Figure 1 Can a global flood explain the correlation of strata around the world? Did they really form almost simultaneously?
PDF file available here
Are there “incontrovertible” reasons to affirm a young Earth? What does it mean to be incontrovertible? Some YEC seem to believe that this means that it is claimed by any YEC author that they appreciate. It is easy to list claims that might sound impressive. What happens if we dig into those claims? Can they stand up to analysis?
Geologists interpret the tremendous amount of sedimentary rocks on the Earth to have been deposited over billions of years. That is a big disconnect with YEC claims that the Earth is 6,000 years old. Such sediment accumulations are often miles thick. If this had been deposited over a 1-year period of time, that would indicate that the beds were almost contemporaneous, deposited at incredible rates by catastrophic processes. Is that what the rocks tell us? Some YEC have made physical models that they interpret to be saying that much of the Earth’s sedimentary rock formed almost simultaneously. This is another one the “incontrovertible” evidences from Paul Humber’s “Reasons to Affirm a Young Earth”. (Humber 2013)
The reason given in this case is:
17. Smoothness between Layers, Part 2
As with Part 1, first we will state distinctly the observation from nature and then the assertions derived from it.
Observation 2. There are numerous layers that are correlated across continents.
Assertions:
- This indicates similar, tsunami-like, global flow conditions.
- The website at Sedimentary experiments: Preliminary report (ianjuby.org) presents evidence showing that layers were not formed in epic time periods. (Juby 2007) Other means have not been demonstrated.
- Geological layers formed almost simultaneously across the entire world, and the “principle of superposition” is valid locally, so no single layer can be entirely older than the one above it (you may refer to the website above for details).
- For the most part, layers were formed contemporaneously as Berthault (Berthault 1994)
The observation is basically true, depending on what you define as a layer. It is very rare that individual beds can be identified and correlated across a basin, let alone across continents. Large packages can be correlated. Dr. Tim Clarey (ICR) “discovered” this in his “Carved in Stone” book (Clarey 2020). I put discovered in parentheses because geologists have been using this fact for many years. Proving that the packages in different continents are correlative is more challenging, but often works. It is all a matter of the scale you are speaking of. Correlations between continents, such as Dr. Tim Clarey used and Dr. Andrew Snelling (AIG) refers to, assume that fossils and sometimes, magnetic stratigraphic techniques provide reliable correlation. Fortunately, these have proven to be quite reliable correlation techniques to demonstrate the relative order that rocks were formed in. Certainly radiometric dating also supports correlations.
Both Guy Berthault and Ian Juby performed interesting experiments regarding the formation of laminations in clastic mixes of different sediment sizes. (Berthault 1994; Juby 2007). I managed to find the key articles referenced regarding sedimentary experiments. Unfortunately, the picture quality from the DigitalCommons@Cedarville site made the photos pretty useless. Lamination within a particular depositional episode takes place very quickly as single beds are deposited as all sedimentologists recognize. It is actually difficult to time the duration involved in forming individual laminations. Sediment laminations result from the flow of water or from wind moving different sediment-sized materials at different speeds. This is all at the lamination scale or cross-bed scale. What about for larger features? Beds, bedsets and larger ways that sediment deposits are organized are formed differently than laminations. Claiming that the large scaled bedforms all formed rapidly and almost simultaneously is not what we see in nature, nor in other experimental modeling work.
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Figure 2 Experimental modeling from St Anthony Falls Laboratory showing how sedimentation responds to sea level rises and falls. |
You might want to look at this article regarding physical modeling: Experimental Stratigraphy (Paola et al. 2001). It shows some of the extensive work done at the St. Anthony Falls Laboratory in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I visited there while some of this work was being done. I like the way they are careful in scaling the size and type of particles to accurately model the processes in nature. Particularly useful are experiments with a continuous sediment supply, but with changing water level (base level). Figure 2 is from one of the same experiments that Paola, et al, 2001 reported on, but published by Pratson and Gouveia, (Pratson and Gouveia 2002). Unlike Berthault’s Experiments of Stratification, the superposition was well verified. The scale of the tank and the scale of the particles were designed to physically model deposits that form and the processes active as a river delta forms into a basin with relative sea level falls and rises. It is well visualized here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuB0cKLim1Y . The deposits match very well the observations that we see over and over again in basins around the world. This type of modeling demonstrates that when rivers bring sediments to the seas and when sea level rises and falls as happens over thousands of years due to changes in glaciation and perturbations in the Earth’s rotation and its orbit, sediments are deposited in predictable fashion.
Regardless of what Berthault or Juby demonstrated or didn’t demonstrate regarding the formation of laminations, it is a big step to say that this shows anything about the deposition of beds, bedsets and the larger units that make up the stratigraphic record. Logically, this is the same sort of problem that the naturalistic evolutionist makes. He claims that the microevolution that is well documented in modern studies is the same process that accounts for the major new information that was needed in order to explain the big differences in life. No one disputes that many laminations were formed quickly. We also believe that most sandstone beds were laid down relatively quickly. Deposition might have taken place in minutes or hours or perhaps months. We do not believe that they were formed over millions of years. That is a strawman. Deposition just shifted to another site, leaving non-deposition for a period of time over the first bed. The processes that act in normal sedimentary record are highly variable around the world.
Occasionally, we can quantify how long it took for sediments to be deposited. Tidal deposits are like that. We can measure and count tidal bundles that represent high-tide and low-tide deposits. Just like modern deposits, we can identify 28 day cycles of tides just as we have today. In one area, these have been counted to show that one set of beds was deposited continuously over 8 years. (Wilford 2021; Mitchell 2022) While geologists don’t believe that beds of rock took millions of years to form, they also cannot fit these into a 1 year long flood deposit. If we can document that one set of beds formed over 8 years, it is clear that the thick column of beds present were not formed simultaneously as proposed in this YEC claim.
The 3rd assertion included the view that superposition is only valid locally. Superposition is the simple logical rule that geologists use in recognizing what order strata were laid down. It is simple logic that unless the order has been disrupted, the oldest sediments are on the bottom and get younger up the section. We use this at many scales from an outcrop to basin and often between basins. Can geologists demonstrate the validity of the overall geologic column using this simple logical methodology? “Locally” as Humber claims can be a very large area. I reported that in the study area for my book: Texas, New Mexico, northern Mexico and the Western Gulf of Mexico (Mitchell 2018), the age relationships from the top of the Precambrian to the recent can all be demonstrated by superposition and that is over a large area. It certainly does not follow that all of the stratigraphic layers formed almost simultaneously across the globe, except in the sense that deposition is always taking place around the world. The idea that “for the most part, layers were formed contemporaneously” is just wrong. You can’t take a small tank and demonstrate that laminations can form quickly and extrapolate that to say that the variety of sands, shales, limestones, dolomites, halites and anhydrites in columns of rock that are miles thick were formed contemporaneously.
Other recommended resources: (Kendall, n.d.)
References Cited:
Berthault, Guy. 1994. “Experiments on Stratification.” Proceedings of the International Conference on Creationism 3 (1). https://digitalcommons.cedarville.edu/icc_proceedings/vol3/iss1/10.
Clarey, Dr Timothy. 2020. Carved in Stone: Geologic Evidence of the Worldwide Flood. ICR Institute for Creation Research.
Humber, Paul G. 2013. Reasons to Affirm a Young Earth. Vol. e-book revision. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/54235fb7e4b0dab08d8d81dd/t/57d6e6b3d482e999611d7888/1473701556828/ReasonsAffirmYE+CRS+e-book.pdf?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAAR0J_JCi_6zH1KuNlHYrgIJjTAhCgOm4zwio8ks44k5CGnJIAiETnqThXLI_aem_BA94GfB1gm5q86tQj_pW2w.
Juby, Ian. 2007. “Preliminary Reports of Sedimentation Experiments Held at Glen Rose, Texas, March 2007.” IanJuby. March 2007. https://www.ianjuby.org/sedimentation/.
Kendall, Christopher G. St. C. n.d. “Sedimentological Processes Modeling.” Accessed December 21, 2024. https://slideplayer.com/slide/8262589/.
Mitchell, Stephen. 2018. A Texas- Sized Challenge to Young Earth Creation and Flood Geology: A Christian Geologist Looks for Answers. Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
———. 2022. “Tidal Clocks and Flood Geology.” Jesus in History and Science (blog). February 9, 2022. https://jesusinhistoryandscience.com/?p=2917.
Paola, Chris, Jim Mullin, Chris Ellis, David C. Mohrig, John B. Swenson, Gary Parker, Tom Hickson, et al. 2001. “Experimental Stratigraphy.” GSA Today 11 (7): 4. https://doi.org/10.1130/1052-5173(2001)011<0004:ES>2.0.CO;2.
Pratson, Lincoln, and Wences Gouveia. 2002. “Seismic Simulations of Experimental Strata.” AAPG Bulletin 86 (1): 129–44. https://doi.org/10.1306/61EEDA58-173E-11D7-8645000102C1865D.
Wilford, Mr. 2021. “Carboniferous Tidal Cycles vs YEC.” Mountain Railroad (blog). August 18, 2021. https://mountainrailroad.org/2021/08/18/carboniferous-tidal-cycles-vs-yec/.
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