Cedarville Magazine, Spring 2017

Over the next few years, I learned that conventional geology did not have very good answers for some of the patterns in the rock record, but Genesis did! For example, why weren’t there transitional fossils that demonstrated evolution from one group of animals to another? And why were there marine rocks on the continents almost everywhere I looked? And why did the fossil record begin all at once, with hardly any life-forms in the layers of rock below? As a young geologist, I learned that the Grand Canyon is not only one of the most spectacular geological wonders of the world, but its rocks are a great place to test the Genesis account of earth history. I found key impactful evidence that led me to believe the veracity of the Genesis account of world history. THE GREAT UNCONFORMITY In 1869, JohnWesley Powell named The Great Unconformity during the first successful boat trip through the Grand Canyon. An unconformity is a buried surface of erosion. In other words, it marks a place in the rock strata where a significant amount of rock has been removed by erosion and other rocks have been deposited on top of that surface. Since Powell’s discovery of the unconformity in the Grand Canyon, others have found that it is truly great. The same buried erosional surface can be traced across much of the North American continent and is even recognized on other continents. As a young geologist, I began to ask myself, “If Noah’s flood was real, what kind of evidence would it have left in the rock record?” Genesis 7:11 tells us that “all the fountains of the great deep burst forth and the floodgates of heaven were opened.” If this happened, the earth’s surface would have been severely scoured at the beginning of the flood, leaving an unconformity in its wake. This is exactly what we find, not only deep in the Grand Canyon but at the base of most of the fossiliferous strata around the world. THE CAMBRIAN EXPLOSION The Great Unconformity rests directly below the rocks that contain the fossils of the Cambrian Explosion, or the first appearance of complex animals in the rock record. Among the fossil remains found in these layers are representatives of nearly every single phylum of animals on earth today, including the vertebrates!There are no animal fossils belowThe Great Unconformity (or below the Cambrian) that show the evolutionary predecessors to these organisms. Below the unconformity we find fossil bacteria, and immediately above, we find fossils of nearly every complex group of animals that we have today. This continues to be one of the most difficult problems for the theory of evolution — how did these animals originate? Again, Genesis seems to offer a solution: These organisms are the animals that were living on earth just before the flood. As the flood started, “billions of dead things became buried in rock layers all over the earth,” as Ken Ham likes to say. This is why animals suddenly appear in these rock layers, not because they rapidly evolved, but because they were buried by the encroaching flood waters. As a young geologist, I learned that the Grand Canyon is not only one of the most spectacular geological wonders of the world, but its rocks are a great place to test the Genesis account of earth history. The Grand Canyon as viewed from the South Rim, Arizona. Note the creation week and pre- flood rocks below The Great Unconformity and the Cambrian Explosion and the flood rocks above the unconformity. Cedarville Magazine | 11