Flood geology: Encyclopedia II - Flood geology - Processes

Flood geology - Processes

If the global flood actually occurred, then it would have had a radical effect on geology, and evidence of that flood would be observable today, making the idea falsifiable. Mainstream scientists hold that the evidence available is sufficient to conclusively falsify the notion of a recent global flood.

Eighty percent of the Earth's crust is covered by sedimentary rock. Sedimentary rocks are formed as particles of sediment settle out of air, ice, or water flows carrying the particles in suspension. As sediment deposition builds up, overburden (or lithostatic) pressure squeezes the sediment into layered solids in a process known as lithification ("rock formation") and the original connate fluids are expelled. Amongst creationists there is ongoing debate about which sediments are flood sediments, which are pre-flood sediments, and which are post-flood sediments.

Some flood geology supporters have proposed that a global flood is the most reasonable explanation for the means by which sediment came to precipitate in such depth over so much of the Earth's surface. They further argue that the liquefaction predicted by the flood can explain many geological formations they believe are left inadequately explained by mainstream geology grounded in uniformitarianism.

They do not assert that all geological phenomena are a result of the flood. Flood geology supporters acknowledge many geological formations were formed by other processes. However, they argue that there are a large number of geological formations which can only be explained with reference to massive cataclysmic action involving enormous amounts of water and sediment which rapidly precipitated from solution, liquefied, and dried.

This explanation has been met with much derision in the creation-evolution controversy where mainstream proponents point out that a large number of sedimentary formations are inconsistent with a short-timescale creation. Indeed, this problem was one of the principal reasons why early 19th century geologists such as William Buckland came to abandon the global flood as a sustainable hypothesis.

Flood geology - Liquefaction

Liquefaction, a phenomenon commonly seen in quicksand and earthquakes, is claimed to have played a major role during the posited flood. It is argued that the resulting periods of liquefaction due to the catastrophe would cause the sediments to layer into strata.

Other processes cause the strata to bend smoothly in places to explain bends and folds, while earthquakes would still be the major cause of radical discontinuities in others.

Flood geology proponents claim that massive liquefaction can explain phenomena such as transported blocks, sand plumes, coal and limestone deposits, and aquifers.

Flood geology - Submarine canyon formation

Proponents of Flood Geology argue that such submarine canyons were formed as the floodwaters receded from the continents. Such extensions are found in the Congo, Amazon, Ganges, and Hudson rivers, they are generally understood to be geological formations which have developed when sea levels were significantly lower than today.

It is argued that uniformitarian explanations are inferior to flood explanations, because the submarine canyons are extremely long, deep, and the sides are steep and often vertical, and thus do not show evidence of the erosion predicted by long periods of time, and being much more consistent with a shorter time frame. This claim is unsupported by the planetary science description of erosion processes which allow for a wide variety of formations to occur over the (relatively) long timeframes seen in mainstream scientific descriptions of such formations.

These are explained in the mainstream model as being due to persistent water flow which creates over a period of thousands if not millions of years structural breaks in the continental shelf. These fractures are even modeled in geological simulations which show the processes occurring as described by mainstream scientists.

Flood geology - Fossilization

Counter to the mainstream version of fossilization, creationists claim that fossils are evidence of the flood, where the remains of many of the Earth's lifeforms were quickly buried by sediments in the short period of the flood. In support of their argument, flood geology supporters point to the fact that fossilization can only take place when the matter is buried quickly so that the matter does not decompose. They also point to a recent discovery of Tyrannosaurus rex bones in which – after demineralization – soft tissue structures were found [5] as evidence that the bones cannot be reasonably understood to have survived for millions of years without the soft tissue either decomposing or fossilizing. Mainstream paleontologists view this specimen as excellently preserved.

Fossil dating by using index fossils is rejected, because fossils are dated with reference to uniformitarian assumptions regarding the rate at which the sediments were laid down. They argue that there is no reason that these assumptions must be held, that the evidence could just as easily be interpreted as rapid sedimentation during a recent flood, and if the sediments were laid down quickly, fossil dating methods are meaningless. This ignores the fact that fossil dating (biostratigraphy) was a strictly relative dating method until the advent of radiometric dating. Until then, there were no assumptions about deposition rate involved. Relative dating –i.e. this section is older/younger than that one – only requires the law of superposition. Mutation and evolution rates proved to be congruent with the timespans obtained from radiometric dating.

Flood geology - Fossil fuels

Flood geology supporters argue that the existence of large oil deposits are the result of the flood's accumulation and subsequent subsurface compression of large amounts of dead plant matter. They argue that this explains how so much organic matter came to be buried and pooled beneath enormous amounts of sediment before the organic matter decomposed, and explains how the sediments came to quickly dry into sedimentary rock atop the fossil fuels.

The mainstream theory of fossil fuel formation holds that they were formed when layers of accumulating sediment covered ancient organic debris. Most such debris is destroyed at the earth's surface by oxidation or by being digested by microorganisms, but organic material that survives to become buried under sediments, or deposited in other oxygen-poor environments, can be subjected, over millions of years, to increasing temperatures and pressures and undergo chemical transformations resulting in petroleum, natural gas, or coal. Deposits of these fossil fuels typically occur in sedimentary basins and along continental shelves. Sediments may accumulate to depths of several thousand feet and in these conditions organic material is subjected to pressures of tens of thousands of pounds per square inch and temperatures of several hundred degrees. The Carboniferous Period, during which the land was covered with swamps filled with huge trees, ferns and other large leafy plants, is the time in which most fossil fuels were formed. It occurred from about 360 to 286 million years ago. Some deposits of coal can be dated to the late Cretaceous Period, 65 million years ago.

Flood geology - Fossil layering

The ordering of fossil layers is often used as evidence for the mainstream explanation of geological features. Flood geology tries to explain that while dinosaurs never share the same layers as mammoths, such is not due to temporal separation of the organisms. Instead an unspecified and unmodeled "hydraulic sorting action" is claimed to be able to sort out fossils according to their shape, density, size, and the gases released from the body after death. This is claimed to account for the layering observed as reported by Walt Brown of the Center for Scientific Creation:

Others have proposed that more advanced animals were better able to escape the rising flood waters, so that they were not overtaken until later. This idea is roundly criticized by mainstream proponents as ludicrous since there are "advanced" and "simple" animals found throughout the entire fossil record.

Critics assert that there is a considerable lack of any evidence for any of the above effects proposed by creationists.

Flood geology - Frozen mammoths

Mainstream scientists hold that the giant mammoths went extinct about 11,000 years ago, although fossil remains of dwarf mammoths found off the coast of Siberia are dated to about 2000 BC. Some proponents of Flood Geology have claimed that this extinction is evidence of catastrophism because certain mammoths have been found with grass in their mouths. Proponents of the vapor canopy flood model claim it can explain these mammoth remains. They argue mammoths were suddenly frozen solid when large quantities of water vapour in the atmosphere were desposited as ice at the poles. Mainstream scientists do not view the few instances of grass in the mouths of frozen mammoth caracasses as sufficient evidence for a global catastrophe. Moreoever, the extraordinary temperatures needed to quick-freeze a mammoth are way below any temperature ever measured on earth and the idea of a canopy itself is considered so extreme as to cause the surface of the Earth to have the conditions of a pressure boiler before the flood.

Answers in genesis lists this in their section "arguments we think creationists should not use". Rather, they claim that mammoths and the surrounding circumstances are best explained by radical climate change in a supposed ice-age following the flood. Opponents counter that there is no evidence for an Ice Age before 10,000 years ago. Mainstream science, however, recognises a large number of earlier Ice Ages, with the earliest so far identified occurring 2.3 billion years ago.

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