast and left a layer of mud 15 cm thick with many fine laminae. A 1965 flood in Bijou Creek in Colorado produced similar fine laminae [4} Indeed, laboratory experiments in which laminated rock was disintegrated into it’s constituent particles was redeposited in a circular flume, both in water and dry, and reproduced the original fine horizontal laminae rapidly, not in millions of years. The most well known of these experiments were performed by French scientist Guy Berthault [5].
Mount St. Helens and the geological formations caused by its eruption have provided powerful evidence that thin layers in rock can be formed very rapidly. Rivers of hot volcanic ash known to geologists as pyroclastic flows, plus mudflows, and river floods, all left formations containing the very same type of layers we find in Grand Canyon rocks and other formations in a matter of weeks, days, or even hours [6].
Canyons that are smaller versions of Grand Canyon in their geologic features were cut rapidly, in weeks or days. For example, two years after the eruption of the volcano, Spirit lake breached its mud and debris dam and carved several canyons, including one called the “Little Grand Canyon” because it resembles about a 1/40th scale model of the Grand Canyon, with the same types of geological features. So rock layers can be laid down rapidly, and canyons can be cut rapidly as well, neither requiring millions of years [7]. Geologists are now considered different explanations for the formation of Grand Canyon other than the traditional one that the Colorado River carved it over 70 million years. In fact, a breached dam type event caused by a large lake is one of the possible causes of the Grand Canyon’s formation. He also describes other canyons and how water can carve into solid rock once it reaches a critical volume and speed.[8]
Geologist Steven Austin has done some major research on Mt. Saint Helens, which he shares in his book co-authored by Geologist John Morris, entitled Footprints in the Ash. [6].
For other articles on Mt. Saint Helens, see: Learning the Lessons of Mt. Saint Helens-how its eruption backs biblical history
Geologic Catastrophe and the Young Earth.
Little Grand Canyon (video)
For articles on Grand Canyon, see: Don’t Grand Canyon Rocks Showcase Deep Time?
Controversy over the Uniformitarian Age of the Grand Canyon
When and how did the Grand Canyon form?
For an alternative model to the breached dam theory on the origin of Grand Canyon , see:A Receding Flood Scenario for the origin of Grand Canyon
Question: How about the fossil forests at Yellowstone Park? Aren’t they proof of at least hundreds of thousands of years for the earth’s age?
Answer: A well-known petrified forest in Yellowstone Park has a series of over 25 layers of petrified trees in both upright and horizontal positions. These layers have traditionally been interpreted as a successive series of forests, each needed centuries to grow before being buried by volcanic eruptions. The entire sequence of fossil forests would therefore seem to take many tens of thousands of years, much more than the biblical chronology allows. Nearby Specimen ridge has over 50 layers of these petrified trees. How can this be reconciled?
It turns out again that Mount Saint Helens was the perfect laboratory for studying this phenomenon. Also, there are features of the Yellowstone and Specimen Ridge deposits that are incompatible with the idea that the trees were buried in place.
The Specimen Ridge trees have their logs, branches, and twigs oriented with their axes in a preferred direction, as if by a current. Fossils in the layers come from more than one type of habitat. All the trees are missing complete root systems, showing instead that they were snapped off at the roots at or near ground level. In other words, they seem to be in growth position, but not in growth location.
Creation scientists wanted to study the ring patterns of the trees. If they did not match up well, this would indicate they were in separate forests that grew at different times, but if the growth ring patterns did match, this would indicate that all the trees had lived at the same time, and had come from a common source. Sure enough, the tree rings in these forests were compared and found that the trees had matching signature patterns, rather than very different patterns if they were separate forests living at different times. A better explanation is that they were in one forest, and were broken off by successive mudflows and deposited in different layers one on top of each other. [9]
See: The Yellowstone Petrified Forests by Dr. John Morris
Logs on Spirit Lake
Mt. Saint Helens uprooted trees with successive mudflows and deposited them in Spirit Lake, in the same type of successive layers, with some trees vertical because their heavier root systems sink first, oriented with the current, and broken off at the root base. Also, some trees floated in the lake, and became waterlogged eventually, and sunk down, with their heavy truncated root balls first, and came to rest on top of the trees that were already buried. Dr. Austin and Dr. Morris confirmed this both by scuba diving and sonar. [10] The volcano continued to be active and more debris was deposited in the lake, and the upright trees were buried in separate layers, even though they came from the same forest around Mt. Saint Helens. If we hadn’t know about Mt. Saint Helens eruption, we might have interpreted these layers as successive forests as in Yellowstone or Specimen Ridge. And apparently, the long age sign on the road in Yellowstone has been removed, many scientist now considering and agreeing that the trees may have all come from the same forest!
See article: The Yellowstone Petrified Forests-evidence of catastrophe
Also, petrified wood does not have to take millions of years to form. All it takes are certain conditions, such as silica-rich ground waters percolating through volcanic ash. There are many examples of man made wooden objects that have been petrified within a few years. I remember two different signs at Petrified ForestNational Park in Arizona, one that said the wood took eon’s of time to petrify, but another that stated: “The process of turning logs to stone may have only taken a few years”! So the evidence is forcing some parks to change their exhibits.
Question: How can there be so many layers with dinosaur tracks and nests throughout the geologic column? Dinosaurs couldn’t run around underwater! And how about raindrop impressions and mudcracks? Don’t all of these require surfaces exposed to air for a length of time rather than being continuously submerged in water?
Answer: The evidence of dinosaur tracks and dinosaur nests throughout the rock layers only requires that there be periods where the water levels were fairly shallow or that there were periods of time where land was briefly exposed. The idea that the Flood was simply an inundation of water without any changes in water levels or land topography locally, is too simplistic. There is evidence for much tectonic activity which would have caused the land surface to rise and fall in various places and so a given land surface could be briefly exposed, long enough for dinosaurs to take refuge there and leave tracks, which were later covered by sediment when the water levels rose again or the land sank further. Just the tidal effects of the moon alone would cause local fluctuations in water levels even as the overall water level of the Flood rose. See articles: Fossilized Footprints a Dinosaur Dilemma
These brief exposures of land would also account for raindrop impressions and other surface features. In fact, these impressions and the tracks could only be exposed for fairly brief time or they would erode away. (see articles; Surface Features require Rapid Deposition, and Are Soft-Sediment Trace Fossils (Ichnofossils) a time problem for the Flood? (technical)
Furthermore, the dinosaur fossils that made the tracks are usually found in a layer well above the tracks themselves, as if they died when the waters returned and so were buried above. The tracks are not the meandering type of trackways that would be found if the dinosaurs were feeding, but straightaway tracks as if running or fleeing something. The tracks are unusual in shape and some resemble swim tracks that would be difficult to form if the dinosaurs were on land. (See article: A Stampede of Swimming Dinosaurs.
Also, tracks are found for the same species of dinosaur in the same locations in layers that are millions of years apart according to the conventional dating of those layers. What are the odds that the same species of dinosaur millions of years later would leave tracks in exactly the same area, exhibiting the same unusual straightaway pattern?
Dinosaur nests that have been found actually give evidence that the eggs within were laid under stressful conditions in a wet muddy surface (see article:Dinosaur nests reinterpreted Michael Oard also has written a book Dinosaur Challenges and Mysteries, addressing many of the difficulties raised about dinosaur fossils including tracks, nests, eggs, and scavenged bones. [11}
A larger problem for paleontologists to explain today is why dinosaurs are found with marine fossils, a phenomena readily explained by the Flood model [12] Many geologists are also realizing now that the evidence favors catastrophic deposition of dinosaur fossils, by a series of floods. However, the evidence also shows volcanic eruptions at the same time as the dinosaurs were buried by flood waters, even in areas where no volcano is near today. What could cause these multiple, coincidental floods and eruptions at the same time? What could cause rivers and drainage patterns over large areas to remain unchanged so that the animals were buried in the same location many times? The answer, of course, is one Flood with accompanying volcanic activity [13]
As for the mud cracks, geologists have found evidence that the cracks found in water laid rocks have features which mean they could not have been made from the ground drying out, but from the soft rock being squeezed up from below while buried and not exposed at the surface. These features are called syneresis cracks and are common in formations such as the Hermit Shale in the Grand Canyon [14} also see article: Mud Cracks and the Flood
Finally, not all geologists who believe that the Flood happened think that the entire rock column was laid down by the Flood. There would have been many residual catastrophes, storms, and the like for centuries afterwards until things settled down to where they are today geologically. Some put the Flood/post Flood boundary at different levels, but all realize that fossils require rapid burial before they are scavenged or rot. And it seems that the extent of rock formations become more local in the geologic column as we get closer to the surface, which would indicate post-Flood events that were more local.
See articles: Post Flood World, Continuing Catastrophes-Post Flood World, A Dark and Stormy World
For an alternative model that has several post flood catastrophes but still maintains a young earth, see article: A Brief Earth History by Barry Setterfield. Although his model is different from some of the other creationist models, it is good and healthy scientifically to have several models for comparison. The truth may lie in one of these models, or in a combination of features of parts or all of them.
Question: What about “evaporites”, which are salt formations believed to be formed by slow evaporation? What about chalk beds which form from the gradual settling of the shells of dead microscopic marine organisms? How about tree-ring dating ? Finally, how about the caves in limestone, don’t caves have to form slowly?
Answer: All of these have been used to supposedly prove that the earth must be much older than the biblical chronology allows. Let’s take a brief look at each of them:
Evaporites:
“Evaporites” refer to large salt deposits that have been found around the world, that have been assumed to have been formed by a slow process of evaporation from seas and salt water lakes. At today’s rates, these formations would take hundreds of thousands of years to form. But again, the key factor is the assumption of uniformitarianism, that ancient salt deposits formed the same way as modern deposits where the rate of evaporation can be measured.
However, there are differences between the modern and ancient salt deposits. The evaporite formations show sedimentation features characteristic of being deposited rapidly in water, such as produced by turbidity currents [15]. However, there is another way they could be produced rapidly. Volcanic and hydrothermal waters are usually saline, and when they mix with cold water the sudden drop in temperature causes the salt to precipitate out of the solution. In fact this hydrothermal “precipitite” model answers many questions left unexplained by the evaporite model, such as the different proportions of salt minerals in these deposits, indicators of high temperature deposition, association with volcanic deposits, the purity of the deposits, and several others {16} Non creationist science writer Richard Milton commented on the precipitation model:
“…no modern sea or lake is presently forming evaporite beds in any way comparable to these geological deposits, which are of immense thickness and great chemical purity… To deposit even a one-meter thickness of salt over an area of only one kilometer would require the evaporation of many billions of tons of sea water…The purity of these deposits and the absence of material derived from the surrounding land point to them having come about not through evaporation…but through precipitation from chemically saturated waters…This idea is rejected by uniformitarians because it again implies a catastrophic origin and singular or rare events.” [17}
For another pair of articles for a different model of salt formation, see: A Magmatic model for the origin of large salt formations, and Clarifying the Magmatic model for the origin of salt deposits
Chalk Beds:
White cliffs of Dover
Chalk beds present a similar situation. These formations are found all over the world, one of the most famous being the White Cliffs of Dover in England. Chalk is made up of tiny shells of microorganisms made of calcite and calcium carbonate. Assuming again that the present is the key to the past, uniformitarian scientist look at places where these microorganism shells are accumulating on the ocean floor today, and notice that these shells take a long time to sink to the bottom and pile up. They then conclude that this is how the chalk beds were formed, and so must have taken millions of years. Furthermore, they claim that to form as much chalk as we see in the chalk beds, the number of organisms required would be more than could have lived on the earth at one time period.
However, creationists have responded in several ways. First, former director of the Geoscience Institute, Dr. Ariel Roth, calculates that with an optimal rate of carbonate production the chalk beds could have been produced in about 1,000 years. And geologist John Woodmorappe used Roth’s calculation to show that only 2.5-4.1% of the earth’s surface would need to be sea water with these microorganisms to produce the chalk required. These deposits could then either be pre or post-Flood. [18]
Another possible model is put forth by geologist Andrew Snelling, which would explain a rapid deposition of these chalk beds during the Flood itself. This would happen if huge “blooms” of these microorganisms were caused by the stirring up of nutrients, higher temperature, decaying fish, and turbulence of the water. These are the very conditions that cause such “blooms” today, and can cause “white water” conditions where the concentration of microorganisms increases by several orders of magnitude. Also, the purity of these chalk beds indicates rapid deposition since if they were deposited over a long period it would be hard for them to avoid contamination by other types of sediment. And continent wide deposits of this type would be explained by the greater extent of ocean waters covering the continents during the Flood.
Snelling also notes that large fossils with great detail preserved, are found in these chalk beds, implying rapid burial or they would have decayed. (see article: Chalk it up to a Global Flood)
Snelling comments on chalk bed formation in his book Earth’s Catastrophic Past: “Quite clearly , all of these necessary conditions for explosive blooming of coccolithophores would have been present during the cataclysmic global upheavals during the Flood. Torrential rain, sea turbulence, efish and other organic matter, and the violent volcanic eruptions, on the ocean floor, associated with the ‘fountains of the great deep’, and on land, both occurrences causing steam, carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, iron, and other elements to be spewed into the ocean waters and atmosphere, would have resulted in explosive blooms of coccolithophores on a large and repetitive scale in the oceans. Ocean water temperatures would have been higher toward the end of the Flood because of the heat released during the cataclysm, both from volcanic and magmatic activity…Furthermore, thermodynamic considerations would definitely not prevent a much larger biosphere being produced, because oceanic productivity 5 to 10 times greater than at present could be supported by the available sunlight if the nutrients were available.” [19]
So this problem has several possible solutions, none of which require millions of years.
Tree Ring dating:
Do tree rings prove an older earth than the bible allows? Actually, the oldest living trees are about 4,300 years old, which is what we would expect if the Flood happened 4-5,000 years ago. (see article: Why aren’t Earth’s Oldest Trees Older? ) Scientists try to extend the chronology by matching ring patterns with wood from dead trees, but this method requires many assumptions that are likely unreliable. Trees can form more than one growth ring in a year, and cross matching rings can be visually very difficult and subjective. See articles: Swedish Trees older than the universe? and also: Patriarchs of the Forest This is why scientists rely on radiocarbon more than on visual inspection, and we have already discussed the problems with radiocarbon dating See: Is a six to ten thousand year-old earth preposterous?. and associated link:Carbon 14 evidence for a recent Global Flood and a young earth
Cave formation:
How about limestone cave formation? Doesn’t this take a long time? Only if we assume that conditions are like the present day (uniformitarianism again), namely, that caves are dissolved by carbonic acid in groundwater at today’s rates of dissolution. Dr Snelling postulates an alternative: ” In the later stages of the Flood catastrophe, tectonic activity would have resulted in the folding and faulting of the strata in sedimentary basins, and as the Flood waters subsequently receded, massive sheet and then channelized erosion would have stripped many sedimentary layers overlying limestone beds and sometimes carving deeply into them. Both the tectonic movements and removal of the overburden would have eased the compaction pressures and opened up joints, catastrophically releasing fluids that had been under pressure…Thus, the mixture of now released acidic pore waters and the acidic hydrothermal fluids would have rapidly dissolved out huge caverns along joints and fractures, so that huge cave systems would have developed by rapid dissolution of the limestone beds at rates far exceeding today’s rates.” [20]
Snelling goes on to discuss how large amounts of groundwater containing sulfuric acid most likely dissolved huge caves such as Carlsbad Caverns, and cites evidence from Carlsbad and other locations. Sulfuric acid would dissolve these caves much more rapidly than the weaker carbonic acid. [21]
There are other items pertaining to the earth’s age that I will not take the space to cover. I will refer you to the following links and references for these:
Coral reef formation: See article by coral expert Dr. Robert Carter: “Ancient” Coral Growth Layers. Also see article How long does it take a coral reef to grow? Also see Dr. Ariel Roth, Origins-Linking Science and Scripture, Review and Herald Publishing, Hagerstown MD, 1998, pp. 235-241.
Oil: The Origin of Oil Also see Snelling, Earth’s Catastrophic Past, pp. 965-976.
Coal Formation: How did we get all this coal? Also see Snelling, Earth’s Catastrophic Past, pp. 959-963.
Stalactites and Stalagmites in caves: Origin of Limestone Caves-by geologist Dr. Steven Austin
As we have seen in this extensive blog article, the main difference between the conventional view of geological formation and the catastrophic Flood models is the assumption that today’s processes have always been going on in the same rate as in the past (uniformitarianism) But we have a book, the Bible, that provides an eyewitness account by the Creator that this assumption is false and that rapid, catastrophic processes were indeed involved in earth’s past.
In the final article in this series, we shall look at a few more objections to the Global Flood that have to do with the Ark itself and the survival of plants and animals.
[1]Snelling, Dr. Andrew, Earth’s Catastrophic Past, Institute for Creation Research, Dallas, TX, Volume 2 , pp. 945-946.
[2] Ibid., p. 950.)[3] Ibid., p. 951.-
[4] Ibid., p. 512.
[5] Austin, Steven, Grand Canyon, Monument to Catastrophe, Institute for Creation Research, Santee, CA, 1994, p. 38.
[6] Austin, Steven, and Morris, John, Footprints in the Ash, the Explosive story of Mount St. Helens, Master Books, Green Forest, AR, 2003, pp. 51-54.
[7] Ibid., pp 70-71.
[8] Austin, Steven, Grand Canyon, Monument to Catastrophe, Institute for Creation Research, Santee, CA, 1994, pp.83-107.
[9] Morris, John, The Young Earth, Revised and expanded edition, Master Books, Green Forest, AR, 2007, pp. 115-118.
[10] Austin, Steven, and Morris, John, Footprints in the Ash, the Explosive story of Mount St. Helens, Master Books, Green Forest, AR, 2003, pp. 40-41, 100-103
[11] Oard, Michael, Dinosaur Challenges and Mysteries, Creation Book Publishers, Atlanta, GA, 2011.
[12] Dinosaurs in Marine Sediments- a Worldwide Phenomenon by Dr. Tim Clarey, June 2015, Acts and Facts Magazine
[13] Dinosaur Disarray-Jonathan O’Brien, Creation.com, 2012.
[14] Austin, Steven, Grand Canyon, Monument to Catastrophe, Institute for Creation Research, Santee, CA, 1994, pp. 40-42.
[15] Snelling, Dr. Andrew, Earth’s Catastrophic Past, Institute for Creation Research, Dallas, TX, Volume 2 , p. 941.
[16] Ibid., pp. 940-944.
[17] Milton, Richard, Shattering the Myths of Darwinism, Park Street Press, Rochester, VT, 1997, p. 75. This author declared that he had no religious beliefs (p. 269), yet he could see many problems with the so-called evidence for Darwinism.
[18] Can Flood Geology Explain Thick Chalk Layers? By Dr. Andrew Snelling. For a post-Flood model for chalk formation, see A post-Flood solution to the Chalk Problem. For a more comprehensive and technical article that addresses several models, see Chalk and “Upper Cretaceous” Deposits are Part of the Noachian Flood
[19]Snelling, Dr. Andrew, Earth’s Catastrophic Past, Institute for Creation Research, Dallas, TX, Volume 2 , p. 928. For an extended discussion see pp. 925-930.
[20] Snelling, Dr. Andrew, Earth’s Catastrophic Past, Institute for Creation Research, Dallas, TX, Volume 2 , p. 978.
[21] Ibid., p. 979.
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