Whenever I hear the word "uniformitarianism," the first image that comes to mind are layers of sedimentary rock, like those of the Grand Canyon. Doubtlessly this is because it has been pounded into my mind since grade school that each of those layers represents millions of years of earth's history.
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Grand_Canyon_2.jpg - released into the public domain by Jon Sullivan, pdphoto.org The views of the author are not endorsed by Jon Sullivan. |
Recently, however, I read an interesting article in the Journal of Creation by Ariel A. Roth, a biologist and student of sedimentary geology. [1] I found the article interesting not because I am an expert in geology but because the fundamental concepts appealed to my common sense as a layman. My summary of his article:
In Ariel A. Roth's article on "flat gaps," Roth indicates that the flat gaps, or paraconformities, between sedimentary sequences (layers) are a severe problem for long-age, uniformitarian geology. He argues that the large periods of time allegedly indicated by the gaps would produce evidence of erosion in the removal of "vast depths of sediment" and the production of "a highly irregular land surface," but such evidence is not present. He indicates that flat gaps "are very difficult to explain within the long-age uniformitarian paradigm and severely challenge the concept of millions of years" but that they "provide strong evidence for a young earth and are easily explained within its paradigm of the global biblical Flood."
So, a paraconformity (a type of unconformity) is a gap between parallel sedimentary layers. These gaps are supposed to represent millions of years where erosion took place or build-up did not take place. The problem, writes Roth, is that if these paraconformities really represented such long periods of time, they would not be as straight or uniform as they are. The many normal forces of erosion that are at work today, which often make our own land surfaces so complex and irregular, would also have been at work during the time represented by these gaps. And so these paraconformities would not, as a general rule, be straight or uniform but rather highly irregular in direction and shape.
Biblical creationists believe these sedimentary layers are more convincingly explained by the global flood described in Genesis. That is, when God miraculously covered the entire planet in water, that same water stirred up massive amounts of rock and minerals and then, through natural processes, laid those materials back down into the fairly even and orderly layers that are visible today.
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[1] Ariel A. Roth. "flat gaps" in sedimentary rock layers challenge long geologic ages. Journal of Creation, 23(2):76-81, 2009.
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