Essay on Creationism and Grand Canyon

Located just outside of Moab, Utah, the Arches National Park was underwater 300 million years ago. After the seas dried up, they left thousands of feet of salt. Soon, the layers of salt were covered in sand and other sediments. All of the sediments pressed together and formed sedimentary rock. The red rocks were deposited over millions of years to be the way they are now. During those years, erosion has shaped them into what they look like now. Soon, the water flowed through and didn’t give the top rock any support and collapsed. Caused by erosion, the water flowed through narrow cracks and made canyons.

The Grand Canyon is one of the greatest natural creations our planet has to offer. Have you ever been mesmerized by the giant cliffs, massive ridges, or the wide array of beautiful colors? If you answered yes, this paper is just for you! After reading this, you will be well educated about the Grand Canyon.

Evidence in the Mosaic Canyon; however, do suggest that the area was covered by a warm

Radiometric dating is still being used today. Modern uranium-lead radioactive dating of meteorites and earth materials gives us today's estimate that the earth is about 4.5 billion years

(1995-2013) Finally, many evolutionists use the Grand Canyon as proof for millions of years, but evidence shows it actually formed from the overspill from two post-Flood lakes. (Creation Today, n.d.) Obviously, all of this evidence creates major problems for evolution, but is fully explained by Noah’s Flood.

Mesa Verde National Park on the Colorado Plateau contains many geological aspects of interest, including its sedimentary rock layers, its canyons, its alcoves utilized by ancient people and how these alcoves were formed. Mesa Verde National Park is located in the southwest corner of Colorado, close to the Four Corners area, on top of a high mesa overlooking the Mancos River (Harris et al. 2004). The park, covering 81 square miles, consists of several main sedimentary formations that are characteristic to the park (Encyclopedia Britannica 2015). Canyons are carved into the sedimentary rock, with the cave dwellings found high on their steep walls. These dwellings are an especially unique aspect to the Mesa Verde National Park, and are built out of large alcoves. The alcoves were produced by weathering and erosion of the sedimentary rock type. To better understand how these alcoves formed, we must understand the geology of Mesa Verde National Park and how it has developed over history.

This is a comparative essay and its purpose is to compare old-Earth and young-Earth viewpoints on Dating the rocks of the Grand Canyon. There are different views on this and no scientific method that can prove (completely) the age of the universe or the earth. There are the use of different types of calculations that can provide some guesses on the age of the earth. Many things need to be assumed such as a beginning date and the speed of change along with varying increases and decreases of material over time. “Young-Earth Creationism” (YEC) is based on a precept that earth and the universe were created by God, only 6,000 years ago in six days. Their position is that by examining geological records the scientific details of

Our hike will start here, at the north rim of the Grand Canyon. We will go all the way to the bottom of the canyon. But first, a description of this area. The Grand Canyon is one on the most visited and studies sites for geologists on Earth. There are almost forty major sedimentary rock layers exposed in the Grand Canyon. Some of these rocks layers are two hundred million years old or two billion years old. Most of the sediment that makes up the rocks was deposited by oceans and seas, which now, are long gone. We know this because there are many fossils and and other records on large bodies of water in the Grand Canyon. The Grand Canyon is found in the Colorado Plateau. The Colorado Plateau is lifted almost two miles, or four and a fifth kilometers. It started to lift up seventy-five million years ago. This started a mountain-building period of time called the Laramide orogeny. During this period, the Rocky Mountains were created. The main types of rocks found in the Grand Canyon are limestone, siltstone, shale, and sandstone. Many of the layers are made up of limestone. Some examples of these are the Kaibab Limestone, the Redwall Limestone the Temple Butte Limestone, and the Muav

The volume of the rock displaced by the Burlingame Canyon is nearly five million cubic feet, but the Grand Canyon is roughly 448 trillion cubic feet or 89,702,431 times the volume of the Burlingame Canyon. If the Grand Canyon eroded at the same rate as the Burlingame Canyon, it would still take 1.5 million years to form. In other words, just because a tiny canyon can be created in six days does not mean that it can happen the same way for the large scale of the Grand

The final piece of evidence for a worldwide flood is the Grand Canyon. An article describing the Grand Canyon states, “The general scientific consensus, updated at a 2010 conference, holds that the Colorado River carved the Grand Canyon beginning 5 million to 6 million years ago.” (Zimmermann, 2013) However, it is obvious that the Colorado river could not have carved the Grand Canyon. It is much too small to carve such an enormous monument, and it shows a surprising lack of erosion for being millions of years old. (The Grand Canyon, n.d.) One problem with evolutionists’ theory is the numerous side canyons formed just as deep with no visible water source. (Brown, 1995-2013) Also, why are there no other Grand Canyons around the world that were created with larger and more powerful rivers? (Brown, 1995-2013) A massive amount of around eight hundred cubic miles of sediments were excavated from the Grand Canyon, yet the Colorado River’s delta, the section at the mouth of the river where sediments eroded by the river are deposited, contains less than one percent of this material. (Brown, 1995-2013) So where did it all go? A worldwide flood is the most plausible explanation. As the crust buckled and shifted, the water from the flood drained off of high levels into the ocean basins and any low places. (Brown, 1995-2013) The Colorado Plateau was lifted around six thousand two hundred feet, carrying two large post-Flood lakes with it, the Grand Lake and Hopi Lake. (Brown,

The rich “pancakes” of layers the Grand Canyon presents, allows relative dating to occur. Even though there are many deposits of sandstone and other similar deposits throughout the layers, the groupings of fossils assist the geologist in determining the age. Due to the work of William “Strata” Smith, the different layers or strata is determined by the fossil within the rocks, and the geologic map created. This application of dating was not the only source used.

Newman is quick to point out that there are many variations of the old earth creationist position. Of these, however, he finds three main varieties, which differ primarily in their views on the nature of the days of the creation week. These three categories are: (1) The day-age view. As implied by the title, this view considers the days to be chronological, but not 24-hour periods. Rather, they are long spans of time,

The oldest recorded rock in the Grand Canyon is Elves Chasm Gneiss. It is speculated to have formed in 1840 m.y. and is older than any other rock found in the Grand Canyon. The specific origin of the Elves Chasm formation is unclear, but researchers believe that it may have formed from fragments of continental crust (Dehler, et al, 1999). It is said that most of the rocks in the canyon formed between 1750 and 1680 Ma. It is most likely that the area of the Grand Canyon was volcanic and the rest of the canyons deep crevasses were created by erosion from water. This also shows that the canyon area was at a peak with metamorphism and igneous interference.

It has been known for well over a century now that the Earth’s core, mantle and the crust make up the basic structure of the Earth. However, there is some controversy over how and when the Earth produced its core, mantle and crust. In this essay, I will first discuss about the formation of the Early Earth and its Moon, then about the methods used to pinpoint the age of the Earth. Other than that, I will also expand on core and mantle formation, as well as the eventual production of the continental crust.

For decades the age of the Earth has been a major conflict between science and religion, but why is it such a big conflict? If, in the year AD 1600, an individual had asked an educated European how old the planet Earth was and to recount its history, the response would have been that it was about 6000 years old and that its ancient history was given by the biblical account in Genesis (Changing Views of the History of the Earth). If one asked the same question of an educated European in AD 1900, one would have received a totally different answer (Changing Views of the History of the Earth). The answer would have been the Earth was ancient, there had not been a Noachian flood, and that the species of life had not been fixed over the history of Earth (Changing Views of the History of the Earth). In short, Genesis was an allegory and not literal history (Changing Views of the History of the Earth). This brings up the different views between “young earth creationists” and “old earth creationists” and those that support an infinite universe. The problem today is each side contains major valid points of evidence of both biblical and scientific, on the age of the planet Earth.