I’ll address your five points in order.
- A great deal of the sedimentary record displays periodic and alternating long term changes in depositional environment, resulting in layered rock which cannot result from a single high energy event, but is entirely consistent with geology.
Dr. Kurt Wise just released his findings in his data taken from The Paleobiology Database, a public database of paleontological data that includes the ability to filter fossil occurrences by time, space, and taxonomy. He organized this data with a metric called NLSSS (Number of Local, Stage-boundary Straddling Species). This measure tracks species found within tight geographic ranges (2 degrees longitude and latitude) that appear in rock layers from different geological stages.
He found, and you can easily do this yourself, that species continuity across boundaries—those points in the rock record that geologists associate with evolutionary transitions—does not align with the geological system or stage boundaries. This finding means that species often survive across so-called mass extinction boundaries, challenging the narrative of evolutionary paleontology. Of course, the one boundary that does correspond to a mass extinction is the K/Pg, which you’ll have no disagreement with your creationist brothers and sisters.
What this does is call into question the very foundation of sequence stratigraphy—the widely-accepted framework that links the Earth’s sedimentary layers to slow, cyclical changes in sea level, sediment supply, and tectonic activity over millions of years. This is what you are essentially alluding to. According to this model, layers of rock correspond to distinct periods in Earth’s history, punctuated by evolutionary shifts and mass extinctions.
But another important pattern was discovered. Each mega-sequence begins with high-energy conglomerates—coarse, large-grained sediments requiring significant water force to deposit. As the sequence progresses, the energy decreases, with sands, shales, and then limestones being deposited in turn, each layer representing less turbulent conditions. This pattern repeats across multiple mega-sequences (of which there are five clear mega-sequences), pointing to a series of catastrophic energy pulses, not the slow, steady processes described by mainstream geology.
This is not an “insurmountable problem” at all.
- Flood geology insists that the preflood world was buried under deep sediment, but in much of sedimentary rock of various ages normal activity of life is found to be present, including burrowing, bioturbation, footprints and other traces of locomotion, and in the case of dinosaurs, building nests and laying and incubating eggs. These activities cannot happen while drowning, but is entirely consistent with geology.
Fossils require deep sediment to be formulated, that’s not controversial amongst the fluvial geomorphology community. I hate to be nick-picky here, but bioturbation includes burrowing.
I would like to see where this bioturbation is? In fact, there is a stark absence of any meaningful ecological signature within the vast majority of sedimentary rocks. Apart from this, you have vast planation surfaces with no topography, and all the indicators of rapid burial. This last point brings me to these delicate fossils off building nests, laying eggs, footprints and tracks.
This is clearly a strong indicator of rapid burial. There is no plausible reason for such articulated impressions and action to be preserved over gradual processes. What we’re looking at is turbidity flows moving mile-high deposits and quickly screenshotting ecology. This is not a slow process by any stretch. Modern experiments have repeatedly shown fossilization within days/weeks. This is simply not something that could have been preserved over deep time.
Not remotely a problem.
- The stratification of the fossil record defies any plausible flood geology explanation. A single, high energy event would not leave a globally consistent succession of fossils. While microfossils do not have the public recognition of dinosaurs, they are even more conclusive evidence against a single event global flood.
One mistake being made here is the assumption of a single event or a single process. The flood consisted of a series of processes that involved a year of submersion and recession, but that only accounts for about a half to 3/4ths of the total catastrophe. There was the freezing of rapid rains in the northern and southern poles causing great glaciers and ice sheets to spread over much of the continents. There were great lakes such as what secularists now recognize as Lake Missoula that broke fourth and eroded massive terrestrial regions.
I would like to see this globally consistent succession of fossils. I was under the impression that even folks at BioLogos subscribe to the notion that great explosions of biodiversity which novel body plans are present at almost every turn in the paleontological record. There are some transitional fossils, I’ll grant you, but those are not impressive when we have a rather comprehensive understanding of the fossil record and they represent an exception to the rule.
You make many unsubstantiated claims which I can’t respond to. For instance, how are microfossils or dinosaurs conclusive evidence against a flood? In order to present an insurmountable problem, you must posit a problem first.
- A single year cannot even come close to accounting for the quantity of biogenic limestone, dolomite, and chalk present on the earth.
A global flood can. There is actually a lot of interest in this area amongst the secular world due to the fact that it represents a solution for an energy source that is renewable with virtually zero carbon footprint. Look up CarbFix, which is lead by a Hellisheidi power station in Iceland that captures carbon dioxide (CO2) and turns it into stone, with the purpose of permanent storage. Dr. Tim Clarey has also done work on demonstrating that limestone deposits can form quickly in flume experiments. As Dr. Michael J. Oard has pointed out, dolomite has actually been a problem for secular science for about 200 years. Our solution is simple, we observe dolomite forming only in warm saline water in the present. To quote Dr. Oard:
It is estimated that 1,000 units of fluid flow is needed to dolomitize one unit volume,5 and 350 kg of Mg is needed to dolomitize 1 m3 of limestone with a porosity of 7%.11 Of course the fluid flow of magnesium ions decreases away from a potential source—one of the many problems with dolomitizing a huge limestone formation. This is one reason why it supposedly takes millions of years for dolomite to form. The problem with primary precipitation is that a tremendous kinetic barrier exists.12 Presently seawater is 10–100 times supersaturated with magnesium,10 yet dolomite is not precipitating today. Land discovered that dolomite would not precipitate even at 1,000-fold supersaturation at temperatures of 25°C after 32 years.13 This kinetic barrier can be overcome by increasing the temperature of the fluid…
…the massive scale of dolomite deposition matches the scale of deposition during the global Flood, laying down these carbonates over vast areas with one deposit forming on top of the other in quick succession. This is exactly what we see today in the layers of sedimentary rocks.20 These huge formations defy uniformitarianism, which should produce only small-scale local horizontal and vertical sedimentation patterns
As for the chalk, what we find in these chalk layers are fossils of clams, coral, snails, shells, etc. The conventional explanation actually cannot account for this. There’s an exceedingly span in which the smallest changes to the chalks would be made on the order of 0.008 and 0.08 inches per year for about a million years. This is not the environmental tapestry in which we would expect these kinds of fossils.
Let me just ask you a forrest question (since we’ve been talking trees): How do you account for these massive stretches of sediment deposited transcontinentally that are hundreds of feet high if these layers all individually take millions of years? Should expect no other geological processes to interrupt these sediment deposits for such aforementioned lengths of time? Why is there order and consistency to them that defies ecological systems?
Yeah, this is another non-problem for creationism.
- Flood geology cannot account for the consilience of radiometric dating of igneous incursions ash, and flood rock, with the bracketed fossils that appear in expected epochs of Earth history. For lake sediments, flood geology offers no explanation for the correlation of 14C dating and depth of varve.
I just chuckle when I hear the term “Gish-Galloping” thrown around. I wouldn’t do it here, but that’s because Gish would usually have an argument.
Radiometric dating methods, particularly those using long half-lives (e.g., potassium-argon, uranium-lead), often assume a constant decay rate and initial conditions. Many creationists have challenged this assumption and have gotten no serious rebuttals. Dr. Snelling points out the anomalies such as discordant dates (where different methods give conflicting results). These occur in a consistent manner, with radioisotopes that date older consistently dating older and conversely the younger dating younger (with a divergence of hundreds of millions of years in many cases).
In the context of the Flood, rapid burial, volcanic activity, and varying environmental conditions would have altered radiometric signatures. Flood geology posits that much of the fossil record and associated igneous layers were laid down in a short time, which could explain discrepancies and misinterpretations in radiometric dating. Furthermore, accelerated nuclear decay (as suggested by the RATE project) could explain the inflated radiometric ages.
Finally, I see no reason why the earth can be old AND we can have a recent humanity and flood. I know that sounds like a cop-out, but really. Danny Faulkner has some great insights on how God may have accelerated all of creation during the creation week. That’s possible and not a weak Biblical interpretation at all. I have no reason to think that the universe wouldn’t appear old due to mature trees and ecology, mature galaxies and light that reaches man, mature geology and, yes, some decay into daughter elements. However, this doesn’t negate the facts of radio halos and helium ratios.
Further, C-14 dating is only accurate for tens of thousands of years and should not detect C-14 in samples older than about 50,000 years. However, C-14 has been found in fossils, coal, and diamonds supposedly millions of years old. Rapid sedimentation during the Flood could produce varve-like layers much faster than the uniformitarian model suggests. Laboratory experiments and observations of catastrophic events show that multiple varves can form in a single year under the right conditions. These are non-starters for you, my friend.
I certainly appreciate your taking the time for present these challenges, and I hope you appreciate my exegesis and measured response as a brother in Christ.
I would love to hear a response, but do not feel obligated to (especially a comprehensive one). I would like to know how you understand this evidence and where I am in error.
Thank you,
Wesley C