X-Nilo Files 1(3), December 1998

A deep canyon in one day?

Q. If the Earth is only thousands of years old, then how do you explain the large number of river valleys that many scientists say took millions of years to form.

A. I remember learning at school that when you stand on the edge of a deep valley, and look down into the tiny river below, that it took millions of years for the river to erode the valley. You know, I never thought of asking my teacher whether there was any other way the valley could have been eroded. For instance, could there have been the possibility that there was a lot more water in the past that caused the canyon to be carved out quickly, but today all that’s left is a small river at the bottom.

This is why I was so excited to see what happened at Mount St Helens after the eruption of this volcano. If you go there today, you’ll see one canyon feature that looks like a 1/40th scale model of the Grand Canyon. Flying through this canyon is the north fork of the Toutle River. Now on the basis of what I was taught at school, you’d ask how long it took the river to erode the canyon. However, the river didn’t erode the canyon. It was formed by a mud flow in one afternoon. And it even carved through hard rock. What caused the canyons and river valleys over the Earth? The answer’s in Genesis: Noah’s Flood.

—excerpt from Answers with Ken Ham, July 31, 1995

Layers in Hours?

Q. Most people have been indoctrinated by evolutionists to believe that it takes millions of years to form layers of rocks, such as those we see at the Grand Canyon for instance. Can these layers form quickly?

A. Certainly. Evolutionists tell us that to form layers of rock as you see in the Grand Canyon, it took millions of years of processes whereby the material is slowly laid down. However, recent research, as a result of the volcanic explosion at Mount St Helens, has shown that layers of rock can be laid down very quickly.

For example, at Mount St. Helens in Washington State, there’s one rock layer that’s 30 feet thick – and it was formed in less than one day – in fact in one afternoon. And the interesting thing is that this layer consists of thousands of individual layers, some only one millimeter thick. Normally, this sort of rock layer would be interpreted as taking a long time.

Now what’s the point of this for creationists? Well, creation scientists have been ridiculed by the evolutionists for saying that the catastrophic event of Noah’s Flood formed most the fossil layers over the Earth very quickly. What happened at Mt. St. Helens on a small scale showed geologists that such layers can form rapidly – just as creationists have been claiming!

—excerpt from Answers with Ken Ham, May 16, 1996

Mount St Helens: Evidence for Creation!

One of the largest volcanic eruptions in North America occurred at 8:32 A.M. on Sunday, May 18, 1980. With an explosive eruption that was the equivalent to twenty millions tons of TNT, the once prominent volcano with an elevation of 9,677 feet quickly lost 1,300 feet of summit elevation.

An Earthquake registering 5.1 on the Richter scale occurred directly underneath the summit. This Earthquake sent a 1/2 cubic mile landslide off the top. One-fourth of this went north into Spirit Lake, displacing water approximately 860 feet above the pre-eruption level. The remaining part of the landslide went down to the west into the Toutle River drainage basin. As the summit and north slope were displaced, super hot liquid flashed to steam resulting in a steam blast. This immense blast, equivalent to 20 million tons of TNT, created a ground hugging slurry of volcanic ash and steam traveling at about 200 mph. This slurry and ash, which was at a temperature of 550 degrees F, totally devastated a wide path of timber on the north side of the mountain and caused trees as far away as 19 miles to topple. The gases and ash unleashed from the volcano are estimated to have exceeded 1,472 degrees F. Over a nine hour period, the plume emitted from the volcano had released energy equivalent to 400 million tons of TNT.

This event, followed by two other catastrophic events at Mount St Helens, provided an amazing opportunity for scientists to learn not only the processes involved in a volcanic eruption, but the geophysical processes for strata, canyon, and petrified forest formation. The table below contrasts evolution and creation theory with the observed conditions created by the eruption of Mount St Helens.

	Evolutionist theory	Creationist theory	Mount St Helens
Canyon Formation:	Canyons are slowly formed by streams cutting their way through rock. This process occurs over thousands of years.	Canyons are formed catastrophically by agents such as massive mud flows. This process occurs over a period of days.	The valley of the Toutle River was blocked by the landslide material deposited in 1980. On March 19, 1982, a massive mud flow gouged out and breached the dam. This giant mud flow cut a whole new series of channels. Part of the drainage basin formed in the Spirit Lake area. The newly formed canyons include a complexity of features such as a flat gully-headed side canyon, a cup-shaped side canyon, and a snaking pattern. Did a river over the course of thousands of years slowly cut its way through these areas to form the canyons? No. The massive mud flows created these channels over a period of days.
Strata Formation:	Stratification occurs from the deposition of particles from air or water to form layers of sediment. The layers form slowly between wet and dry years, between summer and winter, and the boundary between two adjacent layers represents long periods of inactivity. The time scale for producing strata can vary, but it is generally accepted that hundreds or thousands of years are required to transform sediments into rock strata.	Stratification occurs quickly as the result of a catastrophic event, such as a volcanic eruption. The time frame for strata formation is a matter of days, not hundreds or thousands of years.	The walls of the Toutle River canyons were formed by the three events described above. The June 12th pumice deposit was formed by a flow with hurricane-like velocity, resulting in a finely layered formation. This did not take hundreds or thousands of years to form, but formed in a matter of hours (for the middle section), and two years for the entire height! The evolutionist theory for the formation of these walls is that the stream located at the bottom eroded them over thousands of years. What actually happened was that the mud flow that created deposits forming the cliff also created the stream.
Petrified Forest Formation:	The trees from a forest are buried, while erect, by soil, perhaps by catastrophic events such as volcanic flows. For thousands of years soil builds and adds another layer. A new forest develops, and again is buried forming a third layer. This process continues over thousands or millions of years with the logs penetrating through the successive layers.	Floating logs in a lake sink to the bottom. The root end of the trees containing more mass (and thus heavier) sinks first. During and subsequent to a catastrophic event, rapid sedimentation in the lake forms around the log. Additional logs drop to the bottom of the lake at different times creating the appearance that the trees are at different layers. This process takes years to complete, not thousands or millions of years.	The logs left floating in Spirit Lake float upright. This is because the bottom of the tree has a higher mass and density. These floating trees provide convincing evidence that supports the creationist petrified forest theory. This theory is that floating logs become heavier as they absorb water and then sink to the bottom. Due to the rapid sedimentation occurring in the lake as the result of surrounding erosion, the log is quickly covered with sedimentation. The logs drop to the lake bottom at different times. As they are covered with sedimentation, strata form. This happens over a short period of time instead of thousands of years, and is formed from a single forest, not generations of forests.

 

—excerpt from "http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/jeffrey_marr/helens.htm"

Quote

'It is futile to pretend to the public that we understand how an amoeba evolved into a man, when we cannot tell our students how a human egg produces a skin cell or a brain cell!'
— Dr Jerome J. Lejeune, discoverer of the cause of Down's syndrome, Institute de Progenese (Paris).

Science in the News

Current Science (Dec. 4, 1998) has some interesting 'environmental' articles. Along with the articles there are two graphs which track the 'growth of greenhouse gases' (p. 6). What’s wrong with these graphs?

One graph tracks the growth of carbon dioxide measurements since 1775 (one has to assume worldwide), and the other tracks methane measurements since 1775. So, what’s wrong with the graphs?

Who was tracking these measurements prior to the early 1950s when NOAA started measuring CO2 and the early 80s when it starting measuring methane?

Be careful what you read and interpret. Facts are not always what they seem to be.

While the Earth and all that is in it IS deteriorating, the doomsday sayers would have you believe the Earth will kill itself off sooner rather than later. It’s all in God’s time.