FLAT LAYERS (FLAT GAPS) INDICATE EXTINCTION OR RAPID LAYERING
Flat gap rock layers are marked by a surprising lack of erosion. Such flatness indicates either extinction or rapid layering. Neither of these two options play well with Darwinian timetables as extinction stalls the evolution of species and rapid rock layering steals millions of years required for evolution. Ironically, between these flat gap’s (the air between the layers) evolution adds 10, 100, or even 200+ million years of time! In doing so, they suggest that these flat rock layers that laid exposed to the elements for millions of years, never experienced any substantial erosion from wind, water, insects, or roots. Such claims require a suspension of logic.
Flat layers also called “Flat Gaps” or “Paraconformities” are shown (in the image from The Grand Canyon abovebetween the whitish Coconino sandstone overlaid with the reddish Hermit Shale as a completely flat layer. This provides evidence which reveals no sign of insect or root erosion in the layers (called bioturbation) from living organisms which indicates extinction and not evolution.
Flat Gaps are evidence of either mass extinction or very rapid processes potentially likely caused by a global flood catastrophe.
If this fragile sandstone, supposed by geologic ages as being more than twenty million years old, we would reasonably expect to find massive erosion but we do not. We find an abrupt flatness defying the landscapes around it, standing in fierce objection to the interpretation that millions of years passed as it sat flat and virtually untouched for millions and millions of years.
Such Flat Gaps pose a serious challenge to the idea of long geologic ages because uniformitarian naturalistic assumes to find constant erosion, tectonic activity, bioturbation, and even drifting of continents as time passes. All these events would equate to either additional sedimentary deposition or erosion but certainly not the flat gaps found. These Flat Gaps found all around the world on every continent indicating again that the past consisted of either a mass extinction of live which caused no bioturbation or very rapid sedimentary layering. Both of these are best answered by a massive flood.
Additionally, these gaps have missing layers of sediments which are presumed (elsewhere) to represent eons of time (millions to hundreds of millions of years). See figure 1. By applying millions of years to these “missing” flat gaps as a means to maintaining the theorized eons of geologic time is nonsensical.
Figure 1. Diagrammatic cross section through sedimentary layers illustrating a flat gap or paraconformity. The paraconformity is the thin dark line in the middle of the diagram. Note the darker grey layer designated “Distant layer … ” to the right that was laid down before the overlayer. Uniformitarian geologists assume that it would have taken a very long time to deposit the “Distant layer … ”, and the length of that time determines the duration of the gap between the underlayer and the overlayer. If it is assumed that it took 20 Ma to deposit the “Distant layer … ”, the gap is assumed to represent 20 Ma. The irregular white line in the underlayer illustrates the erosion that would be expected during such a long time, but the irregular erosion is essentially absent.
“The complete absence of the deep erosion expected at these gaps over their alleged long ages is very difficult to explain within the long-age uniformitarian paradigm. On the other hand, flat gaps are easily explained when interpreted within the worldwide Flood framework described in the Bible, which deposited most of the sedimentary record of the earth.”
Valley of the Colorado River viewed from Dead Horse Point in Utah. The arrows point to two gaps (paraconformities) of about 10 and 20 Ma each. Some 300 m and 600 m of erosion respectively could be expected in these time-frames. The canyon is 600 m deep. At the upper arrow the Middle Triassic is missing, while at the lower arrow part of the top of the Permian is missing. Palo Duro Canyon in northern Texas exposes a flat gap between the Pliocene Ogallala Formation at the top resting on the Triassic Trujillo Formation. At the tip of the top arrow, the Jurassic, Cretaceous, Paleocene, Eocene, Oligocene, and Miocene are missing. At the tip of the lower arrow, the Lower and Middle Triassic are missing between the Late Triassic Tecovas Formation that lies above and the Permian Quartermaster Formation below. On an average, on the basis of standard geologic time, one would expect some 6,000 m, and 480 m of erosion at these flat gaps.
View of the Morcles Nappe in the valley of the Rhone in Switzerland. The 45 Ma gap (probably more) is at the bottom of the slightly darker layer you can follow across the figure from the tip of the arrow. Here much of the Upper Cretaceous and Paleocene are missing. Due to the recumbent folding of the Morcles Nappe, the layers at this locality are in reverse order but the contact is still flat.
Can Theism and Naturalism be mutually exclusive? While such distinctions are commonly considered completely unrelated, such convictions are ultimately based on a faulty understanding of the positions.
