Sedimentary, My Dear Watson

I went down to the bottoms of the mountains; the earth with her bars was about me for ever: yet hast thou brought up my life from corruption, O LORD my God.

(Jonah 2:6) KJV

Floods leave deposits of sediment. Over time sediment can become rock. If animals and plants are trapped in the sediment they become fossils. Sedimentary rock covers about 70% of the earth’s surface.

In areas where it’s not present it’s been eroded away by water and time. It appears that all of the Earth was once covered with sediment. What if ALL of the sedimentary rock on the Earth was deposited during Noah’s flood?

Popular science (SciPop) has taken the evidence of Noah’s flood, the stratigraphic column, and woven it into a narrative of billions of years. This was done by dividing it up into periods of time. Each layer of sediment is considered to be a period of history based on the fossils in the rock.

The periods of time are sequenced by assuming that the simplest forms are the oldest, more complex forms are recent. The premise is that life evolved. The assumption of evolution is how the stratigraphic column is arranged. It’s an example of circular reasoning whereby the stratigraphic column has been incorporated into the narrative of biological evolution. It’s what you have to believe if you don’t want creation to be true.

If you think that radiometric dating is proof of the evolution timescale the consider the following:

Problems with Radiometric Dating

1. Periods of geological time were established before radiometric dating was possible,
2. most fossils are found in rocks that can’t be dated using radiometric techniques,
3. it depends on assuming a constant rate of nuclear decay,
4. it depends on assuming that the half-life rate law applies to nuclear decay,
5. it’s an inductive rationalization of the premise of an ancient Earth.

If, on the other hand, all of the sediments were deposited during the single event known as Noah’s flood, then the fossils aren’t evidence of biological evolution. In this case each layer of sediment represents a habitat which was destroyed and buried in the flood. The different fossil assemblages represent ecosystems or communities, not periods of time. The composition of sediment can tell us about the environment in which it was deposited.

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