In another post, I was asked about evidence of age in the geologic column. One of the simplest indications of age is the footprints that we find. Nothing was walking around under the flood. Whether it be birds or dinos or other things, there are tracks of footprints that we have to deal with. You also have things like varves that have alternating layers of spring time pollen and fall time leaf debris. This indicates seasons of change - something that would not occur under ocean of water all in one year. Ill post a quote from A New Look at an Old Earth that used to be online (I think it is gone now) that discusses just this one argument from varves. I actually have some samples of these varves that the author of that book sent me to examine. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Green River Formation: Sediments which accumulate in the bottoms of lakes pile up in layers just like the growth rings of a tree. The Green River Formation of Utah, Colorado and Wyoming is comprised of the sediments of a lake which dried up long ago. The formation is estimated to contain more than four million of these layers. Some estimates are five times that. These layers can be viewed alongside U.S. Route 191, between Duchesne and Price in Utah. The formation extends southward from the southern border of the Ashley National Forest. Because the highway drops steeply to the south, and because the layers of the formation tilt in the opposite direction, about a mile of cross-sectional thickness of the formation is exposed in just a few miles of road cut. Because of variations in climate over the time the lake existed, different layers can be quite different in appearance. Some are indistinct and difficult to count (a carefully aimed blow from a rock hammer fixes this), and a significant fraction of the layers (enough to prove the point all by themselves) are trivial to count (assuming a person has a great deal of time to spend); the individual layers are so sharply defined that they easily break apart into distinct flakes which are each about the thickness of a potato chip. The roadside is littered with these loose flakes which are broken off as the exposed formation weathers. The layers look like flavored Pringles. Pollen, as you would expect in annual cycles, is interspersed in every other layer. The layers average around 250 per inch. The thickest parts of the Green River Formation in Lake Gosiute are in the neighborhood of 200-2600 feet. Human Geologists have many different theories about how long it took to deposit these layers. The standard theory is that each layer took a year to deposit - just like rings on a tree. If this interpretation is correct, the varves of the Green River formation must have formed over a period of 4-20 million years. Other geologists believe individual storms may have been responsible for many or most of the layers. Young-earth geologists point to extraordinary circumstances near construction sites etc. and argue that as many as three to five layers might have been deposited in a single day. But everyone has to admit that the layers are there - literally millions of them, neatly stacked in a huge vertical sequence - and that they were deposited at the bottom of a lake which once covered approximately 10,000 square miles. Other suggestions have been made, such as the theory that these layers resulted from an erupting volcano like Mt. St. Helens. Although volcanoes can generate striped patterns in the ash they expel, it hardly needs mentioning that this ash is never comprised of calcium carbonate or neatly interlayered with fish fossils (as the Green River Formation layers are). Furthermore, the Green River Formation contains two thin layers which really are volcanic in origin. These two layers are distinguishable from the rest of the formation only because the rest of the formation is comprised of lake-bottom sediments rather than more of the same volcanic material. The details in the evidence dont allow for this sort of misinterpretation. We will have to consider the possibility that these layers were all deposited during the single year of Noahs flood. In order to deposit four million layers in one year (much less 20 million), the layers must be deposited faster than one every eight seconds! (The arithmetic always gives this same result.) The problem becomes one of changing the composition of the fine-grained sedimentary particles in an area about the size of Lake Erie from limestone to organic then back to limestone again, once every eight seconds. Furthermore, this must be done without disturbing the water so much that fine-grained sediments cannot settle out of it. This is clearly not what the evidence is telling us either. Remember, we are attempting to avoid miraculous false appearances here. If we assume that the layers were deposited naturally over 10,000 years (ignoring Noahs flood and the fact that the lake vanished long ago), and if we assume the layers somehow formed faster than one per day, then we would still need to account for the mile depth of the formation. The Mississippi and Colorado rivers, taken together, drain about half of the area of the continental United States (excluding Alaska), and both are well known for the large amount of silt they carry (although before the Europeans arrived, they did not transport nearly so much silt). Together, even at todays rates, these two rivers transport less than a tenth of a cubic mile of sediments per year. If we made the impossible assumption that both of those rivers dumped their entire sediment load into this one lake and that no sediments ever washed out of it, this would only add about half an inch per year spread over the roughly 10,000-square-mile lake bottom. Even with these unreasonably extreme assumptions we cannot explain the evidence we see; in 10,000 years, this would account for less than a tenth of the formations thickness. And this is only a very small part of the bad news. All of the layers of the Grand Canyon can be shown to have been deposited before the first layer of the Green River Formation was. They extend right underneath that formation. If the Grand Canyon is the result of the tremendous forces of Noah?s flood, how calm was the water? Also, as the area of the lake rose and fell, there are layers with raindrop indications and mud cracks. How did it dry out if it was under the flood? And, if that were not enough, some layers have tracks of bird footprints in them. How were there birds walking around in the middle of the flood? Finally, radio carbon dating of samples though out the formation give the readings you would expects if the layers were annual. Please notice that I have made no circular assumptions about how long each layer was presumed to have taken to form etc. I gave the young-earth assumption every possible allowance. Still, a literal reading of this evidence simply will not allow for the young-earth theory of Biblical interpretation - with or without help from Noahs flood. Either Gods creation testifies that it is much older than 10,000 years, or God has deceived us in his creation (fish fossils and all). Since these varves exist, and since it is shown that they could not have been laid down by the flood, we have only two choices. Either these sediment layers actually occurred over a great deal of time, or a deceitful Creator placed false ?evidence? in his creation and then told us to look there for His ?unseen qualities?.
Posted on: Sat, 07 Jun 2014 21:02:44 +0000
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