Below is the online edition of In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood,
by Dr. Walt Brown. Copyright © Center for Scientific Creation. All rights reserved.
Click here to order the hardbound 8th edition (2008) and other materials.
Evidence Requiring an Explanation
Summarized below are the hard-to-explain details which any satisfactory explanation for the origin of the Grand Canyon should answer.
Layering. Probably the most striking sight at the Grand Canyon is the vastness of the parallel sedimentary layers—multicolored by their differing mineral and chemical content. Any explanation for the Grand Canyon’s layers should also explain other sedimentary layers worldwide, because they are so similar (although less dramatic).
Limestone. The Hualapai Limestone, west of the Grand Canyon, was deposited before the Colorado River flowed out the western end of the Grand Canyon. Also, many layers in the canyon consist primarily of limestone hundreds of feet thick.19 What is the source of so much limestone, and what concentrated it? If these limestone layers were deposited in shallow inland seas—the standard explanation—then the Colorado Plateau had to rise and fall at least once per layer. Explaining one lift is difficult enough.20
Marble Canyon. How does the origin of the nearly straight Marble Canyon and its narrow, vertical walls relate to the origin of the adjoining, but broader, Grand Canyon? What accounts for the strange pattern of tipped layers in the walls of Marble Canyon and Echo and Vermilion Cliffs?
Distant Cavern Connection. How could a deep and dry underground cavern develop 5,400 feet above sea level and then drain for 63-miles into the Grand Canyon?
Side Canyons. Why do Grand Canyon and Marble Canyon have so many side canyons that were cut as deeply as the main canyons but without a visible source of water?
Barbed Canyons. Why does Marble Canyon have large, barbed (backward) side canyons?
Slot Canyons. How did such narrow side canyons with jagged walls capture enough water to cut deep channels that drain into the Colorado River? Why are most of the world’s slot canyons on the Colorado Plateau?
Perpendicular Faults. Why are the dozens of faults in the Grand Canyon generally perpendicular to the Colorado River, and why doesn’t the river flow along an “easier” path provided by a fault?21 Maybe the faults formed as a result of—and after—the deep erosion that formed the river’s channel.
Arching. Why are Grand and Marble Canyons cut into and along the top of a broad, upward-pointing arch that extends, in general, for the 277-mile length of those canyons?
Inner Gorge. Why are the walls of the inner gorge so deep, steep, narrow, and rough? How could a river cut so deeply into such hard rock at the inner gorge but not as deeply into softer rock both upstream and downstream?
Nankoweap Canyon. Why did humans live for centuries in this now dry, desolate canyon? What produced the avalanche and provided a violent, multidirectional flow of water able to (1) carve Nankoweap Canyon and its side canyons, (2) create a large delta that remains today despite the cross-flowing Colorado River, and (3) stack thousands of large, rounded boulders 100–200 feet high along Nankoweap Creek? Where was enough water to do all that?
Unusual Erosion. Why are slumps, landslides, and rockfalls found on the top of Nankoweap Mesa? Why does the Colorado River sharply delineate this eroded region to the west from the smooth, lower region to the east?
Forces, Energy, and Mechanisms. Each explanation for the Grand Canyon requires lifting the Colorado Plateau more than a mile in the air and excavating and transporting thousands of cubic miles of rock. Are the forces, energy, and mechanisms for these movements known—or merely inferred or assumed? Without a knowledge of the underlying physics, which must conform to scientific laws, major errors can creep in. Even if the inferences or assumptions are correct, ignorance of the actual forces, energy, and mechanisms will blind us to root causes, rates, and other consequences. Predictions will not present themselves; modeling and testing become limited. Such explanations can only be described as “half baked.”22
Why Here? Why is the Grand Canyon where it is, and why are there not many other “grand canyons” worldwide?23 The canyon receives little rain. If an explanation claims that a set of conditions, such as a fast-flowing river and millions of years, produced the Grand Canyon, then dozens of other “Grand Canyons” should exist where those conditions are even more extreme.
Why So “Recently”? If the Grand Canyon was carved during the last one-thousandth of earth’s history, why were no other “Grand Canyons” carved earlier?
Missing River. Limestone deposits at the western end of the Grand Canyon show that the Colorado River did not flow beyond the Grand Canyon before the canyon was excavated. Where was the river? What brought it to its present location? How was the western Grand Canyon carved?
Missing Talus. In the canyon region, why do steep cliffs, such as Echo Cliffs, Vermilion Cliffs, and others, have little talus (rubble) at their bases?
Kaibab Plateau. Why and how did the Colorado River make a right turn and cut up through the Kaibab Plateau, which rises more than a mile on either side of the river? What caused the Kaibab Plateau to bulge upward, like a squeezed water balloon?
Colorado Plateau. A plateau is large region whose horizontal sedimentary layers show that it has been lifted relative to the corresponding layers surrounding the plateau.24 The Colorado Plateau rises an average of 6,200 feet above sea level. The 1-mile-deep Grand Canyon could never have formed on land that is less than a mile above sea level. What lifted the Colorado Plateau, so the canyon could be carved?
For all its glorious views, the Colorado Plateau remains an ugly mystery to geologists. They can’t figure out why and how it rose thousands of feet over the millions of years it took to carve spectacular natural wonders like the Grand Canyon and Monument Valley.25
Missing Mesozoic Rock. What swept off a soft Mesozoic layer, at least 1,000 feet thick, from atop 10,000 square miles of hard, horizontal Kaibab Limestone? What swept the Mesozoic rock off the much higher Kaibab Plateau?
Missing Dirt. About 2,800 cubic miles of dirt had to be removed to carve the Grand Canyon. The Colorado River’s delta does not contain even 1% of that dirt. Where did it go? Was there enough water to transport all that dirt?
Fossils. Why are fossils found only above the Great Unconformity?
Tipped Layers. Why are sedimentary layers (hundreds of feet thick) tipped at steep angles below portions of the Great Unconformity, while the layers above, averaging 4,000 feet in total depth, are essentially horizontal?
Time or Intensity? A satisfactory proposal for carving the Grand Canyon must show, in a self-consistent way, that eons of time transpired, or there was a violent flow of water.
Figure 123: Grand Canyon in 3D. Grand Canyon Village is at the bottom of this computer generated picture; the Colorado River lies below the dashed blue line. Obviously, a river did not carve all the randomly oriented drainage channels that make up the Grand Canyon. And yet, that is what the public has been told for 150 years. No wonder the standard explanation—that the Colorado River carved the Grand Canyon—has so many recognized problems, even in the eyes of the so-called experts.
Surface water typically flows downhill; however, subsurface water in the saturated zone flows in the direction of decreasing pressure, a completely different pattern which depends largely on the location of faults and other subsurface drainage channels. Sediments deposited by the flood averaged more than a mile in depth all over the earth. Each grain that settled through the muddy flood waters helped trap water between the loosely packed grains. When the flood ended, approximately 20% of the flood water was temporarily held between sedimentary grains, seeking ways to escape to the surface. Water that escaped accounts for many of today’s land features, including much of the Grand Canyon.
Part of the 60-mile-long Bright Angel Fault is shown by the dashed white line. This vertical fault (a deep fracture) has been lifted up to 200 feet on its west side which allowed subsurface water to escape out of the freshly exposed 200-foot-high cliff face and up out of the fault. That erosion carved the prominent Bright Angel side canyon, the location of the famous Bright Angel Trail. Hundreds of less spectacular faults account for hundreds of other variously oriented valleys and side canyons that allowed escaping subsurface water to drain down to the deepest channel, where the Colorado River now flows. In other words, the Grand Canyon was carved first; then, the region’s natural drainage created today’s Colorado River.