The Grand Canyon – A Slice Through Time

In Galileo’s time there was a great conflict between how the church establishment interpreted the Bible and the findings of good science. This battle is now being re-enacted over the age of the earth and universe. ‘Flood Geologists’ take the wording in the early chapters of Genesis literally. On this basis they insist that the earth is only a few thousand years old and that therefore all the geological record must have developed recently and the ‘Great Flood’ is given as the explanation.

During the eighteenth century evidence accumulated suggesting that the earth was ancient. Most orthodox theologians had no problem with this view. Between 1910 and 1915 a group of eminent American evangelical theologians wrote a series of articles known as ‘The Fundamentals’, outlining fundamental Christian doctrines. These issues concerning the age of the earth or the extent of Noah’s flood were not then considered to be fundamental.

The notion of a recent creation and a global flood was popularised by Ellen Gould White (1827-1915), the leader of the Seventh Day Adventists. It was another Adventist author, George McCready Price (1870-1963) who promoted flood geology and suggested that the strata in rocks could all be formed rapidly by a global flood. This view was then further popularised by the book ‘The Genesis Flood’ (1961) written by a Professor of Old Testament, John Whitcombe and Henry Morris, the Director of the Institution of Creation Research. It was this book that created a stir amongst many evangelical churchmen. The difficulty is that people are presented with a dilemma, should I believe what modern science is affirming strongly or believe the Bible. In fact that should not be the dilemma if the same God who created our world also gave us his Son and his Word, the Bible. If the science is sound then the church must review how it has interpreted Scripture. There must be unity.

The Grand Canyon gives us a slice through time. A recent book by a group of Christian geologists, called ‘The Grand Canyon, Monument to an Ancient Earth’ i, investigates the evidence, now available, from the geology and fossils found in the strata of the Grand Canyon. They discuss whether it is possible for Noah’s flood to explain these findings. They conclude that it is impossible for these strata to have formed, and appear as they now do, in just a few thousand years. They give the following reasons.

1. There are over twenty eight rock strata that are present in the Colorado area. Even though many of these have been eroded in the Grand Canyon region, the more recent layers are still present in the adjacent ‘Grand Staircase’ mountains. It is only in these upper strata that Dinosaur footprints and eggs are found. In the Grand Canyon the base rock is volcanic rock but this is overlaid by over 5000 feet of sedimentary rocks. Although the upper strata are horizontal the lower layers are tilted down to the East. As most of these strata are sedimentary rocks deposited under water, the deeper strata could not have been formed at the same time as the more superficial layers.

2. The many rock strata are very different in colour and hardness which suggests the rocks were not all created in one process. Interspersed between the sandstone strata are layers of shale and of volcanic rock. These layers strongly suggest that the earth was created over a very long period. In the deepest strata there are tilted sedimentary rocks directly on top of faulted granite.

3. These oldest layers of sedimentary rocks have been tilted, faulted and eroded. Subsequently deep tilted strata were covered with further strata of other sedimentary rocks. These must have taken an extremely long time to form. The erosion of both the sandstone and volcanic rocks by the Colorado river would itself take millions of years.

4. Geology and astrophysics strongly suggest that the world is over 4.5 billion years old. Modern radiometric dating methods are increasingly reliable and repeatable and confirm these ancient dates. The deepest layers are of volcanic granite, but dykes or protrusions of volcanic rock have intruded into the overlying sedimentary rocks. These dykes have been dated radiometrically as being about 1.7 million years old. This means that the deeper sedimentary layers must be older than that. The more superficial volcanic layers are radiometrically dated as being younger that deeper ones. To reject isotope evidence nowadays is to be pig-headed. Isotope physics are now used everyday in all aspects of our lives and isotope decay is well understood and is reliable. The Mars rover that treks across the planet is powered by an isotope of plutonium that has a half life of 88 years. There is no evidence that decay rates have ever changed.

There is excellent cross-checking for the reliability of carbon dating and there are now good checks on the dating of rocks radiometrically. Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD and destroyed Pompeii. Rocks from that eruption have been correctly dated independently using the argon-argon method.

Recent research on plate tectonics confirm the reliability of isotope dating for volcanic rocks. The Mid-Atlantic Ridge (see diagram) is a volcanic mountain range on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean. Lava erupting from the ridge is slowly driving North and South America away from Europe and Africa.

The symmetry of the continental shapes and the correspondence of the geological strata either side of the Atlantic strongly suggest that once these continental masses were joined. The radiometric dates of the rocks in the ocean floor confirm that the further they are away from the central ridge, the older are the rocks. This suggests that it is the ridge eruptions of lava that are pushing the plates away from each other. The maximum ages for rocks either side of the Atlantic Ocean are 180 million years. By comparing this with the distance between the continents (3,480 miles), it has been calculated that the continents are separating around 1.2 inches per year. Satellite measurements have now confirmed that the continents are separating at approximately 1 inch a year. Thus the decay rate and the separation of the continents have been shown to be in concert for 180 million years.

Uranium/lead dating is widely used to date rocks that crystallised from 1 to 4.5 million years ago. It is estimated to be accurate to within 0.1 to 1 per cent. It is usually performed on zircon which is a crystal of uranium and strontium that strongly rejects lead when forming. Yet he uranium slowly decays into lead and it has been shown that the ratio of uranium to lead is related to the age of the rock.

In the Grand Canyon the deeper strata of volcanic rocks are always found to be older using these radiometric methods.

5. If the sedimentary strata, found throughout the world, were formed during Noah’s flood the Garden of Eden would have existed under five miles of sedimentary rocks. This is the depth of the sedimentary rocks in that area, rocks that would have been laid down during Noah’s flood if the earth is only a few thousand years old. Middle East oil is found in the Cretaceous rocks, that are about two miles down. This oil, that forms from the destruction of living matter, would have to have formed in the time of that flood. No good explanation has been suggested as to how oil formed in that layer if one flood that lasted a year caused all the layers.

6. Some strata have coarse sandstone at the bottom merging with finer sandstone above and then shale above that. This suggests that when these strata were formed the water was relatively still, allowing the heavier sand and stones to settle to the bottom, leaving the finer clay suspended in the water above. It is this clay that then formed the shale. This could not have occurred in the more turbulent waters of a rapid flood associated with mountain formation and tsunamis.

7. Multiple limestone layers are found between the other strata of the Grand Canyon. These are formed from broken down sea shells, coral and/or limey mud and take a very long time to form. It can develop in lakes or seas but has never been seen to form in flood water as the time is much too short. The absence of clay and sand in the chalk layers makes it clear that the thick limestone strata could not have formed in turbulent flood waters.

8. In some places the sandstone shows ripple marks on the top of strata, such as seen today on sand beaches. These are formed by water currents in shallow water moulding the sand. They are not caused in fast flowing water. Other stone surfaces have raindrop indentations that confirm that the sand was above water level when the indentations formed.

9. There are tunnels in the limestone that have been filled with other material containing rough rocks. This rubble came from already hardened overlying rocks that have collapsed into the tunnels. This finding is irreconcilable with a flood causing all the layers over a short period.

10. Tracks of reptiles and insects have been found on the top of strata estimated to be from the Paleozoic era (541-252 million years ago) and above. These prove that the sandstone was above water when these were made.

11. The upper surface of some strata of limestone have deep channels, probably eroded out by rivers. These are filled with different petrified material. The filling in these channels contain some fossils of the giant seed fern, Lycopod trees. These plants grew up to ninety feet tall and had trunks up to six feet in diameter. They grew in low lying swamp land around 320 million years ago. These fossils prove that these buried rocks were, at one time, dry ground.

12. Many rock strata have splits in them that appear to be filled with other material. The obvious explanation is that these rocks have solidified and split, the splits being filled with sand or other debris which itself has turned to rock. The point is that these layers had to have been present for a substantial time to have become petrified.

13. The deepest strata of Grand Canyon rocks reveal only marine organisms such as trilobites and sponges. It is only in the more superficial Permian rocks (252-299 million years ago), the last of the Paleozoic era (541-252 mya), that tracks of reptiles, spiders and scorpions are found. There are coral fossils in many layers but these fossils are different from contemporary species.

14. Plant fossils also vary markedly, the oldest strata containing plants have only simple ones. Conifers appear late in the Permian era. Deciduous trees, flowering plants and grasses only appear in the more superficial Cretaceous era strata (145-166 million years ago). If all these strata formed over a very short period in a turbulent flood these fossils should be mixed up, at least to some degree.

15. The way that the edges of the Grand Canyon have not readily collapsed confirm that the river has slowly eroded solid rocks over a very long period of time. If the sediments had not formed into rock they would have eroded in a very different way with walls collapsing.

16. It is now apparent that the Grand Canyon was formed by waters advancing, leaving a sedimentary deposit of either sandstone or limestone, and then receding leaving the layer to petrify and then often split. Later subsequent waters would again cover the land and leave another deposit with its characteristic features and fossils. This process must have taken a very long time, millions of years.

17. The Rampart Cave in the Grand Canyon is about 150 feet long. Its floor is covered with the dung of an extinct Giant Ground Sloth which used to live widely across North America. Sloths had been extinct for several thousand years before the first evidence of human activity in the Canyon. The earliest human artefacts in the cave have been dated using radiocarbon to about 6,000 years ago. The upper layers of dung have been dated using radio-carbon to more than 11,000 years and there is no evidence that Giant Sloths have lived since then. Samples of the deepest dung yielded ages greater than 35,000 years. The giant Sloths were extinct long before the first humans appeared.

Comment

Some advocates of a young earth have suggested that the world behaved in very different ways in the past and that all processes occurred dramatically faster. However there is no evidence that the constants of physics have ever changed. For the earth to be young then the decay of isotopes would have to have been around a million times faster at some stage. This would result in the whole earth becoming molten again!

It is now possible to study the properties of galaxies at the edge of the universe. It appears they all work according to the same rules of physics as we have on earth. One of the constants that enables molecules and life to exist on earth is the fact that a proton’s mass is 1836.152 times that of an electron. Modern research has found that this ratio is the same throughout the universe

"One of the most important numbers in physics, the proton-electron mass ratio, is the same in a galaxy six billion lightyears away as it is here on Earth, according to new research, laying to rest debate about whether the laws of nature vary in different places in the Universe."1

There appears to be the same universality of all we observe in the universe. Physicist Eugene Wigner acknowledges that the mathematical nature of the universe,

". . . is something bordering on the mysterious and there is no rational explanation for it." 2

Richard Feynman, a Nobel Prize winner for quantum electrodynamics, said,

"Why nature is mathematical is a mystery . . . The fact that there are rules at all is a kind of miracle." 2 3

There are now many cross checks that confirm that isotopes have decayed at a consistent rate over the years. It is therefore very unreasonable to suggest that the laws of physics have ever changed in order to accommodate a theory about the date when the earth was created, a date dependant on one way of understanding the words of Scripture.
This immutability of the laws of nature is exactly what Scripture affirms.

“But this is what the LORD says: I would no more reject my people than I would change my laws that govern night and day, earth and sky.” Jeremiah 33:25

But the question then arises,

“Does this conclusion not undermine the authority of Scripture, an authority that Jesus affirmed.”

In no way! If the Scriptures are ‘the very words of God’ (Romans 3:2) then the only change can be our understanding of the words and genre with which they are written. This is exactly what has happened with regard to the conflict over a flat earth, held by several early church Fathers, and over Galileo’s findings. In the sixteenth century the church rejected Galileo’s discoveries on the basis that Scripture repeatedly says ‘the earth cannot be moved’ (1 Chronicles 16:30, Psalm 93:1, Psalm 6:10, Psalm 104:5) Now we understand that it was the church’s understanding of Scripture that was wrong, not the findings of good science. The Bible strongly affirms that God created the world and all that is in it.

“The heavens are yours, and yours also the earth; you founded the world and all that is in it. You created the north and the south . . .” Psalm 89:12

God certainly created the world but the question of when he did so, it does not answer – nor are we given details as to how, except that it was by his word. What is certain is God’s message that we must all live under the authority of our creator and accept the forgiveness that God’s Son, the Lord Jesus has won for us. There is so much evidence for him.

BVPi

1 Emily Baldwin; "Earth's Laws Still Apply in Distant Universe";AstronomyNow.com; June, 2008.

2 Eugene Wigner, "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences," in Douglas Campbell and John Higgins, eds., ‘Mathematics’ (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1984), Vol. 3, 117.