What Would We Expect to Find
if the World had Flooded?

1. We would expect to observe a uniform, worldwide blanket of randomly sorted boulders, cobbles, sand, and silt overlain by a layer of clay. But this worldwide blanket does not exist.
   
   
2. We would expect to see no sorting in regard to sediment type and size. No creationist has ever explained how the Flood could have deposited layers of heavy sediment on top of layers of lighter sediment.
   
   
3. There would be mega-ripples everywhere such as are seen along the Columbia River formed by the rapid movement of the waters off the land surface. No mega-ripples evident.
   
   
4. There would be no segregation of fossils. If all organisms lived at the same time, we would expect to see trilobites, brachiopods, ammonites, dinosaurs, and mammals (including humans) all randomly mixed together in the worldwide blanket described in point #1. This is not what is observed. The fossil record exhibits an order consistent with the theory of evolution (but inconsistent with creationism).
   
   
5. There are at least five major extinction events, a situation where fossils are abundant below a certain line within the geological layers, but totally absent above that line. There is no way to explain these geological features with a global flood.
   
   
6. Igneous (volcanic) rocks, if they existed at all in flood sediments, would all be in the form of pillow lava, which are extruded underwater. In reality, there are very clearly defined volcanic layers, from which radiometric dates are obtained. So how can we have flat layers of vocanic rock, compressed between other layers, occuring during an "ultramassive flood"?
   
   
7. Metamorphic rocks, as they are formed from previously existing rocks, would not exist in the post-Flood geological layers because the necessary heating and cooling require millions of years for large bodies. All radioactive isotopes which would not have completely decayed away in, say 10,000 years, would exist in nature because those with a moderately short half-life would not have had time to decay.
   
   
8. No varves, ice cores, tree ring ensembles, coral cores, or other examples of periodically accumulated accretion should not be found to extend back beyond the time of the Flood. But they do. Ice cores, drilled from stable ice plains, show 40,000 years of annual layers. Varves, which are mineral deposits, show millions of years of annual layers.
   
   
9. Because of the catastrophic force of the marine environment and the lack of exposure of the land during the flood, we would expect to find no examples at all in the geologic record of the following delicate fossils or evidence for land deposition
   
   >>fossilized dinosaur nests ant nests termite nests bird nests (of a relative of the flamingo in the Green River Formation in Wyoming)
   
   >>fragile wasp nests
   
   >>complex rodent burrows
   
   >>animal dung left in its original position of deposition as it hardened on dry, solid ground trackways of land animals
   
   >>raindrop imprints fossilized mudcracks
   
   >>fragile things preserved as fossils, such as bird feathers (Confuciusornis) ferns (adjacent to coal beds) insects (Oligocene lake beds near Florrisant, CO), oxidized rocks layers (redbeds) because there is insufficient oxygen in the water to oxidize (bring up) the iron present. All these fragile features are found deep in the geological record.
   
   A catastrophic flood would have destroyed them. I would especially like you to consider how raindrop imprints and mudcracks could have become fossilized in a sudden, massive flood.
   
   
10. We would expect to find no thick subsurface evaporites (halite, sylvite, and gypsum). It would be impossible to precipitate them from a marine environment. There would be genetic evidence of a recent population bottleneck in all extant species. There is no such genetic bottleneck, dating from 6-10 thousand years ago.
    
    
11. There would be some remnant evidence of pre-Flood civilization(s) and obviously pre-Flood humans. The Institute for Creation Research has not established any criteria for what a pre-Flood human might be like (instead consigning all "degenerate" fossils like erectus and neanderthal to post-Flood).
    
    
12. There would just be one age from the top to the bottom of the geological column. In other words, whether you pick a rock from the top of the Grand Canyon or the very bottom, they both should be dated at 10,000 years old.In fact there are very real increases in age as one digs deeper down in the column. If the flood DID happen, then all the geological stratum were laid down in just one year, containing all those pesky bones. That evidence supports evolution.
    
    
13. We should expect that all mountain ranges (being all formed during or immediately after the Flood) should show similar, near equal amounts of erosion. They don't. If the flood occurred about 10,000 years ago, the polar ice caps should have no more than 5000 annual layers. Or, at the very least, there should be massive evidence of melting and salt water intrusion at that time. There is no evidence of massive melting.
    
    
14. Had a flood occurred, all plants alive today should have seeds which could remain viable in hot, humid conditions for a year, or which can survive prolonged submersion in sea water. All plants should be able to grow with little or no topsoil. In reality, most can't.
    
    
15. In regard to fossils, there are three very important predictions if the Global Flood really occurred, and is responsible for depositing fossils within the strata:
    
    A) None of the marine fossils would be encrusted by other fossils, or show any sign of boring by organisms after death.
    
    B) None of the vertebrate fossils should show signs of scavenging or prolonged weathering by exposure on the ground.
    
    C) None of the vertebrate fossils should be encrusted by pedogenic carbonate, such as the fossils in the Karoo of South Africa and the Badlands of South Dakota are.
    
    In other words, if the Flood happened, fossil vertebrates should consist only of freshly broken bone exhibiting no sign of scavenging or of having lain on the ground or sea bottom for a long period of time.
    
    
16. Zoogeography should show a dispersal pattern demonstrating that the point of origin of all species is in the Middle East (the disembarking point for Noah's ark). It doesn't. It shows different points of origins for different species.
    
    
17. The Hawaiian Islands and associated coral structures should all be found to be more recent than the Flood. They aren't.
    
    
18. There should be isotopes with half lives of less than 80 million years in the biosphere. The fact that there are none argues very strongly for an earth with an age far older than 10,000 years. (This point is not so much about the flood in particular, but presents an irrefutable argument in favor of an ancient earth. . This evidence has never been refuted by any creationist.(Click here to read a technical explanation: http:/www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Temple/9917/isotopes.html
    
    
19. Fossilized plants should be represented equally throughout all the geological layers, with no sorting from 'primitive' to 'modern'. This is not the case-- there is clearly segregation of plant fossils from primitive to modern represented in the geological column. Plants have no means by which to "run to higher ground", the infantile method that creationists suggest was used by animals to sort themselves in order of intelligence.

- Modified with permission from the web site by Ken Harding: "What Would We Expect to Find if the World had Flooded? "

For greater detail visit his website at:
http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Temple/9917/evolution/evolve.html