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8 Grand Canyon evidences

The following eight statements are factual descriptions of the Grand Canyon. Each statement is followed by a short explanation from a creationists’ perspective that is consistent with a catastrophic formation of the Grand Canyon, a global Flood, and a young earth. If you would like to download a copy of these evidences as a PDF, just click on Download PDF and save it to your computer.

	Formation of the Grand Canyon: Stretching 277 miles through the Southwestern portion of the Colorado plateau, the Canyon is carved through sedimentary layers of limestone, sandstone, and shale, and into the basement of schist and granite. It descends over a mile into the Earth and is 18 miles wide at some points. Explanation: How could the Colorado River carve through the 8,000 foot Colorado plateau when the river, in its upper reaches east of the plateau, is at less than 4,000 feet? As demonstrated at Mt. St. Helens, catastrophic processes provide a very plausible explanation for quickly carving canyons like the Grand Canyon. A global flood would provide just such a catastrophic mechanism.
Nautiloids: Fossils of these aquatic creatures, which averaged 18 inches in length, but reached as much as 6 feet, are related to today's squid and octopus. They are found in abundance in a 6-foot thick layer near the base of the 500-foot thick Redwall limestone. Explanation: For fossilization to occur, the subject must be buried catastrophically, protecting it from decay. The Nautiloids, some reaching 4 feet in length and found buried standing upright, show that at least this layer within the Redwall had to be laid down very quickly, not at the bottom of a calm placid sea, the uniformitarian interpretation.
	Contact point between sedimentary layers: Known as unconformities, many of these contact points form a distinct line that can be seen even from the rim of the canyon. Explanation: If these unconformities represent from 10 to 125 million years of “missing time,” which is the uniformitarian interpretation, why is there no sign of either physical or chemical erosion between the layers? Why is there no sign of channeling, canyons or valleys, as we see with erosion of present-day topography? Could this be classic flood geology on a global scale?
The Great Unconformity: The contact point between the basement formations of schist and granite and the first sedimentary layer is called the Great Unconformity. Explanation: Representing a billion years of missing time and material in a uniformitarian interpretation, the Great Unconformity shows the nearly flat erosion of the underlying surface. This hard surface appears to have been smoothed by an enormous regional-scale flow of water. This is just what would be expected in a global flood.
	Folding: Folds, or bends in the rock, are found in some sedimentary layers. Explanation: When there is movement along a fault today, it cracks the rock. The folding of the rock, sometimes across multiple layers, without cracking or the effects of heat from supposedly slow deep burial, indicates that the folding had to happen while the layers were still soft and immediately after rapid deep burial. Thus these folds show that the deposition and upheaval responsible for the folding were, in fact, one event.
Layering of Grand Canyon: The Grand Canyon exhibits 4,000 – 5,000 feet of geological strata in more than 30 separate formations of limestone, sandstone, shale and conglomerates overlying granites, schists and gneisses. Explanation: How the sedimentary layers of the Canyon were deposited is a key difference between the two models (creation vs. uniformitarian). The upper layers are divided into 9 formations (Paleozoic era), with the lower (Precambrian) also containing 9 layers. Creation geologists consider the upper layers to be Flood deposits with the lower being pre-Flood and the underlying granites and metamorphics resulting from geologic processes during the original creation event.
	Carbon dating: Geologists test levels of Carbon-14 in organic material to determine its age. Explanation: Current research in carbon dating, which most scientists agree is only accurate up to a maximum of 70,000 years, is providing further evidence of a young earth. Active carbon-14 has been found in coal samples, some from the Grand Canyon area, thought to be up to 350 million years old, and in diamonds supposedly more than a billion years old. Additionally, coal samples from different layers in the geologic column have almost identical amounts of carbon-14.
Radioactive Dating: Radioactive dating, used by geologists to determine the age of rocks, is based on the radioactive decay of a parent element into its daughter element. This method is only useful in igneous and metamorphic rock, the basement formations found in the Canyon. Explanation: Three basic assumptions are made in radioactive dating: 1) the rock starts out with the quantities, or ratios, of parent and daughter element known, 2) nuclear decay rates never change, and 3) the process takes place in a “closed” system which does not allow for contamination. The erroneous ages frequently found by geologists indicate that all of these assumptions are subject to failure.

Conclusion: We all look at the same data, the same Canyon; and since man was not there to witness these events, it is the interpretation of the data in relation to the past that provides a conclusion. That conclusion is based largely on one’s worldview, the biases through which one views the world, which ultimately depends on the beliefs one starts with concerning the origin of all things.

Creationists do not contend to have all the answers. What they do contend is that their interpretation, based on the Bible’s account of history, provides a very plausible explanation that is consistent with the data, and with the One who was present when the Canyon was formed.

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