A major problem with young-Earth creationist (YEC) flood geology—aside from it not being taught in Genesis—is the sheer number of geological events that need to be squeezed into a very short period of time. When one considers the numbers and diversity of igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic rock bodies; the complex nature of the fossil record, and the varied landscapes across Earth’s surface, the problem boils down to one of Too Many Events, Too Little Time.

Which Rocks are Flood Rocks?

Not all YEC geologists try to put all these features into the flood year. An example of this is seen in a YouTube video released recently by two of my favorite young-Earth creationists, Paul Garner and Todd Wood. They have a YouTube channel called “Let’s Talk Creation,” and the topic for Episode 112 was “After the Flood 1: The Earth Recovers.” Paul and Todd are intelligent, cordial, and exhibit the fruit of the Spirit in their dealings with those who disagree with them. Paul has a master’s degree in geology and Todd has a doctorate in evolutionary biology, so they understand what they disagree with. Todd Wood is famous—infamous to some—for his essay, “The Truth About Evolution,” in which he stated,

• “Evolution is not a theory in crisis. It is not teetering on the verge of collapse. It has not failed as a scientific explanation. There is evidence for evolution, gobs and gobs of it. It is not just speculation or a faith choice or an assumption or a religion. It is a productive framework for lots of biological research, and it has amazing explanatory power. There is no conspiracy to hide the truth about the failure of evolution. There has really been no failure of evolution as a scientific theory. It works, and it works well.”

Unfortunately, Todd has taken a lot of flak from the YEC community for saying that evolution is not a theory in crisis. I’ve seen Facebook YECs dismiss his essay with, “That only demonstrates that not all YECs are born again.”

Todd and Paul are, of course, committed to young-Earth geology, including flood geology, and they work hard to find ways to explain Earth’s rock and fossil records in that context. I disagree with them, of course, both about biblical interpretation and Earth history. The Bible does not require a young Earth and does not teach that the fossil record and associated sedimentary, igneous, and metamorphic rocks were formed during the flood.

Compressing 60+ Million Years of Geology Down to a Century

Which brings us to the topic of Episode 112: “After the Flood.” Paul and Todd consider the upper part of the geologic column—roughly the Cenozoic part—to be largely a result of post-flood processes, a view sometimes referred to as post-flood residual catastrophism. YECs who take a similar approach include Andrew Snelling, Marcus Ross, and Steven Austin (see the chart from Stephen Mitchell in this article). The post-flood catastrophism view was also presented in the documentary Is Genesis History? Mountains After the Flood.  In this YEC flood model, the world did not simply return to normal after Genesis 8, but continued to experience catastrophic tectonism, volcanism, mountain building, and sedimentation for centuries, albeit at a slower rate than during the Big Flood. This residual catastrophism wound down considerably by the time of Abraham, but Garner, Wood, and others have said that this residual catastrophism continues to this day, though at a greatly attenuated rate.

How much time are we talking about for all this post-flood residual catastrophism to occur? Answers in Genesis has published a chronology that has Noah’s flood ending in about 2350 BC and the Ice Age beginning about a hundred years later. That time span—100 years—is the number to keep in mind as I discuss everything that the residual catastrophism model purports to explain between the flood and Ice Age. In the standard geological time scale, the Cenozoic began when the Cretaceous period ended with a bang about 66 million years ago, and the Pleistocene ice ages began a little over 2 million years ago. This means that YEC post-flood catastrophism takes 60-plus million years of geological action—by standard geological dating—and compresses it into a century. Maybe Todd and Paul, like some other young-Earth creationists, would be willing to expand this chronology a bit, but I don’t think allowing 500 years would work any better for them than 100 years.

In Episode 112, Paul and Todd describe some of the geological events they believe happened after the flood, such as the burial of fossil rhinoceroses under thick volcanic ash in Nebraska (Ashfall Fossil Beds State Historical Park), the formation and disappearance of the Green River Formation lakes in Wyoming, Utah, and Colorado; lots of mountain building, and lots and lots of volcanism. One way to picture the Too Many Events, Too Little Time problems faced by YEC post-flood residual catastrophism is to consider an assortment of events that would have had to have happened in a century (or a few centuries) after the flood but before Ice Age glaciation.  I’ll focus on events in the northwestern United States.

• Deposition of thick layers of terrestrial sediments, such as the coal-bearing Fort Union Formation in Montana and Wyoming. The sedimentary layers of the Fort Union are very similar to the underlying Hell Creek Formation; the primary difference is that the Hell Creek contains Cretaceous fossils, such as dinosaurs, and the Fort Union contains Paleocene fossils, and no dinosaurs.
• Uplift of the Rocky Mountains, in what is called the Laramide Orogeny. This started in the Cretaceous, but much of the uplift occurred in the early Cenozoic, and would be considered in this model to be post-flood. An interesting thing is that gravels eroded off the uplifting mountains west of Yellowstone National Park contain cobbles of limestone and sandstone from Paleozoic and Mesozoic rocks, indicating that the rocks were already lithified during the orogeny. This contradicts the “sediments must be soft to be folded” mantra of most young-Earth creationists.

• Deposition of thousands of feet of lake sediments in Wyoming, Utah, and Colorado to make the Green River Formation. These sediments preserve horizontal ecological zones such as shoreline, nearshore, and deeper water environments. The thickest parts of the Green River Formation are close to 10,000 feet (3000 meters) thick. Garner and Wood drew a parallel to Ice Age lakes such as Lake Bonneville in Utah, but the lakes that formed the Green River Formation were chemically quite different from Lake Bonneville, and deposited a much thicker package of sediments.
• Thick accumulations of sediments also would also have been deposited in other basins between mountain ranges. One example is the Jackson Hole basin along the front of the Teton Range in Wyoming, where the thickness of Cenozoic sedimentary deposits are over 30,000 feet (9,000 m) thick. To get most of this in a 100-year period would require a deposition rate of 300 feet per year, and probably much greater, because this valley would not have existed for the entire century.
• Formation of Cenozoic large igneous provinces, such as the Columbia River Basalt Group of Washington, Idaho, and Oregon. The CRBG consists of roughly 300 individual flows with an average volume of 500 km³ each. Some of the flows traveled from fissures in northern Idaho all the way to the Pacific Ocean. There is evidence for the passage of time between many of the flows, including paleosols (ancient soils) on top of flows, stream and lake sediments between flows, folds that deformed deeper flows but not younger flows, and feeder dikes for younger flows that crosscut through older flows. With the number of geological events that would have happened before and after the CRBG eruptions, the post-flood catastrophism might require 300 flows in a decade or two, which is 15-30 eruptions per year. This does not allow time for thick flows to crystallize before the next flows covered them.

• Many thousands of eruptions from more normal volcanoes, such as stratovolcanoes and cider cones. One example is the Eocene Absaroka Volcanic Supergroup rocks at Yellowstone—where the petrified forests are found—or older volcanic areas in the Cascade Range. There are extensive areas of Cenozoic volcanic rocks in each Western state. YEC post-flood residual catastrophism would require entire stratovolcanoes to form through numerous eruptions then erode down to their roots in a very short period.

• Volcanism associated with the Yellowstone hot spot includes a whole string of calderas leading from northwestern Nevada through southern Idaho to the present location of Yellowstone volcanism. This includes at least seven large volcanic fields, including Yellowstone. There was a total of 15-20 large caldera “supervolcano” eruptions along this track. The Yellowstone volcanic field itself has experienced not only three large caldera eruptions, but also at least 100 eruptions that produced flows of rhyolite or basalt before, in between, and after the caldera eruption. Some of the rhyolite flows are enormous, yet would have emplaced slowly. The other volcanic fields across southern Idaho each had at least dozens (maybe more) smaller eruptions in addition to large caldera eruptions. It was one of these calderas that produced the ash that buried the rhinoceroses in Nebraska.

• Continued tectonic activity after the Laramide Orogeny, including Basin and Range tectonic extension which resulted in north-south oriented mountain ranges separated by valleys from Arizona up to southwestern Montana.
• Many more events occurred during this supposed time of post-flood residual catastrophism, such as intrusion of plutons, formation of mineral deposits, erosion of mountains, streams going this way then that way, times of lush tropical vegetation, other times of desert conditions, and much, much more.
• All of these events preceded the Pleistocene Ice Age, which in itself was a complex Too Many Events, Too Little Time event, with multiple advances and retreats of continental ice sheets and mountain glaciers.

Some of these events may have some overlap, but many had to be sequential. If one uses the Answers in Genesis timeline I referred to, the chronology would look something like this:

Tentative timeline for a century of post-flood residual catastrophism The end of Noah’s flood and timespan for the YEC Ice Age are from Answers in Genesis. The other dates are my suggestions for the timeline for post-flood residual catastrophism, showing once again the problem of Too Many Events, Too Little Time.
Years	Events
2350 BC	End of Noah’s flood
2350 to 2340 BC	The Laramide orogeny (uplift of the Rocky Mountains), which began late in the flood year, continues. Growth of semitropical to tropical forests across much of North America. Deposition of Paleocene sediments, including the Fort Union Formation. First mammals arrive.
2340 to 2330 BC	Formation of stratovolcanoes which gave us the Absaroka Volcanic Supergroup with its petrified wood forests in and near Yellowstone NP. These erupted numerous times, then the volcanoes eroded down to their roots. Mammals diversify.
2330 to 2320 BC	Columbia River Basalt Group. Hundreds of enormous basalt lava flows, with necessity for passage of time between them. More time for mammals to diversify.
2320 to 2310 BC	We had better give a second decade to the Columbia River Basalt Group.
2310 to 2300 BC	Yellowstone hotspot volcanism begins (McDermitt Volcanic Field). More time for mammals to diversify.
2300 to 2290 BC	More Yellowstone hotspot volcanism (Owyhee-Humbolt Volcanic Field). More time for mammals to diversify.
2290 to 2280 BC	More Yellowstone hotspot volcanism (Bruneau-Jarbridge Volcanic Field). More time for mammals to diversify. The rhinoceroses at Ashfall Fossil Beds in Nebraska were likely killed by ash from an eruption from a caldera here.
2280 to 2270 BC	More Yellowstone hotspot volcanism (Twin-Falls Hagerman Volcanic Field). More time for mammals to diversify.
2270 to 2260 BC	More Yellowstone hotspot volcanism (Picabo Volcanic Field).
2260 to 2250 BC	More Yellowstone hotspot volcanism (Heise Volcanic Field). Basin and Range tectonism, with uplift of mountain blocks, and sinking of intervening blocks to form deep valleys. More time for mammals to diversify.
2250 to 2000 BC (250 years)	The Ice Age according to the Answers in Genesis chronology. Yellowstone Caldera volcanism ends. Lake Missoula flood (YECs only allow for one). Cascade Range volcanoes form. Extinction of wooly mammoths, saber-toothed cats, etc. Humans arrive near the end.

This timeline barely scratches the surface in terms of what needs to be compressed into post-flood residual catastrophism. There are more volcanoes, intrusion of plutons, and formation of mineral deposits than can be compressed into a century, or even a millennium if a YEC were willing to extend the timeline. The Cenozoic sedimentary rock record in this part of the world has deposits that look like they were formed on alluvial fans, on meandering stream floodplains, on braided stream floodplains, in deltas, in perennial lakes, in ephemeral lakes, on shorelines, and in sand dunes. The fossil record has tracks and burrows that indicate—along with paleosols (buried soils)—periods of landscape stability. I’ve focused just on a corner of the United States, but if one looks at the rest of the world, we see thick marine deposits formed on vast platforms (the limestone used to make the pyramids in Egypt) and along continental margins (Gulf of Mexico coast), and thousands of feet of evaporite minerals in places like the Dead Sea rift.  The more one investigates Earth’s Cenozoic geology, the harder it is to imagine how all these geological events could be squeezed into this time of post-flood catastrophism.

Questions for Post-Flood Catastrophism Advocates

Here are some important questions that advocates of post-flood residual catastrophism need to address:

• How did forests, such as those present when the Eocene Wind River Formation deposited in Wyoming, develop a few short years following the flood without time for soil development and ecological succession?
• How did soils form and vegetation grow at all in areas that were experiencing many feet of deposition per year?
• How did mammals and other animals arrive, thrive, and diversify in a very short time period with very high rates of annual sediment accumulation?
• How did mammals make burrows during times of rapid sedimentation?
• How did paleosols (ancient buried soils) develop quickly on land surfaces that were not exposed for more than a short period of time?
• If sedimentary layers must be soft when folded, why are there solid clasts of Paleozoic and Mesozoic limestone and sandstone in debris eroded off the mountains as they were being uplifted during the Laramide Orogeny?

What About the Ice Age?

Whether YEC geologists emphasize or minimize post-flood catastrophism, they just about all believe that there was a short (250-700 years) Ice Age following Noah’s flood. The most common model posits warm oceans and cold continents after the flood. The warm oceans were the result of all the catastrophic plate tectonics, accelerated nuclear decay, and volcanism that happened during the flood, and evaporation from this hot water led to greatly increased precipitation. The cold continents were the result of the vast quantities of ash and sulfur dioxide injected into the atmosphere by volcanism after the flood. The YEC Ice Age has its own set of Too Many Events, Too Little Time problems, some of which I highlighted in my The Pleistocene is Not in the Bible post.

Bad Solutions and a Better Solution

If there are too many events in too little time for post-flood residual catastrophism to work, what is a Christian to do?

Some YEC geologists (e.g., Clarey, Coulson, Walker) reject post-flood catastrophism and place the flood/post-flood boundary right before the Ice Age. This means that, aside from an Ice Age, there was little post-flood residual catastrophism. Does this solve the problems I have outlined? I don’t think so, because if it is challenging to compress all these Cenozoic events all the way from 60 million years down to a century, it would be even more difficult to squeeze them into a month or two at the end of Noah’s flood. If it stretches credulity to have the 300 enormous basalt lava flows of the Columbia River Basalts form in a decade or two, it makes even less sense to have these erupt in just a few weeks, with perhaps a dozen eruptions per day, late in the flood. Putting all these events back into the flood year might be the worst possible solution.

Another solution would be to say that everything was a miracle. Most YEC geologists, however, are miracle-minimalists who try to explain as much as possible without invoking miracles as part of their flood geology models, so that is probably not going to happen. Many also object to invoking miracles because these would seem to make God look like a deceiver, with sedimentary rocks that look like they formed in lakes, streams, beaches, etc., and volcanic rocks that look like they really formed from volcanoes, but they really didn’t. Despite this, “miracle” might be better than current flood geology models.

Another option would be to say, “I don’t know how it worked.” That would be honest but doesn’t have much apologetics value. Still, this also would be better than current flood geology models.

The best solution, in my mind, is to take a closer look at the Bible; to read Genesis once again to see what it really says, and does not say, about the origin of the fossil record and associated sedimentary, igneous, and metamorphic rocks. When we do this, we see that flood geology is not found in the account of Noah’s flood in Genesis 6-8, nor is there a period of post-flood residual catastrophism in Genesis 9-11. I won’t take space for it here, but Genesis does not even require a global flood. By the description in Genesis, the flood was big, it was sent by God as a judgment against sin, there was water as far as Noah could see, it destroyed Noah’s world, and no such flood has been sent since then. It does not take the YEC flood to fit the description in Genesis 6-8. Furthermore, the narrative is silent on the origin of the fossil record, the origin of sedimentary, igneous, and metamorphic rocks, and the origin of Earth’s landscapes. As far as what Scripture directly teaches, maybe the flood was responsible for all these things, and maybe it wasn’t. Because the Bible does not address these topics, faithful readers and interpreters of the Bible are not obligated to accept flood geology.

If flood geology does not work, and if flood geology is not taught in the Bible, Christians do not need to expend so much energy trying to figure out where the flood/post-flood boundary exists in the geologic column or trying to squeeze so much geology into such a short period of time.

I believe the Bible, but I do not believe YEC flood geology.

Grace and Peace to all believers, YEC or otherwise.

Notes:

Advocates of post-flood residual catastrophism do so for multiple reasons, not just to remove some of the burden of Too Many Events, Too Little Time from the flood year.

There are three episodes in this “Let’s Talk Creation” video series:

• Episode 112 – After the Flood 1: The Earth Recovers – This review
• Episode 113 – After the Flood 2: Diversity of Life – Rapid post flood evolution. Here is a response from Dr. Joel Duff.
• Episode 114 – After the Flood 3: Filling the Earth – This was just released today, and I have not watched it yet. Perhaps Todd and Paul answered all my objections.

Paul and Todd had a series about “Which rocks are flood rocks?” on their Let’s Talk Creation podcast back in 2003. I have not yet completely listened to all of these.

• Episode 55 – Which Rocks are Flood Rocks? Part 1: Introduction
• Episode 56 – Where Does the Flood End? Position #1 Featuring Dr. Tim Clarey (flood rocks end just before the Ice Age)
• Episode 57 – Where Does the Flood End? Position #2 Featuring Dr. Marcus Ross (post-flood catastrophism)
• Episode 58 – Which Rocks are Flood Rocks? Part 4: Parting Thoughts

Here’s a little bit of discussion on these topics with me, Paul, and Todd in 2009:

The New Creationism blog – Horse Fossils on Todd’s Blog

The New Creationism blog – After the Flood (see my comment and Paul’s response)

Todd’s Blog – The Horse Series and Creationism

Photo Credits:

• Folded sediments – Kevin Nelstead. I took this picture on a good field trip led by Michael Oard in 2021. Mike is a prolific writer on geological topics from a YEC perspective.
• Columbia River Basalt Group – By David Lee from Redmond, WA, USA – Palouse Falls, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=44706785
• Absaroka volcanos – From “Absaroka Volcanic Province” at https://www.geowyo.com/absaroka-volcanic-province.html. The caption reads, “After Fritz, W. J., 1982, WGA, Fig. 23, P. 99”
• Map of Columbia River Basalt Group and Yellowstone hotspot track – U.S. Geological Survey, https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/locations-yellowstone-hotspot-volcanic-fields