Of Texas and the Flood of Noah
Rarely do geologists see a canyon form in real time. But in 2002, a catastrophic Texas deluge carved out a gorge more than 30 feet deep and over a mile long in just three days. Based on aerial photos, gorge morphology, and flow measurements from the flood, researchers conclude that the new canyon grew quickly because the torrent ripped out entire boulders of blocky limestone, rather than gradually abrading the rock. The unusual opportunity to connect known water-flow rates to canyon geology could help reconstruct even bigger prehistoric megafloods that shaped parts of Earth and Mars. Credit: Lamb, M. P., and M. A. Fonstad. “Rapid formation of a modern bedrock canyon by a single flood event.” Nature Geoscience 3:477-481 (July)
Dr. Bruggeman comments: How little man knows! ...And what we think we know in the realm of science is constantly changing...which makes life all the more interesting! The above synopsis is from American Scientist, Sept.-Oct. 2010, p. 385. The original headline was “Of Texas and Mars,” but I changed it to get readers thinking how other catastrophes could have accomplished astounding geological changes.
Scientific Creationists have been saying for decades that enormous geological changes do not need millions or billions of years to be accomplished but can come about very rapidly via catastrophic events. They claim the Grand Canyon could have formed very rapidly. The Mt. St. Helen’s volcanic eruption in Washington state on May 18, 1980 created enormous changes, for example, but that aspect (which tends to confirm biblical creationist theories) has been virtually ignored by the secular scientific establishment. Creationists also conclude that the great flood of Noah’s day created global catastrophic geological changes in a matter of minutes, hours and days.
As a young man, I remember being impressed with the books, Worlds in Collision and Ages in Chaos by the Russian-born, Jewish scholar, Immanuel Velikovsky (1895-1979). Although his works were either ridiculed or ignored by the scientific community (in the 1950s and beyond), his (what is now termed) “creationist” slant was only the latest in a long and distinguished string of scholars going back centuries who supported that line of thinking regarding geological catastrophism. It is only our “enlightened” post-Darwinian geologists who vehemently cling to the idea that millions to billions of years were necessary to effect such features as the Grand Canyon.