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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
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