Tuesday, May 24, 2011

The Grand Canyon and the Great Flood















In a previous post, we discussed evidence that supports Walt Brown's assertions that after the global flood, the thickened continents contained trapped water in many places, and that spectacular canyons were carved when some of these basins full of trapped water violently breached. The Monterey Canyon discussed in that post may well have formed from some of the water formerly filling California's Great Central Valley.

Another major piece of evidence is the Grand Canyon (above). In his book, Dr. Brown lays out all the various theories that attempt to explain the origin of this magnificent geological feature, along with the strengths and weaknesses of each theory.

Visitors to the Grand Canyon are confidently told the conventional uniformitarian explanation that the Colorado River slowly carved out the canyon over millions of years, as if this theory is the only possible explanation and as if it has been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. Movies and books in the park's visitor centers reinforce this impression.

However, there are serious problems with the uniformitarian explanation, and evidence that it has a very difficult time explaining. One of the most difficult problems is the fact that the Colorado River -- which flows from north to south on the east side of the large, raised Kaibab Plateau (green terrain feature shown in the Google map above, marked with the words "Kaibab Plateau HP") -- suddenly makes a hard right turn to the west and blows right through the Kaibab Plateau massif. This is a very unusual thing for a river to do.

On the other hand, if a huge inland sea remained after the thickening of the continents in the aftermath of the global flood discussed in Dr. Brown's theory, then the breaching of that lake would explain many of the features of the Grand Canyon quite satisfactorily. In fact, the Grand Canyon may have been carved by the breaching of two lakes -- the violent escape of the water from the first lake may have undermined the western barrier of a second large lake, leading to its breaching as well. The breathtaking and distinctive terrain to the east of the Grand Canyon (including the buttes and mesas featured in numerous cowboy movies) could be explained as the area that was under the inland sea that breached to form the Grand Canyon.

In the terrain map above, the viewer can see a distinctive "funnel shape" in the upper right area of the map, out of which the first "tail" of the huge canyon appears to originate. This funnel shaped area is evidence that a massive amount of water once violently poured through that funnel and proceeded to carve the Grand Canyon.

This evidence is discussed in greater detail in the Mathisen Corollary. The theory of a global flood within human memory would also explain many unsolved mysteries of mankind's ancient past. Connecting the theory of a global flood with the evidence of an ancient advanced civilization is the premise of the Mathisen Corollary.

The possibility that the Grand Canyon was carved rapidly rather than very slowly, however, undermines certain tenets that many in conventional academia hold sacred. In particular, it undermines the dogma that the features on earth required hundreds of millions of years to form, which is a key supporting argument for the theory of Darwinian evolution. Because of the almost religious devotion to these dogmas, conventional theorists do not appear interested in exploring the significant evidence for a rapid (and relatively recent) explanation for the existence of the Grand Canyon.