Here’s a video from the Institute for Creation Research, introduced by ICR with, “Did a Global Flood Really Happen? Here’s the Proof!”

Facebook Video — https://www.facebook.com/reel/879149367477349

TikTok — https://www.tiktok.com/@daystartv/video/7413878648874339615?_r=1&_t=ZP-8z953y7HFwk

I know that Randy Guliuzza of the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) has good intentions. Like me, he believes the Bible is inerrant and authoritative, and desires that barriers to faith be broken down and that people would come to saving faith in the crucified and risen Lord Jesus Christ. One difference between Randy and I, however, is how we view Genesis and geology. As a young-Earth creationist, Randy is convinced that Earth’s sedimentary rock record was formed during Noah’s flood, so he thinks we have to explain most of the rock record with flood geology. I also look at Genesis 6-8 as a record of a historical flood event but think that young-Earth flood geology is an over-reading of the text of Genesis. The flood was big, it was sent as a judgment against sin, it destroyed Noah’s world, all he could see from horizon to horizon was water and debris, no one was going to simply walk away when it struck, and no such flood has been sent by God again. It does not take the young-Earth creationist version of the flood, however, to fit the biblical description. Additionally, the Bible does not say that Earth’s fossil record and associated sedimentary rocks were formed during Noah’s flood, so young-Earth flood geology is an inference or extrapolation of the story in Genesis, not a direct teaching of Scripture. No Christian should feel obligated to accept young-Earth flood geology either as biblically required or as an explanation for why the rock record in God’s creation is the way it is.

Here are a few critiques of this short video, with direct quotes in italics:

1. Evidence everywhere? — “Geologically, there is evidence for the flood everywhere.“

Most features of the rock record do not appear to be the products of catastrophic flooding. There are many rock units that show the passage of time; too much time to squeeze into the short young-Earth timeline. Examples include biological reefs and other buildups that grew in place, thick deposits of mud (now shale and mudstone) and other fine-grained sediments that would not have settled out of moving, turbulent flood waters, and thick piles of basalt lava flows in flood basalt provinces. I could list many other rock types and geological features that cannot be squeezed into one-year young-Earth models.

2. Flat layers with flat contacts? — “For one thing, you can go anywhere on this planet and you’ll see a layer stacked upon a layer, stacked upon a layer, stacked upon a layer with no evidence of time between those layers.“

How do old-Earth geologists explain flat layers that have sharp contacts between formations? These layers typically consist of marine sediments deposited on wide shelves or platforms. In such a setting, there is little or no weathering or erosion, even over long timespans. Why would there be? If one were to dig a really deep and long trench through the continental shelf off the eastern United States or Gulf of Mexico, you would see the same thing: flat layers on a local scale, with flat contacts between different formations.

Randy wants you to picture the layer cake stratigraphy of the Grand Canyon, but not to look too closely. Such flat layering is typical of marine platform settings as I have just described, but there are many places where contacts between layers are far more irregular. This is especially true when terrestrial sediments are involved.

Even in the Grand Canyon, with its apparent pancake stratigraphy, there is significant erosion between some of the layers. Not all those contacts are flat. There are what appear to be stream channels eroded into the top of the Muav Limestone, and these are filled with the Temple Butte Formation. Similarly, there is what appears to be karst topography eroded into the top of the Redwall Limestone, and this is filled with the Surprise Canyon Formation. The erosional surface on the top of the Redwall is up to 90 m (300 feet) deep, which doesn’t exactly fit the description of flat.

3. Billions of fossils? — “trapping literally billions and billions of dead things. And these layers are thick sedimentary layers. Where do we see anything like that happening on this planet today? Nowhere.“

If you dig down into fresh sediments just about anywhere in the world, you aren’t going to find shells or bones just waiting to become fossils. What you need to know is that we observe almost exactly the same thing in the sedimentary rock record. If you walk up to a typical outcrop of sandstone or shale, you will have to look really hard to find any fossils at all. That is the norm in the sedimentary rock record. There are exceptions, of course, but most rocks are rather barren when it comes to fossils. I live close to an imposing Cretaceous sandstone cliff. I’ve found a few molds of mollusks over the decades, but those are quite rare. No dinosaurs at all, despite the Mesozoic age. The fact that we don’t “see anything like that happening on this planet today” is pretty consistent with what we find in typical rock outcrops.

One exception is most modern carbonate (limestone) depositional settings, such as coral reefs and carbonate platforms like the Bahamas. These are loaded with calcium carbonate hard parts that will readily become fossils as the reefs or platforms subside, making room for growth of more organisms. Reefs and carbonate platforms are loaded with dead shells today, and are models for ancient fossil-rich limestones.

4. Nobody has done this sort of research? — “And our research that we’re doing at ICR, we’re doing a project which nobody has done, we’re cataloging thousands of these bore holes when people go looking for oil and coal, they dig in and look at what’s coming out.“

Oil companies have global databases that dwarf what ICR has put together in almost every way.

“We can demonstrate, scientifically, from our research, the progressive nature of the flood, and we can show that on every continent on the planet we have some of the same layers in the same relative order on every continent on the planet.“

I’ve read Dr. Timothy Clarey’s (also ICR) book Carved in Stone, in which he reports on this project. From an old-Earth perspective, these layers demonstrate transgressions and regressions of global sea level, something that had global sedimentary implications. As sea level rises, any given place often has sandstone deposited first, then shale as the water becomes deeper, then carbonates once the shoreline has moved further inland. The individual layers do not require catastrophic deposition, so the entire package does not need catastrophic deposition. In some cases—shales and carbonates—the layers are best explained by non-catastrophic deposition.

5. Conclusion: A global flood? — “Now what is going on to do something like that but a worldwide flood?“

My questions for ICR and young-Earth creationists:

• What is going to deposit mudstone, the most common sedimentary rock type, all over the world? Being that mud does not settle rapidly out of even quiet water, and hardly at all out of rapidly moving turbulent water, the answer is probably not a global flood.
• What is going to deposit reefs with preserved ecosystem patterns (fore-reef, reef core, back-reef)? Unless that flood picked up entire reefs tens of miles long and dropped them intact in just the right parts of the geologic column, the answer is probably not a global flood.
• What is going to sort fossils both vertically (Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, etc.) and horizontally (e.g., lake sediments with preserved shoreline, shallow water, and deep-water fossils)? The answer, once again, is probably not a global flood.

I believe the Bible, but young-Earth flood geology is neither biblically necessary nor geologically credible.

God’s Global Plan of Salvation

How I came to faith in Christ