28:19 Give and Take: Did Noah’s Flood Form the Grand Canyon?

Hi Jeff, swearing again here with a

give

and

take

where we explore the latest scientific topics to help you have confidence in the truth of Christianity. Today I have a special guest in the studio, Ken Will Guma, and we are going to address an interesting topic and an important topic: Did Noah's Flood Cause the Grand Canyon? Ken. It's good to have you here today. I'm glad to be here. Jeff. I'm looking forward to this. You know, I know you've been. You are a geologist. I have been in the area. Petroleum geology specialists worked there for several decades, so I'm really excited about the opportunity to delve into this question because it causes quite a bit of tension within the church.

You already know all the Old Earth, Young Earth. How old are things? Yeah, and what do we do with the Grand Canyon, so I guess I'll ask you the question: How would you respond to someone who claims that Noah's Flood caused the entire Grand Canyon every time I read Genesis? Record what comes out in Genesis 6 and 7 and the description there is that it rained for 40 days and 40 nights and the waters continued to rise and rise and rise and rise and rise, so the biblical record shows the context of the continuous rise of the water in a falling sequence, however, when we look at the Grand Canyon we don't see a singular sequence of filling all these rocks in the Grand Canyon in one big sequence, so there is a dramatic difference in that, so explain what you mean With that, how is it done? us, what is the evidence that this continuous sequence does not exist?

Yes, the sediments in the Grand Canyon are what geologists call the Paleozoic era and the four lower

form

ations

form

f5 of the Olek lower pairs periods are the Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian and Mississippian. Okay, so that's the context of the geological time scale. Well, presumably the Cambrian is older and then these others are progressively younger. Yes, relatively, the oldest Cambria on the Mississippi is the youngest in this particular sequence. Well, when they examine the rocks themselves. and nature, the fossils that are in these we have the Cambrian and there is a limestone deposited during the Cambrian, so the Ordovician and the Silurian are completely missing, rocks are missing in terms of the fossils that we know from Europe and the rest of America of the North, like the Appalachians, there is no division or Silurian, so that would not simply indicate that maybe there was some kind of catastrophic

flood

that made different deposits in different areas of the world that you know, so the geological column is not really representative of the time, yes, well, when we think about the logic of the whole sequence, that doesn't fit the story in the sense that that limestone that is the Cambrian also has evidence of erosion that took place as if there was a landscape open for a period. of time is fine and there is evidence of channels cut into that limestone at the base, that lower formation in this sequence then the channels are fine, so presumably the Cambrian would have had to have been deposited during the

flood

and then eroded and excavated. during the flood too, yeah, maybe the explanation and then we completely missed the Ordovician and Silurian fossils, okay, so it was a time when that area was above ground, there was nothing flooded there, okay, so the lack of deposition means that area was above water so it couldn't have been underground or below what could have been below the site, there's no reason to think it would be under the flood, exactly right, so we have these two main missing epochs of eras appeared, geological history, missing what other kinds of things lead you to say no, you can't

take

out the Grand Canyon in a single flood, yeah, well, the next formation is the Devonian, so the Devonian is now located above the Cambrian, okay, which over time. is missing, so time is missing, so after the Devonian, the next one up is what is called red wall limestone, which is from the Mississippi, okay, the youngest of those five that I'm referring to, okay, the Mississippian limestone, which is red wall limestone by name, is that one. a red streak that you see every time you see those pictures of the Grand Canyon, right, it's a thick limestone four three hundred four hundred feet thick.

Limestone is not formed by flooding. Limestone or coral reefs. Limestone is formed because calcium and carbonate are taken. out of the water by chemical means, by shell-making organisms, or by inorganic precipitation, so it's a dark, shallow marine tropical, okay, that's interesting because to form limestone you have to have a kind of shallow. Marine environments are the exact case and therefore if we are talking about a flood that covers the entire Earth, you are not talking, you are quite deep to do that and you will not get limestones, precisely, it is not a limestone deposit environment. limestone.

Even after the deposition of the red-walled limestone, there was also a period of time when this was above the surface of the earth and again channels were cut into the red-walled limestone. There are caves that were formed by acid rain when it falls on a limestone that tends to be a cave formation process, okay so the caves are also there before the next formation that was on top of that and again it definitely indicates clearly the passage of time between the red limestone wall and the next formation above it, so it appears there are two different lines of evidence there.

One is that by missing these two eras that we see in the rest, they are scattered throughout the rest of the world, that whatever was happening in the Cambrian, there were long periods of time before the other layers were placed exactly on top and then mix it up and on top of that, even within the layers, you'll have evidence that those layers are up there from the water, they eroded, the caves formed that kind of thing and then the water covered them and redeposited them, so have at least two separate segments of water. exactly true, yes, any other, what other type of evidence would you point to?

Another dramatic piece is that there are no dinosaur fossils in the Grand Canyon, whatever the dynastar fossils are, the dinosaurs didn't even live, not even God had created the dinosaurs yet at this point because the dinosaurs are Mesozoic, which is younger , it's late, it's later in time, and we know there were dinosaurs in Utah, so that's negative, they're far away, not too far away, but they were in much younger sediments in logic. order from the oldest to the youngest coming north, so this I really mean, when you go in and analyze it carefully, this really shows that there is an antiquity in the Grand Canyon and there seems to be a great complexity in the process, Since God used to form exactly there is no doubt about it, the evidence is abundant and compelling and that is what attracted me with a group of colleagues, we wrote a book about the Grand Canyon, it is called Grand Canyon, Monument to an Ancient Land and we cover fossils we cover geologic time we cover sedimentary processes and how they form and we describe the history of the Grand Canyon as modern Christian geologists would recognize it once we do a lot of research into the

canyon

itself, you know, the Grand Canyon really tends to evoke, Oh. and inspiration as you see it and this can cause tension in the Christian Church and often people outside the church can ridicule the church because of our views, but what I find surprising is that as we look at the processes and understand how In the shape of the Grand Canyon, as detailed in Ken's book, we see simply an intricate work of God creating this spectacular wonder that draws us to worship Him and that we can now use to engage others and simply ask who He is this creator and how we can worship him.