Sunday, January 19, 2014

Mt. Saint Helens and Noah

A "Little Grand Canyon?"


For years, creationists have promoted the lie that erosion features following the Mt. Saint Helens volcanic eruption both "proved" that the Grand Canyon was deposited and carved out in the year of Noah's flood, and of course that Noah's Flood even occurred.

Chief in their "proof" is this photo attributed to Steven Austin of the Institute for Creation Research. For 27 years it has been copied to dozens of creationist websites, blogs, and on-line discussions:



I added the red lines demarking three major deposition features. Austin described it this way, "The little "Grand Canyon of the Toutle River" is a one-fortieth scale model of the real Grand Canyon."(Austin, S. A. 1986. Mt. St. Helens and Catastrophism. Acts & Facts. 15 (7)). The original caption reads,
Figure 4. Twenty-five foot thickness of stratified
pyroclastic flow deposit which accumulated in less than
one day on June 12, 1980. The stratified flow deposit
forms the floor of the pit in Figure 1 which was later
eroded by mudflows to make the cliff exposure here.

("Mount St. Helens and Catastrophism" Steven A. Austin, Presented at the First International Conference on Creationism, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, August 4–9, 1986. Published in: Proceedings of the First International Conference on Creationism, R. S. Crowell, editor), pp. 3–9, 1986).

The errors are many, and vary between just plain not true, and subtly not true.

A sequence of events


The first gross error of the "just pain" variety is that this geology is analogous or related to the Grand Canyon. There are actually three reasons it is not, first is that the there is no competent geologist that would think the pictured Mt. Saint Helens deposit was formed by long process. Second, the evolution of this deposit is still very active and the pictured features are merely temporary. Third, to call this a 1/40th scale model of the Grand Canyon is just stupid.

We see in the photo below that the initial (bottom) component in the creationist's photo was produced by landslides. This will produce a well mixed combination of older volcanic deposits, and a smaller amount of fresh material introduced by the eruption. What this deposit will not be is well sorted by size, nor will the larger fraction be at all rounded.


The landslides removed millions of pounds of rock which had held back the eruption. Once that was gone, the next massive event was the explosive eruption of mostly new material that had been under tremendous heat and pressure. The next photo shows us the volume and energy of that eruptive material.



The material we have seen so far is what formed the lower "strata" that creationists claim models the Grand Canyon. It is from landslides augmented with a small portion of volcanic ash.

With the capping material totally removed, the next phase of the eruption began. This was the release of volcanic "ash."



This is not at all like a wood ash. It is composed of tiny particles of volcanic silica, plus remelted and cooled rock fragments. The ash fell over 12 hours, and covered an area of over one hundred square kilometers. The chemistry, geology, and distribution of the ash is available from the United States Geological Survey article,"Properties of volcanic ash."


From the photos above we see that this ash has a mix of lighter, and darker particles indicating slightly different composition. These randomly sort out as the ash falls and settles on the ground. This forms the middle section of the creationist's photo. The small particles drifted down under the main influences of particle size, particle density, and prevailing wind speed. So, layers formed as the ash fall continued for over 12 hours. These layers were quite different from the water carried sediments most people are familiar with, and creationists like to attribute to "the Noah's flood."

The top section of the creationists "little grand canyon" is a well mixed dark colored sediment that is a combination of all the erupted materials, weathered soils, and a strong plant material fraction. The source is what is called a "lahar flow." The next two photos are of the Mt. Saint Helens lahar flows. The first is an aerial shot showing the extent of a late lahar flow.


The following photo has several interesting features. First note that the flow was much higher than the residual deposit. Next, look at the amount of surface vegetation, tree bark and branches that were ground-up and added to the flow. Finally, looking at the exposed bank we see that a lot of weathered dark organic rich soil was added to the ash and volcanic rock mix. This is the source of the dark "cap" from the creationist's "strata" photo.


The creationist photos included this following image. It is striking in that it totally exposes their fraud. The image that Steven Austin described as "Twenty-five foot thickness of stratified pyroclastic flow deposit which accumulated in less than one day on June 12, 1980" is just a small, and untypical segment of the total mass of the 1980 Mt. Saint Helens eruption. Exposed in an actively eroding river bank, it obviously is a small segment that will not survive for very long either.




One last error of the "just plain not true" sort is that not a single one of these features from the Mt. Saint Helens volcano could possibly have formed underwater in the midst of a global flood.

It also forms a sad example of how creationists cannot bring themselves to tell the truth. Steve Austin and his followers hope to make others believe that real geologists would look at the apparent strata from the eruption so far as something that had taken a long time to have formed. They know that geologists don't think this.

PS: I wanted to add a link to a good Mt. St. Helens blog by Lance Wilson.



15 comments:

Unknown said...

Concise and thorough. I thought it was very well written and comprehensible to even a lay person.

Gary S. Hurd said...

Thanks. I am glad you liked it.

Tami said...

No one said the Grand Canyon layers were laid UNDERWATER during the global flood. Rather were deposited when the flood waters receded. Nice strawman ...

Gary S. Hurd said...

In fact, Tami, "flood geologists" like the scam ICR do claim that the sediments of the Grand Canyon were deposited by the 'flood.' They go on an falsely claim that the canyon itself was cut down into the 'fresh' sediment as the Genesis waters receded.

http://stonesnbones.blogspot.com/2016/05/i-have-been-waiting-for-my-copy-of.html

the wiz said...


I am afraid the reasoning you use in the blog is all too typical of evolutionist sophistry. For example you use the question-begging-epithet, "real geologists" so as to imply that a creation geologist isn't one, but that would be an example of the no-true scotsman fallacy.

Secondly your complaints aren't really consequential. For example your complaint that the features will erode quickly is obtuse, because grand canyon is a much larger scale, and could have eroded since, indeed - a lot. Finally you ignore the fact that the rill and gully features of the small canyon seem identical to features on a larger scale.

Having to prove Noah's flood occurred is actually a red-herring fallacy, because the claim in question is whether catastrophic forces from a large water body, could cause a canyon quickly, and cut it out. We see here with the Mt St Helens canyon, that it can happen quickly, so theoretically we have an example that catastrophe can create a canyon, whereas you have no examples of one being created over eons of time.

Your point about the stratification, is inconsequential because the claim Austin is making is that stratification can occur quickly, so logically speaking it does not matter what portion was stratified. Furthermore flume experiments have shown that facies can form in a current under hydraulic conditions. So the two important points are;

1. We have proof a catastrophe can create a canyon quickly. (your point that "it won't last" is a moot point, logically, since our objective is only to prove it won't take eons of fictional evolutionary time.)
2. We have an example of quick forming strata, which proves it can happen catastrophically and quickly. Again your complaint is that it won't last but this small canyon can hardly be compared to the much larger scale of grand canyon when it comes to erosion-rates, can it?

johnabirk said...

1. Nobody disputes that erosion 'can' occur quickly. My sandcastle got washed away at the next high tide. Unlithified sediments go away quickly. So...
2. What type of lithified sedimentary rock form the strata of the G.C.?
Where in the world do you find an analogy between the G.C. and the unlithified igneous derived sediments present in the M.S.H. situation??

Steve C. said...

I recently started watching "Is Genesis History" on Netflix. Hoping that it would at least offer rebuttals to the geological evidence, it instead started right out with the Mt. Saint Helens/Grand Canyon "proof." They trottedout ehir worst argument right out of the gate. I never got past that part.

johnabirk hits it right on the head. Erosion rates for lithified sediments compared to loose ash are MANY orders of magnitude apart.It happens that I did much of my field work in Michigan and Illinois and am very familiar with rapid deposition and it's erosive processes. Most of the terminal moraines of the last glaciation have been completely eroded within 10K years. All that remain are traces of extinct beach ridges and kettle lakes. These deposits are sorted glacial outflows and many are much coarser that volcanic ask. In a few hundred years there will no longer be a "Little Grand Canyon" to point at since it will all have eroded to an alluvial fan.

As a devout Christian, I am unabashedly opposed to "creation science" because it poses insuperable obstacles to people who might otherwise come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ were it not for this sincere but pig-headed stupidity.

Gary S. Hurd said...

I need to remind my self to up date this to also debunk Snelling on his fraud about radiometric dates from Mt. St. Helens.


http://www.icr.org/article/excess-argon-archilles-heel-potassium-argon-dating/

Gary S. Hurd said...

ICR Mt. St. Helens radiometric claims

At least here is a start;


1996 “Excess Argon within Mineral Concentrates from the New Dacite Lava Dome at Mount St. Helens Volcano”
Steven A. Austin
http://www.icr.org/research/index/researchp_sa_r01/

Debunked;

1998 “Comments on David Plaisted's "The Radiometric Dating Game" - Part 1”
Kevin R. Henke, Ph.D.
http://www.tim-thompson.com/plaisted-review.html

2003 “Young-Earth Creationist 'Dating' of a Mt. St. Helens Dacite: The Failure of Austin and Swenson to Recognize Obviously Ancient Minerals”
Kevin R. Henke, Ph.D.
http://www.noanswersingenesis.org.au/mt_st_helens_dacite_kh.htm

2003 “RATE: More Faulty Creation Science from The Insitutute for Creation Research”
Joe Meert, Ph.D.
http://gondwanaresearch.com/rate.htm



Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Gary S. Hurd said...

I don't allow anonymous comments.

Gary S. Hurd said...

I am slightly minimizing my "no anonymous post" rule since the poster's name is mentioned at the end.

Mt. Saint Helens and Noah

in response to I recently started watching "Is Genesis History" on Netflix. Hoping that it would at least offer rebuttals to the geological evidence, it instead started right out with the Mt. Saint Helens/Grand Canyon "proof." They trottedout ehir worst argument right out of the gate. I never got past that part. johnabirk hits it right on the head. Erosion rates for lithified sediments compared to loose ash are MANY orders of magnitude apart.It happens that I did much of my field work in Michigan and Illinois and am very familiar with rapid deposition and it's erosive processes. Most of the terminal moraines of the last glaciation have been completely eroded within 10K years. All that remain are traces of extinct beach ridges and kettle lakes. These deposits are sorted glacial outflows and many are much coarser that volcanic ask. In a few hundred years there will no longer be a "Little Grand Canyon" to point at since it will all have eroded to an alluvial fan. As a devout Christian, I am , by Steve Clark. May 3, 2019 at 8:04:00 PM PDT

Gary S. Hurd said...

I'll delete the comment above because it is from an anonymous source.

Try again.

Shannon said...

Basically the article says it's a coincidence that the canyon is like the Grand Canyon, which is unscientific and ludicrous. All it does is described the canyon and say, "See, it's a coincidence".

Gary S. Hurd said...

What I think is that you should read this post again.

The "little grand canyon" is nothing at all like the real Grand Canyon.

And there is a fairly recent book, Carol Hill, Gregg Davidson, Wayne Ranney, Tim Helble.
2016 "The Grand Canyon, Monument to an Ancient Earth: Can Noah's Flood Explain the Grand Canyon?" (Kregel Publications).

It is excellent. Most of the authors are Christians, and geologists. They wrote this for Christians being lied to by the creationist frauds.