Twelfth Post

Some Geology pointing to the Great Flood

JMJ

Glory to Jesus Christ!

A grace-filled Feast of the great penitent Saint Mary Magdalene (Roman AND Byzantine calendars! 😇), y'all!

The mainstream Old Earth/Evolution paradigm teaches that the assorted rock strata we see on our travels, whether soaring out of the ground or along road cuts as we drive, were formed (deposited, squeezed, chemically altered, melted, etc.) over very long time periods, and what we witness nowadays is the end result of over four BILLION (That’s 4,000,000,000.) years of Earth's history.

“WOW!!!!” listening onlookers say as they swoon, overwhelmed in wonder. 🫠🫣

This author says: “POPPYCOCK!”

Why?

Because he looks at the rocks with a mind that thinks outside the box and which questions questionable narratives. Here he is by a little cliff around three miles from his dwelling…

(All photos in this post by author.)

The strata are horizontal. The rock comprising them is made of a mix of fine-grained sand and clay/silt. Except for the little vertical faults that offset the layers, and occasional changes in composition, the horizontality extends out for large distances.

Going along the 40°N parallel, where the photos were taken, the layers are horizontal some two hundred miles East to the Allegheny Mountains in Western PA. They extend Westward largely horizontally roughly one thousand five hundred miles to East-Central CO near Denver.

And even at the geographical extremes just mentioned, they're still layer-caked, just faulted up and down and/or wrinkled WITHOUT SIGNIFICANT CRACKING in the mountains of PA and CO.

Last I checked, your friendly neighborhood rill, stream, brook, creek, or river does not deposit sand or mud with such vast, monotonous horizontality: there'd be channels evident in the cliff above — silted in for sure, but evident…the horizontal cracks would have an occasional semicircle shape to them. Yes, no evidence of that.

Sooo…some BIG process must've brought all that sediment in from somewhere.

And in the regions East and West where the layers were wrinkled, they must've been wet and soft…otherwise they'd bend as smoothly as saltines or peanut brittle 😳, i.e. they'd break. And, what process wrinkled them? Must've been very big and very quick…before the water escaped from the layers.

Going to the East end of the author's favorite state, Montana, one finds rimrocks: high, long cliffs that extend for many miles…

(Behind tiny Winnett, for example.)

Again, horizontal strata. The horizontality extends down with very few interruptions Southeastward some four-five hundred miles to the above-mentioned strata near Denver. Billings, MT airport sits atop a rimrock: fascinating take-off view of Downtown a couple of hundred feet below!

(Note skyscraper at left.)

Again a huge process to deposit so much horizontal sediment over so vast an area. Same wrinkling nearby like the sort mentioned earlier in PA or CO, too.

Another puzzle arises from observation of the rimrock landscape. Obviously, sediments deposited by water or wind don't solidify into nice cliffs. Strata are deposited in a broad sheet cake configuration, with running water cutting parts out.

The little cliff by the author's dwelling can easily be cut by the little creek (Salt Run) at his feet in the above photos. (The author can attest to the violence of the flooding that Salt Run inflicts on the land around it, with boulders, stumps, slabs, fallen trees, and loose sediment deposits, familiar from many hikes, significantly moved if not outrightly swept away who knows where.) And the cliffs there form the sides of a little valley with higher land close by all around.

Not so with the Montana rimrocks! Arid climate, so not much running water. Vast length, and vast lowlands between the rims, like someone just sliced out a big piece of sheet cake from the middle and left a gaping hole.

What gives? Must have been a large process that acted quickly.

Then there's that pesky problem of all these sedimentary rocks being so THICK!!! On the continents, the thickness averages about two MILES. (Homework strikes again!! 😵‍💫 🤣 Look up the thicknesses!) The underlying rocks are granite (of tombstone fame) and related rocks. They're the bedrock of a continent.

For example, in Texas, the author's second favorite state, these limestone and marl (limestone with clay) layers behind the Baymont Inn and Suites in Glen Rose go down about one thousand five hundred feet before hitting bedrock. The thickness increases to some FOUR miles (20,000 ft) near the coast of the Gulf, some two hundred miles away.

And in the oceans, very little sediment. (Homework!!! 🫨) Why?

All these things discussed in this short post are not adequately explained by the Old Earth paradigm. In sum, because of the uniform strata horizontality over large distances, indication that folded strata were wet upon folding, and large areas of missing sediment from the surrounding sediment sheet cake, the slowness of the Old Earth explanation just doesn't work.

The observations are clamoring for a different, better paradigm, and this series of posts will examine two of them, the Catastrophic Plate Tectonics (CPT) model as well as the Hydroplate Theory (HPT) model. Both assume the historical reality of the Great Flood of Genesis from the get-go and, as we examine the visible evidence further, we'll see that only that cataclysm can account for what we see in the rocks out there.

Keep in mind also that Earth's history is really part of human history: the Flood was a necessary drastic correction to the God-hating trajectory that man was taking.

God caused the Flood to save souls: Noah and his family on the Ark could ponder during the time aboard and in the drastically changed new world they encountered starting on Ararat; everyone else had to face their world destroyed and their lives fading out (The rain lasted nearly SIX WEEKS, the land taking a lot of time to be fully submerged.) — they're the “spirits in prison” that Our Lord preached to after dying on the Cross (1 Peter 3:18-20).

The Flood was a supernatural event, but with many physical manifestations that we can explore. For this author, the deeper he investigates the Great Flood Geology, the more he realizes what an absolutely horrifying event it was!!

Our Mother of Perpetual Help, aid us!!