https://answersingenesis.org/geology/grand-canyon-facts/fossil-evidence-grand-canyon/
This will be the beginning of a string of discussions we will have concerning whether or not young earth claims stand up to scrutiny. Some excerpts:
Flood geologists can simply accept the directly observable evidence for rapid, continuous deposition, the more scientific choice at this point.
There’s further evidence to encourage Flood geologists to think that they have made the correct scientific choice. If individual sediment layers were hardened, uplifted, eroded, then covered again with water, it’s likely that the lower hardened layers would crack in a pattern different from cracks formed in layers above them, and produced and moved millions of years later. In other words, there should be “buried faults,” cracks through one layer not continuing into the layer above, but there are virtually no buried faults above the Precambrian in the Grand Canyon. There are faults, all right, but they cut continuously through the whole sequence of Paleozoic layers present (Cambrian, Mississippian, Pennsylvanian, and Permian), not just part of it. That evidence suggests the whole “layer cake” was formed rapidly and continuously, without a major break in time—just as you would expect from understanding the Grand Canyon in terms of what the Bible says about Noah’s flood.
What do you think?
Can someone explain why continuous faults through the entire rock would require rapid and recent sedimentation?
It would seem to me that millions of years of slow and even discontinuous sedimentation can produce a large stack of rock. If uplift started after all that rock had formed over millions of years, then there would be continuous faults through the rock. As far as I am aware, standard geology has uplift of the Colorado plateau starting after the last layers were produced.
That is an interesting theory, T_aquaticus, though it does fail to explain one thing. Why would there be "virtually no buried faults" after billions of years?
There were no faults because there was no tectonic activity in that region during those periods. You can find a decent article on the geologic history of the Colorado plateau here:
https://www.nature.nps.gov/geology/education/foos/plateau.pdf
In the article it states:
"The last marine deposits of the Colorado Plateau are Cretaceous in age. This tells us that at this time the plateau was at sea level."
The Cretaceous sediments make up the second to last sediments in the Grand Canyon, with only Tertiary sediments above them. Therefore, the uplift which created the faults is relatively recent and occurred after almost all of the sediments had been deposited in what is now the Colorado plateau.
The interesting thing about this, T_aquaticus, is that it appears to be a presentation of, simply, an alternate paradigm. What part about the paradigm that you have presented do you believe gives it an edge over the young earth paradigm?
The alternate YEC paradigm itself does not work. It states that discontinuous sedimentation over millions of years could not produce the observed faulting. This is demonstrably false. AiG is trying to claim that only a recent global flood could produce what is observed, so if it can be shown that discontinuous sedimentation over millions of years can produce the observed geology then AiG's argument is false.
If we are talking about standard geology vs. YEC, then the benefits of standard geology are obvious. With standard geology we have multiple and independent dating methodologies that give the same answers as to the age of rocks. YEC has no dating methods for rocks. Standard geology can explain why there is a correlation between the isotope ratios in rocks and the fossils found above and below those rocks. YEC can't. Standard geology can explain the extreme gooseneck meanders found in the canyons on the Colorado plateau. YEC can't. Standard geology can explain why you get nearly sheer cliffs in the Grand Canyon. YEC can't. I could go on for pages listing all of the things standard geology can explain that YEC can not.
So...if the millions of years paradigm could be true, then you are saying the flood paradigm is false?
J.E.S.,
There is no "if" about uniformitarianism since YEC, flood geologists, and even yourself are using uniformitarianism. The only problem is that you stop using uniformitarianism when it leads to conclusions you don't like, and only for that reason.
For example, you make claims about what the results of a flood would look like, and you base those claims on modern observations of how flooding works. That is uniformitarianism. If you assume that sediments will settle out of water because they are denser, you are using uniformitarianism. If you assume that rain fell down towards the Earth because raindrops are denser than air, then you are using uniformitarianism. So why do YEC's question things like the constancy of radioactive decay, which are just as much a fundamental constant of nature as the density of water or the geologic results of flooding? Because it leads to conclusions they don't like.
There are far better reasons for rejecting the constancy of radioactive decay than there are for rejecting the density of water. ;)
Anyhow, I have rephrased my question in the previous post to remove the word "uniformitarianism..."
What reasons are there for rejecting the constancy of decay rates, and why are they reasonable? Where is the support for these reasons in the peer reviewed literature?
As to your rephrased question:
"if the millions of years paradigm could be true, then you are saying the flood paradigm is false?"
It has nothing to do with the millions of years paradigm. If sediments in the Grand Canyon are young then the igneous rocks intruding into those layers should have relatively little daughter isotope in them because there hasn't been enough time for enough daughter isotope to accumulate. YEC fails that test, and it is one of many. If the GC sediments were laid down all at once and then quickly eroded then they had to be soft sediments heavily laden with water. When you erode through this material the walls of the canyon will slump, just as it happened in California mudslides when loose sediments lost the plant material that bound them together. You can't get sheer cliff walls with flood geology, yet there is the GC with sheer cliff walls. That is a failed test.
Interesting comments, T_aquaticus...
I am curious to see what you think about the argument of canyons below Mt. Saint Helens being formed in a matter of days. I have some pictures below which you can examine...
For the sake of the argument, if these canyons (or parts of them) could be formed quickly by catastrophic events, could it not be reasonable to say that the GC was created quickly by a catastrophic event (e.g: Noah's Flood)?
RE: Mt. St. Helens
First, look at the height of the canyon sides. They are less than 100 feet. The sides of the Grand Canyon are hundreds of feet tall and are sheer cliffs in places. The whole point is that you can't form sheer faces hundreds of feet high with mud because the mud will collapse. Pictures of mud cliffs less than 100 feet tall do not change this fact.
Second, radiometric dating of those deposits demonstrates that they are recent.
Third, you don't see gooseneck meanders with sheer cliffs hundreds of feet high like you do in the GC. Meanders like these are only formed from a slow moving river moving along a flat plain. The meanders in the GC were created by the slow uplift of the Colorado Plateau which caused the meandering river to incise slowly over time. Floods don't do that, and you will not find similar features from the Mt. St. Helens flooding.
Fourth, the flooding at Mt. St. Helens did not produce deposits consistent with marine or fresh water environments, like those found in the GC.
Just as a further comment . . .
You don't have to believe in millions of years in order to see the difference between slow deposition and fast deposition. Let's take a look at these layers
The coarse grained sediments on the top and bottom of the picture are sediments laid down quickly in flooding conditions. The very fine layered varves (21 annual layers) in the middle of the picture are annual deposits laid down slowly. Notice the huge contrast in grain size? Fine particles take a long time to settle out of water, and when you see those types of deposits you know that they are due to slow deposition. Coarse grained sediments, on the other hand, can settle out quickly. These are just basic physical facts, and it is these types of physical facts that lead geologists to conclude that the Earth is quite old.
On the inability of mud cliffs to for rapidly without collapsing, consider the Channeled Scablands in eastern Washington. Its features are generally accepted by geologists to have been formed by floods¹.
Take a look at this image from the Palouse Falls in the Channeled Scablands: (Side note: how do you add images?) http://www.sevenwondersofwashingtonstate.com/uploads/4/7/4/6/47460045/1364416_orig.jpg
There are canyons such as this one in the Channeled Scablands formed by floods, why not the Grand Canyon?
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¹https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/03/channeled-scablands/
You make many good points, Nate. And that Nat. Geographic article was excellent. It is interesting to consider what other discoveries are being suppressed by dogma...
(To add images, simply click on the camera icon that is on the lower left of the text editor, then select the file you wish to upload.)
RE: Channeled Scablands
The thing is, those floods did not produce those deposits. They produced the erosion. For Flood geology and YEC, Noah's flood has to produce both. In the Channeled Scablands those are old deposits that lithified over time which allowed them be eroded without slumping. In Flood geology, there isn't any time for these deposits to lithify. They would have been loose mud and would have collapsed.
Also, the Channeled Scablands give us a great example of what catastrophic flooding would have done if it were responsible for the Grand Canyon. When you have catastrophic flooding the rivers don't stay in their banks and dig deeper. Instead, they overflow their banks and grow wider, and they will even form parallel rivers which form a system of braided channels. This is what we see with the Channeled Scablands which were produced by the sudden eflux of water out of glacial lakes.
We see nothing like this in the Grand Canyon system, as seen here:
With the GC, we see a single meandering channel with drainaige patterns running perpindecular to the main stream. This is completely inconsistent with catastrophic erosion from a catastrophic flood. This pattern is consistent with a river that formed on a flat plain and then slowly eroded a canyon as the plain was slowly uplifted.
There are also other differences we can get into, such as the U shaped canyons in the Channeled Scablands and the V shaped canyons in the GC. The evidence for quick erosion in the Channeled Scablands simply doesn't exist in the GC.
Hey, T_aquaticus...
Would you mind posting some pictures of the U-shaped Scablands canyons, and the V-shaped GC canyons so that we could compare them? Would you say it is impossible for a V-shaped canyon to be created by a flood event?
V shape of the Grand Canyon:
U shape of the Channeled Scablands:
In the Channeled Scablands you have a nearly flat bottom.
T_aquaticus:
Would the "slumping" you spoke of earlier in any way account for the "V" shape of the grand canyon?
J.E.S.,
If there were slumping then the V wouldn't be anywhere near the angle it is at. Even within the V shaped canyons there are cliffs that are hundreds of feet high. The V shape has more to do with weathering after the sediments are exposed by water erosion. Since the Colorado river is slowly eroding through these sediments, the sediments at the top have been exposed to weathering for a much longer time span.
It may also be worth mentioning rock formations called "hoodoos". These are spires of lithified sediments that are the result of wind erosion and weathering. If softer rock is capped by harder rock that is more resistant to weathering then you get these strange looking spires that simply couldn't be formed from mud, much less formed quickly through weathering. The hoodoos below are from neighboring Bryce Canyon.