The Genesis Flood is said in the Bible to have been of such great magnitude that it covered the whole globe for an entire year, destroying all living things on the face of the earth, except those preserved in the Ark. For many centuries men accepted these Biblical teachings in their literal sense with little question. But there has been a gradual change in outlook during the past two centuries. With more extensive study of the earth’s rock strata, along with the development of a more inquisitive and rationalistic approach by scholars, a completely different explanation of origins has been developed.
I understand very few people besides geologists have an interest in this information and its details. I've tried my best to put this in layman's terms and to make it as concise as possible.
The study of geologic history has become dominated by the concept of uniformitarianism. Uniformitarianism is the belief that existing physical processes, acting essentially the same in the past as at present, are sufficient to account for all past changes. This concept of course implies that the earth must be tremendously old to account for the features we find in the earth today.
In contrast to the theory of uniformitarianism is the theory of catastrophism, which states that the geological changes in the earth's crust have been caused by the sudden action of violent physical causes. A flood, such as the one described in Genesis, could account for the fossils and the strata throughout the earth which have traditionally been interpreted as evidence of long ages of uniformity. The evidence for catastrophism, in geology abounds. It is simply a matter of interpretation and starting assumptions.
During the decade before the 1980 eruptions of Mount St. Helens, geologists began to express their dissatisfaction with strict uniformitarian thinking. They had noticed in the geological record that the past events they were studying were far different from the kinds of things produced today. These geologists began to entertain the notion that episodic catastrophes had done more to shape the earth than did long periods of uniformity.
Many leading geologists today even identify themselves as “neo-catastrophists,” and have begun to invoke large-scale, dynamic processes for the production of geologic layers and earth features. Today, numerous leading geologists insist that many (and perhaps nearly all) of the geologic deposits are actually a sequence of rapid catastrophic deposits, usually water related. For instance, many would argue that each horizontally bedded layer of fossil-bearing strata in the Grand Canyon was laid down by a catastrophe of one sort or another.
However, the growing number of “neo-catastrophist” geologists who advocate this position claim that each sequence of catastrophes was separated by millions and millions of years. By doing so, they recognize catastrophism in geology, but still hang on to the concept of the old earth and retain the time necessary for evolution, presumably, to occur.
Yet, as we shall see, there is no evidence that these great time periods between layers existed. In this appendix we will explore the evidence that disputes the uniformitarian view of earth history, and supports the catastrophic view. We will not go into great detail here but will give a general overview of the evidence. We will also explore the account of the great Flood in the book of Genesis to see if this account is reasonable to believe in light of historical and geological findings.
The main buttress of the uniformity theory, together with its evolutionary implications, is the supposed fact that the strata everywhere exhibit the same order, thus permitting the development of a worldwide system of identification and correlation. Paleontologists maintain that the strata can be divided into a series of identifiable units corresponding to definite geologic ages and that these units always are in the same order regardless of location, and thus testify to their validity in determining chronologic ages.
The ten strata systems that geologists use (Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous, Permian, Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous, and Tertiary) compose the "standard geologic column" and are claimed by many to contain the major proof of evolutionary theory. However, several erroneous notions have been attached to the geologic column.
The notion that the earth's crust has on "onion skin" structure with successive layers containing all strata systems distributed on a global scale is not supported by the facts. Data from continents and ocean basins show that the ten systems are poorly represented on a global scale: approximately 77% of the earth's surface area on land and under the sea has seven or more (70% or more) of the strata systems missing beneath; 94% of the earth's surface has three or more systems missing beneath; and an estimated 99.6% has at least one missing system.(1)
Only a few locations on earth (about 0.4% of its area) have been described with the succession of the ten systems beneath (west Nepal, west Bolivia, and central Poland). Even where the ten systems may be present, geologists recognize individual systems to be incomplete. The entire geologic column, composed of complete strata systems, exists only in the diagrams drawn by geologists !! (2)
The great thickness of the sedimentary rock is also used as evidence for a very old earth. They claim that the layers of sedimentary rock were laid down slowly over millions of years. The paleontologists claim that the distribution of the fossils found in the strata layers show a definite evolutionary progression from simple to complex. This is the standard system of geologic ages, as found in any textbook on historical geology.
As we will see, there is evidence that these layers of sedimentary rock could have been deposited in a relatively short period of time. There is also evidence that contradicts the evolutionary viewpoint of the deposition of the fossils and, further, shows the distribution of fossils within the rock could be explained not by evolution over millions or billions of years, but as the result of a catastrophic flood. We will also see that there is a lack of evidence that millions of years passed between the deposition of each layer.
It may of course be granted that the principle of stratigraphic correlation by means of fossils, in terms of the accepted sequence, is supported by much evidence. Any theory that could have obtained almost universal acceptance by geologists is obviously not founded solely on wishful thinking. In spite of the general validity of the standard and accepted geologic stratigraphic succession, there are many exceptions and contradictions which cannot be explained in terms of the accepted theory of uniformity. Proponents of the theory try to explain away these contradictions and deny their importance. But these contradictions strike at the very heart of their theory.
On the other hand, these findings fit very well into a catastrophic theory that includes the Genesis Flood. The two main categories of contradictions are instances of individual fossils being found out of proper context and instances of entire formations being found out of proper sequence with those above and below.
When a fossil is found in a stratum to which it theoretically does not belong, several explanations are offered. If it is supposed to be older than the fossil bed where it was found, it can be said to have been redeposited from an earlier eroded deposit or it may be implied that this particular species survived longer than had been previously believed. If it is supposed to be younger than its stratum, it can be again explained as due to the reworking and mixing of two originally distinct deposits or else as showing that the animal dates from an earlier period of history than previously thought.
Often, discovery of such an anomalous fossil has been deemed sufficient justification for redating the entire formation so as to conform to the supposed age of the particular fossil. With so many speculative devices conveniently at hand for reconciling these discrepancies, it is obvious that all but the most flagrant cases of mislocation can be quickly and easily explained away. In cases that simply cannot be explained in such a manner, it is still possible to ignore them, on the assumption that there must have been some mistake in the field evidence or its description.
When an entire formation seems out of place in the standard sequence it is not as easy to explain away, however. These cases are usually handled in terms of supposed great earth movements, faulting, folding, thrusting, among other explanations, whether or not there is any actual physical evidence that such a movement ever took place.
A more difficult problem for uniformitarian geology is the existence of formations found actually in reverse order, with presumed older rocks lying on top of younger rocks. The theory of the “thrust fault” is commonly advanced to explain this. This theory states that rocks which originally were flat-lying and contiguous were suddenly separated by a vertical or sloping fault. The rocks on one side of the fault rise with respect to those on the other. Then the upper rocks were thrust horizontally over the lower, leaving the older rocks resting on top of the younger rocks.
Terms such as “overthrust”, “low-angle fault,” “nappe,” or “detachment thrust” are also used to describe these processes. It is recognized that phenomena of this sort have taken place, on a small scale, in certain localities where there is ample evidence of intense past faulting and folding. However, examples are definitely on a small scale, usually in terms of a few hundred feet, whereas many of the great overthrust areas they are trying to explain away occupy hundreds or even thousands of square miles. It seems almost fantastic to conceive of such huge areas and masses of rocks really behaving in such a fashion, unless we are ready to accept catastrophism. Certainly the principle of uniformity is inadequate to account for them as there are no processes going on today that even come close to these processes.
Is it not possible that all of the many paradoxes and exceptions, with which the geological formations abound, can be better explained by means of some principle other than uniformity and evolution? The concept of catastrophe can adequately explain not only the deposition of the rocks and organisms in their usual sequences but also the occasional deposits in unusual orders.
While the evidence supports the idea that layers of rapid catastrophic deposition occurred which took very little time, great amounts of time supposedly passed between these layers. Yet there is no actual evidence that a great deal of time passed between the catastrophic depositions of the adjacent layers. Due to preconceived evolutionary notions these geologists are forced to believe that a great deal of time must have passed in between these catastrophic depositions.
On the other hand, there is a great deal of evidence which shows that very little time passed in between the deposition of these layers. The huge Coconino sandstone formation in the Grand Canyon is about 325 feet thick and extends to 155,000 square miles in area. The large scale cross-bedding shows that it was all laid down in deep, fast-flowing water within a matter of days. Other rock layers in the Grand Canyon indicate that they were rapidly deposited also, and without substantial time-breaks between the laying down of each unit.
Sedimentary rock is made by water depositing layers of solid material on the earth’s surface. There are two ways such rock could be formed. The first is by a small amount of water depositing layers of dirt and sand over a long period of time. The second way is by a vast amount of water making such deposits over a short period of time.
Sedimentation today usually occurs slowly by small amounts of water depositing layers of dirt and sand in tiny quantities. This observation leads scientists to presume that it has always been this way. The great thickness of the sedimentary rock is therefore often used as evidence for a very old earth.
However, experiments and observations also tell us that sedimentation and sedimentary rock can form very rapidly. Take the Mount St. Helens eruption for example. This volcano deposited 25 feet of finely layered sediment around its base in just six hours. (3) Therefore, the argument that the thickness of sedimentary rock proves an ancient earth is not reliable (more about Mt. St. Helens later).
There are many lines of evidence that support the idea that the rock strata were laid down quickly, one after another, without significant time breaks between them. I will list six (6) of the main ones below.
Many sediments have been found that have been deformed, that is to say bent or broken. This must have happened while they were still in a soft, unconsolidated condition. In old-earth thinking, layers of sediments were deposited consecutively but separated by longs periods of time, perhaps millions of years. It is known that sediments harden into rock in as little as a matter of years, and perhaps as much as a hundred years. However, under ideal conditions, it can happen within days. So how can they explain this bending of strata, covering many layers of the strata, which according to their own reasoning took millions upon millions of years to deposit? Certainly the rock would have hardened over those long periods of time and hardened rock would crack, not bend.
One important example of this is the Kaibab Upwarp at the Grand Canyon. The whole Grand Canyon sequence of layers is bent at the Kaibab Upwarp, in some spots quite radically, and without cracking. As we can clearly see during earthquakes today, when rock is moved along a fault it cracks, it does not bend! This indicates that the strata, which supposedly represent some 300 million years of evolutionary time, were all still soft when the bending occurred. (4)
This is consistent with the layers being deposited and bent quickly, as would have happened during a great flood accompanied by great tectonic action such as would have occurred in the flood described in Genesis. Further, in the areas that have not been shifted vertically, the sedimentary layers still lie relatively horizontal and show essentially no sign of any physical erosion or chemical weathering between layers. Yet if the evolutionary/long age model is correct then each layer would have been exposed for millions of years before the layer above was deposited. What we do see between most of the layers is a very clear distinct, straight line that is unwavering for miles. (5)
Evolutionists will say, however, that if a rock is deeply buried and confined on all sides by surrounding pressure, bending can occur on an otherwise brittle rock. This is true for certain softer rocks which can “flow,” like rock salt. But in a hard rock, like the Tapeats sandstone, that sort of bending always results in elongated sand grains or broken cement crystals, neither of which have been found in these deformed Grand Canyon rocks.
It is interesting to note that in most locations beneath the Tapeat sandstone, lays the Vishnu Shist, which is extremely hard metamorphic rock. This formation is the basement rock in this area and is correlated laterally with rocks across the continent. Creationists assume these rocks to date to the original creation of the earth. Evolutionists date it as over a billion years old. The Vishnu behaved as brittle rock and brokeduring the Kaibab Upwarp. Thus, the hard metamorphic rocks broke and the sedimentary rocks, which are now quite as hard and brittle, merely bent and did not break. It appears obvious that they were soft and recently deposited and had not yet turned to stone.
The situation at the Grand Canyonis far from unique. There are many, many other places where rocks have deformed while in a soft, unconsolidated condition. The Rocky Mountains and Appalachian Mountainsare full of such occurrences.
One way to show that only a short time elapsed between the deposition of one bed and the deposition of an overlying bed is to show that the various surface features present on the top surface of the lower bed would not last very long if exposed to the elements. Keep in mind that almost every sedimentary rock layer was deposited under water. Every geologist agrees with this. In such an active environment, surface features can be preserved only if they are quickly buried by overlying material, so that they are protected and have time to turn into rock. If such marks are exposed on any surface, under water or above water, they will soon erode and disappear. Even on a hard rock surface, markings will erode in a few decades. There is no possibility that fragile features will last for millions of years.
There are many examples of such surface features that certainly would have been eroded before another layer of strata could have been deposited on top of them, had there been large expanses of time between layers. One very common feature is the presence of “ripple marks” which form as water moves over a surface. These can frequently be seen on a beach after the tide has receded. Animal tracks are also commonly found in rock layers. Obviously both of these features had to be formed in soft sediment and are very fragile and will not last very long if exposed to any elements. Yet these features are readily seen in many locations frozen in solid rock.
There is no possibility that fragile features will last for millions of years, waiting to be re-submerged and buried, and thus protected from destructive forces. We can’t determine exactly how much time passed between the deposition of two layers simply by looking at these surface features, but we can conclude that much less time passed than it takes for surface features to be eroded and disappear. Again, there is no possibility that these fragile features could last millions of years as uniformitarians claim. As stated, even on hard rock surfaces they will erode away in a few decades at most.
Bioturbation is defined as the disturbance of the geological zone by biological activity. On and below any surface, whether on land or in the sea, life is present which will leave its mark. A relatively recent example is Hurricane Carla, which devastated the central Texas coast in 1961. As it retreated, it laid down a recognizable layer of sediments on the shore and far out into the Gulf of Mexico. These graded sediments contained within them many “sedimentary structures,” such as buried ripple marks and cross-bedding. These internal sedimentary structures were well studied in the years after Hurricane Carla, and were recognized as rapid deposition features. (6)
About twenty years later, others went back to study what had happened to the stratum. Due to bioturbation, the layer could hardly be found, and once located, it retained almost no evidence of sedimentary structure. Within just a couple of decades, and probably much more quickly, biological activity at this surface bed, both on shore and off, had destroyed its internal character that had been formed by the catastrophic processes of Hurricane Carla. (7) This reinforces the fact that in any environment, from a desert sand dune to the shallow marine area, life is abundant and continually agitates the sediments within several feet of the surface.
Yet the geological column, with few exceptions, contains abundant internal structure in each stratum. Evidently, the sediments were not exposed to an environment of biological activity for any length of time before they were buried. Perhaps the sediments continued to build up so rapidly that the structure was out of reach of burrowing animals. However, this implies continual catastrophic deposition, which is certainly what we would expect from a flood like the one described in Genesis.
Where fossilized bioturbation does exist, it usually looks quite different from modern habitats. It better resembles that left by burrowing animals as they escape from deepening sediments, having been buried there against their will. These “escape burrows” are frequently oriented upward only, not in the variety of directions employed in living communities. It’s as if the organisms were digging out of a continually growing supply of sediments. (8)
As stated above, we cannot tell exactly how long underlying layers existed before being covered by the layers above, but we definitely can say that it was less time than it would have taken for bioturbidity to destroy the sedimentary structures within the lower layer. In this manner we can march up the geologic column, “tying” the layers together and conclude, with reasonable certainty, a relatively short time for the entire sequence.
Another surface feature that testifies to rapid depositions is the almost complete lack of recognizable soil layers anywhere in the geologic column. According to traditional geology the continents, which are now exposed, have on numerous occasions been underwater. This is based on the fact that nearly all rocks were deposited by ocean water. While on land they presumably supported soil wherein plants and animals could live. Even in near shore environments, underwater “soils” are needed. Whether the land is covered rapidly by a catastrophic process, or slowly by transgression of the sea, certainly some of the soil would be preserved.
However, soil layers, or even soil materials, are seldom found in the geologic record. A possible soil sometimes mentioned is “underclays,” typically found under a coal seam and thought by some to represent a leached soil layer. But the make-up of underclay is not what one would expect of a soil layer capable of supporting a lush swamp. And even this attemptat identifying a fossil soil is rare. The geological record is one of rocks, with few exceptions, not soils or “paleosols.” These rocks are not thought to consist of materials which have ever been soils.
A better explanation is that only one soil existed before the depositional episode which resulted in the majority of the geological record. And that depositional episode was the Genesis Flood.
It is frequent to find two formations of totally different rocks, lying one on top of the other, with a knife-edge bedding plane between them. One example is the Hermit shale which lies below the Coconino sandstone in the Grand Canyon. The Hermit shale, which is thought to have accumulated in an off-shore environment, contains index fossils and is dated by evolutionists at about 280 million years. The Coconino sandstone, which is usually interpreted as a desert sand-dune deposit, is dated by evolutionists at 270 million years.
The upper surface of the Hermit where it meets the Coconino is exceptionally flat. How could the surface remain flat and featureless for 10 million years until the sand of the Coconino began to collect? No surface on earth remains stagnant with no erosion or deposition. The point is, the existence of the sharp, knife-edge contact between these two beds, and others, argues against the passage of long periods of time between their depositions, regardless of the index fossils found within them.
Any geologist not holding to the assumption of evolution can see the obvious testimony of continuous, rapid deposition. Although it does not occur between every two consecutive layers, it occurs between at least some layers in each locality, therefore contradicting the theory of vast ages between depositions.
One of the most dangerous aspects of a coal mine is the presence of features known as “kettles.” Seen as somewhat circular shapes in the mine’s roof, kettles are the bottoms of cylindrical bodies of rock which can easily detach and fall. It turns out these circular features are the bottoms of upright tree trunks, the roots of which get mined away along with the coal. It has been found that these trees extend through more than one strata, hence the name Polystrate trees (“poly-strate”—meaning “many strata”).
From studying these trees, we can conclude that the length of time for accumulation of the peat (which later turned into coal) and the overlying sediments was less time than it takes for wood to decay. Obviously, wood decays in only a few decades at most, whether in an active ocean, standing air, or buried in sediment. These trees in effect “tie the layers together” into a short period of time. This period of time can’t be explicitly determined from the data, but it is wholly incompatible with the long-age model normally taught. If there were only one polystrate tree it could be explained away as having been deposited in a freakish scenario, but the fact is, the world contains many polystrate trees.
This argument is not limited to large tree trunks. Other types of fossils also testify to the same conclusion. Polystrate fossils are frequently found protruding through several layers of limestone. Commonly found in layers of limestone are fossilized reed-like creatures called Calamities. These calamites were evidently quite fragile once dead, for they are usually found in tiny fragments. Obviously the limestone couldn’t have accumulated slowly and gradually around a still-growing organism, but must have been quite rapidly deposited in a series of underwater events.
Other types of fossils likewise testify to the same conclusion. Sometimes, an animal’s fossilized body will intersect more than one layer or lamination within a rock. Here the same argument applies. The Green River Formation in Wyoming contains shale deposits with millions of millimeter-thick laminations, interpreted by uniformitarians as representing winter/summer sequences. Yet fossilized catfish are found in abundance in many orientations and extending through numerous layers of these laminations. (9) Obviously these catfish did not lie there for hundreds of years while deposits accumulated over them. Enormous concentrations of bird fossils are also found in these sediments. (10) This formation clearly supports rapid catastrophism.
Some other evidences for the non-existence of the eons of time and for the rapid deposition of the layers are:
So as we can see, there is much evidence that the geological column was deposited quickly with very little time expiring between the depositions of layers.
Much sedimentary rock is filled with fossils. This gives clues about how the rock was actually formed. When a plant or animal dies and lies on the ground, it quickly rots and decays. After a few weeks, often little remains of the creature. Within a few months, even the bones of larger animals disintegrate. For a fossil to form, the plant or animal must be buried very quickly by mud, volcanic dust, or another protecting substance. Otherwise, the creature would decompose or be eaten by predators. Next, the minerals in the water, rock, and soil must be absorbed by the buried body. Over time, the body becomes hard because it has been saturated with minerals.
If sedimentary rock was formed by laying down dirt and sand over millions of years, then the remains of the living things would easily have rotted long before they were covered and fossilized. The only way to explain the presence of fossils within rock is for these plants and animals to have been buried very quickly.
All of this suggests that sedimentary rock containing fossils must have been formed rapidly. This means days or weeks, not millions of years. We have reliable evidence of rapid fossilization. A fossil has been found of a seven foot long ichthyosaur that became fossilized while giving birth. Fossils have also been found of fish in the act of swallowing other fish. (11)
The fact that we have so many fossils is, in itself, evidence for an event that rapidly buried them, such as a worldwide flood. The fossil record, and its implication that there really was a worldwide flood, are well described by Texas A&M microbiologist Dr. Bert Thompson:
Vast animal graveyards and fossiliferous rubble shifts have been found worldwide. Evidence of a great, sudden, and recent water cataclysm, followed by a deep freeze, across the entire great north, accompanied by titanic hydraulic forces and crustal upheavals, burying a host of mammoths, mastodons, elephants, and other great beasts in a region which is now almost totally devoid of vegetation has been documented.
Vast numbers of fossil trees and plants, standing erect, oblique, and even inverted while piercing through successive beds of water-laid stone have been discovered. There is abundant evidence of profuse vegetation and a temperate, even subtropical climate prevailing in Antarctica and the north Polar Regions at some time in the past.
Worldwide fossilization has occurred in vast quantities, including fossils in sedimentary strata, often at great depths and under great pressure. Vast and numerous rifts, fissures and lava beds have been discovered, scarring the world ocean floor, all clearly recent and speak of some gigantic submarine upheaval of the earth’s crust (as in breaking up of the “fountains of the deep”). Marine fossils have been found buried and exposed at almost every altitude. And on and on and on such evidences could be listed. (12)
Remnants of this worldwide flood can be found all over the earth. Marine crustaceans have been discovered on 12,000-foot mountaintops. Pillow lava is formed only under water, and yet geologists have found a field of pillow lava as high as 15,000 feet on Mount Ararat. Hippopotamuses, now living only in Africa, have been uncovered in England. Hundreds of dinosaurs have been found buried together with other creatures that did not share the same habitat. The Norfolkforest beds in Englandcontain fossils of northern cold-climate animals, tropical warm climate animals, and temperate zone plants all mixed together.
Research has revealed findings that include moose-deer (natives of America) buried in Ireland; elephants (natives of Asia and Africa) buried in England; crocodiles (natives of the Nile) in the heart of Germany; shell-fish (never known in the American seas) together with the entire skeleton of whales in the most inland regions of England. A whale’s skeleton was even found on top of the Sanhorn Mountain, which is 3,000 feet high. (13)
How were such diverse creatures transported and buried thousands of miles from their normal environments, at unexplainable elevations, except by a devastating universal flood? The flood was so cataclysmic and so geologically impacting and climate-altering that it gives the best explanation in all of science for the multitude of fossils that must have been buried very rapidly on all seven continents.
Evolutionists claim that the order in which fossils are found in the geological column is due to the succession of life forms on earth demonstrating evolutionary change from simple to complex, which occurred over many hundreds of millions of years. Creationists believe that the order in the fossil record is due to the order of burial during the Genesis Flood and the local catastrophes that followed. Which view does the evidence support? Here is what the evidence shows: (14)
Early Burial of Marine Creatures
It is frequently found that the lowermost strata are those containing the simpler (and therefore supposedly more ancient) organisms, usually marine organisms. This, however, is not evidence for evolution, as commonly claimed, but rather testifies that these marine creatures were, as would be expected, deposited first and deepest in the flood sediments.
Two factors combine to make this a general rule. The Bible describes the source of the water for the great flood as coming from “the fountains of the great deep” and the “windows of heaven.” Forty days of rain would not have been enough to create all the effects that the flood produced. The “fountains of the great deep,” which are probably sub-oceanic and subterranean sources of water, most likely provided the majority of the water. The sea bottoms would have been first affected by the breaking-up of these fountains of the great deep. This inference is corroborated by the fact that those strata found usually lowest in the column are marine strata, containing marine organisms.
The other factor tending to insure the deposition of the simple marine organisms in the deepest strata is the hydrodynamic selectivity of moving water, together with the effect of the specific gravity of the respective organisms. The criteria are derived from the consideration of hydrodynamic forces acting on immersed bodies and are well established. (15)
Moving water exerts “drag” forces on particles based upon their diameter, sphericity and density. Particles which are in motion will tend to settle out in proportion mainly to their specific gravity (density) and sphericity. It is significant that the organisms found in the lowest strata, such as the trilobites, brachiopods, etc., are very “streamlined” and are quite dense. The shells of these and most other marine organisms are largely composed of calcium carbonate, calcium phosphate and similar minerals, which are quite heavy—heavier, for example, than quartz, the most common constituent of ordinary sands and gravels.
These factors alone would exert a highly selective sorting action, not only tending to deposit the simpler (i.e., more nearly spherical and undifferentiated) organisms nearer the bottom of the sediments but also tending to segregate particles of similar sizes and shapes with the complexity of structure of the deposited organisms increasing with increasing elevation in the sediments.
It is not unlikely that this is one of the main reasons why strata give a superficial appearance of “evolution” of similar organisms in successively higher strata. Local peculiarities would be expected to cause local variation in organic assemblages. But, on the average, the sorting action is quite efficient and would definitely have separated the shells and other fossils in just such fashion as they are found. The complexity of such “index fossils” increase with increasing elevation in the column, in at least a general way.
Higher Mobility of the Vertebrates
It is reasonable also, in the light of the Flood record, to expect that vertebrates would be found higher in the geologic column than invertebrates. Vertebrates in general possess much greater mobility, and this factor would normally prevent their being entrapped and deposited in the deepest sediments. Fishes are found in profusion in the Devonian period, often in great sedimentary “graveyards,” indicating violent deposition, and often in fresh water deposits. It is obvious that fish do not normally die and become fossilized in such conditions as these, but are usually either destroyed by scavengers or float on the surface until decomposed. The whole aspect of the fossil fish beds indicates violent burial in rapidly moving sediments.
The source of these masses of sediments in which the marine vertebrates were entombed is largely continental in nature. The character of these deposits seems explicable only in terms of torrential streams carrying vast quantities of sediment entering the ancient lakes or seas of the areas and overwhelming and burying fish and other aquatic creatures by the hundreds of thousands. All of this is easily understood in light of the Biblical flood but is hard to account for in uniformitarian terms.
Burial of Land Animals and Plants
If the Genesis flood is true, then land animals and plants would be expected to be caught in the later period of rising flood waters. This is exactly what the strata show. Of course, this would be only a general rule and there would be many exceptions, particularly as the lands became increasingly submerged and more and more amphibians, reptiles and mammals were overtaken by the waters. In general though, as a statistical average, we would expect to find the deposits in just the order that they have been found and described in terms of the standard geologic column.
On top of beds of marine vertebrates one would expect to find amphibians, then reptiles and finally birds and mammals. This is because these groups possess, in order:
This order is exactly what is to be expected in light of the Flood account and, therefore, gives further circumstantial evidence of the truthfulness of that account. In no sense is it necessary to say that this order is evidence of organic evolution. Although this order is generally to be expected, it is found to have many exceptions, both in terms of omissions and inversions. These exceptions are understandable in terms of a catastrophic flood, but are extremely difficult to account for logically in terms of evolution, millions of years and uniformity theory.
Dinosaurs
Proceeding higher in the geologic column we come to the extensive Mesozoic strata, including the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous systems. Here we find the great dinosaurs. The question of the sudden extinction of the dinosaurs that supposedly ruled the earth for so long is still one of the great mysteries of uniformitarian paleontology. The riddle will never be solved as long as paleontologists insist on a uniformitarian explanation. The Biblical flood, however, can adequately explain the data.
It should be noted that if representative dinosaurs were taken on the Ark (presumably young ones), then it is likely that their final extinction is accounted for by the sharp changes in climate after the Flood. On the other hand, some may have persisted for a long time, possibly accounting for the universal occurrence of “dragons” in ancient mythologies.
One of the mysteries connected with the dinosaurs is the number of great dinosaur graveyards found in various parts of the world. The entombment of such numbers of them literally demands some form of catastrophic explanation. The evidence shows that these graveyards are not the place where these dinosaurs died. Good et.al. wrote about one such location, the Dinosaur National Monument in Utah and Colorado:
A majority of the remains there probably floated down an eastward flowing river until they were stranded on a shallow sand bar. Some of them…may have come from far away dry-land areas to the west. Perhaps they were drowned trying to ford a tributary stream or were washed away during floods. Some of the swamp dwellers may have mired down on the very sandbar that became their grave while others may have floated for miles before being stranded. (16)
You could hardly ask for a better description of the way these great reptiles were overwhelmed, drowned and buried by the flood waters. As far as changes within the dinosaur lines were concerned, evolutionists postulate the tendency for each group to “evolve” from small ancestors to large descendants. However, it would seem easy to explain this considering the abilities of the larger and more mature animals to escape the flood waters longer. This is exactly what one would expect to find if the Genesis flood is true.
The Final Flood Deposits
The Tertiary Period is popularly known as the age of the mammals, because of the large numbers of mammalian fossils found in these strata. Fossil mammals are considered the chief indicators of the various stages of the Tertiary. It is significant to note that the most important paleontologic evidences that supposedly support evolution are found in the Tertiary strata.
As in the case of the dinosaurs of the Mesozoic period, the main feature of the presumed evolutionary series in the Tertiary is that of an increase in size in the course of the ages. This phenomenon of evolutionary size increase has been considered to be so universal that it has been called Cope’s Law.
This field evidence of increasing size with increasing elevation in the Tertiary strata can once again be easily explained in terms of a great flood, rather than the result of evolution. The greater mobility of the larger, stronger animals, and therefore their generally greater ability to retreat from the rising floodwaters and to escape being caught in the swollen streams rushing downward from the hills can easily explain the geological record. There would be many exceptions to this of course, as one would expect from such a catastrophic event, and that is just what the strata tend to show.
More commonly, however, the various animals in series are not found superposed in the strata at any one location or adjacent locations, but rather are found on the surface at scattered points around the world with the phylogenetic series then being constructed mainly on the basis of evolutionary presuppositions as to the possible relationships between these various creatures.
It is likely that the Tertiary deposits represent in most cases the later stages of the Deluge activities, as they are usually found either on or near the surface and superimposed over Mesozoic and/or Paleozoic strata. However, it must be recognized that in some instances Tertiary strata are found lying directly on basement rocks and sometimes found in as hard and crystalline a state as any of the presumably more ancient rock systems and even are found lying beneath these supposedly older rocks.
So, as we have seen, the evidence can easily fit into a catastrophic model as opposed to the generally accepted uniformitarian model. In fact, the discrepancies and contradiction that are encountered can more easily be explained by the nature of a catastrophic flood and simply cannot be explained in terms of slow, gradual uniformitarian processes.
The eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980 has fundamentally challenged traditional uniformitarian thinking about geological events, especially events of the past. In contrast to most geologic events, Mount St. Helenswas well studied. What geologists learned is that the results of the eruption, which were observed at Mount St. Helens, were similar to results of past processes that were notobserved. The importance of the study of Mount St Helens cannot be overemphasized.
Although other eruptions, as well as hurricanes, earthquakes and tsunamis have been studied, none compare with Mount St. Helens in regard to the variety of processes that were studied. Although the eruption was rather small to average when compared to other historic volcanic eruptions, the volcanic and tectonic processes involved are nevertheless analogous to the processes that would have been involved in the Genesis Flood.
Genesis 7:11 describes the breaking up of the “fountains of the great deep” as the initial cause of the flood. This appears to be a reference to the sudden eruption of volcanoes on the ocean bottoms. On that particular day, all the fountains of the great deep were broken up. Their remains are found today all over the world. (17) These volcanic events no doubt spewed not only lavas but also waters and chemicals. Today we know that the interior of the Earth is comprised of rock that contains much water.
Further, these eruptions would also have produced tsunamis. It is hard to imagine, if all these “fountains of the great deep” broke apart on the same day, the devastation the huge number of tsunamis that raced around the earth from every direction would have caused.
Genesis 7:11 also states the “windows of heaven were opened,” and Genesis 7:12 states it rained for forty days and nights. Although enough moisture existed in the atmosphere to cause quite a bit of rain, the water source had to be continually replenished. The undersea volcanic activity would have done just that. The ocean floor volcanic eruptions would have heated the water surrounding the underwater vents, most likely boiling this water. This would have sent huge plumes rising into the atmosphere, where they would have condensed and fell as rain.
Much of the devastation due to Noah’s flood would have been volcanic and tectonic in nature, and therefore analogous to the Mount St. Helens eruption. Although a great deal of volcanic devastation occurred, most of the damage done at Mount St. Helens was water related. When it was over, processes at Mount St. Helens accomplished the same sort of geologic work that biblical creationists usually attribute to the Great Flood, although on a much smaller scale and at a lower intensity. (18)
Scour Slope
When the Mount St. Helen’s erupted, huge amounts of debris landed in the nearby Spirit Lake basin creating a wave 860 feet high onto the hillside north of the lake. As the water rushed back into the basin it completely scoured off trees, leaves, animals and soil.
An estimated one million large trees were dragged back with it into the lake, creating an enormous floating log mat in Spirit Lake. Geologists call such an eroded slope a “scour slope.” They were amazed that such a surface feature, previously thought to occur after long periods of erosion, could be formed in less than one minute! When everything settled down, the floor of the lake was found to be higher than the surface was previously, 300 feet higher than before the eruption, due to all the sediments introduced to the lake.
Rapid Laminations
Before the eruption of Mount St. Helens, geologists believed that thin layers of stratification, called laminations, formed very slowly. As we stated above, the boundaries between consecutive strata were often deemed to represent long-time breaks with no deposition. However, at Mount St. Helens, strata were observed to form rapidly, without time breaks.
There is one particular area where over 600 feet of sediments were deposited by mudflows from three separate incidents, the first being the initial eruptions. Multiple thin layers of strata were deposited resembling strata which traditionally might have been thought to require many thousands or even millions of years to forms. Geologists normally think that it takes excessively long periods of time to accumulate such thick sequences of sediments. However, each of the three episodes that created this 600 foot thick deposit took only minutes to hours instead of long periods of time to form.
The layers of this deposit clearly resemble the character in many rock units in other areas, such as the Grand Canyon. (19) Had geologists studied these deposits blindly, without knowing of the recent eruption, they would have interpreted such beds as having been deposited over long periods of time in calm environments. The Tapeats Sandstone in the Grand Canyon, similar in many respects to deposits at Mount St. Helens, has traditionally been interpreted as taking long ages to accumulate. However, by better understanding catastrophic processes, leading geologists have recently reinterpreted it to be the result of a series of dynamic underwater currents. (20)
The Tapeat Sandstone actually covers much of the continent. Catastrophic deposits covering huge regions such as this are hard to explain using slow, uniformitarian reasoning. Yet it is exactly what would be predicted if the Genesis Flood were true.
Rapid Hardening of Sediments
When comparing the concepts of uniformity and catastrophe, one important factor to consider is how long it takes for soft, sandy sediments to harden into sedimentary rock. Students are taught that it takes excessively long periods of time. However, studies have shown that the amount of time can be speeded up under ideal conditions, specifically high pressure, elevated temperatures and the presence of a cementing agent to bind the grains and molecules together.
At Mount St. Helens, the conditions were far from ideal, yet in less than five years after the eruptions, geologists founds many areas where sediments were solidified enough to stand vertically on their own. This is something only rather hard rock can do and indicates that it does not take long ages to form rock.
Varves
In some calm lake beds and offshore areas, minute laminae called varves form each year as small particles accumulate. As there can be a recognizable difference in chemistry and size in varves created in different seasons, geologists have used them to estimate the time it took to deposit the entire sequence. In some areas, millions of these varves are found in sequence, leading most geologists to assume they took millions of years to form. At Mount St. Helens, varve-like laminae were formed in the multiple thousands in a span of a few hours ! This clearly smashes the assumption of long ages being required. (21)
Rapid Topographical Formations
Topography, such as those found in the Badlands of South Dakota and other southwest desert areas, are assumed by geologists to have taken many thousands of years to develop. However, similar surface features have formed around Mount St. Helens.
River drainage basins are thought to be formed over the course of millions of years. However, a mudflow formed by a small summit eruption in March of 1982 at Mount St. Helens produced a 140-foot-deep canyon where there was no canyon before. This new drainage channel was formed in a single day! The canyon formed has become known as “The Little Grand Canyon” because it appears to be a scale model of the Grand Canyon. A geologist unaware of the recent history of the canyon would assume that it occurred a long time ago and slowly eroded thereafter. This is another demonstration of the importance of Mount St. Helens.
Mount St. Helensand Radioisotope Dating
Only rocks that were once in a hot molten form, such as volcanic rocks, can be dated using radioisotope dating techniques. Thus, the rocks at Mount St. Helens should be datable. Radioactive isotopes are measured in these rocks to find out how long it takes a “parent” isotope such as potassium-40 to decay into its “daughter” isotope argon-40. The method estimates how long it would take for the “parent” to decay into that amount of “daughter.”
The time calculated is really the time which has elapsed since the igneous material cooled from a hot, molten magma into solid rock. In the case of a recent eruption of molten rock, the results should find almost no “daughter” isotopes present and be considered too young to measure. Yet samples gathered at Mount St. Helens have yielded dates as old as 2.4 million years using the potassium-argon technique. All the minerals combined yield the date of 350,000 years old. Yet these rocks cooled within lava in less than 25 years at the time of their testing.
This situation is not unique. Nearly every time a rock of known age has been dated by radioisotope dating, the calculated age is similarly exaggerated. (22) It certainly makes it difficult to trust these techniques to date rocks of unknown ages. More detail on radiometric dating methods can be found in that Appendix when I get to it.
Most people are taught that the Grand Canyon was formed due to erosion caused by the Colorado River as the Kaibab Plateau continued to rise over a very long period of time. Even though this idea continues to be taught in textbooks, it has been abandoned by most geologists who actively research the canyon. (23) The alternative viewpoint that has been developed, thanks in part to evidence provided by Mount St. Helens, is that the canyon was formed fairly recently in a more rapid water catastrophe.
Polystrate Fossils and Mount St. Helens
We mentioned above how polystrate tree fossils traverse more than one, and sometimes many, layers of strata. This makes them incompatible with any long age scenario of strata deposition. Certainly the wood would have decayed long before successive layers could have been deposited around it, if in fact it takes long ages for such deposits to occur.
Mount St. Helens has provided real-life evidence of polystrate fossil trees. When it erupted in 1980 millions of logs ended up in Spirit Lake. As the floating tree trunks became water-logged they sank to the bottom, root end first, and grounded themselves in the organic muck and bark sheets at the bottom of the lake. As the volcanic material and debris continued to settle to the bottom, these upright trees became buried on the lake bottom as if they grew there. Just five years later over 20,000 trees were found to be buried in an upright “polystrate” position.
Volcanic events continued over several years, and sedimentation is continuing at a rapid pace to this day. Thus the sunken trees are still being buried in several layers. Each species of tree water logs at different rates. Different sinking rates means that one species ends up in one layer and then another species of upright trees sits in the overlying layer. If at some future time erosion exposes these layers, the series of tree-bearing sediments would likely be interpreted as a series of successive standing forests, each with a dominant species of tree and each buried by separate volcanic events many years apart. Obviously this is not the case.
A similar series of layers displaying just this pattern has been discovered and is being studied in Yellowstone Park. A series of twenty-seven layers containing petrified trees has been exposed by erosion, and fifty such layers are found in a nearby lake. It had previously been interpreted as a series of separate forests, each requiring hundreds of years to grow before being buried by separate volcanic eruptions. Therefore, the entire sequence was assumed to have taken tens of thousands of years to be deposited. But now Mount St. Helens gives an alternate explanation of its possible origins, that of rapid catastrophic formation.
Further confirmation of this rapid catastrophic formation is found in the study of tree rings. The tree rings found in several consecutive layers at Yellowstone Park were compared. If the trees lived at different times, as uniformitarian geologists asserted, their tree rings would show entirely different yearly patterns. If they lived at the same time and died in the same catastrophe then their rings would display similar patterns. The findings of a recent study of these Yellowstonetrees revealed the trees retained matching signature patterns in their rings. (24) Thus, they lived at the same time and were transported and deposited within different strata by successive mudflows. They did not live in successive forests. The scenario is quite similar to what we find at Mount St. Helens.
Coal is believed to be formed from the remains of organic deposits, known as peat, over millions of years of heat and pressure. However, this has never been observed under natural conditions. In addition, research has now shown that coal does not take millions of years to form as commonly asserted. Several laboratory tests have shown that coal or coal-like substances can be made rapidly, in minutes, hours or days. It doesn’t even require pressure, but mainly higher temperature, ideally in the form of very hot water. (25)
Now there is evidence of rapid coal formation in actual conditions. When Mount St. Helens erupted in 1980 it devastated 150 square miles of forest north of the mountain. Within minutes over a million logs were floating on Spirit Lake, surrounded by great volumes of organic material and volcanic ash. In just a few years an organic deposit consisting of mostly tree bark, decayed wood materials and volcanic ash had accumulated at the bottom of the lake. This “peat” has much of the same make-up as coal. Since it is known that the hard, black shiny bands in coal are actually “mummified bark,” the Spirit Lake peat looks very much as if it would make good coal. Another eruption of Mount St. Helens might someday bury this peat under a hot layer of lava or volcanic ash. If it did, all of the requirements for rapid coalification would be present. (26)
Rapid Ice Age Cooling
The ash cloud from Mount St Helens blanketed 11 states and several Canadian provinces with dust. Some towns were in complete darkness at midday and had significantly decreased temperatures as a result. The earth’s rock layers show abundant evidence of a huge number of massive volcanic eruptions around the time that would have been the closing stages of the Genesis Flood. An eruption at Yellowstone, for example, was estimated to be 1000 times as big as that of Mount St Helens. So if the comparatively small Mount St Helens could cool the earth, it is easy to see how multiple volcanic eruptions after the Flood contributed to the rapid onset of the Ice Age.
Little Grand Canyon
Nearly 2 years after the initial eruption, on March 19, 1982, the hot volcanic ash from another explosive eruption of Mount St. Helens melted a thick snow pack in the crater, creating a destructive, sheet-like flood of water and mud, which became a mudflow. Reaching earlier deposits that were blocking Spirit Lake, the flow cut channels through the debris at a speed of 40 miles per hour. Individual canyons up to 140 feet deep appeared in a single day. On either side of the canyons were elevated plateaus resembling the North and South Rims of the Grand Canyon.
Side canyons also appeared, resembling the side canyons of the Grand Canyon. The breach did not cut straight through the obstruction, but took a meandering path, similar to the meandering path of the Grand Canyon through the high plateaus of northern Arizona. This “Little Grand Canyon” is a one-fortieth scale model of the real Grand Canyon.
This amazing feature was cut through soft debris, but another eruption two months later (on May 19, 1982) melted a snow pack that cut through hard basalt bedrock. The resulting Loowit Canyon was more than 100 feet (30 m) deep. Nearby, the avalanche cut through lava and ash layers to form a third canyon, Step Canyon, up to 600 feet (180 m) deep.
Small creeks now flow through these deep canyons. In other places where small creeks run through deep canyons, geologists assume the creeks cut the surrounding canyons very slowly over a very long time period. Yet Mount St. Helens has clearly shown that canyons form first and form extremely rapidly!
What we have seen up to this point is that the Biblical account of the Genesis Flood is not contradicted in any way by the geological record. Nothing up to this point has contradicted the possibility that the Genesis Flood did in fact occur and is responsible for the geological formations observed in the world today. What we have instead seen is that there is ample evidence that the stratigraphic layers have been deposited relatively quickly and not over immense periods of time. We have also seen that the distribution of fossils can reasonably be explained as resulting from catastrophic flood processes.
Finally, we covered the evidence from Mount St. Helens which verified before our eyes that all of the geological processes that were previously believed to only occur over immense periods of time can and did actually occur in a relatively short period of time.
Conversely, we have seen problems that simply cannot be explained from a uniformitarian standpoint. Evolutionists will claim that there are also problems with the Genesis account that either do not make sense or cannot be explained. Below I will cover some of these main points and show that they can be explained and they do make sense when examined in the proper light.
As we stated above, the “fountains of the great deep” (Genesis 7:11), are probably oceanic or possibly subterranean sources of water. In the context of the flood account, it probably means both. It goes on to state that these “fountains” were “broken up,” which implies a release of the water, possibly through large fissures in the ground or in the sea floor. Is there any evidence for this in the geologic record?
In the 1950s Bruce C. Heezen and Marie Tharp discovered a mountain range 40,000 miles long beneath the oceans of the world, which wraps itself completely around the earth. It is called the Mid-Oceanic Ridge. It is composed of a rock called basalt which comes only from deep inside the earth. This is the material of lava flow, and is spewed from erupting volcanoes.
The Mid-Oceanic Ridge is, therefore, the result of a world-wide fissure in the earth’s crust which allowed the molten basalt to flow from the core of the earth. This is, evidently, the scar left from when the earth split open, allowing the superheated steam of the “fountains of the deep” to blast forth into the atmosphere with unimaginable force, providing a major part of the water which covered the earth, and whose sudden rupture not only changed the earth’s physical arrangement of land, but the atmospheric pressure as well. It is interesting that up to 70 percent or more of what comes out of volcanoes today is water, often in the form of steam. Add subterranean water that would have been released due to this tectonic activity and there would be plenty of water for a worldwide flood.
The rearrangement of land is in evidence by examining the continents of Africa and Asiato the east of this ridge and comparing them with North and South America on the west of the ridge. When the coasts of these continents are compared with the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, which is part of the overall ridge, we find an almost perfect fit. It is apparent then that these four continents were at one time a single landmass, and the rupture of the earth along this ridge had essentially blown them apart.
When the great fissure broke open in the earth releasing the trapped, superheated steam, the molten magma could then flow. First it tended to fill in the gap left by the water vapor, but as this space was exhausted, it oozed through the crack beneath the ocean floor. The magma would have been cooled as it met the colder water of the seas, forming mountains along the path of the rupture. This is the world’s longest mountain chain, extending completely around the world beneath the oceans. (27)
In their catastrophic plate tectonics model for the flood, Austin et al. have proposed that at the onset of the flood, the ocean floor rapidly lifted up to 6,500 feet due to an increase in temperature as horizontal movement of the tectonic plates accelerated. (28) This would spill the seawater onto the land and cause massive flooding.
So in a catastrophic model, there would be plenty of water available to cause a worldwide flood such as the one described in the Bible. But where did all the water go after the flood? If the waters are still here, why are the highest mountains not still covered with water, as they were in Noah’s day?
Quite clearly, the waters of Noah’s flood are in today’s ocean basins. About 70 percent of the earth’s surface is covered by water. Without mountains or sea basins, water would cover the whole earth. Recent calculations on the quantity of water on earth show that if the surface of the planet were smooth, the earth would be entirely covered with water to a depth of 1.7 miles. (29)
The catastrophic plate tectonics model gives a mechanism for the deepening of the oceans and the rising of mountains at the end of the flood. As the new ocean floors cooled, they would have become denser and sunk, allowing water to flow off the continents. Movement of the water off the continents and into the oceans would have weighed down the ocean floor and lightened the continents, resulting in the further sinking of the ocean floor, as well as upward movement of the continents. The deepening of the ocean basins and the rising of the continents would have resulted in more water running off the land.
The collision of the tectonic plates would have pushed up mountain ranges as well. Critics may ask how water could have covered Mount Everest, which is more than 5 miles high. Considering the catastrophic tectonic model, it is likely that the mountains today were formed only towards the end of and after the flood by collision of the tectonic plates and the associated up-thrusting. Evidence in support of this can be found on Mount Everest itself. The layers that form the uppermost parts of Mount Everest are composed of fossil-bearing, water-deposited layers !
This uplift of the new continental landmasses from under the flood waters would have meant that, as the mountains rose and the valleys sank, the waters would have rapidly drained off the newly emerging land surfaces. The erosion caused by receding flood waters is the reason that river valleys are far larger than the rivers now flowing in them could have carved. The water flow that carved out the river valleys must have been far greater than the volume of water we see flowing in the rivers today. This is consistent with voluminous flood waters draining off the emerging land surfaces at the close of the Genesis flood, and flowing into the rapidly sinking, newly prepared, deep ocean basins.
How many animals would have been on the ark?
Many skeptics assert that the Bible must be wrong, because they claim that the Ark could not possibly have carried all the different types of animals. This has persuaded some Christians to deny the Genesis Flood, or believe that it was only a local flood involving comparatively few local animals. But of course these critic have not performed detailed calculations. (30)
The relevant biblical passages that discuss how many types of animals Noah would have taken aboard the ark are:
The second quote mentions seven of every kind of “clean” animal. It must be noted that the vast amount of animals are not “clean.” So Noah would have collected two of the majority of animals. God created a number of different types of animals with the capacity for a great deal of variation, within limits. The descendants of each of these different “kinds,” would today mostly be represented by a larger grouping than what is called a species. All the various species descended from a particular original kind which modern taxonomists call a genus.
For example, horses, zebras and donkeys are probably descended from an equine (horse-like) kind, since they can interbreed, although the offspring are sterile. Dogs, wolves, coyotes and jackals are probably from a canine (dog-like) kind, and so on. In his book, Noah’s Ark: a Feasibility Study, John Woodmorappe totals about 8000 genera (plural of genus), including extinct genera. Therefore approximately 16,000 individual animals would have been aboard. (31)
One issue commonly raised is that of dinosaurs. Of the 668 supposed dinosaur genera, only 106 weighed more than ten tons when fully grown. However, there is a tendency among some paleontologists to give each of their new finds a new genus name. But this is arbitrary, so the number of extinct genera is probably highly overstated. (32) Further, the Bible does not say that the animals had to be fully grown. The largest animals were probably represented by young specimens. The median size of all animals on the ark would actually have been that of a small rat, according to Woodmorappe‘s up-to-date tabulations, while only about 11 % would have been much larger than a sheep.
Would the ark have been large enough to carry all these animals?
According to Genesis 6:15, the Ark measured 300x50x30 cubits or 459x75x44 feet, and was made with three decks. Therefore, its volume was 1.54 million cubic feet. To put this in perspective, this is the equivalent volume of 522 standard American railroad stock cars, each of which can hold 240 sheep.
If the animals were kept in cages with an average size of 20x20x12 inches, that is 4800 cubic inches, then the 16,000 animals mentioned above would only occupy 42,000 cubic feet or 14.4 stock cars. This would leave room for five trains of 99 cars each for food, Noah’s family and ‘range’ for the animals. There would be plenty of room on the Ark for the animals with plenty left over. It would be possible to stack cages, with food on top or nearby (to minimize the amount of food carrying the humans had to do), while still allowing plenty of room for gaps to allow air circulation. Remember, we are discussing an emergency situation, not necessarily luxury accommodation.
Even if we don’t allow stacking one cage on top of another to save floor space, there would be no problem. Woodmorappe shows from standard recommended floor space requirements for animals that all of them together would have needed less than half the available floor space of the Ark’s three decks. Woodmorappe calculated that the volume of foodstuffs would have been only about 15 % of the Ark’s total volume. Drinking water would only have taken up 9.4 % of the volume. This volume would be reduced further if rainwater was collected and piped into troughs.
Regarding excretory requirements for the animals, some have claimed it would be impossible for these few humans to clean up after all these animals. It is doubtful, however, that the humans had to clean the cages every morning. Possibly they had sloped floors or slatted cages, where the manure could fall away from the animals and be flushed away (plenty of water around!) or destroyed by vermicomposting (composting by worms) which would also provide earthworms as a food source. Very deep bedding can sometimes last for a year without needing a change. Absorbent material (e.g. sawdust, softwood wood shavings and especially peat moss) would reduce the moisture content and hence the odor.
So, in conclusion, the ark would certainly have been large enough to carry all of the animals with plenty of room to spare.
How did fish survive the flood?
If the whole earth were covered by water in the flood, then there would have been a mixing of fresh and salt waters. We do not know how salty the sea was before the flood. Volcanoes emit huge amounts of steam, and underwater lava creates hot water/steam, which dissolves minerals, adding salt to the water. Furthermore, erosion accompanying the movement of water off the continents after the flood would have added salt to the oceans. In other words, we would expect the pre-flood ocean waters to be less salty than they were after the flood.
The problem for fish coping with saltiness is this: fish in fresh water tend to absorb water, because the saltiness of their body fluids draws in the water (by osmosis). Fish in saltwater tend to lose water from their bodies because the surrounding water is saltier than their body fluids.
Many families of fish contain both fresh and saltwater species. Indeed, most of the families alive today have both fresh and saltwater representatives. This suggests that the ability to tolerate large changes in salinity was present in most fish at the time of the flood.
Major public aquariums use the ability of fish to adapt to water of different salinity from their normal habitat to exhibit freshwater and saltwater species together. The fish can adapt if the salinity is changed slowly enough. Many fish species today have the capacity to adapt to both fresh and salt water within their own lifetimes, so it is reasonable to believe that was the case at the time of the flood. .
Noah would not have needed to bring plants aboard the ark. Many terrestrial seeds can survive long periods of soaking in various concentrations of salt water. Scientist George Howe conducted a series of experiments where he tested the ability of plant seeds to survive underwater. Seeds from various fruits and flowers were submerged in either salt or fresh water for up to 140 days. His findings demonstrated that the majority of seeds treated in such a way still managed to germinate and grow after the water was removed. (33)
Indeed, salt water impedes the germination of some species so that the seed is better preserved as compared to fresh water. Darwin himself proved that seeds could survive months of soaking in sea water. Other plants could have survived in floating vegetation masses, or on pumice from the volcanic activity. Pieces of many plants are capable of asexual sprouting.
Many plants could have survived as planned food stores on the ark, or accidental inclusions in such food stores. Many seeds have devices for attaching themselves to animals. Others could have survived in the stomachs of the bloated, floating carcasses of dead herbivores. The olive leaf brought back to Noah by the dove (Gen. 8:11) shows that plants were regenerating well before Noah and company left the ark.
Evolutionists acknowledge that men and animals could once freely cross the Bering Strait, which separates Asia and the Americas. (34) Before the idea of continental drift became popular, evolutionists depended entirely upon a lowering of the sea level during an ice age to create land bridges, enabling dry-passage from Europe most of the way to Australasia, for example.
There is widespread, but mistaken, belief that marsupials are found only in Australia, thus supporting the idea that they must have evolved there. However, living marsupials, opossums, are found also in North and South America, and fossil marsupials have been found on every continent. Likewise, monotremes (egg-laying mammals) were once thought to be unique to Australia. However, the discovery in 1991 of a fossil platypus tooth in South America stunned the scientific community. (35) Since evolutionists believe all organisms came from a common ancestor, migration between Australia and other areas must be conceded as possible by all scientists, whether evolutionist or creationist.
The ancestors of present-day kangaroos may have established daughter populations in several parts of the world, most of which subsequently became extinct. Perhaps marsupials only survived in Australiabecause they migrated there ahead of the placental mammals and were subsequently isolated from the placentals and so protected from competition and predation.
To account for today’s animal distribution, evolutionists themselves have had to propose that certain primates have traveled across hundreds of miles of open ocean on huge rafts of matted vegetation torn off in storms. (36) Iguanas have recently been documented traveling hundreds of miles in this manner between islands in the Caribbean. (37) So it becomes clear that these supposed obstacles can be easily explained.
Observation of earth’s population and population growth is consistent with the biblical account of the Flood. Given that the earth’s present population was about 6 billion people in 1994, and factoring in its current rate of growth of about 2% per year, it would take only about 1100 years to reach that population number from an original pair. (38) If man has been around for over a million years, as evolutionists teach, there should be about 108600 people alive today! That’s the number 10 with 8600 zeroes after it!
The assumption of stable population growth throughout the past might seem unreasonable. But the last few centuries have seen mass weaponry, brutal genocide, rampant abortion rates, the worst wars, the worst famines and the worse plagues. Yet the population growth rate has not changed much.
If we accept that man has been around one million years, the growth rate would have had to been 0.002% to produce the current population of 7 billion people. To compound the problem for evolutionists is the fact that the amount of people that would have lived and died in this million year period is so large it becomes meaningless. If all these people lived and died then why are human bones so scarce?!
We are told that Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon civilizations dominated the Stone Age. These people buried their dead which would increase the chances that bones and teeth would be preserved. In the 100,000 years the Stone Age supposedly lasted, with populations of between 1 and 10 million individuals, they should have buried about 4 billion bodies in the uppermost soil layer. Yet we find only a few.
We cannot make any firm conclusions because the conditions are subjective. However, we can say that what has been found is certainly more compatible with the Genesis Flood and a young earth than with an immensely old earth.
The universal worldwide flood is not described in the Bible alone. There are hundreds of legends of a worldwide deluge. Sir J. William Dawon, the famous Canadian geologist, writes:
Further, we know that the deluge of Noah is not mere myth or fancy of primitive man or solely a doctrine of the Hebrew Scriptures. The record of the catastrophe is preserved in some of the oldest historical documents of several distinct races of men, and is indirectly corroborated by the whole tenor of the early history of most of the civilized races. (39)
Dr. Bert Thompson also documents historical records of the flood: (40)
The account of the Genesis flood hardly stands alone. Researchers have described over 100 flood traditions from Europe, Asia, Australia, the East Indies, the Americas, East Africa, and many other places. Almost all accounts agree on these points:
One of the oldest flood stories was discovered in the excavation of Ninevah in 1850-1854. Multitudes of clay tablets were uncovered. Among these tablets was found the so-called Babylonian account of Creation.
Some critics claim that the Biblical Flood account was taken from the Babylonian flood account of the Gilgamesh Epic. Because the tablets are dated long before the oldest biblical documents, paleontologists assume it to be an older account than the biblical account of the flood. Yet as we saw earlier in this book, biblical scribes destroyed old copies of the biblical books in favor of the newer, perfectly copied versions. So this is not proof that the Babylonian account is older than the Genesis account.
It is indeed astonishing to see how large are the areas of general agreement between the Biblical and Babylonian Flood accounts. On the other hand, it must be recognized that there are so many important differences in detail between the two accounts (the Biblical being far more rational and consistent than the Babylonian), that it is quite impossible to assume that Genesis in any way depends upon the Gilgamesh Epic as a source.
As stated, hundreds of flood traditions have been found in every part of the world, in both the Eastern and Western hemispheres. Common to most of them is the recollection of a great flood which once covered the earth and destroyed all but a tiny remnant of the human race. Many of them, even those which have been found among the American Indians, tell of the building of a great ark which saved human and animal seed from total destruction by the Flood and which finally landed upon a mountain.
Unfortunately, we cannot expect non-Christian scholars to acknowledge such traditions as constituting confirmatory evidence for the historicity of the Genesis account, because that portion of the Bible has been assigned, on the basis of anti-theistic presuppositions, to the realm of myth and legend.
The astonishing manner in which modern scholarship has misinterpreted the true significance of the Gilgamesh Epic is a perfect example of this anti-supernaturalistic bias. Conservative Christian scholars have considered the Babylonian flood account and, contrary to the critics, have found it to be one of the most remarkable confirmations of Genesis ever discovered in ancient literature. In spite of polytheistic elements, the Babylonian account contains parallels to the Genesis account, even in matters of detail that are nothing less than amazing.
The Genesis account of the Flood, being free from any of the corrupting elements which abound in the Babylonian version, is based upon written records that were kept pure and accurate down through the centuries. But critical scholarship, instead of admitting that the Babylonian account is a highly corrupted cognate of the pure Genesis account, has deliberately perverted the true relationship of these records by making Genesis a corruption of the Gilgamesh Epic ! (41)
Regarding the Babylonian Creation account, Professor of archaeology Joseph P. Free states:
If there is any connection between the Babylonian tablets and the true account of Creation given in the Bible, it is likely that the facts regarding Creation were handed down and diffused among many people and finally appeared in this variant form in Babylonia with the addition of many legendary and polytheistic features. Our examination shows that the Pan-Babylonian theory of origins is not borne out. (42)
In conclusion, it becomes clear that when all the evidence is examined with an open mind none of the evidence can be said to contradict or prove the Genesis Flood false. Interestingly, in the New Testament’s second book of Peter, Peter writes regarding scoffers in the last days:
First of all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. They will say, “Where is this ‘coming’ he promised? Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.” But they deliberately forget that long ago by God’s word the heavens existed and the earth was formed out of water and by water. By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed…(2Peter 3:3-5 NIV).
This is another example of fulfilled prophecy. When Peter writes that the scoffers will say: “everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation” he is clearly describing the concept of uniformitarianism, which has of course become the dominant theory of geology. Don’t be fooled. No matter what the critic write and say, the Bible has never been proven wrong in any properly understood passage !!
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