Warped earth
by David Allen
Have you been taught that folded rocks were deformed over millions of years by gradual
application of heat and pressure? That’s what I was taught at high school.
However, geologic formations commonly show clear evidence that the rocks could not
have been hard and brittle before they were folded.
Soft and plastic
Image 3
When I was studying at university, I inspected numerous rock outcrops on geology
excursions. At the majority of outcrops where the rocks were folded, lecturers
would explain that the rock must have been deformed while the sediment was still
unconsolidated and saturated with water.
They said this because, although the rocks were obviously severely deformed, there
was hardly any fracturing. We all realized that the rock could not have been
brittle when it was folded so tightly. It must have been soft and plastic.
If the rocks had been hard and solid before they were deformed, they would have
fractured, not folded.
Image 4
In my work as a geophysicist, I have observed many examples of soft sediment folding,
including rocks at Turon River (Images 3–4) and Ulladulla (Image
7) in Australia and at Jaipur in India (See
image 8, image 10,
image 11).
The lecturers also wanted us to carefully examine the minerals and texture of the
rock outcrops. They pointed out that there was no evidence that the rocks
had been subjected to much heat or pressure. Instead, it was clear that bending
had taken place at normal temperatures.
Many of the folded layers of rock that we observed were enormous. What could
have formed these folds? In most cases, the lecturers could only point to
catastrophe. They could not suggest any gradual process that could deform
rocks into tight folds under normal temperature conditions without fracturing them.
Even the thick strata in Grand Canyon were still soft and plastic when they were
deformed. (See Grand Canyon
strata show geologic time is imaginary.)
Enormous forces
However, there are other instances where it is obvious that the folding occurred
while the rock was solid. Deformation experiments have shown that such folding
is possible under extreme pressure in a short time or under moderate pressure in
a long time. Some tightly folded rock layers are so large that they can only
be properly observed from the air (Image
6).
Massive folds in hard rock over such a huge area had to involve enormous forces
that can only be explained by enormous catastrophe. Could continental-scale
earth movements during the Genesis Flood have produced the great forces needed to
fold such large, tight folds quickly?
Global catastrophe
Many scoff at the thought of the global Flood, claiming that normal climatic events
could not cause such an event. They are right! It was not a normal event.
The Flood started when ‘the fountains of the great deep
broke forth and the floodgates of the heavens were opened’ (Genesis
7:11). The Bible is very clear that the Flood was a real event—an
incredible worldwide catastrophe.
In spite of this, some people imagine that the Bible must be describing a local
flood. And they only look for evidence for large local floods in the Middle
East. However, if they could bring themselves to accept (even if only for
the sake of the argument) the immensity of the Flood, they would soon ‘see’
that the geological evidence for global cataclysm is overwhelming.
Logical explanation
Many creationist geologists believe that the Genesis Flood involved rapid movement
of the huge plates comprising the crust of the Earth. This explains why so
much sediment was still soft when it was deformed. No sooner would floodwaters
have deposited great volumes of mud and sand than moving plates would have crumpled
and deformed the sediment while it was still saturated. The Flood also explains
the colossal forces needed to fold enormous areas of hard rock.
The Biblical Flood is a simple, logical, and valid explanation for why we find so
much rock that has been catastrophically deformed on all the continents.
Folded limestone
Image 2 Fossil shells
In the Peruvian Andes (Ancash Province), limestone has been folded (Image
1) as an oceanic plate pushed against the edge of the South American Plate.
Fossilized shells found in the rock (Image 2) were once in the sea. Dinosaur
footprints have also been found at this location. Experiments with deforming
limestone1 show that strata such as
these could have been folded within the year-long Genesis Flood.
Tectonic movement during the Genesis Flood has pushed these Peruvian strata 5,000m
(16,000 ft) above sea level. During this upheaval, rapid erosion by a rushing
mixture of water and rock, followed by glacial erosion in the post-Flood Ice Age,
would have left the landscape as observed in Image1. Today, the glaciers have
receded and erosion has slowed down. Even at the present rate, erosion is
occurring much too fast for these mountains to have existed nearly as long as the
evolutionary geological timescale suggests.2
Folded mud
All the rock in Image 3 is tightly folded—the close-up (Image 4) shows one
fold. The minerals in the rock indicate that it has not been heated much,
so it must have been folded when the sediment was water-saturated and unconsolidated.
The Genesis Flood provides a logical explanation of how such large volumes of sediment
could have been folded so tightly before they had a chance to consolidate.
(Chelseigh Formation, greywacke and shale on the Turon River, west of Sofala, New
South Wales, Australia.)
Great and small
Image 5
Folds of all scales proliferate in the rocks of the Earth—many are so small
that they can only be seen under the microscope (Image 5). Others are so large
(Image 6) they can only
be seen from the air. Image 5 (at 160x magnification) shows severely deformed
quartz and muscovite mica (from near Cooma, New South Wales, Australia). Mineralogy
of the photomicrograph suggests that in this case the rock was solid when deformed.
Folding like this has been reproduced and recorded during experiments in the laboratory,
so millions of years are not required.3
In contrast, the aerial photo below (Image
6) shows enormous folds near Mt Isa, Queensland, Australia. Rapid
plate movement during the Genesis Flood would have provided the immense forces needed
to compress and fold such great volumes of rock. In this case, the evidence
is consistent with some heating of the rock, probably due to the forces involved.
Faulting and sliding
Not only is there a vast amount of evidence around the world for catastrophic folding
of soft, waterlogged sediment, but also for faulting and sliding of huge blocks
of material. In Image 7 above, a 4 km2 block of sediment broke
away and slid into this position rapidly.4
Under the front of the block, the sediment is extremely deformed. If this
sediment had been laid down over millions of years, it would have consolidated and
solidified, making such incredible movement impossible. However, during the
global Flood, the frequent movement of large blocks of water-saturated unconsolidated
sediment would be anticipated. (Ulladulla Mudstone, Warden Head, Ulladulla,
New South Wales, Australia.)
‘Rainbow cake’ mix
Image 12 Rainbow-cake mix
A vast expanse of catastrophically deformed mudstone north of Jaipur, Rajastan,
India (Image 8), was deposited by water and severely deformed before it could solidify
into rock. No gradual process taking place over millions of years can explain
such large-scale deformation.
Other rock at the same location in India (See
image 9, image 10,
image 11) has been deformed
so much that it looks like a rainbow-cake mix (Image 12). The catastrophic
global Flood is the event which logically explains how such mixing could have taken
place—not small, gradual, everyday events over millions of years.
Just as swirls in a rainbow cake were formed quickly before the mix was baked into
cake, folds in much of the crust of the Earth were formed quickly in a great watery
catastrophe before the rocks were solidified. Mineralogical evidence confirms
that such folds could not have formed slowly over millions of years. All such
occurrences can, however, be well explained in the context of the Biblical Flood.
References
- Clark, I.F. and Cook, B.J., Geological Science—Perspectives
of the Earth, Ausralian Academy of Science, Canberra, Fig. 15.49, p. 404, 1986.
Return to text.
- Allen, D., Sediment transport and the Genesis Flood—case
studies including the Hawkesbury Sandstone, Sydney, Journal of Creation
10(3):358–378, 1996. Return to text.
- Wilson, C.J.L., Burg, J.P. and Pottage, A., Dynamic processes
in shear of ice as a rock analogue, video, University of Melbourne, 1986. The
video is available from the Audio-visual Coordinator—Centre for the Study
of Higher Education, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria, 3052, Australia.
Videos of deformation experiments with materials other than ice are also available.
Return to text.
- Gostin, V.A. and Herbert, C., Stratigraphy of the Upper Carboniferous
and Lower Permian sequence, Southern Sydney Basin, Journal of the Geological Society
of Australia, 20(1):49–70, 1973. Return to
text.
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