Creation Answer:
“Evolutionists and creationists agree: the ideal conditions for forming most fossils and fossil-bearing rock layers are flood conditions. The debate is just whether it was many “little floods” over a long time, or mostly the one big Flood of Noah’s time.”[i]
Go out and find a piece of concrete and try bending it. This is one of the problems for old rock layers all over the world, in that hardened rock will crack and break when pushed or pulled. But we see smoothly bent rock layers all over the world.[ii]
This could be done if the layers (millions of years worth) were soft at the same time or if the layers were under extreme heat and pressure; their shape could deform without breaking. The problem with the latter view is that the pressure and temperature would have metamorphosized and changed the rock, but these examples of bent layers are still sedimentary rock layers. The best explanation is that they were still soft after being laid down and then uplifted and bent at nearly the same time. This is a massive geological event consistent with a global flood.[iii]
Rock layers are different from each other based on their composition, temperature, and how fast or slow their flood current is. In some layers, you have very fine grains of sediments and in other layers, there large boulders as big as cars, which means that a fast current would have had to carry those huge boulders. From their view, evolutionists can’t explain these boulders.
As different currents are swirling during the time of the flood, you would have different layers (think of them like pancakes) formed even in different places (offset pancakes). This is why there are often missing layers in one region but are in order in a different region.
Ph.D. Geologist Steven A. Austin says that “Every continent contains layers of sedimentary rocks that span vast areas. Many of these layers can even be traced across continents.” There are “six megasequences (very thick, distinctive sequences of sedimentary rock layers) that can be traced right across North America.”[iv] Some of these sequences include layers like the Tapeats Sandstone that covers most of North America and even beyond, and chalk beds that stretch across a large part of Europe and into the Middle East, and the Coal Bed that stretches through much of North America as well.[v]
Other evidences that point to a global flood are the rapidly buried fossils (some even “misplaced” or “out of place” fossils with reference to the evolutionary timeline[vi]), jumbled-up mass fossil beds, sea creature fossils high above sea level, rapid or no erosion between strata, sediments in rock layers that have been transported long distances, and layers that appear to be laid down in rapid succession (polystrate fossils lie vertical through “millions of years” of deposition).[vii] The global flood would have been perfect conditions for making these rock layers.
What the Bible Says: Genesis 6-7
by Brian Mariani and others
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One thing to keep in mind, each blog is one piece of evidence. Evidence has to then be interpreted, which is not a fact…but evidence strengthening or weakening a specific hypothesis or theory. So there can be multiple ways of interpreting the same evidence. I am not being unscientific, but asking more questions and being skeptical is being more scientific. I am still working on these, so please help with your comments.
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[i] Dr. Gary Parker, Creation: Facts of Life, How Fast?, January 1, 1994, http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/cfl/how-fast, accessed October 10, 2013.
[ii] A Pocket Guide to…Best Evidences: Science and the Bible refute millions of years, Answers in Genesis – US, 2013.
[iii] A Pocket Guide to…Best Evidences: Science and the Bible refute millions of years, Answers in Genesis – US, 2013.
[iv] Andrew A. Snelling, Ph.D., Transcontinental Rock Layers: Flood Evidence Number Three, May 7, 2008, Answers in Genesis, http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v3/n3/transcontinental-rock-layers#fnList_1_1, accessed October 10, 2013.
L. L. Sloss, “Sequences in the Cratonic Interior of North America,” Geological Society of America Bulletin 74 (1963): 93–114.
[v] Andrew A. Snelling, Ph.D., Transcontinental Rock Layers: Flood Evidence Number Three, May 7, 2008, Answers in Genesis, http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v3/n3/transcontinental-rock-layers#fnList_1_1, accessed October 10, 2013.
[vi] Dr. Gary Parker, Creation: Facts of Life, How Fast?, January 1, 1994, http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/cfl/how-fast, accessed October 10, 2013.
[vii] Andrew A. Snelling, Ph.D., Geologic Evidences for the Genesis Flood: Part 1: An Overview, September 18, 2007, Answers in Genesis, http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v2/n4/geologic-evidences-part-one, accessed October 10, 2013.
CEM Research and Polystrate Fossils, Creation Evidence Museum of Texas, http://www.creationevidence.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=49, accessed October 10, 2013.
4 Comments
I am curious to know if any polystrate fossils have been discovered to pass through a mega sequence layer. If so, it would be powerful evidence against the local flood rescuing device used by uniformitarianists.
I am not aware of any that span an entire mega sequence, but only sub units and boundaries. I will be looking and doing some searching, and please let us know if you locate such a fossil. Thanks.
I have some questions regarding marine fossils found on mountains:
Do we know about other layers above or below them and what they contain?
Is the existence of these type of marine fossils indicative of actual deposition from the great flood or some mega uplift event?
Hello Gil,
Thank you for your questions. I am not exactly sure about the specific layers at the tops of the Himalayas for example. The Tapeats Sandstone layer is visible toward the bottom of the Grand Canyon and is found on the top of Moran peak in the Teton Mountains. That layer, specifically extends thousands of miles – such consistent widespread layers point to massive flood deposits.
Fossils at higher elevations on the continents point more to flood deposition rather than mega uplift over millions of years, because of the Principle of Isostasy – continental crust is lighter and more buoyant and thus couldn’t easily be overwhelmed underwater. “First, it is nearly unimaginable to postulate an ocean on top of a continent for geophysical reasons. No continents are underwater today for the simple reason that continental crust is composed of lighter minerals than oceanic crust. This buoyancy causes continents to sit high in the mantle compared to the denser ocean basins. Geologists must be able to imagine a world very unlike today’s, in which either entire continental masses become depressed or else global sea level somehow rose. Neither isostasy nor glacial melt waters are of sufficient scale to explain it.” (https://www.icr.org/article/calibrating-flood)