Claim CH550:

The Flood deposited the geologic column.

Response:

  1. Varves within the geologic column show seasonal layers over many, many years. In many cases, such as the Green River formation, these layers are too fine to have settled out in less than several weeks per layer. Varves in New England show evidence of climate change 17,500 to 13,500 years ago, which matches climate patterns in other parts of the world (Rittenour et al. 2000). These layers prove that the geological record was not produced in just one event.

  2. There are many different kinds of surface features preserved in the middle of the geological column. These features include soils, mud cracks, evaporite deposits, footprints, raindrop impressions, meteor craters, worm burrows, wind-blown sediments, stream channels, and many others. For example:

    • The Loess Plateau in China has a layer of loess more than 300 m thick. Loess is wind-blown sediment that would not occur during a global flood. The Loess Plateau occurs around the downwind edges of the Ordos Desert, its source of sediments, and the grain size of the loess decreases the further one gets from the desert (Vandenberghe et al. 1997).

    • The Loess Plateau includes paleosols within it. These are buried fossil soils, some of which would require tens of thousands of years to form (Kukla and An 1989; Liu et al. 1985).

Links:

Isaak, Mark, 1998. Problems with a global flood, 2nd ed. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-noahs-ark.html

References:

  1. Kukla, G. and Z. An, 1989. Loess stratigraphy in Central China. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 72(1): 203-225.
  2. Liu, T., Z. An, B. Yaun and J. Han, 1985. Loess-paleosol sequence in China and climatic history. Episodes 8: 21-28.
  3. Rittenour, T. M., J. Brigham-Grette and M. E. Mann, 2000. El Nino-like climate teleconnections in New England during the late Pleistocene. Science 288: 1039-1042. See also Kerr, R.A., 2000. Viable but variable ancient El Nino spied. Science 288: 945.
  4. Vandenberghe, J., A. Zhisheng, G. Nugteren et al., 1997. New absolute time scale for the Quaternary climate in the Chinese loess region by grain-size analysis. Geology 25(1): 35-38.

Further Reading:

Harding, Ken, 1999. What would we expect to find if the world had flooded? http://www.creationism.ws/what_if_flood.htm [or Harding, Ken, 1999 http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Temple/9917/flood.html via http://www.archive.org . The text is white so you may have to reset your browswer's colors.]

Miller, Hugh, 1857. The Testimony of the Rocks. Or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed. Edinburgh: Shepherd & Elliot. See also MacRae, Andrew, n.d. Hugh Miller -- 19th-century creationist geologist. http://home.tiac.net/~cri/1998/miller.html

Strahler, Arthur N., 1987. Science and Earth History, Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books.
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created 2003-5-21, modified 2003-9-6