Catastrophism and Uniformitarianism

Hello Everyone!

In Answers in Genesis' 'News to Note' they have an article about a recent geological discovery: A landslide was responsible for dumping 225 billion metric tons in a matter of just a few days. This took place about 60,000 years ago. (See BBC Story here).

Here is an excerpt from AiG's article:

Young-earth groups such as Answers in Genesis frequently point to catastrophic geological processes like this landslide that fly—or flow, perhaps—in the face of long-age, uniformitarian geological doctrine. Secular scientists repeat the dogma of “millions of years” and generally point to slow, day-to-day erosion as the major factor in shaping the surface of the earth. Yet geologists, time and time again, stumble over large-scale, fast-occurring geological catastrophes that they identify as having shaped particular features of the earth (such as the Channel Scablands in Montana).

Given all this and acknowledging the geological upheaval a worldwide flood would have brought, where are the scientific objections to geological catastrophism? The reality is, even secular geologists accept some catastrophic explanations (as mentioned above), but by balking at a global flood, they ignore the greatest geological catastrophe there ever was!

Alright, so they are proposing that the geologic column is at least mostly a product of an enormous flood, and not the result of millions of years worth of sedimentation. This is something that we can test! Okay, I want all the evolutionists at home to think, or just be open to, the possibility of the geologic column being deposited by a Global Flood. Now, to all the Creationists, I want you to be open to the idea of the geologic column possibly being the product of slow processes and some catastrophic ones (this is what modern uniformitarianism is, it accounts for catastrophe). Okay, are we ready? Good! Let's look for clues as to whether the geologic column was produced by one flood, or many floods and slow sedimentation.

If the geologic column was deposited by a Catastrophic Flood, I would never expect to find any fragile items in the fossil record. A catastrophic flood would probably destroy fragile things, since it would have had to be violent enough to produce certain geological anomalies. But we have many examples of fragile things, such as the body prints of an amphibian, footprints of dinosaurs, and fossilized rain drop imprints. It is easy to imagine sediment gradually covering a print left in the mud by an amphibian, but hard to imagine rushing torrents doing this without destroying it. And remember, these things were found in the middle of the geologic column, and according to flood geologists, the middle of this epidemic flood. Flood Geology fails this test.


Radiometric Dating

It has been established via experiment that radiometric decay is constant, and therefore a reliable indicator of age. Creationists pose other objections to it, but I won't go into those since they are discussed in "Radiometric Dating: A Christian Perspective" and "Isochron Dating". (For an easier to digest summary, see this article).

The point is, since we know radiometric dating to be reliable, we should be able to use this to date the strata. If Flood Geology is correct, all strata should date to the same age. If Uniformitarianism (Slow Processes) is correct, then the strata should date to different ages. I would also add that if radiometric dating gave dates that were all over the map and not consistent, we could call this inconclusive. Of course, we know that Radiometric Dating does give consistent results, and it is frequently found that the oldest strata are lower than the youngest strata. See the links above for examples of this. Flood Geology again fails the test.


Fossil Sorting

Let's apply one more test. If the flood really happened, then we would expect to see chaos in the fossil record. Man with dinosaurs, all forms of life mixed together, side by side. Yet this outstandingly NOT SO. If the fossil record was laid down over a long period of time, we would expect to see changes in the life forms from strata to strata (since we observe changes today). This would be true even if you only accepted micro-evolution. For instance, see these seashells and how they are found in different strata. Again, Flood Geology fails and Uniformitarianism rains supreme in the scientific arena.

It is important to add as a side note that creationists have proposed ways of explaining the fossil record, although they have been proven false. For instance, see this Talk Origin page or this article written by legendary Paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould.