Evolution vs. Design: The Geologic Record – Part 5

To date, we have looked at the theory of evolution, challenged its legitimacy, and availed ourselves of a brief but useful understanding of the recent development of materialistic explanations for the existence of life and for the nature of sedimentary rock which covers at least four-fifths of the surface of the planet’s landmass.  The latter is a major feature of earth geology and the undoubted result of sedimentation by immersion of the continents under the oceans.  That these sediments have turned to stone when the land was again above the oceans is not questioned. Embedded in the rock layers are the mineralized preserves of the remains of once-living things.  These fossils, Darwin thought, would be proof positive of his theory and would, given further study, demonstrate that an ancestry of at least some forms of now living beings would be demonstrated.  This, he had hoped, would validate his evolutionary theory of biology.  By what means did these physical geological processes occur to create the sediments that had trapped once living organisms for fossilization?  Was it by slow uniform (unchanging) processes taking billions of years or by catastrophic occurrences beginning with the global flood of Noah and continuing to this day by relatively mild upheavals such as tsunamis, volcanoes, and earthquakes?

The development of biological and geological evolution began to subvert the widely held belief in biblical authority as both of these sciences departed from their metaphysical foundations, in no small part, due to a rejection of the Genesis account and a disbelief in miracles.  The effects of adopting these materialistic explanations, after several hundred years of debate, dismissed the Bible as antiquated and its God, ridiculed as a self-affirmed warmonger, genocidal and egotistical maniac as many in secular society now claim. These theological topics will be saved for a discussion in another place. For now, an examination of the propositions of these evolving scientific theories of origins which in part, ousted God from an intellectual discussion of materialistic creation, must be contemplated.

Before the 17th century, Western thought held to the biblical flood story to explain the geology of the world.  Concurrent with the arrival of the Age of Reason and the Renaissance, Christian philosophers debated the nature of the Genesis record.  Was the world made in 6 literal days?  Did a serpent really beguile a woman to eat a fruit from a forbidden tree that just happened to be placed in the middle of the garden?  Was the flood literal or figurative?  Was the flood global or local?  Was Genesis speaking of historical fact, or in figures?  Was Genesis allegorical or was it written as a mythological account with a theological meaning?

The scientific approach to assessing the biblical account of geology began to be seen as absurd.  Though Hutton was a theist he did not believe the world was six thousand years old but was ancient and made from eternity to last forever.  He saw his interpretation of geology in harmony with God’s eternal nature.   Lyell was not so generous.  Though not an atheist altogether, he did feel the need to combat the biblical literalist’s explanation of Noachian flood geology.  He built on Hutton’s long ages and created a world that to him demonstrated a continuous development of both the planet and the creatures that were to be found in the geologic record, evidenced in the layers of sedimentary rock as fossils.

Two schools of thought developed.  There were the scriptural literalists and the long-age geologists.  None could completely abandon their religious exposure but more were shifting away from biblical literalism to science as a secular specialization.  This soon fostered a separation of theology from materialistic approaches to the study of geology; geology becoming secularized.

Darwin, as we have seen, furthered the development of biological evolutionary theory in his grand thesis by adopting Lyell’s long-age earth hypothesis.  Darwin’s theory was greatly influenced by many other giants in the field of natural studies as has been mentioned earlier. Natural selection given the great ages bestowed on the world by notable geologists of the day, allowed Darwin to extrapolate beyond testable hypothesis the theory of macroevolution; the idea that all life originated from but one or a few life forms. Nature selected for favorable characteristics that appeared in living things from time to time and this ultimately led to the multitude of species observable today as well as those found fossilized in the sediments of the geologic column.   It is to this kind of rock formation that much concerning evolution was and continues to be extrapolated upon (at least in introductory geology texts).  For this reason, a short and general discussion of the characteristics of sedimentary rock, how it is laid down, its geographic distribution, and most important, its composition, especially its fossil assemblages must be offered.

There are but three major classifications of rock.  Igneous rock is created by volcanic activity. Sedimentary rock is created by the deposition of materials suspended in water followed by hardening by evaporation, concretion, pressure, and heat.  The third kind of rock may be found to be composed of the other two but typically, metamorphic rock is created by the compression of sedimentary rock.  There are no certain techniques available to test the age of any of these rocks except by their super-positioning, either on top of or below another rock face.  Bedrock is typically made of igneous rock and is believed to be the primordial layer of the crust of the planet’s surface.  The bedrock is typically composed of granite, an igneous formation.  Below this is the mantle; a semi or entirely molten rock substructure from which igneous rock is formed.

Metamorphic and sedimentary rocks are never considered to be “new” rock since they are the result of processes that break down rock into sand, silt, clay, and gravels that are then cemented together as sediments.  The question remains whether such processes are catastrophic or uniformitarian (slow methodical processes taking long ages for rock to be weathered). processes of weathering and pulverization of the original rocks into smaller particles that become suspended in water and wash them to the ocean by way of streams and rivers.   Subsequently, suspended materials sediment onto some lower surface.  Ultimately the sediment builds up and is solidified into sedimentary rock. Which of these processes created the sedimentary rocks cannot be known but indirectly, though some laboratory experiments and several recent volcanic eruptions in recent history have demonstrated empirical evidence for the role of water in the stratification of sediments.  Only through the study of the rock’s composition, its geographic distribution, the manner in which the rock was layered and its fossil content etc., can a meaningful hypothesis be developed.  These are just of few of the clues as to how the rock was formed, whether by flood catastrophe or by endless ages of slow but progressive change (evolution).

Studying the rates of sedimentation in lakes and river deltas, early geologist calculated that rock strata of any given thickness were the result of millions of years of sedimentation.  The epochs or eras were developed to name the major formations that supposedly resulted from this mechanism of rock formation.  These eras are the Precambrian Era, the Paleozoic Era (meaning early life), the Mesozoic Era (meaning middle life) and the Cenozoic Era (meaning the age of recent life).  Of these four eras, three were divided into 12 Periods. Each period was typified and recognized by index fossils.  Index fossils were marine mollusks and trilobites that dominated a particular rock layer.  These were not the only fossils to be encased in the rock layers but were thought to be characteristic of not only the specific rock layer but also of its calculated age.  Each layer was believed to represent the period of earth stretching back hundreds of millions of years.   It was believed that by studying the placement of layers upon one another that a composite of all layers could be created.  This creation was called the geologic column and should then reflect the entire age of the earth.  In actuality, the geologic column does not exist anywhere on the planet.  It is a logically deduced layering of strata that created an imagined reality.

The idea of a geologic column was very useful in research and communications among geologists.  Some portion of every layer could be found on every continent.  In more modern times, mining and road building have revealed sedimentary rock layers and discoveries such as the Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon and many other geographic locations around the world exposed some portion of the column.  The index fossils were used to date the rock layers and the consistency of the fossil assemblages typical of a layer helped to support the idea that indeed the world was ancient and had gone through its own evolution of sorts; capturing organisms and fossilizing them along the way.  While at first glance the aging of the earth by assuming the sedimentary rocks were laid down over vast stretches of time seemed credible, but many features of sedimentary rock do not support the uniformitarian theory of continental submersion and subsequent resurfacing by slow earthly processes.

It was in these rock strata that many fossils of plants and animals were found, each peculiar to the rock layer even if the mineral content of that rock layer was of different composition than another holding the same fossil content.  It was to these formations that Darwin hoped for proof of his theory.  If the earth is ancient and these rock layers recorded the evolution of life then forms of life, intermediate between one layer and another leading to the present day, should be abundant.  These imperfect beings would reflect the details of the many variations of life expected by his theory and they should be deposited in the sediments in a way that paleontologists could piece together the lineage of many if not all the currently living forms.  Thus the imagined origin of species by means of natural selection and the imagined geologic column of earth time seemed conveniently synergistic; each supporting the other theory remarkably well.  If such was the case, the biblical story of origins was faulty if not a complete fabrication.  Any God revealing Himself in such a written record was not a god to be believed in or trusted.  He was as much a fabrication of ancient man’s ignorance as the presence of miracles is today!

Remember, however, that the geologic column was a composite of layers found all over the world.  The column did not and still does not exist anywhere in the world.  What we do know now is not much different from what was first proposed by the early geologists.  Sixty-six percent of the land surface of the earth has only 5 or less of the geologic periods in place. Approximately, 80-85% of the land surface does not have even 3 of the geologic “time” periods in place. A significant percentage of every geologic period does not lie on top of the next older period.  Remarkably, some percentage of every geologic period rests directly on Precambrian rock.  While it was understood that the column was a composite of stratigraphic finds, any one of these facts should have placed some doubt in the minds of geologists as to the validity of their suppositions.

Furthermore, neither Darwin nor anyone since Darwin has ever found a lineage of either animal or plant life that could honestly be recognized as related by some evolutionary sequence.  Instead, what is found are rock layers typically holding one assemblage of fossilized creatures and the next rock layer holding a vastly different assemblage of once living things. No transitional forms are present. This continues through all 12 recognized layers with no overlapping or intervening layers showing fossil intermediates.  Some rock layers, supposedly ancient, show more variety of living forms that exist today.  It has been noted by paleontologists that 90% of the variety in every species that ever lived are now extinct; most of these, invertebrates.  We retain some representatives of those forms today but nothing has evolved from what no longer exists and we have lost variety instead of gaining variety as Darwin’s theory supposed.

Another unusual feature of the sedimentary rock layers is that they are not the product of a calm, gentle marine sedimentation that somehow slowly rose to be exposed as rock and then slowly immerse again only to have another layer of sediment settle down.  These rock layers are vast, some of each portion found on every continent and covering thousands of square miles.  Within each layer, the remains of plants and animals were found that could not have been trapped in the original sediment by any gentle means.  Fossilization, which permeates every rock layer on a global scale, can only occur by a rapid burial in soft sediments.  The once living creatures must be rapidly buried deep within the sediment, cutting it off from the process of rotting, from oxygen or scavenging.  How can creatures, dead or alive, be scattered into sediments on a global scale and this done repeatedly over the course of a billion years?  Already hints of global flooding should begin to spring to mind.

Furthermore, how does the uniformitarian process allow for stratigraphy of any kind?  One flat layer lies resting upon another flat layer.  No weathering or biological activity are found between interfaces.  Whether those layers are now angled, vertical or folded by metamorphic processes or are found on the top 3000 feet of Mt. Everest, the layers have no weathering between them as predicted by Lyell’s geology.  No ancient river valleys in one layer only to be blanketed by another sedimentary formation. No soil layers between each compacted sediment.  No river beds, lakes, glacial deposits are to be found in between the layering.  How does a uniformitarian process create such interfaces between the rock strata since the layers were created one and then another, repeatedly by current but imperceptibly slow processes and each layer was supposedly exposed to the atmosphere before the next oceanic layering occurred?

John Woodward (1695) considered his theory of the earth to be a defense of the Scriptures.  He had advanced a theory to explain rock stratification and the fossils embedded in the strata as deposits of the deluge and he insisted that fossils were the remains of once living beings which, along with other organics, sand, silts, clays, and gravels settled out through a much more complex process than slow sedimentation.  His processes saw the global flood of Noah involving rapid oceanic currents, powerful turbulence, torrential rains, rising waters, tsunamis hundreds perhaps thousands of feet high.  The source of the rising water was from the “fountains of the great deep” and the bursting of the “windows of heaven”.  To Woodward, it was the density of the suspended materials and hydrodynamic forces of fluids which, during the year-long global flood and subsequent draining of the oceans from off the rising continents, created globally settled multilayered stratification of these sediments.  Knowing the scriptures Woodward could see that God ended the flood:

Psalm 104:4-9

5  You set the earth on its foundations, so that it shall never be shaken.

6 You cover it with the deep as with a garment; the waters stood above the mountains.

7 At your rebuke they flee; at the sound of your thunder they take to flight.

8 They rose up to the mountains, ran down to the valleys to the place that you appointed for them. 9 You set a boundary that they may not pass, so that they might not again cover the earth.

 

In 1839 John P. Smith, a Congregational theologian in London, published his thoughts on harmonizing the rapidly growing secular geologic theories of an old earth with the Genesis account.  Through his work and lectures, Smith outraged the biblical literalists. However, his attempts at reconciling the science of geology with the Genesis account of the flood allowed other Christian scholars to contemplate a new middle ground that permitted Genesis’ legitimacy (or at least safeguarded it) along with modern secular reasoning.  So was born the Genesis account of Noah’s local flood hypothesis.  After all, if there were no global evidence of a universal flood, Christians were losing nothing to the new science of uniformitarian geology.

Lyell would have none of this mediocrity and stated that the laws of nature remain the same, that the geologic processes of the past are the same that we see today.  These, he said, were processes that ran at the same rate as we see now; that the earth today was a product of endless cycles of seasons, rains, local floods and some typical catastrophic occurrences such as localized volcanic and earthquake activities.  The geologic column was real to him.  Though to this day, it is a composite diagram combining in a single column a succession of all known strata, fitted mostly based on their fossil content.  The key to the column’s construction had become the mineralized remains and impressions of marine (oceanic) organisms and the supposition that these index fossils must reflect a biological evolution occurring.  In recent times the geologic column has been ridiculed since it is the fossil content that determines the age of the rock and in other places, it is the rock that determines the age of the fossil.  This circular reasoning does not help the case for determining the age of any geologic period.

Which model best fits the facts of sedimentary rock?  Before we make a decision let’s consider the other fossil content of these sediments as they may give further clues to the forces that actually laid down the sediments.

In Agate Springs, Nebraska there is a fossil bed of some 9,000 animals buried in sandstone rock.  These include rhinos, camels, giant boars, birds, plants, trees, seashells, and fish. The verdict is death by drowning.

 

In Dinosaur Provincial Park in Alberta Canada stands a 200-foot cliff above a dry riverbed.  Embedded in the stone matrix are the remains of at least 500 different fossil forms.  They include pollen grains all the way up to the giant Centrosaur dinosaur.  No one can estimate the number of Centrosaur fossils embedded in what is now a cliff face but estimates are way beyond the thousands.  The best geological theory is that these beasts died crossing a river during a flood season.  They were drowned by a flash flood, carried to a bend in the river and were rapidly covered by sediments.  The site is said to be 75 million years old.  It is said to be the largest dinosaur graveyard in the world.  No one disputes these animals and many like them died in a flood.  It was a flood catastrophe.

In the Nemegt Valley of the Gobi Desert, an area of China replete with dinosaur finds of every kind (including fakes from time to time), the first fossil eggs ever discovered were found.  Sauropods, Deinocheirus, Tyrannosaurs, duck-billed dinosaurs and the fossilized remains of a Velociraptor engaged in a death struggle with a Ceratopsid among many other curious fossilized “still frames” of life in action have been documented and restored to museum quality exhibition.  The Oviraptor once thought to be the “egg stealer” was later discovered to be an adult form of some kind of raptor protecting, not eating, the eggs in the fossilized nest. What was the animal protecting its nest from before it died in the floodwaters?

Dinosaur nests around the world from Canada to Patagonia to China and Africa, India, Spain and sites throughout Asia, and other European countries have been discovered intact and fossilized in place.  How do eggs from around the world become fossilized at the same time; slow uniform processes of land subsiding into the ocean or catastrophic flooding on a global scale?

The fossil sandpit in East Germany contains the remains of tens of thousands of fossils.  The site has been mined for over 300 years.  The dead animal remains are found in unlikely contortions bearing witness to the power of floodwaters that took their lives.

Cumberland Bone Cave in Maryland contains intermingled fossilized skeletons of wolverines, bears, tapirs, groundhogs, rabbits, coyotes, beavers, muskrat, elk, crocodiles, and pumas. By what means did they die and become fossilized?

Besides the behemoth-sized crocs and giant sauropods, pterosaurs and fossilized forests lie beneath the sands of the Sahara desert.  Discoveries of this kind and of hidden topology indicate that the Sahara desert was not the product of millions of years of climate change but rather catastrophic inundations of water.  Aerial studies of the desert have shown lakes, rivers, and lush forests once riddled the now sand-laden land mass.

This is where Charcharodontosaurus, a theropod that out-rivaled T. Rex, was found along with turtles, crocs, and sauropods all fossilized in the same region in the Sahara desert.  What on earth could take out 100-ton sauropods and giant meat-eating dinosaurs?  Well, we have their fossils and therein lay the answer.

The Antarctic is proving this to be true as well.  In some cases, whole forests are being discovered that still bear leaves, roots, moss and other vegetation now dead but frozen in time by frozen water. Bones of a fossilized sauropod, a giant plant-eating animal weighing up to 100 tons or more, have been found on every continent and most recently this includes the Antarctic.

Como Bluffs, Wyoming is a dinosaur graveyard 7 miles long containing literally tons of bones; 146,000 pounds recovered so far.  Cause of death: drowning.

At the Ghost Ranch of Arizona literally, thousands of fossil remains of Coelophysis, a 70-pound flesh-eating dinosaur from Triassic rock, were discovered.  Many were fairly pulverized but most were found fully articulated.  It is understood that floodwaters killed them. Asked how so many animals could die, one of the discoverers answered, “Maybe it was a local catastrophe of some sort…The herd is found in river deposits so maybe they died while trying to cross.”  All evidence points to death by drowning.

Cleveland Lloyd Quarry of Utah is a graveyard of 12,000 bones of 70 different animals including 10 different dinosaurs; death by drowning.

Dinosaur National Monument in Vernal, Utah is a mountainside of at least 20 complete skeletons and 300 individual dinosaurs in different states of disarticulated; death by drowning.

The frozen soils of Alaska bear thousands of rapidly frozen animals such as the wolf, fox, badger, wolverine, saber-tooth tiger, jaguar, lynx, mammoth, mastodon, horses, camels, antelope, bison, caribou, moose, elk, sheep, musk-ox, yak, ground sloth and rodents all buried and rapidly frozen in great numbers; death by compaction in a catastrophic mud wave.

In Siberia, a graveyard of mammoths, bison, horses, cattle, sheep, and rhinos are found frozen in place by a catastrophic slurry of muck.  Not impressed by this example?  The graveyard is 2,000 miles long with about 5 million mammoths alone.  Something catastrophic occurred on earth for such a thing to happen.  Again – water was blamed.

The Tibetan Plateau is 750,000 square miles of sedimentary deposits thousands of feet thick found at an elevation of 3 miles.  So you understand the rarity of this find, the current uniformitarian processes would have worn the Plateau down to dust in 20 million years leaving no fossils to be found and no Tibetan Plateau to talk about.  Recent, sedimentary deposition followed by catastrophic uplift of the mountain range is a more reasonable answer.

In the Karoo Supergroup of Africa, the remains of 800 billion (yes billion) vertebrate animals are found.  Fossil remains only occur by rapid burial in water.

In 1964, in Cretaceous deposits, a literal battle between a single Tenontosaurs (herbivore) and a herd of Deinonychi (meat eaters) was found fossilized in a moment of terror.  The discovery indicated the herbivore had inflicted lethal blows to five of the Deinonychi before falling victim to the herd’s assault.  At an instant, this scene was drowned and packed into the surrounding muck to be preserved a testimony to the power of water to capture and drown living things; changing the face of the earth.

In Montana, several specimens of duckbill dinosaurs have been uncovered.  Several of them either mummified or retained skin imprints of their fleshy scales. “We think that it was buried in wet river sand around 77 million years ago and much of the flesh was intact when fossilization started,” said the paleontologist. A rapid burial in water is always the explanation given fossilization.

Not long ago 346 fossilized whales were found in a dolomite rock formation south of Lima, Peru.  This find also included fossil fish, turtles, seals and land animals.  Not all of the remains were fossilized.  How did these creatures get to southern Peru?  I’ll let you answer this one.

There is not enough time to cover all the geological formations that are the result of catastrophic occurrences mostly by flood activity and on a global scale.  I hope to make the point clear that a single, global, catastrophic flood has destroyed a previous world on planet Earth, the likes of which we can only imagine.  Besides the strange layering of sedimentary rock up to 15,000 feet thick in some places, the complete lack of weathering in between the rock layers, the existence of fossilized plants and animals which fill one layer of rock only to disappear to be replaced by a completely different assortment of fossils in the next layer; all of these and other criticisms to the claim that the sedimentary rock formations are millions of years old can be made.  Certainly, no support for biological evolution can be made from these rocks. After more than150 years of searching for the multitude of intermediates that Darwin required to validate his proposal, not one has been found.

No doubt we will return to the nature of Noah’s global flood activity repeatedly in future discussions and highlight failures of nearly every field of modern science to be honest with the evidence and prejudiced against clear indications that a Designer has been involved in the affairs of men.  At this point, I interject that since Darwin’s revolution that captured the minds of men within a 20-year period, there have been a number of investigators who are bewildered by the rapid acceptance of both biological and geological evolution when neither has been supported by experimentation or observation.

In 1955 Immanuel Velikovsky’s book, World in Upheaval, was published.  A student of natural sciences at Edinburgh, he included history, law and received his medical degree in Moscow studying the brain in Zurich and psychoanalysis in Vienna.  A very well-educated man, Velikovsky assembled observations in the earth sciences and traveled extensively to record in vivid terms the evidence of catastrophes from the bottom of the oceans to the moon and beyond.  Fossil evidence he saw as simply extinction by catastrophic means. Evolution’s motor being selection by the death of the weak hardly seemed a reasonable mechanism by which to create anything better. The lack of any real sedimentation taking place in the deep parts of the seas today and the failure to see the effects of Lyell’s slow processes making any difference in planet geology at present disturbed Velikovsky.  What he could see I have shown, in part, in the fossilized graveyards found from pole to pole; none of which could have been the result of uniform processes.

In 1961 The Genesis Flood written by John C. Whitcomb and Henry Morris was released.  Whitcomb was a professor of Old Testament at Winona Lake’s Grace Theological Seminary and Morris was Professor of Hydraulic Engineering and Chair of the Department of Civil Engineering at Virginia Poly Technical Institute.  Their work demonstrated the facts about the violent nature that leads to the formation of sedimentation and rock formation.  Besides the lack of any such processes occurring today or evidence of current fossilization taking place, their approach to examining what the ramifications of a global flood meant for earth geography, oceanography and every specialty in geology was in no small way convincing. Taking the basic arguments for the universal flood, the authors show the failure of uniformitarian geology to explain most of what we see in the rocks, oceans, deserts, polar caps and mountains.  The causes of the flood and the subsequent inundation of all land masses were shown to have racked the entire planet with great earth movements, i.e., tectonics, volcanism, mountain building and created the continental shelves, and to place massive sedimentary deposits of similar composition and assemblages of animals around the world.  Many of the post-flood formations such as the Scablands of eastern Washington, the Grand Canyon, the Great Lakes and the Niagara Falls and the presence of formations like the Sahara Desert and the polar ice caps were explained in commonsense terms that reconcile the world in its present state with a catastrophe of global proportions.  Clearly, the fossil record, buried forests, coal seams and other features of the sediments deposited on the land were to have no evolutionary history and had to be the product of brief but terrifying destruction of the entire planet.

In 1971 a secular geologist, Derek Ager, in particular, a specialist in stratigraphy (studies of sedimentary rocks) wrote the book, The Nature of the Stratigraphical Record. This well-trained and well-traveled field scientist took a new look at earth’s sedimentary geology, citing global consistencies in the bedding of sedimentary formations.

In his own words,

“There’s something damn funny about the stratigraphical record’.  The record is spasmodic and ridiculously incomplete, with particular strata and fossils extremely widespread, but separated by vastly longer gaps than anything that is preserved.  The same strata and fossils, though to all intents and geological purposes synchronous (laid down at one time), must have spread diachronously (laid down through multiple exposures).  Traditional ideas such as gentle, continuous sedimentation (and perhaps similarly continuous evolution) are not adequate to explain what we see.  Nor is the idea of the ‘stratotype’ satisfactory as a means of establishing and international stratigraphical language.  The record is spasmodic and must be treated as such.  The ‘layer cake’ analogy just will not do”.

Ager made it clear and repeated it in this and his second book followed up in 1990 to say he was no a young earth geologist or creationist and knew that what he was about to reveal would be used by creation scientists to damage the geology of Lyell.  He was correct.  Facts speak louder than fiction. [Italics mine for emphasis].

Let’s summarize what we have learned.  Using the old earth geology of stratification in hopes of finding intermediate life forms to validate Darwin’s evolutionary biology has failed. Gould and Eldridge noted these failures of the use of sedimentary rocks to prove evolution:

1. First, there are problems dating the sedimentary rocks by objective means.  They are composed of secondary minerals and compacted by a number of forces; concretion being one of many means of solidification.  Using the assumption of evolution to date a stratum and a stratum to date a fossil is circular reasoning for dating the rock.  It is not science.
2. There are no gradual changes in life forms…no missing links, transitional forms or intermediates.  To say otherwise is not scientific.
3. The abrupt appearance of most major invertebrate phyla are found in the Cambrian period, a sedimentary Epoch not elucidated here but often called the Cambrian explosion of life… nothing develops into those life forms; nothing transitional can be found leading from the rock layer.  These are the facts of science.  No indication of evolution.
4. Each layer of rock or Period…has distinctive fossils that appear abruptly and then vanish just as quickly away.  Why this is true appears to support a flood hypothesis and Woodward put forth a viable hypothesis that was rejected because it supported the Genesis account.  This is good science. To say otherwise is mythology.
5. Many species appear in the very ancient layers, disappear from subsequent layers of sedimentary rock and yet are known to be living today.  (The tuatara, dawn redwood tree, coelacanths and many others.)  How is it that creatures today can be shown found in 300-500 million years old and yet the sediments only capture in one particular stratum, and never again, yet here they are alive today?
6. There are no examples of plant evolution in the fossil record.  Isn’t this strange?  Mosses and ferns just appear.  Pine trees just appear.  Oaks and mighty redwoods just appear in the rock layers and nothing leading to them in some state of transition is found?  To say otherwise is deceit and mythology.
7. The geologic column shows stasis… a permanency of the life forms found in each particular layer.  Dinosaurs were once thought to have lived unchanged for 200 million years.  There is no evidence of the gradual evolution of any kind.  More on this as we begin to study the new geology of the last 20 years.
8. Early and so-called primitive life is not primitive at all.  No organism is primitive.  Down to single-celled bacteria, molecular complexity is beyond our comprehension.  What makes a jellyfish any more primitive than a human being?  It is simpler to dissect and to understand how it captures and digests food and how it reproduces, but how many humans can undergo multiple divisions of the entire animal body-plan like the jellyfish does in certain stages of its life cycle? That’s complexity!
9. Changes in the fossil record indicate extinction; species have been lost, not formed.  Extinction is the rule, not evolution.  Evolution predicts an increase in diversity and in complexity.  Evolutionists debate whether this is really true.  Some even admit that nothing is really extinct but could be reproduced by evolution under the right conditions.  What is true is that we have lost diversity and complexity and that is all that sedimentary rocks show?

A few final thoughts before this article is closed.  Current geology is returning to neo-catastrophism or new explanations of the sediments and the fossil record based on catastrophes. The collective assemblage of sedimentary strata that has been studied by thousands of geologists has forced the science to admit the death and extinction of living organisms by flood catastrophes.  At least 5 major catastrophic occurrences are admitted by the new geology.  Although no one is admitting that their timescale for the geologic column is meaningless, what is claimed is that incredible earth-shattering changes have occurred in the past such as asteroid impacts, massive volcanism, switching of the magnetic poles and other speculations.

The most well-known and admitted catastrophe is the complete extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago due to the impact of an asteroid on the Yucatan Peninsula.  This supposedly occurred at the end of the Cretaceous period bringing the 200 million year reign of the dinosaurs to an end.  A fine line composed of iridium suggested an asteroid impact resulted in a global catastrophe that killed all the dinosaurs in 1 to as many as 3 years.   Yes, years!   Many theories are put forth to explain what killed nearly all life at that period.  Some consider the dust of the impact blocked out the sun.  No sun, no plants, no plants, no plant eaters, no plant eaters, no meat eaters.  Everything dies.  Some suggest the asteroid caused massive volcanism and caused deadly gases that killed the beasts.  The one thing that is not discussed or explained or brought up is this: who buried all the bones?  The fact that a global flood is required to credit an asteroid with the death of the dinosaurs is generally never mentioned.  The facts are clear that between rock stratum and another, there is no evidence of intermittent exposure.  The iridium streak is 1 cm thick between the Cretaceous Period and the Paleocene.  Both layers, like all sedimentary layers, are laid down on each other without weathering between the interface.  Ocean flooding on a global basis is always to be blamed for fossils and sediment but it is the geologists and the paleontologists best-kept secret….and  never to be mentioned.

Having looked at the geology of sedimentary rock, the fossil assemblages and the characteristics of the global proportions of both the strata and the fossils embedded in each layer, it should be clear that these rocks give no indication of great ages to the earth.  It should be clear that every layer is the product of flood geology.  It should be clear that the world has undergone at least one entire catastrophic flood event. The takeaway message concerning Darwin’s hope to find a multitude of transitional life forms in the sediments can most assuredly be brought to rest.  There are none.  His admission that this might be the case and the fact that it is the case means we do not have any empirical evidence of evolution AND that the Earth is not a very ancient planet or the product of its own evolution.

Elaboration on sunken cities (over 200 have so far been found in the Mediterranean Sea), the existence of continental shelves (there is more water on the planet now than in the not too distant past), the discovery of underwater river beds, and the many hypothetical speculations on ice ages could be included in the argument against an old earth.  Abandoning the myths of Darwinism, admitting the failures of hypothetical geology and accepting the need for a revealed source of origins should allow us to return to the validity of biblical literalism and begin to develop a new theory of life and earth history from an intelligent design perspective.

What was known in the early 1800’s is clearer in the 21st century.  There is no evidence of an old earth.  There is no evidence that evolution occurred; at least the fossils in the rock and the rock itself are void of that kind of evidence.  So where do we go from here?

In the next part of this series, the complexity of life must be considered.  Could a mindless process of natural selection have been the director for the production of complex organisms bringing them to the level of perfection we now see? Is it believable that the behavior, the instincts and the complex nature of the interplay of life in an ecosystem of living things, sexual reproduction, nest-building, symbiosis, metamorphosis be the product of a natural selecting process, the engine of which is the death of the less fit?   From frogs to snails and puppy dog tails, is blind undirected evolutionary processes the answer to existence?   Intuitively the answer is obvious, but let’s answer the question from science.