2 Grand Canyon Evidences that Confirm the Bible

In June 2016, an article was posted on the BioLogos website (which promotes old-earth, evolutionary “creation”) titled, “Flood Geology and the Grand Canyon: What Does the Evidence Really Say?”1 Written by four Christians who are science professionals, including three geologists, the article purports to dissect and respond succinctly to evidence for the global flood cataclysm as recorded in Genesis 6–8 and assembled and published by creationist geologists.

In the preceding Part 1 article, we considered their approach to this topic in light of their professed Christian faith. As they claim in the preamble to their BioLogos web article, they are Christian geologists who affirm the authority of the Bible but reject the flood geology narrative. But doesn’t the authority of the Bible derive from the character of the author? If the Bible is God-breathed (2 Timothy 3:16), then it is infallible truth, as God never tells lies (Titus 1:2).

Indeed, we saw that the Apostle Peter sternly warned against these modern-day scoffers because of their false philosophy that “all things are continuing as they were from the beginning” (2 Peter 3:3–6). How can these Christian geologists reject Jesus’ clear teaching (when Jesus is “the truth” [John 14:6]) that just as his second coming will be global, the flood was a global event that “swept them all away” (Matthew 24:36–39)?

Their tactics were also closely examined to demonstrate that they use misrepresentations and straw man arguments. Numerous examples were given just from the foreword and the first two chapters of the book The Grand Canyon, Monument to an Ancient Earth, Can Noah’s Flood Explain the Grand Canyon?, which their web article promotes. These tactics are designed to portray creation-flood geologists as lacking any scholarship or credibility, making it easier to tear down the evidence they present for the flood.

On the contrary, exposing these misrepresentations and straw man arguments leaves these opponents as the ones lacking credibility and scholarship. After all, either they rarely read the creation-flood geological literature or they deliberately ignore it, as the examples given in Part 1 of this series demonstrate and as will be also seen in the following critique of their examination of the first two of the five evidences of the global flood cataclysm.

As mentioned in Part 1, They also demonstrate lack of credibility and scholarship in the preamble to their BioLogos web article. They mention Whitcomb and Morris’ The Genesis Flood: The Biblical Record and Its Scientific Implications (1961), then refer in an endnote to PhD geologist Austin’s Grand Canyon: Monument to Catastrophe (1994) to Vail’s “coffee-table book” Grand Canyon: A Different View (2003), as if the latter is also a flood geology textbook. They totally ignore highlighting PhD geologist Snelling’s Earth Catastrophic Past: Geology, Creation and the Flood (2009),2 which is the most recent “textbook” on creationist and flood geology and discusses many aspects of Grand Canyon geology.

So now we turn to a close examination of their purported refutation of five evidences for the global flood cataclysm. As these refutations are summaries of chapters in their book The Grand Canyon, Monument to an Ancient Earth, Can Noah’s Flood Explain the Grand Canyon?, they make repeated references to that book’s contents.

Evidence #1: Layers over Entire Continents

The misrepresentations of flood geologists continue unabated as these four Christian authors launch into their critique of this first evidence for the global flood cataclysm. In discussing the supposedly different opinions of flood geologists about how deep (or high) the floodwaters rose over the continents, they state that “some imagine the water rising above the present heights of mountain ranges.” However, they do not cite a single reference from flood geologist literature to back up their claim.

To the contrary, all flood geologists recognize that the present mountains were formed from flood-deposited, fossil-bearing sedimentary layers in the late stage of the flood.

The reason they cannot cite a reference to substantiate this claim is because no flood geologist has said that. To the contrary, all flood geologists recognize that the present mountains were formed from flood-deposited, fossil-bearing sedimentary layers in the late stage of the flood. This was not just from the present continents being lifted up but also from catastrophic plate collisions and humongous volcanic eruptions above subduction zones.3

Flood geologists have biblical and geological reasons to envisage the pre-flood supercontinent having only low-elevation hills and mountains compared to today’s mountains.4 Furthermore, God’s Word specifically states that “the waters prevailed above the mountains, covering them fifteen cubits deep” (Genesis 7:20). Since a cubit was ~18 inches (~45 cm), the floodwaters only covered the pre-flood mountains by ~23 feet (~7 metres). That was half the 30 cubits height of the ark (Genesis 6:15) and thus likely its draught. Therefore, we are told that the floodwaters rose just high enough for the ark to float over the tops of the pre-flood mountains.

So flood geologists agree with these critics that none of the sedimentary rock layers in the Grand Canyon resemble deep ocean deposits because flood geologists have never claimed they were. Again, these critics have misrepresented flood geologists with yet another straw man. Instead, detailed studies by flood geologists of Grand Canyon rock units—for example, the Tapeats Sandstone, Bright Angel Shale, and Muav Limestone (fig. 1), including the sedimentary structures and fossils in them—only proposed that relatively shallow marine waters covered the North American continent to deposit them.5

Where flood geologists totally disagree with these Christian geologists who are committed to the conventional millions-of-years timescale for the earth’s history is with their underlying assumption that present geological processes and their rates are the key to deciphering how rock layers formed in the past. Like their secular colleagues, these Christian geologists never admit that this is an assumption, as they merely describe present processes and then interpret the past formation of rock layers as if it were all proven. But just because nearly all geologists use that assumption as a given does not make it proven and beyond dispute.

The key overarching problem in their web article (and thus their book) is that the past was never witnessed by any geologists. Even Noah couldn’t see what was happening outside the ark. So today, geologists can examine rocks and measure their grains and sedimentary structures, which are repeatable observations, but they cannot reproduce the past. So to interpret the observable data to derive an explanation for the formation of the rock layers in the past requires two unprovable assumptions: 1.) The present is the key to the past, and 2.) the presently observed rates of geological processes (erosion, sedimentation, volcanism, earthquakes, etc.) have always happened at essentially the same rate, frequency, and power throughout the past.

Many discount the Bible as God’s eyewitness testimony of the earth’s past history and assume that the ideology of the present being the key to the past is reasonable and valid. However, it is an unbiblical assumption because God’s Word declares that it is what happened in the past that explains the state of the present world. For example, why is there death and suffering? It was because of what happened in Genesis 3 when Adam and Eve disobeyed God, and the result was the fall and God’s curse on creation. So why do we have fossil-bearing sedimentary layers spread across continents? It was because of man’s rebellion and the corruption of all flesh that God sent the judgment of the global flood cataclysm to destroy all people and land-dwelling animals and birds except for those on the ark. And why do we need Jesus Christ as our Savior? Because of Adam’s sin and God’s righteous judgment (Genesis 3:15; John 3:16–18; Romans 5:12; 1 Corinthians 15:21–22).

These Christian geologists say they believe God’s Word as inerrant in such spiritual matters and that Jesus Christ is the only all-sufficient Savior. But they do not accept God’s Word is authoritative in earthly matters, such as the earth’s creation and history. Yet Jesus specifically said: “If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things?” (John 3:12).

For example, Jesus explicitly described the people’s behavior before the flood as carrying on with life as if everything were going to continue just the same, that is, “eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage,” even though they had been warned by Noah’s preaching that the flood judgment was coming. But then “the flood came and swept them all away.” Jesus warned that it would be the same just before he (the Son of Man) comes in judgment (Matthew 24:37-39). Don’t these Christian geologists believe Jesus will come again in judgment of the whole earth globally? If they do not, that’s a serious problem. If they do believe in the coming judgment, why do they not believe God judged the whole earth globally by water in the days of Noah, just as Jesus, “the truth,” said? On that day of Jesus’ second coming, all things will not continue as they were. So assuming that all things have continued as they were in the past is the grave error these Christian geologists make.

So assuming that all things have continued as they were in the past is the grave error these Christian geologists make.

That grave error is on display in their web article when they describe how “the ocean and continental plates continuously move both laterally and vertically” and “we can actually measure this movement in real time by GPS today.” They then tacitly apply this to the past without saying so explicitly, as if today’s slow plate movements have always been the same. They are totally ignoring the possibility of catastrophic plate movements (for which there is evidence) as a valid model for the mechanism of the flood cataclysm.6

It is the same sleight of hand made by these Christian geologists when they describe: “There are many places on earth today where very thick deposits of sediment and sedimentary rocks are accumulating on continental crust below sea level.” Then applying those present geological processes (operating at presently observed rates, frequency, and power) to the past they state: “The weight of the sediments causes the crust to sink, giving more room for still more sediments. . . . As continents converge in the future, these sea deposits, containing abundant remains of sea creatures, may be lifted up above sea level, just like they did in the layers of the Grand Canyon.”

How do they know that is how the layers in the Grand Canyon formed when they never witnessed their formation? Studying the sedimentation features produced by today’s slow-and-gradual deposition might provide clues, but today, we have never witnessed another global flood to observe the features it would leave behind. Yet rapid deposition of sediments has been observed in local catastrophes and the resulting features are similar to those observed in the layers in the Grand Canyon.7 All such observable evidence has been utilized by flood geologists in their already-referred-to detailed technical studies of the Grand Canyon rock units.

It should be added that these technical studies of Grand Canyon rock units by flood geologists also included detailed mineralogical and textural analyses, which are crucial to understanding the depositional conditions. On the other hand, in their book chapters and this web article where they promote the conventional slow-and-gradual deposition explanation for the same Grand Canyon sedimentary layers, these Christian geologist opponents never support their claims with any such analyses. So who is more comprehensive and thorough in their research of these rock units? Before a flood geologist published tens of color photomicrographs of the Tapeats Sandstone in 2021,8 the only previous photomicrographs of the Tapeats Sandstone published in the conventional literature were four black-and-white images from a 1945 monograph.9

At least these old-earth Christian opponents admit in the BioLogos article that “many sedimentary layers do cover vast areas of the continents.” But they then claim that “no single layer covers an entire continent from one end to the other as the flood geologists claim.” This is an astounding and embarrassing claim because it demonstrates, in their own words, that these opponents clearly have not even read the conventional literature where it has been well-documented for over 60 years that many single sedimentary layers cover the North American continent and beyond.10

Indeed, in the 1980s, the American Association of Petroleum Geologists sponsored the Correlation of Stratigraphic Units of North America (COSUNA) project in which the various layers in the entire Phanerozoic strata record were correlated between outcrops and drillholes across the US. This demonstrated conclusively that many sedimentary layers, even though they were given different names in different parts of the continent by local geologists, actually are the same rock layers and extend right across the US.

God’s eyewitness testimony in his Word says that during the flood, the waters covered the whole globe so that all flesh outside the ark perished (Genesis 7:19–24). That implies the waters from “the fountains of the great deep” were added to the pre-flood ocean (Genesis 7:11) so that they swept right across all the land and covered it. And since the floodwaters would have carried sediments with them, if the flood really did occur, we would expect to find sediment layers deposited by water spread right across the continent. And we do, as documented in the conventional literature, as already noted, and also in the flood geology literature.11

For example, throughout most of the Grand Canyon, the basal unit of the Phanerozoic is the Cambrian Tapeats Sandstone, and it sits on an erosion surface called the Great Unconformity. The Tapeats itself, its equivalents, and the Great Unconformity can be traced entirely across the US and across North Africa to southern Israel (fig. 2). And that Great Unconformity erosion surface can be traced on every continent almost entirely around the globe and invariably the equivalents of the Tapeats Sandstone sit on it.12 This is documented in the secular literature that these Christian geologist authors should have been aware of before falsely accusing flood geologists.

However, just for the sake of argument, let us suppose that the layers of sediments are not continental or intercontinental in extent. Even if that were the case, the sedimentary layers in the Grand Canyon area are very extensive geographically (covering at least thousands of square miles/km) and in thickness. If the present is the key to the past, where on earth do we see such consistently extensive and thick continuous layers of sandstone, limestone, and shale forming today with well-preserved fossils in them covering such a large area? Nowhere! The geological record simply does not fit the old-earth, slow-gradual-like-today myth.

Two final considerations here of the claims of these Christian geologist opponents. First, they claim that sea level repeatedly rose and fell over hundreds of millions of years so that shorelines moved inland to deposit the sand, mud, and lime that comprise the geological formations we now see in the Grand Canyon. If one consults the textbook on Grand Canyon geology,13 one finds that according to this scenario, the North American continent would need to have risen and fallen vertically some 15 or so times, if each Grand Canyon geological formation were deposited by rising and falling sea levels. However, neither these Christian opponents nor that secular textbook explain the mechanism for how that happened. Even their slow-and-gradual version of plate tectonics does not account for the vertical rise and fall of continental plates that many times. So that claimed “explanation” is devoid of science and is mere storytelling and hand-waving. On the other hand, flood geologists have explained the deposition of all these Grand Canyon geological formations in rapid succession by shallow waters oscillating across the North American plate due to the stupendous raising of the ocean floors during catastrophic plate tectonics and the combination of earthquake-generated tsunamis and humongous tidal resonance on a global ocean, as a result of the fountains of the great deep breaking open (Genesis 7:11).14

Second, these Christian geologist opponents claim that the evidence for the slow deposition over millions of years of the Grand Canyon’s sedimentary rock layers in very shallow water or just above sea level is the abundant sedimentary structures such as mud cracks, raindrop imprints, cross-bedding, and small animal tracks (using photos from their book).

However, the claimed mud cracks and raindrop imprints are very dubious and open to dispute when compared to mudcracks and raindrop imprints formed today. In any case, syneresis (shrinkage) cracks that mimic mud cracks are well-documented as forming underwater. And to preserve raindrop imprints requires rapid burial very soon after formation, or else they get obliterated.15 It has already been explained above that sediment surfaces would be exposed temporarily by the humongous tidal resonance during the global flood cataclysm. While briefly exposed between tides, animals finding respite from the floodwaters on the sediment surfaces would leave their tracks, and the falling rain could leave raindrop imprints. Then when the surging tides rose, bringing more sediments, the tracks and imprints would be rapidly buried and preserved.

Furthermore, the tracks of small animals have been demonstrated to be more likely formed underwater, and again, their preservation requires their rapid burial (see below for further comments). Similarly, the cross-bedding found in the Grand Canyon geological formations has been demonstrated to have all formed underwater by strong, fast-flowing water currents and definitely not by desert winds, as claimed by these and other old-earth opponents, whose view is contrary to all the observational and experimental evidence (again, see below for further comments).

Evidence #2: Billions of Dead Things (Sea Animals Deposited Rapidly on Land)

In their web article, these Christian geologist opponents claim next that “the story the fossils tell us about Grand Canyon rocks” is this:

Rather than finding evidence of a single, global catastrophe, the fossils of the Grand Canyon provide one of the clearest pictures of a long history of changing environmental conditions and life forms . . . most fossil organisms are found in association with other fossils from coherent ecosystems.

They accuse flood geologists of describing “sea creatures being swept away by turbulent floodwaters and deposited, tsunami-style along with sediment forming the rock layers we see in Grand Canyon.” Instead, these old-earth geologists claim the organisms were “not violently transported and mixed with transported organisms from dissimilar environments.”

In response, first, this accusation is a misrepresentation: Flood geologists have written about whole ecosystems being swept away by the floodwaters and those organisms eventually being buried together elsewhere as essentially intact former ecosystems.16 But such rapid burial was also violent,17 for which these critics admit that “there are indeed variations in the preservation observed . . . the character of the fossils is consistent with specific environmental conditions.” Indeed, flood geologists have demonstrated conclusively based on observational evidence that some fossils were entombed by rapid underwater debris flows.18

Indeed, flood geologists have demonstrated conclusively based on observational evidence that some fossils were entombed by rapid underwater debris flows.

Second, what about the rapid burial of sea creatures to form their fossils? If present depositional environments are the key to explaining the formation of fossils in the past, which is the assumption made by these Christian geologist opponents, then where today do we find fish fossils forming? Do we find dead fish on the bottom of the ocean or a lake slowly being covered up on the ocean or lake floors to form fossils?

The answer to this question is a resounding NO! Even though some opponents claim that anoxic (lack of oxygen) conditions will slow decomposition of dead fish and aid preservation while slow burial occurs, bacteria still thrive under such conditions and digest the flesh of the fish. The observational reality is that unless burial and preservation is rapid, most dead fish decay or get eaten by scavengers so that nothing is left to be preserved.

Furthermore, many fossils are found not in scattered isolation but en masse in what have been called fossil graveyards or lagerstätten in which the fossils are usually exquisitely preserved, sometimes with even full details of intact soft tissues. This is well-documented in the secular literature, where it is well-recognized that these fossil graveyards require rapid burial in conditions not operating today.19

Significantly, these Christian geologist critics of flood geologists conveniently ignore the startling example of the global distribution of chalk and the astounding mixture of fossils it contains. They ignore this evidence because it is devastating to their agenda to defend the slow-and-gradual dogma of the slow limestone and fossil formation advocated for by their uniformitarian secular colleagues.20

The famous Cretaceous (Latin creta) chalk beds and their fossils that are exposed magnificently along the eastern shore of the English Channel (fig. 3) and on the Yorkshire coast are well-documented.21 These same chalk beds can be traced under England across to Northern Ireland and under the English Channel to France, Germany, and Poland then across Europe to the Middle East as far as Turkey, Egypt, Israel, and Kazakhstan. They also are found across the US Midwest from Alabama and Arkansas to Colorado and from Texas to Nebraska, and in Western Australia in the Perth Basin. This is a global distribution, albeit with gaps—some due to subsequent erosion. So much for these opponents decrying flood geologists who claim that layers cover entire continents!

The English chalk beds contain fossil sponges, corals, bryozoans, brachiopods, bivalves, gastropods, ammonites, nautiloids, belemnites, arthropods (crabs and lobsters), and echinoderms (crinoids, starfish, and anemones).22 But they also contain the fossilized jaws and teeth of fish and fossil remains of turtles, ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, marine lizards, pterosaurs, and even dinosaurs.23

The Niobrara Chalk in Kansas also contains an impressive list of larger fossils—fish of various types up to 5 meters (over 16 feet) long, sharks, turtles up to 4 meters (about 13 feet) long, plesiosaurs up to 14 meters (almost 46 feet) long, mosasaurs up to 15 meters (about 49 feet) long, pterosaurs with wingspans up to 9 meters (about 29.5 feet), dinosaurs such as hadrosaurs up to 9 meters (about 29.5 feet), and ankylosaurs, and birds up to 2 meters (over 6.5 feet) tall.24

Chalk is a soft, pure, earthy, fine-textured, usually white limestone of marine origin, consisting almost wholly (90–99%) of the calcium carbonate mineral calcite, formed mainly by the shells of floating microorganisms (chiefly foraminifers) and the remains of calcareous algae, such as coccoliths, set in a matrix of very-fine crystalline calcite.25

Because of its fine-grained consistency and voluminous content of tiny fossil shells, evolutionary geologists and these Christian geologists, whose operating belief is “the present is the key to the past,” explain the deposition of chalk beds by studying the limey ooze on today’s ocean floor. This ooze is widespread across today’s ocean floor at depths shallower than 4,500 meters (about 14,775 feet). They claim that the ooze has accumulated at a rate of between 0.2 mm and 2 mm (0.008–0.08 inches) per year.26 So assuming the slow rate throughout the past, it would take 100,000 to 1 million years to accumulate the 200 meters (about 656 feet) thickness needed for the ooze to be converted to chalk. Indeed, they claim chalk deposition lasted for 40 million years.27

Nevertheless, they are ignoring that these chalk beds were deposited across the continents by the ocean waters that rose to completely flood the continents, which consist of continental crust. These chalk beds are not found deposited across the ocean floor, consisting of ocean crust, where the limey ooze is today. And today’s limey oozes are nowhere near as pure in calcium carbonate as the chalk beds formed in the past and seen on the continents!

So the present is not the key to the past as claimed by these Christian geologist opponents, who are fellow travelers with evolutionary geologists.

So the present is not the key to the past as claimed by these Christian geologist opponents, who are fellow travelers with evolutionary geologists. Where do we see limey ooze slowly accumulating today on the continents and burying and fossilizing such huge plesiosaurs and mosasaurs (ocean dwellers) together with large dinosaurs (land dwellers) and pterosaurs and birds (air dwellers)? Or what about the fossil of the voracious predatory fish Xiphactinus audax that is 4 meters (13 feet) long with an almost perfectly preserved 1.8 meter (6 feet) long fish Gillicus arcuatus inside of it (fig. 4)? Nowhere! We simply do not see that burial and fossilization happening today on such a massive and catastrophic scale.

To fossilize together such an astounding mixture of large ocean creatures and land- and air-dwelling creatures requires catastrophic burial under ginormous amounts of sediments almost instantly, before they had time to escape, be eaten, or succumb to decay processes. Or in the case of the eaten fish, before it could be digested. So the uniformitarian claim adopted by these Christian geologist opponents that the chalk beds accumulated slowly, a grain at a time falling to the bottom of a calm and placid sea, is simply demolished by the evidence of these catastrophically buried fossils.

Of course, they are also assuming that ocean water conditions have always been similar to today. But during the global flood cataclysm described in Genesis, conditions were very different. The mention of the “fountains of the great deep” (Genesis 7:11) unquestioningly implies that hot volcanic waters and chemical nutrients were profusely added to the pre-flood oceans, changing the ocean water temperature and chemistry, and thus causing the rapid blooming of foraminifers and coccoliths. As a result, calcium carbonate was rapidly precipitating28 to catastrophically bury this astounding mixture of large ocean, land, and air-dwelling creatures to fossilize them in the globally distributed chalk beds.

These Christian geologist opponents then describe the diversity of plant fossils in the Grand Canyon, which includes extinct ferns, lycopods, conifers, and pollen grains of conifers and spores from ferns. However, they highlight the observation that no remains of flowering plants such as sunflowers, grasses, oaks, or no flowering plant pollen grains are preserved in Grand Canyon rocks. Thus, they chide flood geologists with the question: 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?

Ironically, they had already answered their own question. After pointing out it is significant that plant fossils are missing from most Grand Canyon rock layers, they admit this is consistent with the observation that most of the Grand Canyon rock layers are marine in origin and thus not expected—by any geologists—to contain plant fossils.

Indeed, flood geologists also agree the Grand Canyon rock layers are of marine origin because during the global flood cataclysm, the ocean waters flooded over the continents, carrying marine creatures with them to rapidly bury them. The plants were swept away by the surging waters and initially floated, while the surging currents carrying the sediments and marine creatures would have been at the bottom of the water column, as is observed during underwater debris flows today. Thus, the marine creatures would have been buried first in the rapidly accumulating sediments up on the continents and only later when they had become waterlogged and sank would plants and pollen grains be buried in sediment layers deposited higher in the strata sequence, just as we find in the Grand Canyon/Colorado Plateau strata sequence.

Finally, these Christian geologist opponents raise the issue of the preserved trace fossils in the Grand Canyon rock layers, such as feeding traces of trilobites, footprint trackways of vertebrates, and tracks and burrows of spiders, scorpions, millipedes, worms, and more. They ask: How could these have formed and been preserved in the middle of a chaotic, worldwide flood?

However, to turn the tables on these Christian uniformitarian critics, we must demand that they explain how such traces, tracks, and burrows are being preserved today under slow-and-gradual conditions. Ask anyone who walks along a beach today. Are the human and bird footprints, snail trails, or crab burrows preserved as the wind blows and waves surge across the beach? Only while these traces are in wet sand are their outlines held firm, and to be preserved, they need to be covered rapidly before waves, tides, and winds destroy them.

On the other hand, they would have already known the answer if they had read the flood geology literature! Tides on a global ocean would have resonated so that water levels would have risen and fallen by a hundred metres or more (several hundred feet), resulting in sand and mudflats being temporarily exposed at low tides.29 Swimming animals would have found temporary refuge to rest and walk around, while worms, snails, and more would have had a few hours to dig burrows and leave trails before the next high tide would have swept in with sand and mud to rapidly bury and preserve the footprints, trails, and burrows.30

Furthermore, how is it possible to explain dinosaur footprints on the surfaces of limestone beds when dinosaurs were land animals and limestones are claimed to be deposited on the ocean floor (fig. 5)?31 But in the global flood, dinosaurs swimming to survive would have found relief in shallower water during low tides. Indeed, some secular geologists recognize that some fossilized footprints were made when the creatures were running or wading through water.32

In summary, it should be noted that the flood did not cover the whole earth on the first day of the cataclysm. The waters rose steadily, and until the waters covered the whole earth (sometime between the 40th and 150th days), the waters would rebound from the land before the next tide and/or tsunami, leaving exposed land for short periods of time.

Furthermore, the waters of the global flood cataclysm described in Genesis would have been turbulent, like those produced by earthquakes and hurricanes today, but not everywhere at the same time. They would have been rhythmic in their motions, calmer at the water surface, and fluctuating in intensity and depth, with sediment debris flows at the bottom of the water column. The sediments they carried were not deposited with fossils in a jumbled mess during the flood, as proposed by these Christian uniformitarian critics. Moving water has the ability to sort the sediment grains and anything else they carry depending on sizes, density, shapes, etc. of the grains and objects in suspension and the water velocity, although in some cases the fossils are deposited in a jumbled mass, such as in some fossil graveyards.

Rather, the order of succession of fossils we see preserved in the Grand Canyon and other rock layers represents the order in which ecosystems were systematically swept away as the ocean (flood) waters rose progressively higher and higher across the land. These ecosystems were then buried systematically days or likely weeks later after the currents transported them considerable distances, even around the globe.33 And since the flood began as fountains bursting through the ocean floor, the marine creatures would be first affected by the cataclysm resulting in them being buried and fossilized first, followed by land animals and plants as the waters continued to rise and sweep across the land.34

So again, the criticisms of these Christian geologist opponents fail miserably when examined in detail against the observations in the present and what we see in the rock record. Their secular philosophical assumption that today’s geological processes and current rates of those processes are all that are needed cannot and does not explain what happened in the past to accumulate the rock and fossil records we see today. On the other hand, the model being developed by flood geologists based on God’s eyewitness account in Genesis of the global flood cataclysm is proving capable and robust in explaining what is preserved in the rock and fossil records.

In Part 3 of this series, we will examine and refute the critique of the three other claimed evidences raised by these Christian uniformitarian opponents that purportedly refute the global Genesis flood cataclysm.