Mount Rushmore ... Evidence of Design

Originally published in Creation 18, no 2 (March 1996): 19.

Mount Rushmore, in the Black Hills of South Dakota, USA, is a spectacular memorial to four United States Presidents: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt.

Sculpted from a massive granite bluff, the memorial covers about five square kilometres (two square miles), with each head measuring about 18 metres (60 feet) from forehead to chin — making the individual sculptures twice as high as the head of the Great Sphinx of Giza in Egypt.

To suggest these images just happened to appear on the granite face as the result of millions of years of rain, wind, and frost would of course be ludicrous. It is impossible to imagine that the recognizable images of four great American leaders could appear by accident, regardless of the time allowed for such a process.

In fact, hundreds of thousands of tonnes of rock were blasted and chiselled from the rim of Mount Rushmore as the heads were painstakingly sculpted from 1927 to 1941 by famous American sculptor Gutzon Borglum and his workers.

The Mount Rushmore National Memorial is the product of an intelligent designer, as surely design points to a designer.

It's obvious then, that the Mount Rushmore National Memorial is the product of an intelligent designer, as surely design points to a designer?

How is it then, that those who subscribe to the theory of evolution can believe the memorial itself was deliberately designed, when the very men it honours were not?

They will tell you man's existence — and the existence of the Presidents immortalized in rock on Mount Rushmore — is nothing more than the result of a series of unexplained, chaotic, biological accidents, interacting with whatever environments happened, by chance, to be there!

No one doubts the memorial is the work of an intelligent designer, yet much greater design and laws in the universe are overlooked, or disregarded, by people who believe that evolution produced everything in existence, with no intelligence or design behind it.

This makes no sense.

History tells us Gutzon Borglum was the designer of the Mount Rushmore National Memorial; the Bible tells us God is the Designer of the universe, and man was made (designed) in his image (Genesis 1:26).

Newsletter

Get the latest answers emailed to you.

I agree to the current Privacy Policy.

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA, and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Answers in Genesis is an apologetics ministry, dedicated to helping Christians defend their faith and proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ.

Learn more

  • Customer Service 800.778.3390