Shaving years off Grand Canyon

Before you get too excited, later in the article, the director of the bookstore gives his opinion of the book and reason for stocking it.

 

I fear I may have misread you.

It is a wonderful thing that this gentleman was able to meet a Christian woman who led him to the Lord Who has obviously worked a great change in this man's life.

There has been a lot of stir out there about this book being sold through the park's bookstores. Lest someone think this is some great victory for YEC, I was pointing out what the head of the bookstore though of the book.

 

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0890513732/qid=1074106639//ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i0_xgl14/103-8780956-0023826?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

I have my doubts on whether the link will work. If not, go to Amazon.com and search for Grand Canyon: A Different View."

 

"It wasn't a religious experience, it was a conversion to Christianity."
That's a religious experience.

"Why are the papers so slow to mention the word Christianity apart from the context of Roman Catholicism?"
Because Roman Catholicism is like Christianity only cooler (or should that be kewler?)

 

Some people even claim the earth flat based on their inpretation of the scientific evidence and oh, yes, by the way, the bible tells them that also.

Yeah. Sure. They bring their beliefs to the evidence instead of letting the evidence speak for itself.

The evidence says Grand Canyon took millions of years to form.

 

The evidence at Mt Saint Helens says the same thing. Except there, real science shows us otherwise. The Grand Canyon is exactly what you would expect to see with a young earth view. The Grand Canyon is inconsistent with an old earth view.

The reality is that the evidence doesn't say anything. The evidence has to be interpreted. You start with a set of assumptions and interpret the evidence in that light. But your presuppositions have been shown to be faulty.

 

Pastor Larry,

What 'real science' shows that Mt. Saint Helen's and the Grand Canyon are consistent with a young Earth?

 

The evidence at Mt Saint Helens says the same thing. Except there, real science shows us otherwise. The Grand Canyon is exactly what you would expect to see with a young earth view. The Grand Canyon is inconsistent with an old earth view.

The reality is that the evidence doesn't say anything. The evidence has to be interpreted. You start with a set of assumptions and interpret the evidence in that light. But your presuppositions have been shown to be faulty. </font>[/QUOTE]Uh - Pastor Larry - the small but impressive canyon like gullies at Mt St Helens were carved into fresh fallen ash. The grand canyon was carved from sedimentary layers. They are not comparable.

 

Brett,

The real science is what science actually is ... observation. At Mt St Helens, the laying down of the layers was observed.

Paul errs in arguing the issue of "canyon like gullies." That is not the point. The point is that the layers at Mt St Helen are strikingly similar to the layers in the Grand Canyon. We can observe and see how long it took to lay those layers down. An old earth view of hte Grand Canyon is inconsistent with what we know about the laying down of sedimentary layers in the Grand Canyon. We should not feel compelled to read something into the Grand Canyon because we need to support an old earth theory. We should let it stand just like it does.

 

Just a couple of notes:

1. The author of the book was not aware of the evidence which indicates it would have been impossible for the same catastrophe to lay down the strata in the Grand Canyon and then carve it out again. This part goes against his point of view as presented in the book. For instance, the Coconino sandstone shows deposition slopes of 25 degrees. This is possible in water, and that has been shown. But the problem lies in the fact that these same sand deposits retained footprints of land animals. Not that they couldn't have been walking in water, but the currents it takes to form 25 degree deposition slopes would erase footprints. However on the leeward, or steeper, slope on wind blown dunes, there is an area toward the bottom of the slope where footprints can be preserved after deposition, even during moderate winds. This combination would indicate that the Coconino standstone, which preserves these footprints, was probably laid down during a dry time.

As even Dr. Steve Austin says in his book on the Grand Canyon, "We recognize that quartz and feldspar grains, which constitute most of the Grand Canyon sandstones could not have been precipitated from water. These grains were derived by erosion of crystalline basement rocks (granite, gneiss, or schist), or by reworking from earlier sand deposits. These two sources of grains need to be evaluated for Grand Canyon formations." (p. 35).

So it is a recognized problem by ICR, certainly, that there is evidence that not all was laid down by the Flood waters, even though that argument is presented in the book and elsewhere. So the author of the book under discussion here is simply not aware of the geological evidence against his point of view.

2. HOWEVER, it is also just as evident that the Grand Canyon was carved out swiftly and catastrophically. The sharpness of the angular cuts of the rocks would not be maintained after a billion years of winds and rains. North of Grand Canyon, if you look on a map, you will see the Great Salt Flats of Utah -- the remains of what was once an incredibly large inland sea. At some point, this sea burst some natural restraint, and plunged southward, carving out the Grand Canyon in days, if not hours.

If, as the gradualists claim, Grand Canyon was the result of thousands of years of gradual carving by the relatively small Colorado River, there would be a delta at the foot of it. There is no delta. There is no evidence of a past delta. Thousand upon thousands of tons of dirt do not evaporate. However a very fast, catastrophic flooding would be able to carve out the canyon and transport the material well out past the shoreline and into the ocean depths.

Further evidence for that is that several of the tributaries to Grand Canyon give evidence of having flowed the opposite direction of the river flow today. There is a funnel shaped section between the Vermillion Cliffs to the northwest and the Echo Cliffs to the southeast which shows something very interesting. The cut comes down from a relatively narrow section to the northwest and continues, ever wider, like an upside down funnel. There is a series of ancient tributaries along the river at this point which all show that they were flowing TO the northeast originally, although the river itself flows in the opposite direction now.

In order to preserve the remnants of these tributaries on the surface of the bed of the canyon, the formation of the canyon had to be sudden and catastrophic...

...and recent.

This evidence, and more, indicates that the strata of Grand Canyon were laid down at different times, and were not all water-borne. It also indicates that the formation of the Canyon itself, after the layers of deposition, was extraordinarily rapid, and probably geologically recent.

 

For a more conventional view of the formation of the grand canyon, here's a site that tells the story:

http://www.kaibab.org/geology/gc_geol.htm

 

They mean they don't know everything, especially about the very earliest startup of the canyon formation. Don't let that distract you from what they DO know!