Flood Geology and Scientific Creationism

Image by author using ChatGPT.

In an online debate, Inquiring Mind asked me to consider a different view of geology. Perhaps most of those rock layers and fossils down there, he suggested, had been formed in a single global flood in Noah’s day. I was, of course, very familiar with this view, having once championed it. But I had long found it to be unsupportable. But the idea keeps coming up.

Flood geology, as this view is often called, was popular in the seventies, but it fared poorly. Even its followers tend to avoid the debate. Instead, they often identify as advocates of Intelligent Design, avoiding questions of how all those fossils got down there. They know flood geology is impossible to defend against the attack of informed scientists. But down in the trenches, many fight on, believing that flood geology explains it all. And so, I will address that claim here.

Where did all those fossils come from? There are trillions of them. Mainstream geologists, of course, recognize that they were produced over hundreds of millions of years as life progressed. But young-Earth creationists cannot accept that explanation. It looks too much like evolution. So, they want another explanation. Many creationists settle on flood geology. On the surface it sounds scientific. And it fits neatly with conservative theology. I understand the attraction. I was once there, devouring the flood geology line. But my views have changed. Would you like to know why?

Flood Geology is Born

First, let’s take a look at how we got to this point.

In contrast to modern flood geology advocates, creationists in the 1800’s were often quite open to old Earth views. Fundamentalists like Charles H. Spurgeon, C. I. Schofield and Benjamin Warfield accepted that the fossils we see deep in the earth could have been there for perhaps millions of years. Even William Jennings Bryan, the creationist lawyer in the Scopes Trial, testified at that trial that creation may have lasted millions of years.

These men saw little choice but to accept that the Earth was old. After all, geologists were finding rock layers down there with many strange fossils. British geologists had found two distinct rock layers in Great Britain that each had their own distinctive fossils. They called these the Devonian and Silurian layers. Where the two layers met, the Devonian rocks were always found on top. So obviously, the Silurian rocks were laid down first. There must have been a past Silurian period of time followed by a Devonian period.

Later, Adam Sedgwick noticed that rocks to the west were from a distinctly different third layer. He called these rocks the Cambrian layer. Where the Cambrian layer met the Silurian or Devonian layers, the Cambrian rocks always graded below the other layers. So now they knew of three time periods: Cambrian, Silurian, and Devonian. They would soon learn of another period, the Ordovician. And almost invariably, wherever those layers met, they followed the same order: Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, and Devonian.

Adam Sedgwick was a creationist, as were many of the other early geologists. They were simply recording what they saw. If God created everything, and we find there were different periods in the past when different creatures were on Earth, then these geologists figured that these creatures must be God’s past work. Perhaps God had simply made different life in different periods and had found the need to wipe out each previous period with a catastrophe.

And so, by the late 1800s, it had become clear that there was a series of distinct long periods of time with distinct life in the past. Geologists put together the beginnings of our familiar Geologic Column based on their observations.

Many fundamentalists had no problem accepting these long ages. Why fight science? Many found they could put a gap before Genesis 1:2 , which was a convenient place to insert these long ages. Others extended the length of the days in the rest of Genesis 1, so each day was actually millions of years.

But then, when Darwinism became widely known, it became obvious that these rocks were showing a picture of evolution on Earth. Many Christians could not accept this. They not only disputed evolution, but they also looked for ways to dispute the millions of years that life had been on Earth.

One creationist counter argument was popularized by Phillip Gosse in his 1857 book titled Omphalos, which is the Greek word for bellybutton. Gosse argued that Adam, to be truly man, was created with a bellybutton. Thus, Adam had the appearance of age, and of a birth that never took place. Likewise, all the fossils that scientists were finding were explained away as things that had been created that way from the creation of the world. Fossils in the Earth were like Adam’s omphalos. They were always just there.

The argument seems strange to many of us. Why would God create all these fossils to look like animals that never lived?

There is overwhelming evidence that the earth is old and overwhelming evidence that those fossils are real.

If we are going to state that God just created it that way, with all that history written in the rocks that never happened, why not just say that God created the world last Thursday, with all your memories implanted in you at creation? A God who could fake an entire history of the earth in rocks could fake an entire history of you in your mind. So, in the end, Omphalos arguments have little more validity than Last Thursday arguments.

There was an alternate view. Seventh Day Adventist, George McCready Price, taught that those fossils are the remains of animals that had been buried in Noah’s flood. But few people took his ideas seriously.

But then, in 1961, a hydraulics engineer, Henry Morris, and a theologian, John Whitcomb, wrote their book, The Genesis Flood. Morris and Whitcomb argued that all those rock layers had been deposited in Noah’s flood, and the flood sorted them out the way they appear down there. Morris promoted his view of geology and the flood and began the creationist organization, the ICR.

Creationists finally had a counter argument that at least looked more substantial than omphalos. Flood geology as a defined discipline was born. Although this hypothetical global flood required some miracles, flood geologists argued that, once things got started, natural laws caused those flood waters to form what we now know as the fossil record. These men called themselves Scientific Creationists. After all, they used what appeared to be scientific arguments to suggest that the fossil record was created through their model of creation. Yes, Virginia, there is a creation model.

But that model totally fails to predict the rock layers down there. If you take the time to look, those rocks are far different from what any reasonable flood geology would predict. Let’s look at what we see.

The Biblical Flood

First, it should be clear that, barring a miracle, a global flood is simply impossible. Where did all that water come from? Where did it go? How did all the animals get to the ark? How did they all fit in the ark? What did they eat? How could Noah build such a big boat with primitive tools? How could a wooden ark that big survive? How did Noah maintain sanitation on the ark? If you are in the lower level of a boat, and the elephants defecate, then what? Would you want to be down there? There are just too many problems with a global flood. The voyage of Noah’s Ark is impossible.

Ah, but perhaps your answer for each objection is, “A miracle occurred.” Ok, even if we assume miracles sometimes occur, you will have to admit that miracles are rare. So, as soon as you need to prop up your hypothesis with a single miracle, you make your claim less likely. For, after all, miracles are, almost by definition, unlikely. Natural causes always seem to be the best explanation for what happens. Worse, if one must claim multiple ad hoc miracles to make his hypothesis work, each miracle is inherently unlikely, and thus the whole edifice starts to look weak.

Ignoring all that, if the rocks down there closely matched what a global flood would predict, then I would still sit up and take notice. But, in this case, the rocks down there don’t match what a global flood would predict.

Flood geologists present this unlikely story–“multiple ad-hoc miracles kept happening”–and then, in the end, the physical evidence does not match what a global flood would predict. My skepticism is thus fully aroused.

What would we expect to see if the earth had flooded? Such a flood would have had to have made its mark.

For instance, if all 29,000 feet of Mt Everest was covered after 40 days of rain, the oceans must have risen at an average of 30 feet per hour. Rain falling at a foot an hour is a disaster. But 30 feet an hour? Golly.

Even if rain only amounted to a small portion of the total, with the rest coming out of the ground as fountains of the great deep, significant water would have rushed down the mountains and off the highlands. This would have swept the mountains bare, moving debris down into the valleys and oceans.

And then there would have been tides. We are used to tides that sweep across the ocean until they reach the next continent. But, if the Earth was completely submerged, the buried continents would no longer be resisting the movement of tides. Huge tidal waves would then have swept around the Earth with nothing to stop them. This would have kept much of the sediment afloat, and spread it far out into the oceans.

And what about an ark that might have been floating out there with those sweep tides. Surely, it would have been tossed aside. Ok, you might claim yet another miracle. Well, okay then. But isn’t flood geology being called science?

Let’s move on.

As the sediments settled out, the amount of sediment that dropped everywhere would have been proportional to the height of the overlaying water. Hence, we would expect to see much more sediment in the deep oceans than on the mountains. This is not what we see. (Source: Why the Flood is not Global.)

Later, as the waters retreated from the earth, the waters would have swept down the mountainsides bringing sediments off the mountains. We can predict the mountains would be bare. They aren’t.

Also, as the continents rose above the waters, they would have begun to slow the raging tides. The big boulders would have dropped out first, followed by smaller rocks, pebbles, coarse sand, and finally the fine silt and clay. We would predict distinct layering in the deposits, with the biggest rocks on the bottom. Again, not what we see.

Most animals would have been much less dense than the rocks. As their bodies decayed, those that had not been devoured by sea creatures would have floated to the surface. Thus, we would expect these animal bodies would have settled out last, above all those rocks. (Source: Bobbing for Dinosaurs, pp 16-20). Again, not what we see.

What is Down There?

If we look below are feet, it doesn’t match what flood geology would predict. First, sediments are often quite high in the mountains, not quite low in the deep oceans where flood geology should expect them. Second, only small portions of the record show the grading of debris that we would expect from a flood. And third, plants and animals were buried deep in the fossil record, not simply scattered out on top.

What we find easily matches conventional old-Earth geology. Mountains full of sediments were lifted up as the continents played bumper cars over eons of time and squished the mountain upwards. We find signs of many floods, but not nearly everywhere. And plants and animals are buried throughout the record, with many now being found very deep below the surface. Fine, there will millions of years for material to settle on top of them.

As an example of fossil layers in the high plateaus, below is a cross-section of the rock layers north of the Grand Canyon in an area known as the Grand Staircase. On the left of this diagram, Cedar Breaks is at 10,000 feet above sea level. The many layers of fossil-bearing rock below it go all the way down below sea level. That is over two miles of rock.

The black line at the bottom of the rock layers represents the Great Unconformity. Measurements of the rock ages below and above this line show a huge time gap. The rocks below this line date to be older than 1.7 billion years. They are Precambrian rocks and have no multicellular animal fossils. The rocks above this line date to be less than 541 million years old and are thus labeled as Cambrian or younger.

Source: Grand Staircase-big.jpg – Wikimedia Commons , with “Great Unconformity” note added by author

Flood geologists, on the other hand, typically say the rocks below the Great Unconformity with no animal fossils were there at the start of Noah’s flood, and most of the layers above were deposited in the flood.

The monument at Cedar Breaks is higher than most of the surrounding area. How did all sediment wash uphill to Cedar Breaks to form layers two miles deep during a global flood? And if you say this sediment was all washed here in massive tidal waves at the peak of the flood, why didn’t the sediments just wash down to the sea in a path parallel to the Colorado?

Above the Great Unconformity we find many layers that stretch hundreds of miles. The lowest layer above the Great Unconformity is shale, which sure looks like it was formed from clay deposited in shallow water. Above that is the Muav Limestone layer, which sure looks like it was formed from the shells of marine animals in slightly deeper water. As we go on up, we find multiple layers formed in different conditions, including the Coconino Sandstone, obviously formed from blowing sand when the land had risen and formed a desert. All these layers form over millions of years on a dynamic planet. Sea and land elevations change, and different types of sedimentary rocks can then form in different conditions. That is exactly what all these layers look like–millions of years of varying conditions.

But how could a flood create these distinct layers? Some flood geologists hypothesize all sorts of currents. One current first brings mud into the area, then another current brings carbonate components to make limestone, and so on.

Wait suddenly a rush of consolidated carbonates within the flood waters? Another miracle? I digress.

None of this is feasible. A flood would not sort things out this way for hundreds of miles.

By all appearances, most of these sediments were formed under water or on the beaches. So how did these layers now get so high? Mainstream geologists have shown that the continents have slowly moved. As they moved, some rock layers buckled, and other layers were pushed up to form mountains and plateaus. Layers like these, many of which had come from under the seas, are much higher than they were when the rocks were formed. They contain many layers of rocks with fossils of trillions of sea creatures.

Creationists have tried to argue that they too accept the uplift of the mountains, only they claim the process started late in the flood and took place in a much shorter timeframe. That is not credible. How did mountains rise that fast? There are no forces that could force those mountains up so quickly. Yes, rocks will slowly bend and move if given enough time. But try to push them fast? It won’t happen. Had the rock layers actually been pushed that fast, we would see massive fault lines where the rock layers would have split as they moved. We do not find these. (Source: Why the Flood is not Global.)

We find thousands of feet of sedimentary rock throughout the Earth. The average depth of sedimentary rock on the continents is more than 1 mile deep. How can all that come from a single flood: (Source: Occurrence, Mineralogy, Textures, and Structures of Sedimentary Rocks and Twenty One Reasons Noah’s Worldwide Flood Never Happened. )

As another example of the extant of the fossil record, look at the map of Michigan below, which shows the depth in feet to the Precambrian bedrock layer. Precambrian rocks have virtually no signs of multicellular life, so again, flood geologists typically say they were there before the flood. Note that, in parts of Michigan, there are 3 miles of rock strata above these Precambrian bedrock layers. Three miles. Could all this debris have come from one flood?

Below is a cross section through the state of Michigan. Notice how the layers go across the state in the same order the various periods are found elsewhere. We see, for instance, Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian and Devonian layers stretching across the entire state in the same order we found these layers in Great Britain years ago. How can a global flood, sweeping debris over a vast area into this huge waste pit, arrange everything so neatly?

An explosion in a junkyard cannot create a 747. Creationists love to use this illustration with reference to evolution, but in that case the analogy does not apply. Evolution, guided by natural selection, is nothing like an explosion in a junkyard. Natural selection has creative powers.

But, if there had been thousands of cubic miles of debris washing down the mountains from an area covering many thousands of square miles, that is surely chaotic, and that would have been very much like an explosion in a junkyard. Why all the order in the rocks below?

Note that most of the layers in Michigan are beneath the Pennsylvanian and Mississippian. Worldwide there are many primitive animals in the layers below the Pennsylvanian, but never modern mammals, birds, or even dinosaurs. Would not a flood mix a few squirrels or dolphins with all the living things that got buried deep? If flood geology is true, how can all this dirt wash down from the home where the buffalo now roam, bringing many ancient sea creatures along to be buried in the deepest layers, but having no sign of modern mammals or birds in the older layers, even when those layers are now near the surface?

And yes, in many places, old layers like the Silurian are near the surface, as you can see on the diagram above. How does this happen? It turns out that not all areas of the world are always gaining sediments. After all, the sediments need to come from somewhere. So, we find erosion at some places, producing materials that sweep to other areas to form new sedimentary rocks. Thus, areas of Michigan and Great Britain, for instance, have had erosion wipe out the upper layers, so that ancient layers like the Silurian and Devonian are now near the surface.

Other midwestern sites have much more recent layers near the surface. These layers often have fossils of mammals. For instance, in Ashfall Beds State Park in Nebraska fossils of rhinoceroses, camels, and three-toed horses were buried together. It appears that these animals had all breathed the dust of a volcano and gathered at the water to quench the resulting thirst. Here they died, along with of large mammals. But modern mammals are never found where we now see the much older exposed layers like the Devonian.

Elsewhere across the western United States you will find the remains of many dinosaurs. But not in this spot at Ashfall Beds State Park. How could a global flood so neatly gather these mammal species in this park in Nebraska, while ignoring dinosaurs and other animals that we find so abundantly at different places in the American West?

Not only do we find the fossils neatly sorted into layers, but we find the rock layers are also sorted by rock age as determined by independent methods. And yes, we do have accurate ways to measure the age of the rocks. We use multiple techniques and find remarkable agreement between the ages calculated with each technique and the order that geologists had already worked out. How can a flood sort the lead, rubidium, strontium, uranium, and other elements such that measuring these components using different methods consistently gives correlating dates? (See also: Deluge Geology, Questioning “Flood Geology” | National Center for Science Education, How Old is the Earth, and Radiometric Dating: A Christian Perspective)

The measured ages of the rocks fit in with what mainstream geology would predict. The ages are completely different from what flood geology predicts. How did the rocks get sorted by measured age?

Even pollen somehow managed to sort in the fossil record:

The fossilized plants found in Grand Canyon rocks consist of only extinct ferns, lycopods, and conifers. No remains of flowering plants (e.g. sunflowers, grasses, oaks, etc.) or flowering-plant pollen grains are preserved in Grand Canyon rocks. However, pollen grains of conifers and spores from ferns have been found. Pollen and spores are incredibly small, and easily carried by wind and water great distances. How could a global flood with tsunamis sweeping across continents fail to deposit a single grain of flowering-plant pollen in the entire sequence of Grand Canyon layers? It makes far more sense if these layers were laid down during a time when flowering plants were not yet found on earth.

Source: Flood Geology and the Grand Canyon

How did that pollen get sorted? Not by a flood. It was sorted as different lifeforms that lived at different times died in different places, leaving a sorted record down below our feet.

Buried Treasures

We also find thick layers of many specific materials, such as gypsum and salt down below. There are gypsum beds that cover thousands of square miles and are tens of feet thick. Gypsum is formed by precipitation out of ocean water when the water in a restricted body of water evaporates. It takes about 1300 total feet of ocean water to make a foot of gypsum, so this represents enormous amounts of water that were evaporated to form these gypsum layers. This could be done is if there was salt water repeatedly entering the area and then evaporating. Such processes happen today. How can anything like this happen in a global flood? (Source: Deluge Geology)

Concentrated deposits of gypsum are nice for making things like drywall, but even more valuable are the huge deposits containing iron, aluminum, and other metals. A global flood would have hopelessly spread these minerals across the landscape. The distributed minerals would have been useless to us. But this is not what happened. Instead, over many millions of years, there were many different environments at different times and places. In some of these environments, iron, aluminum, and other minerals deposited out in concentrations.

For instance, about 1.8 billion years ago, life started using photosynthesis and started releasing oxygen into the seas. This oxygen combined with the abundant iron that had dissolved in the seas, causing the iron to precipitate out as iron ore. (Source: Iron Ore) How can a global flood produce concentrated iron deposits in rocks that all just happen to date around 1.8 billion years old, instead of spreading the iron throughout the fossil record?

Some flood geologists would say that, since these layers of iron ore are found in layers older than the Cambrian, they were made before the flood. How did they get there? If they were there from creation, why do we find all these Precambrian rock layers that looks like they were formed by similar processes as the strata in the upper layers? And why do these Precambrian layers frequently contain stromatolites–the remains of colonies of bacteria–but not higher lifeforms?

If instead you say those Precambrian rock layers formed in the short period between creation and the flood, how can sedimentary and volcanic rock layers possibly accumulate so rapidly?

It is great that we have that concentrated iron ore available. We can use it to build machines. And yet, without abundant energy, those machines would be nearly useless. Fortunately for us, nature also took care of this for us, as we find vast supplies of coal and oil down there.

Where did the coal come from? It takes a hundred feet of plant matter to form one foot of coal. And yet we find vast seams of coal. A global flood could never have provided enough raw material. Even if vegetable matter from an area ten times the size of the vast coal beds was all gathered together, it would make only a fraction of the coal we see there. (source)

We find most of the coal is buried in the Pennsylvanian and Mississippian layers, which are sometimes together referred to as the Carboniferous Period. During this time, vast forests began to grow. Mushrooms and microorganisms had not yet evolved to efficiently dissolve the wood, so, when trees died, vast quantities of old wood remained on the ground and later got buried in damp conditions. Later, sediments covered the remains and turned it into coal. Over many millions of years, there was plenty of available source materials buried to make coal (see more on the formation of coal here and here and here).

Even more fortunate, we find all that oil down there. Where did it come from? Matter such as algae was buried over long periods of time. As later sediments built up above these sediments, high pressures and temperatures turned the algae remains into oil and gas. The oil is lighter than the rocks and tends to float up. But, where the overhead sedimentary layers have had time to solidify into hard rock layers, they can trap the oil below, keeping it there until we find it. The origin of oil requires long periods of time. It could not have come from a flood.

Life Goes on

But the ancient world was not just a world of dead algae and lifeless mineral deposits. We see also abundant signs that life itself was there while all these materials were being buried. We can see where animals burrowed in the sand, made footprints, and laid eggs in nests as the layers were forming.

While the flood rages, termites dig, dinosaurs dance and cicadas sing. Animals make tracks, and raindrops fall on the ground. Dinosaurs make nests. Wind blows the sand into sand dunes. Trees burn to make charcoal (source: The Defeat of Flood Geology by Flood Geology). Drying mud cracks form in muddy regions, and ripple marks form in shallow waters. (source: Flood Geology and the Grand Canyon). Caves slowly form by the drip, drip drip of carbonic acid. If the bulk of the fossil record was formed in a global deluge, all this somehow happens underwater.

By conventional geology, land animals were alive and well in these layers that were later covered up. The process was repeated many times, yielding the fossil record.

By flood geology, all this has to happen down below the deep waters of a flood. How?

And there were also many volcanos. We find vast formations down there caused by lava that flowed over the Earth. How can all those volcanos occur in the middle of a flood? We see fossil layers below these volcanic layers, so, in the flood geology model, these volcanos occurred after the start of the flood. And we find many fossil bearing layers above these volcanos, so the volcanoes must have preceded the end of the flood. How did that volcanic rock get there?

And no, these volcanos did not occur under the flood waters. When volcanos occur under water, the lava cools rapidly and billows up in huge pillow shapes known as pillow lava. We see much pillow lava down there, yes, but there is also much buried volcanic rock that came from volcanos that spread lava over dry land. So how do we have layers of fossils leading up to the volcanic flow on land, and then many layers with fossils up above the volcano? Does a global flood explain this?

Several geologists and informed scientists have tried to defend flood geology. They constantly run into issues such as those mentioned here. And so, they will write off this buried sand dune or that dinosaur nest or those animal footprints as being in a layer that came before or after the flood. But if you look at all the layers that flood geologists are forced to acknowledge could not be flood layers, we end up with, paradoxically, the defeat of flood geology by flood geology.

And then consider all the varves, which are alternating layers of light and dark rocks. In one place in the Green River Formation there are 20 million thin varves stacked up on top of each other. The deposits appear to have occurred in an ancient lake. The light layers were deposited in the summer, when streams brought much sediment to the lake. The dark layers would be from the winter, where the sediment flow was less. With millions of such layers, the processes that formed the Green River varves must have been happening for millions of years. How can a global flood create many thin layers covering thousands of square miles? It can’t. Flood geology can’t explain it. (Source: ​​​Six “Flood” Arguments Creationists Can’t Answer | National Center for Science Education

And how can a global flood create what we see at Specimen Ridge in Yellowstone Park, where 27 forests are seen buried one on top of the other? Each of these 27 forests appears to have been wiped out in an individual volcano and landslide. Yet on top of each layer, we see that the rock weathered to form new soil that became suitable for a new forest which, in turn, was wiped out in the next catastrophe. How can you explain those 27 forests fossilized on top of each other on the same cliff through a global flood? (Source: The Fatal Flaws of Flood Geology)

And no, these trees did not simply float into position to be buried. Although some may have come this way, many trees are clearly standing in the position they were when buried, complete with their root systems visible in the layers. They didn’t come from a flood.

Books for those who wish to explore this more: The Grand Canyon, Monument to an Ancient Earth: Can Noah’s Flood Explain the Grand Canyon? by Carol Hill, et. al. Ancient Landscapes of the Colorado Plateau by Ron Blakey and Wayne Ranney Science and Earth History by Arthur N. Strahler

Flood geology is not science. Advocates simply look for things that can be interpreted as the result of a global flood, while ignoring all the counter evidence. That is not science. True science needs to have real answers to counter claims. It needs to stand up to scrutiny.

Conclusion

Buried trees, buried footprints, buried caves, buried minerals sorted in many special ways, buried sand dunes, distinct fossil layers sorted by periods, none of this can be explained by a global flood. A global flood relying on miracles is suspect from the start. And it cannot explain the results. Thus, I do not consider flood geology to be credible. I find that the Earth is very old. The layers down there were formed over many millions of years. They are not the product of a single flood.

And that brings us all here, as modern observers of it all. We can look down on a long story of the progression of life intermixed with processes that brought us metals and fossil fuels. Oh, what a story geology tells! Those incredible events enable us to live a modern lifestyle, taking advantage of all that happened years ago.

I hope that you too will find the joy of discovering what is there. Tales of a global flood that created it all may be fun to read, but they are nothing like what really happened. There is enough of wonder, enough of awe, enough of intrigue in reality to stir the soul. Seriously. The awe I find in science excels the awe I ever experienced when I was immersed in flood geology.

You and I are the continuing result of a long struggle for existence. We are part of something that is much bigger than ourselves. Let’s live each day in awe of what is going on. We have this wonderful opportunity to understand a world that formed in an amazing way. Enjoy.