Claim CH581:
The Grand Canyon was created suddenly by the retreating waters of Noah's
Flood.
Source:
Austin, Steve, 1995. Grand Canyon: Monument to Catastrophe. Santee,
CA: Inst. for Creation Research.
Response:
- We know what to expect of a sudden massive flood, namely:
- a wide, relatively shallow bed, not a deep, sinuous river channel.
- anastamosing channels (i.e., a braided river system), not a single,
well-developed channel.
- coarse-grained sediments, including boulders and gravel, on the
floor of the canyon.
- streamlined relict islands.
The Scablands in Washington state were produced by such a flood and
show such features (Allen et al. 1986; Baker 1978; Bretz 1969; Waitt
1985). Such features are also seen on Mars at Kasei Vallis and Ares
Vallis (Baker 1978; NASA Quest n.d.). They do not appear in the Grand
Canyon. Compare relief maps of the two areas to see for yourself.
- The same flood that was supposed to carve the Grand Canyon was also
supposed to lay down the miles of sediment (and a few lava flows) from
which the canyon is carved. A single flood cannot do both.
Creationists claim that the year of the Flood included several
geological events, but that still stretches credulity.
- The Grand Canyon contains some major meanders. Upstream of the Grand
Canyon, the San Juan River (around Gooseneck State Park, southeast
Utah) has some of the most extreme meandering imaginable. The canyon
is 1,000 feet high, with the river flowing five miles while progressing
one mile as the crow flies (American Southwest n.d.). There is no way
a single massive flood could carve this.
- Recent flood sediments would be unconsolidated. If the Grand Canyon
were carved in unconsolidated sediments, the sides of the canyon would
show obvious slumping.
- The inner canyon is carved into the strongly metamorphosed sediments of
the Vishnu Group, which are separated by an angular unconformity from
the overlying sedimentary rocks, and also in the Zoroaster Granite,
which intrudes the Vishnu Group. These rocks, by all accounts, would
have been quite hard before the Flood began.
- Along the Grand Canyon are tributaries, which are as deep as the Grand
Canyon itself. These tributaries are roughly perpendicular to the main
canyon. A sudden massive flood would not produce such a pattern.
- Sediment from the Colorado River has been
shifted northward
over the years by movement along the San Andreas and related faults
(Winker and Kidwell 1986). Such movement of the delta sediment would
not occur if the canyon were carved as a single event.
- The lakes that Austin proposed as the source for the carving
floodwaters are not large compared with the Grand Canyon itself. The
flood would have to remove more material than the floodwaters
themselves.
- If a brief interlude of rushing water produced the Grand Canyon, there
should be many more such canyons. Why are there not other grand
canyons surrounding all the margins of all continents?
- There is a perfectly satisfactory gradual explanation for the formation
of the Grand Canyon that avoids all these problems. Sediments
deposited about two billion years ago were metamorphosed and intruded
by granite to become today's basement layers. Other sediments were
deposited in the late Proterozoic and were subsequently folded,
faulted, and eroded. More sediments were deposited in the Paleozoic
and Mesozoic, with a period of erosion in between. The Colorado
Plateau started rising gradually about seventy million years ago. As
it rose, existing rivers deepened, carving through the previous
sediments (Harris and Kiver 1985, 273-282).
Links:
Woolf, Jon, 1999. Young-earth creationism and the geology of the Grand
Canyon. http://www.jwoolfden.com/gc_intro.html
References:
- Allen, J. A. et al., 1986. (see below)
- American Southwest, n.d., Mexican Hat.
http://www.americansouthwest.net/utah/mexican_hat/index.html
For photos, see
http://www.americansouthwest.net/utah/mexican_hat/goose2_l.html
and
http://www.americansouthwest.net/utah/mexican_hat/goose_l.html
- Baker, V. R., 1978. The Spokane flood controversy and the Martian
outflow channels. Science 202: 1249-1256.
- Bretz, J. H., 1969. The Lake Missoula floods and the Channeled
Scabland. Journal of Geology 77: 505-543.
- NASA Quest, n.d. Mars Team online photo gallery.
http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/mars/photos/pathfinder.html;
see especially
http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/mars/photos/images/marspfsite.gif
- Harris, D. V. and E. P. Kiver, 1985. The Geologic Story of the
National Parks and Monuments. New York: Wiley.
- Waitt, R. B. Jr., 1985. Case for periodic, colossal
jökulhlaups from Pleistocene glacial Lake Missoula. Geological
Society of America Bulletin 96: 1271-1286.
- Winker, C. D., and S. M. Kidwell, 1986. Paleocurrent evidence for
lateral displacement of the Pliocene Colorado River delta by the San
Andreas fault system, southeastern California. Geology 14:
788-791.
Further Reading:
Allen, J. A., M. Burns and S. C. Sargent, 1986. Cataclysms on the
Columbia. Portland, OR: Timber Press.
Beus, S. S. and M. Morales (eds.), 2002. Grand Canyon Geology, 2nd
edition. London: Oxford University Press. (technical)
Chronic, Halka, 1983. Roadside Geology of Arizona. Missoula:
Mountain
Press Publishing.
Elders, Wilfred A., 1998. Bibliolatry in the Grand Canyon. Reports of the
National Center for Science Education 18(4)
(July/Aug.): 8-15.
created 2003-6-9, modified 2005-11-18