@marta
Check this out: no dust on my sandals. 
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Beautiful and interesting area. I remember a similar view to that from Coronado National Monument a couple of years ago. The Rio Grande also carved out Santa Elena canyon in the Big Bend area of Texas. It is sort of interesting to see this little river by the roadside, drive to the park and see the towering walls up to 1500 feet height of the canyon in between, carved by the river over the eons as the limestone faulted and was gradually lifted, with the river cutting the slot as the walls rose, Again a testament to deep time. Santa Elena Canyon - Big Bend National Park (U.S. National Park Service)
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Although some young earthers (notably George McCready Price) have slandered William Smith as making up an old earth and inventing evidence in favor of it, the reality is that Smith’s combination of being self-taught outside the academic mainstream of geology and his single-minded focus on recognizing layers rather than wondering how they formed meant that he was actually a young-earther while doing much of his work. Eventually a couple of pastors who were friends of his explained how the evidence pointed to an old earth. William Townsend, one of those two pastors, first published a significant chunk of Smith’s data on the pattern of fossils marking different layers in his book The Character of Moses Established for Veracity as an Historian, Recording Events From the Creating to the Deluge (2 vols., 1813-1815). If you can’t figure out from the title of that book that Smith was not challenging prevailing theological views on the age of the earth, you can make a lot of money writing purported history books like The Map that Changed the World or Common-Sense Geology - Simon Winchester’s claims about the history are not remarkably more reliable than Price’s, just changing who is supposedly a hero or villain.
Lyell did not propose an old earth; the fact that geology points to an old earth was established by the mid-1770’s, over two decades before Lyell was born, and suspected over a century before his birth. Lyell’s theology was not particularly sound; like most young-earth and ID claims, his approach was deistic, claiming that God is not involved in things that happen according to scientific laws.
Steno published on common-sense observations about geological layers in the 1660’s; similar ideas were floating around elsewhere at that time (e.g., Hooke) or even earlier (da Vinci wrote such thoughts in his coded notebooks and no one else read them for a few centuries). As people began to look at geological layers, they noticed a few things:
There are a lot of layers.
The same layer can be recognized widely across Europe (and eventually elsewhere).
Many geologic layers look a lot like the layers that we see forming today as sand and mud slowly piles up here and there.
(Unlike one of Galileo’s key arguments for heliocentrism, Steno’s models were correct. They also were generally accepted, even though, like Galileo, Steno was challenging some Aristotelian assumptions, which Voltaire nearly a century later was reluctant to give up.)
The huge number of layers, many of which looked to require a long time to form and none of which seemed to have any definite trace of humans, led to increasing recognition that geology pointed to a very long pre-human history, which the Bible had apparently skipped over as being theologically irrelevant. Even Ussher had allotted some time for the chaos before the seven days, and his efforts (like those of many others) to incorporate all available historical data led directly into the incorporation of geological data into our understanding of the age of the earth. Old earth views were generally accepted as no theological problem. Michael Tuomey, in his 1848 Geology of South Carolina, has a short section discussing how well geology supports the Bible. In particular, geology points back to a beginning, against the indefinite cycles of much deistic speculation. Tuomey also describes young-earth objections to geology as a thing of the past. The first book to publish a series of pictures illustrating earth history through geologic time has a final picture of the beginning of modern time in the Garden of Eden. Atheistic and young-earth claims about old-earth being an attack on religious beliefs are untrue.
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Adam Sedgwick is another interesting person in the history of YEC, or at least flood geology. When he stepped down as chair of the Royal Society (THE scientific organization of its time), he had this to say:
This was in 1831, so its not as if they were all bowing down to the alter of Evolutionism, or some other such silly notion. I’m not sure of Sedgwick’s views on the age of the Earth, but he certainly recognized that a recent global flood just wasn’t evidenced in geology.
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I believe comparable to most of his geologist contemporaries: “We can’t really get an exact value, but maybe something like 200,000,000 years or so.”
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Well done. That was a joy to read. Thanks also to @T_aquaticus. Thought folks might enjoy the testimony of our old friend Glenn Morton (RIP) on flood geology:
Edit: Sorry I keep having additional thoughts. haha. Be sure to scroll down in that thread to find this gem:
I know that to people who don’t see much geologic information it could appear to be inconclusive. I can assure you it isn’t. For one, try to explain the 157 times per day a year long flood requires for each couplet of shale and sand. That is 9 minutes for each layer of shale, burrowing and then sand deposition. Apart from the problems of souring these two different lithologies, shale doesn’t even settle out in 9 m. Shale is made up by extremely small particles. Have you ever stirred up the muddy bottom a lake and lost the ability to see anything in the muddy water? That is shale.
Furthermore, throughout what would be flood deposits, the fossiliferous rocks, we have animals behaving at every level like there is no flood going on.
Lots of cool pics too.
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I don’t think it does. Please point out the contradictions that you see.
The order of creation.
You’re kidding, right? From the article you linked…
“For example, a poll’s standard error (what is reported as the margin of error of the poll), is the expected standard deviation of the estimated mean if the same poll were to be conducted multiple times.”
The words “expected” and “estimated” mean parameters were set by people. Let’s say we DID conduct the same poll multiple times. Is it written in stone that the results absolutely must perfectly match the standard deviation parameters that were set up? Every single time we conduct a poll multiple times?
Besides, why did you even bring this up? Give me an example where this applies to anything that we’ve been discussing.
I see. So sometimes the YECs are right after all? 
How does Snelling align his findings with his belief in a 6000 year old earth?
The idea of common descent evolution is just as laughable as a cat turning into a dog. Have you ever really THOUGHT about the ridiculousness of the claims? Or how it’s not even a part of science at all? It’s a fairy tale story so riddled with flaws that it’s a wonder that any intelligent person would give it a second glance.
But since I realize that this silly idea doesn’t suggest that cats turn into dogs, but still maintain that the Bible is all I need, I guess I’m not one of the people you described. What now?
Didn’t she “bury” some soft tissue in her air conditioned lab for 2 years, observe that some of the pieces were still partially intact, and declare that, therefore, soft tissue can survive the elements for millions and even billions of years?
I know way more about this stuff than you think, jammy. Besides, I came here because a BioLogos author wrote truth about scripture, and I thought I might find other like-minded people here who knew there was absolutely nothing wrong with taking the Bible for exactly what it says.
Btw, if you were my brother in Christ, you would believe him when he said God created them male and female from the beginning of creation. You obviously don’t believe that, right?
No, because God SAID He did something, and I believe God. Instead of you guys always alluding to “my particular interpretation” of scripture, why not actually POST one of those scriptures I bring up, and explain to me what it REALLY means? Then we could have an actual discussion.
Oh, you’re not a Bible believer at all then? Okay. I’m not here to cast pearls before swine. Take care.
How so? …
If you say so. I will indeed enjoy my Biblical world in which I live. You enjoy your spinning ball, and may the most powerful vacuum ever imagined by man not suck the air you breathe out into space. 
What meteorites? As for spacecraft, you could start with Google’s “Project Loon”.
The order of creation differs. animals vs people. Read the two accounts and you will see.
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Those big chunky things that fall from the sky and occasionally do great damage. Have you heard of them? Like the 15.5 ton Willamette Meteorite:
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1 And God spoke all these words:
9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God…
11 For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth and the sea and all that is in them, but on the seventh day He rested.
Which one of us is calling God a liar again? 
How could you possibly know He wasn’t speaking audibly? You can’t, so you should remain silent on that part.
Yes, God was obviously speaking to His heavenly court. You call them angels. In the Bible they are called gods and messengers. (There is no equivalent to “angel” in the Hebrew or Greek texts.) And no, God is not comprised of different persons.
God is the one who created the very concept of a “day”. He created the word “day”. And He defined a “day” as one dark/light cycle on the earth. Now check this out… He did that BEFORE He created the firmament - which He named “heaven”. And BEFORE He created the sun and placed it in the firmament that He named “heaven”. And BEFORE mankind even existed.
So you see, it was God who defined our 24 hour days… and God who not only told us He created our world in six of those days - but even went as far as EQUATING those six days with the six literal days the Israelites were to work before taking a day of rest.
Can you SCRIPTURALLY refute a single thing I’ve said in this post? If so, do so.
Artemis is launching tomorrow. ARE YOU MESSING WITH US?
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I work long hours, and rarely have time during the week. But I do enjoy doing this on the weekend, and will be back again next weekend if not before.
People coming up with books and claiming them to be from God are quite numerous – all them them deciding that the other books are lies. So who knows whether the the people with their books are telling truth or lies… but it is only too likely that many are telling lies.
But what comes from the earth and sky do not come from sinful human beings but from the creator of the universe. Thus it is a certainly that calling these lies is to call the creator of the universe a liar.
That is not what I said. If you are not going to respond to what is actually said then it is YOU who should remain silent. By replacing what was said with something completely different we have hard evidence here for all to see that you are lying.
I do not accept your claim of authority to speak for God. And I think it is highly likely that God did not create the concept of a 24 hour day. Certainly your interpretation of the text of Genesis does not make it so.
Already have. The use of the word “day” in Genesis is before the sun even exists, therefore linking the word to the meaning that the sun returns to the same position in the sky of earth is nonsensical. Thus I scripturally refute your interpretation of the text with a different understanding of the text.
That is a lie. There is no such claim made in the text of the Bible. Our 24 hour days comes from the Egyptians and we know this because other cultures around the world have made completely different divisions of time. Furthermore it is preposterous that God, who does not live on the earth but is equally present on all planets of the universe would divide time according to the rotation of our particular planet. This is a rather clear cut example of projection – making yourself god in the limitations of your own mind and experience.
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