Geology Reference
In-Depth Information
new path to the Gulf of Mexico, or local uplift pushed rocks up around a river with enough
erosive power to maintain its course.
Although a great flood did not carve the canyon itself, there is evidence of grand floods
within it. Breaching of cooled lava dams that impounded the river may have launched cata-
strophic floods down through the canyon. One of these natural dams was over two thou-
sand feet tall. Flood deposits found within the canyon include huge boulders perched hun-
dreds of feet above the river. No doubt a flood capable of stranding boulders so high on
the canyon walls would have been spectacular—had anyone been around to see them. But
most of these floods occurred long before people made it to the New World. Native Amer-
ican tales of how the canyon formed are attempts to make sense of mysterious landforms.
In contrast to how simply and directly creationist claims of a global flood can be refuted,
it took centuries to compile the rough outlines of earth history. Generations of geologists
competed to find key outcrops, develop new theories, and demolish the ideas of intellectu-
al rivals. As the world became better mapped, several revolutions tied it all together—the
discovery of geologic time, recognition of how both gradual and catastrophic action carve
topography, and the revelation of how plate tectonics shapes Earth's surface. Geologists
today are confident about reconstructing earth history because geological mapping and cor-
relation, radiometric dating, and fossils all tell a consistent story. Geology provides an in-
dependently verifiable answer to the age-old question of how the world we know came to
be.
All people, geologists included, tell stories to explain the world around them and thereby
understand our place in it. Different ways to see the Grand Canyon led to very different
interpretations of the canyon and what it means. It might seem reasonable to think that a
global flood carved the canyon if all you have to explain earth history is what you read in
the Bible. But if you let the rocks speak for themselves they tell another story, just as grand:
about the unimaginable depths of geologic time instead of the devastating power of a single
flood.
How did it come to be that today what one sees along the Bright Angel Trail contradicts
what many consider a Christian view of the canyon? To answer this question, we need to
explore a two-thousand-year-old running argument about how to interpret nature and the
story of Noah's Flood. Perhaps the best place to start is at the top—of the world.
