Flood geology: Encyclopedia II - Flood geology - Comparison with mainstream geology

Flood geology - Comparison with mainstream geology

Mainstream geology relies on a number of established principles, one of the most important of which is Charles Lyell's principle of uniformitarianism. In relation to geological forces it states that the shaping of the Earth has occurred by means of mostly slow-acting forces that can be seen in operation today. By applying this principle, geologists have determined that the Earth is some 4.5 billion years old. They study the lithosphere of the Earth to gain information on the history of the planet. Geologists divide Earth's history into eons, eras, periods, epochs, and faunal stages characterized by well-defined breaks in the fossil record (see Geologic time scale).

By contrast, creation geology relies on the Biblical account to define three key eras of history:

• The original creation of the Earth by God, in which God separated the land from the primordial waters as recorded in Genesis 1:9. Some creationists have asserted that this original dry land corresponds to a type of Pangaea.
• A global flood which lasted for a year and occurred between 4500-6000 years ago, and altered or destroyed many antediluvian geological formations and species.
• The years between the end of the flood and the present day, during which geological phenomena behaved in much the same way as they do today.

In general, the geological record of Earth is divided by flood geology supporters into four main stages:

• The lowest levels of sediments would be rocks and sediments formed during creation week, when God caused the dry land to appear. These sediments should be devoid of all fossils, as nothing existed to be fossilised.
• Next would be sediments formed in the time between Creation week and the Flood, a period of 1700 years according to Biblical chronology. These would comprise only a tiny part of the geological record.
• The bulk of the geological record would have been laid down during the year-long Flood, which began with violent eruptions of water. These should show evidence not of a calm flood leaving a layer of silt, but of large tectonic upheavals, massive erosion, deposition, and transport, and reworking of sediments more than once. It would also include the mass burial of many creatures.
• Above the flood sediments would be evidence of minor post-flood catastrophes, a relatively recent ice age, and normal geological processes as we see occurring today.

Scientific creationists (or creation scientists) continue to search for evidence in the natural world that they consider to be consistent with the above description, such as evidence of rapid formation. For example, there have been claims of raindrop marks and water ripples at layer boundaries, sometimes associated with the claimed fossilized footprints of men and dinosaurs walking together. Most of this evidence has been debunked by mainstream proponents, and some have been shown to be fakes [10]. Creationists highlight unexplained phenomena made by mainstream scientists in order to point out what they see as inconsistencies in the mainstream view, and they often profess a general incredulity about geological mechanisms of mineral, rock, and fossil formation.

Believers in Flood Geology base their belief in a global flood on the Bible and on an interpretation of geological field work that they believe gives strong evidence of a global flood as described in the Book of Genesis. They also point out that flood stories can be found in many cultures, places and religions, not just in the Bible; this, they suggest, is evidence of an actual event in the historic past. Anthropologists generally reject this view and highlight the fact that much of the human population lives near water sources such as rivers and coasts, where unusually severe floods can be expected to occur occasionally and will be recorded in tribal mythology. Some commentators have suggested that a massive local flood in the Black Sea area, or possibly even the huge rise in sea levels at the end of the last Ice Age, may be responsible for the preponderance of the flood myths in the Near East and across the world.

Most creation scientists believe that the Earth prior to the global flood was significantly different from the Earth today. The fossil record is explained as a record of the pre-flood Earth, all of the fossils being formed within the forty-day catastrophe. The principles used by mainstream geology to characterize the development of the layers in the lithosphere and the fossil record over time are rejected.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Comparison with mainstream geology", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki