Rock Layers Don't Play Fair

A chart of major layers of strata (sedimentary rock) at the Grand Canyon.

If you’re a secular scientist who believes that our planet is billions of years old, earth’s layers of rock don’t play fair.

If you know anything about geology, you’ve probably heard of the Geological Column. It is a non-existent extrapolation of all the rock layers of earth from top to bottom based on how geologists believe they fit together. Nowhere on the planet can all these layers be found together one on top of the other. Scientists have put the Geological Column together by analyzing different layers of rock all over the earth and fitting them into a hypothetical Geological Column where they seem to fit best. They do this based on the type of rock a particular layer is made of, what kind of rock the layers above and below it are, what kinds of fossils they tend to find in those rock layers, and if all else fails, they date it with radiometric dating. But trusting this extrapolated column of “earth’s geological history” presents a major problem when you look at what’s between these layers of rock.

Secular Science Says

Rock layers are believed to form over a long period of time one on top of the other with each layer usually representing hundreds of millions of years. As already mentioned, nowhere on earth can all of the layers in the Geological Column shown in textbooks actually be found. Scientists believe and state that this is because of erosion washing the missing layers away.

This is a difficult issue though, because it means that erosion has to be very particular about what rock layers it completely erodes away and what layers it leaves behind. You can visit two different locations within miles of each other and find millions of years worth of sediment completely missing in one place and present in another. It’s as if nature neatly carved away millions of years of accumulated rock in one small section and missed the same sediment formation just a few miles away.

The Grand Canyon is a great example of this. There is about 250 millions years worth of sediment completely missing from where it should be, according to the Geological Column. The layers of earth are stacked up one on top of the other and yet in the very middle of this, expected layers simply aren’t there. Evolutionists and uniformitarianists (people who believe the earth is billions of years old and that all these layers of rock represent ages of the earth and hundreds of millions of years of time) blame this on erosion. It might be better to call it “selective erosion” because it had to have wiped out millions of years worth of sediment in some locations and left it entirely untouched in others. This is extremely inconvenient and also not very likely, especially across short distances where this phenomenon is very clearly noticeable.

Making matters that much worse for geologists is that many of the rock layers they study have extremely smooth lines between them, as if someone piled the different sediments up and neatly flattened them together without any erosion at all taking place between them. All across the planet, layers of sediment can be found neatly laid down with a clean straight line between them. This should NOT be the case if you believe in millions of years of time having laid these sediments down. Erosion and time should have made the tops of each layer very messy and wavy, not clean and straight like they are.

Unconformities

In geology, there are names for how the layers of rock meet up with each other. Think of these lines in the layers of earth like a border between one rock layer and another one. Some of these lines are messy, indicating that erosion ate away at the top layer of rock before another layer covered it, and some are very clean, indicating that no erosion took place before it was covered by the next layer of sediment. When the top of a rock layer (which has since been covered by another layer of rock) has been noticeably eroded, the border between the rock layers is called an Unconformity.

If you look at the graph of the Grand Canyon rock layers at the start of this write up, you’ll see that some borders between layers are messy and wavy while many others are not. Those messy borders are Unconformities. Many of the rock layers at the Grand Canyon, however, are NOT messy but instead show no signs of erosion at all. This is true all over the planet where many layers of sediment have a border line between them that is neatly horizontal and does not show signs of age or erosion.

When there are no signs of erosion between layers of sediment, it causes a major problem for geologists who adhere to the official Geological Column found in textbooks (but not found on earth). Millions of years of time is supposed to have passed as each layer of sediment was laid down, and yet there are tons of layers all over the earth that show absolutely no sign of erosion taking place between these rock layers, something that should be very easily noticeable!

Making matters worse is when geologists find very neat border lines in areas where entire layers of the Geological Column are completely missing! To explain these situations, geologists have to assume that erosion must have entirely stripped the missing layers away and left behind little or no sign of it having happened. To explain this, geologists call on the term “Paraconformity”. A Paraconformity is when two layers of sediment rock show no signs of erosion between them, but where geologists assume there must have been MAJOR erosion despite the lack of evidence, because rock layers that SHOULD be there are not. Paraconformities are also called Unconformities, NOT because the layers themselves show evidence of erosion (which an Unconformity is), but because layers of rock that are supposed to be there are not.

The Flood Explanation

Geologists who believe in the Biblical Genesis flood that covered the whole earth with water can mostly easily explain these mysterious layers of sediment without having to invent “Paraconformities” in order to explain away the lack of erosion evidence. Geologists who believe in the global flood attribute most layers of sediment to the work of ocean currents and massive scale erosion as water rose, covered the land, mixed it up and laid down tons and tons of soft sediment all across the planet before the water finally receded into the ocean basins we have today. The processes of the water rising then subsiding would have moved vast quantities of sediment very large distances, resulting in layers of sediment that can be found covering large swaths of land. To see this sort of thing in action, just look at examples of massive floods in our world today, and you’ll see that they can very quickly lay down thick layers of fresh sediment, even multiple layers, depending on the types of sediment the flood waters ripped up and how the flood moved through an area.

So when a geologist who believes in the flood looks at the layers of sediment, he doesn’t see millions of years of time, he sees a stage of the cataclysmic flood described in the Bible book of Genesis. And when a geologist who believes in the Biblical flood sees a “Paraconformity”, it doesn’t baffle him at all. Instead, the geologist sees such Paraconformities as being evidence that these layers of sediment were laid down very fast one on top of the other. There are no signs of erosion because there WAS no erosion or millions of years between sediment layers. In the places where there are REAL Unconformities (erosion between layers), that simply shows that there WAS erosion between one layer and the next, just like the evidence shows.

Flood geologists do not have to have an invented “Paraconformity” that has little or no evidence of existing, because they believe exactly what the signs and evidence show us, without having to make up excuses for why the layers of sediment don’t fit a preconceived idea of geological time.

Sedimentary Layers Caused By Water

(A picture of the Grand Canyon I took when I visited the incredible natural wonder of the world in spring 2007. It really is an astonishing mind-blowing place! Note the clean horizontal layering in the sediment in both the near by section and the distance sections of the canyon. This is an extremely common effect when flood waters lay down fresh sediment and does NOT happen over millions of years because too much erosion and change happens in that time to allow for such neat smooth layering.)

Intro

      I’m about to let you in on a “deep dark secret” of geology. Secular scientists insist that the Genesis Flood described in the Bible book of Genesis is absolutely ridiculous. No such world-wide flood has ever occurred, as far as they are concerned. The countless cultural references across numerous unique cultures all over the planet that recount legends of a world-wide flood survived by a limited number of people on a great boat (like Noah and his family described in the Bible), means nothing, they believe, and insist. But you may be surprised to realize that even scientists attribute much of the strata (Sedimentary Rock) laid down across the surface of our planet to have been formed by large bodies of water! These very same layers of Sedimentary Rock (formed mostly by water) also contain almost ALL fossils of once living organisms that were buried when the soft sediment was being laid down. These sediment layers and the fossils formed within them are EXACTLY what you would expect if a world-wide cataclysmic flood like the one described in Genesis were to take place.

      Surprised!? I was. Secular scientists and Creationists agree on a lot of the same processes that formed the many layers of strata (soft sediments and hard sedimentary rock) across our planet, but most people have absolutely NO idea just how well the Biblical Genesis Flood explains these layers of the earth. The biggest difference between secular scientists and creationists when it comes to describing the laying down of strata across the surface of the planet is simply a matter of time. Secular scientists say it took hundreds of millions of slow gradual processes while creationists say that the vast majority of it happened very fast, all within the last 4000 years or so (much less than hundreds of millions of years). Ultimately the big issue here is the world-view (or bias) of the scientist. Secular scientists believe in a billions of years old earth while creationists believe in an earth that probably isn’t much older than 6000 to 10,000 years (at most). Because of the bias of each group, they pre-determine (before even considering much of the evidence) that the many layers of strata took a short or long amount of time to form.

      The shocking thing is that while secular scientists say that these sedimentary layers were formed over hundreds of millions of years, they attribute these layers mostly to having been formed by water, exactly as the creationists also believe, but with completely different time scales in mind.

Sediment

      There are two very important things to understand about the earth’s layers of strata (sediment) before we continuing.

      Sediment is usually caused by soft earth (mud, sand, etc.) being laid down through physical and chemical erosion. Wind and temperature changes of rock cause weathering, but the most common way to form sediment is by way of water. Water erodes the ground and carries bits of sediment long distances and lays it down in neat smooth layers, most commonly at the edges of lakes and oceans where rivers carrying the sediment end. Beaches and shorelines are also prime candidates for forming sediment because of all the minerals and sediment particles in the water there. Sediment is laid down as many small bits of earth (like sand) collected and piled on top of each other. When the water moves across the sediment, it smoothes it out and mixes it up, since it is still soft. When the water evaporates, calms, or goes elsewhere, the soft sediment hardens and becomes solid sedimentary rock, preserving anything buried within that sediment (fossils).

      Almost all fossils are found exclusively in the many layers of sediment across the world. As we already know, sediment is laid down mostly by water. Fossils can only form when a living organism is buried very quickly after death or even while it is alive because if it is NOT buried immediately, the chemicals within it start breaking down the organism and destroying it (it rots away). Because of this, unless a special condition exists (such as an organism being entombed in soft mud or sand), a living organism will not form a fossil. It must be buried in soft sediment within a few hours of death, at most. That’s right! A fossil can’t form unless the organism is buried immediately in loose wet sediment! Fossils are very rare, however, because the conditions to make them are very precise. People who believe in a world-wide cataclysmic flood fully expect that the many layers of sedimentary rock all over the planet would contain thousands and thousands of fossils because these creatures were all buried and drowned in a massive devastating flood. Secular scientists, on the other hand, believe that most of these same fossils and the sediments that encase them were formed by sudden small events across millions and millions of years, usually involving water.

      Sediment, water, drowned and buried living organisms, fossils… Both creation scientists and secular scientists agree on these processes but both disagree strongly on the time scale involved.

The Grand Canyon

      The Grand Canyon is one of the best examples of this debate between secular science and Bible-believing scientists because all of the big pieces and evidences in the debate can be found there. The Grand Canyon is also one of the most amazing geological formations on our planet! What makes the Grand Canyon so great for studying geology and the layers of sediment is that the canyon runs straight through many different layers of earth all the way down to very hard metamorphic and igneous rock beneath (the bottom thickest and hardest layers of the earth’s crust). It’s as if nature carved this giant canyon out to give geologists a perfect natural playground.

(The blue layers are all flat horizontal layers of sedimentary rock. Bible-believing geologists believe that almost all of these "blue" layers {in the graph} were laid down during and just after the Genesis Flood and do NOT represent hundreds of millions of years each. Note that many of these layers are completely flat and even on top of each other, showing absolutely NO sign of ANY erosion having taken place between them being laid down despite supposedly millions of years between each layer {according to secular geologists}. That's just not possible.)

So Much Water!

      Fossils of seashells are found everywhere on the planet throughout most layers of sediment. This is not surprising since seashells are very hard and ideal for becoming fossilized. But it’s interesting to note that no matter where you go on the planet, even up to the tops of the highest mountains, you can find fossils of seashells, as if at one time the entire planet were covered in ocean! Secular scientists actually agree that at one time all land was covered in water, seas and oceans, so they too have a good (and watery) explanation for such a strange occurrence. Of course they believe such things happened over millions of years whereas Bible-believing scientists believe most of it happened over a short period of time, during the great world-wide flood and the few thousand years since.

      The Grand Canyon also contains tons of fossils that belong to sea-dwelling creatures such as clams, shellfish, fish and amphibians (turtles, toads, etc. that like both land and water). To everyone this is very good evidence that the layers of sediment all around (and at) the Grand Canyon were formed mostly by water carrying vast quantities of soft sediment from place to place. Many of the layers of sediment found at the Grand Canyon stretch across much of the North American continent to different levels of depth. Because of this, scientists on both sides of the debate agree that the sediment had to have been laid down by vast seas that spanned much of the continent (or more, in the case of a global flood). These great seas, especially in shallower areas, buried and fossilized many sea creatures for us to dig up thousands (or hundreds of millions) of years later.

      Let’s take a look at what general science tells us about the formation of the Grand Canyon’s sedimentary layers. Below is a long list of instances where the geological explanations for how the sediments and rock layers of the Grand Canyon formed CONSTANTLY mention seas, shorelines, and water. This is because most sediments are formed thanks to water eroding and transporting the material.

Wikipedia: Geology of the Grand Canyon Area

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geology_of_the_Grand_Canyon_area)

“The nearly 40 major sedimentary rock layers exposed in the Grand Canyon and in the Grand Canyon National Park area range in age from about 200 million to nearly 2 billion years old. Most were deposited in warm, shallow seas and near ancient, long-gone sea shores in western North America.”

“Eventually, this sunken region of Laurentia was flooded with a shallow seaway that extended from at least present-day Lake Superior to Glacier National Park in Montana to the Grand Canyon and the Uinta Mountains. The resulting Grand Canyon Supergroup of sedimentary units is composed of nine varied geologic formations that were laid down from 1.2 billion and 740 million years ago in this sea.”

“The oldest section of the supergroup is the Unkar Group. It was laid down in an offshore environment. The first formation to be laid down in the Unkar Group was the Bass Limestone. A wave-eroded gravel that later lithified into a basal conglomerate is known as the Hotauta Member of the Bass Limestone.^[12] The Bass Limestone was deposited in a shallow sea near the coast as a mix of limestone, sandstone, and shale.”

“Nankoweap Formation is around 1050 million years old and is not part of a group.^[16] This rock unit is made of coarse-grained sandstone, and was deposited in a shallow sea on top of the eroded surface of the Cardenas Lava.”

“All formations in the Chuar Group were deposited in coastal and shallow sea environments about 1000 to 700 million years ago.”

“An ocean started to return to the Grand Canyon area from the west about 550 million years ago.^[9] As its shoreline moved east, the ocean began to concurrently deposit the three formations of the Tonto Group.”

“Tapeats Sandstone averages 525 million years old and is made of cliff-derived medium- to coarse-grained sand and conglomerate that was deposited on an ancient shore (see 3a in figure 1).^[10] Ripple marks are common in the upper members of this dark brown thin-bedded layer.”

“Bright Angel Shale… was mostly deposited as mud just offshore…”

“Streams were the likely cause but marine scour may be to blame. Either way, these depressions were filled with freshwater limestone about 385 million years ago in the Middle Devonian in a formation that geologists call the Temple Butte Limestone (see 4a in figure 1).”

“Fossils of animals with backbones are found in this formation; bony plates from freshwater fish in the eastern part and numerous marine fish fossils in the western part.”

“Redwall… was laid down in a retreating shallow tropical sea near the equator during 40 million years of the early-to-middle Mississippian.^[36] Many fossilized crinoids, brachiopods, bryozoans, horn corals, nautiloids, and sponges, along with other marine organisms such as large and complex trilobites have been found in the Redwall.”

“Supai Group was deposited in late Mississippian, through the Pennsylvanian and into the early Permian time, some 320 million to 270 million years ago.^[38] Both marine and non-marine deposits of mud, silt, sand and calcareous sediments were laid down on a broad coastal plain similar to the Texas Gulf Coast of today.”

“Next in the geologic column is the 200-foot (60 m)-thick Toroweap Formation (see 6c in figure 1).^[40] It consists of red and yellow sandstone and shaly gray limestone interbedded with gypsum.^[40] The formation was deposited in a warm, shallow sea as the shoreline transgressed (invaded) and regressed (retreated) over the land.”

A Matter Of Time

      As you can see, most of the sedimentary layers in the Grand Canyon region are believed to have been formed by the work of water completely or partially covering massive swaths of the area, often times the entire mid-western United States. Secular geologists believe that these seas, oceans, lakes, swamps, deltas and rivers came and went repeatedly over hundreds of millions of years, resulting in the layers of sediment we see today being laid down one and a time on top of each other. This same process is used to explain the vast majority of sediment all over our planet! In other words, the entire planet was repeatedly covered in vast quantities of water, but all at different times and never enough to be considered a “global flood”. Again, it comes down to time scale.

      Bible-believing geologists believe that most sediment was laid down by the cataclysmic fossil-creating flood described in Genesis and the processes of a post-flood world. Secular scientists believe that large bodies of water DID lay down these very same sediments, but that they happened very slowly over millions and millions of years. The flood provides a good explanation for the sudden burial and drowning of tons of living organisms whereas the secular theories have to suggest many isolated landslide and flood events to account for those same fossils.

      Secular scientists will tell you that the Grand Canyon is a prime example of an ancient earth because it took hundreds of millions of years for all those layers of sediment to form. Bible-believing geologists believe that much of those same sedimentary layers formed within the short time frame of the Genesis flood, about a year or two. The science works for both because both groups pretty much believe that the very same processes created the sediment and the fossils they hold. The only significant difference is the debate over how long it all took to form.

      Large floods have been proven to move massive quantities of sediment great distances in a very short amount of time, so to speculate that such an event on a global scale could lay down the majority of today’s sedimentary layers is not a far stretch of the imagination. Water also very easily creates a “layer cake” formation of different types of sediment, the waves and currents shifting the sediments enough to make very neat (clean) layers form one on top of the other. However, to believe that all these layers were laid down so perfectly and neatly horizontally without any (or very few) signs of erosion between them across hundreds of millions of years is very implausible.

Massive Whale Fossil Graveyard In Chile

The Blaze: Giant Whale Graveyard Found in Chilean Desert 
"But how did they get there? That’s the question paleontologists are trying to figure out.
Maybe they became disoriented and beached themselves. Maybe they were trapped in a lagoon by a landslide or a storm. Maybe they died there over a period of a few millennia. Somehow they ended up right next to one another, many just meters (yards) apart, entombed as the shallow sea floor was driven upward by geological forces and transformed into the driest place on the planet."

How did they get there? Easy! The same way most of the massive fossil graveyards got there. Two words. Genesis Flood.

"the Chilean fossils stand out for their staggering number and beautifully preserved bones. More than 75 whales have been discovered so far — including more than 20 perfectly intact skeletons.

“I think they died more or less at the same time,” said Nicholas Pyenson, curator of fossil marine mammals at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History."

One of the main theories of the scientists investigating this fossil graveyard is that the whales (75 of them) got caught in a huge landslide. This "local but large landslide" explanation pops up constantly as an explanation for many of the world's fossil graveyards because fossils require a very special set of circumstances to form.

A lot of people don't realize just how fragile and easily destroyed a potential fossil is. For a fossil of a biological creature to form, that creature has to have been completely buried mere moments after its death or while it's still alive. This is because in a matter of hours bacteria and other organisms start to attack a recently dead creature and break it apart. Also, the only way a fossil can form is if it is completely covered by sediment. Over many years the bones then get transformed through chemical reactions within the sediment and become hard preserved fossils. Bone fossils of once living creatures cannot form any other way.

While secular scientists are shocked by large fossil graveyards all over the planet, scientists that believe in the trustworthiness of the Holy Bible are not at all surprised by such finds. The great world wide flood described in Genesis is the perfect explanation for fossil graveyards and for many of the changes to the world's geology since. Here are just a couple reasons why...

Sediment:  Sediment covers most of the earth and is mostly formed and transported by way of water, wind and glaciers. Sediment is small particles of earth or sand that have been compressed or dried out together to form Sedimentary Rock. Since most sediment is formed through water, the global flood described in the first book of the Holy Bible, Genesis, is a perfect explanation for much of the sediment covering the earth's surface. In the flood, water covered the whole earth turning mass quantities of soil into different layers of sediment in a matter of a single year. Secular scientists on the other hand, believe that the earth's sediment has been very slowly building up for 2 billion years.

Sediment Holds Fossils:  Pretty much all fossils of once living things are buried in Sedimentary Rock. This is why so many of the fossil explanations from secular scientists go to the "died in a landslide" theory. The creature that becomes a fossil must be buried in sediment right away for it to be preserved. This means that it has to be completely covered in loose sediment that over time turns into solid rock. Thus landslides and flash floods are the best explanation for fossils. This is why the Genesis Flood is the best explanation for the vast majority of fossils we find today. In the global flood millions and millions of living things were drowned and buried in a cataclysmic upheaval that moved huge quantities of water across the land. Have you ever seen pictures or movie clips of a flood? Flood water carries tons of sedimentary debris as it rips across the ground and lays down tons of that soft muddy sediment all over the place, often times partially or completely burying anything it comes across, whether alive or not.  

While secular scientists use small localized floods and landslides over millions of years to explain most fossils, Christians can easily explain the earth's sediments and the fossils buried within as having been laid down suddenly and dramatically by the world wide flood described in Genesis.

When the water receded, millions of creatures were buried in soft sediment all over the earth. That soft sediment dried out and turned into hard Sedimentary Rock, forever preserving the bones of the creatures that suddenly died and were just as suddenly buried. This means that many of the fossils found today were not buried across hundreds of millions of years of time, but were instead buried very quickly in a matter of a single cataclysmic year. Nicholas Pyenson theorizes that the whale fossils, “died more or less at the same time.” He's right, they did, probably in the global flood.