The Geologic Column

Geologic time scale

If you’ve ever looked at a book about geology at a public school or the library, you probably ran into one of these charts.  Ever since Charles Lyell made Uniformitarianism popular, many people have looked at the order of the sedimentary rocks as “proof” that the earth is millions of years old and that Evolution is true.  But, is that what the rocks really show?

First, we have to remember that we cannot actually ‘see’ the past in the rocks. Every scientist makes guesses about what the things we find in the rocks actually mean. What we do see is layers of sedimentary rocks where we find different types of animals and plants preserved as fossils.

People claim there are 26 places in the world that contain all the layers a chart like this one shows.  (I’ll put up a link at the end to an Evolutionist saying this.)  Interestingly, they are all in a basin (a bowl-like valley).  Since this would have protected the sand and other things that dropped out of the water when the waves calmed down, it makes a lot of sense that these places would have such neat layering.  (I’m going to post later about other interesting things that happen in some of these basins (ever heard of Ayer’s Rock?).

Everywhere else in the world we find missing layers (called Unconformities), out of order layering, which would mean (if the timeline idea was correct) that millions of years vanished from most places and sometimes earlier times happened after later times!

So, since we have decided to believe the only eye witnesses there were of these events (Noah’s family and God), what do we actually see in the fossil layers?  We see that the lowest rocks contain tiny sea creatures.  The next layers up have larger sea creatures.  As you get closer to the surface, lizards, then really big lizards (aka Dragons), then little mammals, then big mammals were buried.

This fits in nicely with a Global Flood that took five months (Genesis 7:24) to completely bury the highest points on earth at the time.  Things that were near the bottom of the water got buried first, then larger fish and sea creatures, then finally land animals that lived near the water and that weren’t fast enough to run away.  Last to be buried were the quick creatures, far from the old oceans, whose bodies took longer to sink after drowning.  Check out this PDF with cool pictures of Pre-Flood environments from Answers in Genesis.  And two more from Biblical Geology.net that explain how the Geologic Column fits in with the Flood:  Page 1 and Page 2.

Just thinking about the billions of dead things the rocks have preserved for us to find is sad and scary.  When God said He was going to start over again, He meant it!

Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts,  And saying, Where is the promise of his [Jesus’] coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation[uniformitarianism].   For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water:  Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished:  But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men. II Peter 3:3-7

Praise our powerful, just, and merciful Creator for the protection we can have in Jesus’ blood!!

The Entire Geologic Column in North Dakota by an Evolutionist (scroll to the end of the article to read about the other places in the world with all the layers)

Creation Ministries International’s response to this claim

Geologic Column is a General Flood Order with many exceptions CMI

Institute for Creation Research: Understanding Evidence for the Biblical Timescale     

Really long, big-word-using fossil layer article from Answers in Genesis

description of the Layers in the Grand Canyon Region from Answers in Genesis