Sedimentary Layers Caused By Water

(A picture of the Grand Canyon I took when I visited the incredible natural wonder of the world in spring 2007. It really is an astonishing mind-blowing place! Note the clean horizontal layering in the sediment in both the near by section and the distance sections of the canyon. This is an extremely common effect when flood waters lay down fresh sediment and does NOT happen over millions of years because too much erosion and change happens in that time to allow for such neat smooth layering.)

Intro

      I’m about to let you in on a “deep dark secret” of geology. Secular scientists insist that the Genesis Flood described in the Bible book of Genesis is absolutely ridiculous. No such world-wide flood has ever occurred, as far as they are concerned. The countless cultural references across numerous unique cultures all over the planet that recount legends of a world-wide flood survived by a limited number of people on a great boat (like Noah and his family described in the Bible), means nothing, they believe, and insist. But you may be surprised to realize that even scientists attribute much of the strata (Sedimentary Rock) laid down across the surface of our planet to have been formed by large bodies of water! These very same layers of Sedimentary Rock (formed mostly by water) also contain almost ALL fossils of once living organisms that were buried when the soft sediment was being laid down. These sediment layers and the fossils formed within them are EXACTLY what you would expect if a world-wide cataclysmic flood like the one described in Genesis were to take place.

      Surprised!? I was. Secular scientists and Creationists agree on a lot of the same processes that formed the many layers of strata (soft sediments and hard sedimentary rock) across our planet, but most people have absolutely NO idea just how well the Biblical Genesis Flood explains these layers of the earth. The biggest difference between secular scientists and creationists when it comes to describing the laying down of strata across the surface of the planet is simply a matter of time. Secular scientists say it took hundreds of millions of slow gradual processes while creationists say that the vast majority of it happened very fast, all within the last 4000 years or so (much less than hundreds of millions of years). Ultimately the big issue here is the world-view (or bias) of the scientist. Secular scientists believe in a billions of years old earth while creationists believe in an earth that probably isn’t much older than 6000 to 10,000 years (at most). Because of the bias of each group, they pre-determine (before even considering much of the evidence) that the many layers of strata took a short or long amount of time to form.

      The shocking thing is that while secular scientists say that these sedimentary layers were formed over hundreds of millions of years, they attribute these layers mostly to having been formed by water, exactly as the creationists also believe, but with completely different time scales in mind.

Sediment

      There are two very important things to understand about the earth’s layers of strata (sediment) before we continuing.

      Sediment is usually caused by soft earth (mud, sand, etc.) being laid down through physical and chemical erosion. Wind and temperature changes of rock cause weathering, but the most common way to form sediment is by way of water. Water erodes the ground and carries bits of sediment long distances and lays it down in neat smooth layers, most commonly at the edges of lakes and oceans where rivers carrying the sediment end. Beaches and shorelines are also prime candidates for forming sediment because of all the minerals and sediment particles in the water there. Sediment is laid down as many small bits of earth (like sand) collected and piled on top of each other. When the water moves across the sediment, it smoothes it out and mixes it up, since it is still soft. When the water evaporates, calms, or goes elsewhere, the soft sediment hardens and becomes solid sedimentary rock, preserving anything buried within that sediment (fossils).

      Almost all fossils are found exclusively in the many layers of sediment across the world. As we already know, sediment is laid down mostly by water. Fossils can only form when a living organism is buried very quickly after death or even while it is alive because if it is NOT buried immediately, the chemicals within it start breaking down the organism and destroying it (it rots away). Because of this, unless a special condition exists (such as an organism being entombed in soft mud or sand), a living organism will not form a fossil. It must be buried in soft sediment within a few hours of death, at most. That’s right! A fossil can’t form unless the organism is buried immediately in loose wet sediment! Fossils are very rare, however, because the conditions to make them are very precise. People who believe in a world-wide cataclysmic flood fully expect that the many layers of sedimentary rock all over the planet would contain thousands and thousands of fossils because these creatures were all buried and drowned in a massive devastating flood. Secular scientists, on the other hand, believe that most of these same fossils and the sediments that encase them were formed by sudden small events across millions and millions of years, usually involving water.

      Sediment, water, drowned and buried living organisms, fossils… Both creation scientists and secular scientists agree on these processes but both disagree strongly on the time scale involved.

The Grand Canyon

      The Grand Canyon is one of the best examples of this debate between secular science and Bible-believing scientists because all of the big pieces and evidences in the debate can be found there. The Grand Canyon is also one of the most amazing geological formations on our planet! What makes the Grand Canyon so great for studying geology and the layers of sediment is that the canyon runs straight through many different layers of earth all the way down to very hard metamorphic and igneous rock beneath (the bottom thickest and hardest layers of the earth’s crust). It’s as if nature carved this giant canyon out to give geologists a perfect natural playground.

(The blue layers are all flat horizontal layers of sedimentary rock. Bible-believing geologists believe that almost all of these "blue" layers {in the graph} were laid down during and just after the Genesis Flood and do NOT represent hundreds of millions of years each. Note that many of these layers are completely flat and even on top of each other, showing absolutely NO sign of ANY erosion having taken place between them being laid down despite supposedly millions of years between each layer {according to secular geologists}. That's just not possible.)

So Much Water!

      Fossils of seashells are found everywhere on the planet throughout most layers of sediment. This is not surprising since seashells are very hard and ideal for becoming fossilized. But it’s interesting to note that no matter where you go on the planet, even up to the tops of the highest mountains, you can find fossils of seashells, as if at one time the entire planet were covered in ocean! Secular scientists actually agree that at one time all land was covered in water, seas and oceans, so they too have a good (and watery) explanation for such a strange occurrence. Of course they believe such things happened over millions of years whereas Bible-believing scientists believe most of it happened over a short period of time, during the great world-wide flood and the few thousand years since.

      The Grand Canyon also contains tons of fossils that belong to sea-dwelling creatures such as clams, shellfish, fish and amphibians (turtles, toads, etc. that like both land and water). To everyone this is very good evidence that the layers of sediment all around (and at) the Grand Canyon were formed mostly by water carrying vast quantities of soft sediment from place to place. Many of the layers of sediment found at the Grand Canyon stretch across much of the North American continent to different levels of depth. Because of this, scientists on both sides of the debate agree that the sediment had to have been laid down by vast seas that spanned much of the continent (or more, in the case of a global flood). These great seas, especially in shallower areas, buried and fossilized many sea creatures for us to dig up thousands (or hundreds of millions) of years later.

      Let’s take a look at what general science tells us about the formation of the Grand Canyon’s sedimentary layers. Below is a long list of instances where the geological explanations for how the sediments and rock layers of the Grand Canyon formed CONSTANTLY mention seas, shorelines, and water. This is because most sediments are formed thanks to water eroding and transporting the material.

Wikipedia: Geology of the Grand Canyon Area

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geology_of_the_Grand_Canyon_area)

“The nearly 40 major sedimentary rock layers exposed in the Grand Canyon and in the Grand Canyon National Park area range in age from about 200 million to nearly 2 billion years old. Most were deposited in warm, shallow seas and near ancient, long-gone sea shores in western North America.”

“Eventually, this sunken region of Laurentia was flooded with a shallow seaway that extended from at least present-day Lake Superior to Glacier National Park in Montana to the Grand Canyon and the Uinta Mountains. The resulting Grand Canyon Supergroup of sedimentary units is composed of nine varied geologic formations that were laid down from 1.2 billion and 740 million years ago in this sea.”

“The oldest section of the supergroup is the Unkar Group. It was laid down in an offshore environment. The first formation to be laid down in the Unkar Group was the Bass Limestone. A wave-eroded gravel that later lithified into a basal conglomerate is known as the Hotauta Member of the Bass Limestone.^[12] The Bass Limestone was deposited in a shallow sea near the coast as a mix of limestone, sandstone, and shale.”

“Nankoweap Formation is around 1050 million years old and is not part of a group.^[16] This rock unit is made of coarse-grained sandstone, and was deposited in a shallow sea on top of the eroded surface of the Cardenas Lava.”

“All formations in the Chuar Group were deposited in coastal and shallow sea environments about 1000 to 700 million years ago.”

“An ocean started to return to the Grand Canyon area from the west about 550 million years ago.^[9] As its shoreline moved east, the ocean began to concurrently deposit the three formations of the Tonto Group.”

“Tapeats Sandstone averages 525 million years old and is made of cliff-derived medium- to coarse-grained sand and conglomerate that was deposited on an ancient shore (see 3a in figure 1).^[10] Ripple marks are common in the upper members of this dark brown thin-bedded layer.”

“Bright Angel Shale… was mostly deposited as mud just offshore…”

“Streams were the likely cause but marine scour may be to blame. Either way, these depressions were filled with freshwater limestone about 385 million years ago in the Middle Devonian in a formation that geologists call the Temple Butte Limestone (see 4a in figure 1).”

“Fossils of animals with backbones are found in this formation; bony plates from freshwater fish in the eastern part and numerous marine fish fossils in the western part.”

“Redwall… was laid down in a retreating shallow tropical sea near the equator during 40 million years of the early-to-middle Mississippian.^[36] Many fossilized crinoids, brachiopods, bryozoans, horn corals, nautiloids, and sponges, along with other marine organisms such as large and complex trilobites have been found in the Redwall.”

“Supai Group was deposited in late Mississippian, through the Pennsylvanian and into the early Permian time, some 320 million to 270 million years ago.^[38] Both marine and non-marine deposits of mud, silt, sand and calcareous sediments were laid down on a broad coastal plain similar to the Texas Gulf Coast of today.”

“Next in the geologic column is the 200-foot (60 m)-thick Toroweap Formation (see 6c in figure 1).^[40] It consists of red and yellow sandstone and shaly gray limestone interbedded with gypsum.^[40] The formation was deposited in a warm, shallow sea as the shoreline transgressed (invaded) and regressed (retreated) over the land.”

A Matter Of Time

      As you can see, most of the sedimentary layers in the Grand Canyon region are believed to have been formed by the work of water completely or partially covering massive swaths of the area, often times the entire mid-western United States. Secular geologists believe that these seas, oceans, lakes, swamps, deltas and rivers came and went repeatedly over hundreds of millions of years, resulting in the layers of sediment we see today being laid down one and a time on top of each other. This same process is used to explain the vast majority of sediment all over our planet! In other words, the entire planet was repeatedly covered in vast quantities of water, but all at different times and never enough to be considered a “global flood”. Again, it comes down to time scale.

      Bible-believing geologists believe that most sediment was laid down by the cataclysmic fossil-creating flood described in Genesis and the processes of a post-flood world. Secular scientists believe that large bodies of water DID lay down these very same sediments, but that they happened very slowly over millions and millions of years. The flood provides a good explanation for the sudden burial and drowning of tons of living organisms whereas the secular theories have to suggest many isolated landslide and flood events to account for those same fossils.

      Secular scientists will tell you that the Grand Canyon is a prime example of an ancient earth because it took hundreds of millions of years for all those layers of sediment to form. Bible-believing geologists believe that much of those same sedimentary layers formed within the short time frame of the Genesis flood, about a year or two. The science works for both because both groups pretty much believe that the very same processes created the sediment and the fossils they hold. The only significant difference is the debate over how long it all took to form.

      Large floods have been proven to move massive quantities of sediment great distances in a very short amount of time, so to speculate that such an event on a global scale could lay down the majority of today’s sedimentary layers is not a far stretch of the imagination. Water also very easily creates a “layer cake” formation of different types of sediment, the waves and currents shifting the sediments enough to make very neat (clean) layers form one on top of the other. However, to believe that all these layers were laid down so perfectly and neatly horizontally without any (or very few) signs of erosion between them across hundreds of millions of years is very implausible.