This is to introduce a long essay I just posted, which shows as the Grand_Canyon_Creation tab at the top of this blog window, or can be clicked here. It describes the rock layers of the Grand Canyon, with photos, and why they are hundreds of millions of years old. It also analyzes the arguments of Young Earth creationism which claims that the Canyon is only a few thousand years old.
This Young Earth viewpoint is fairly widespread in the American evangelical church. We discuss the implications of creationism for the life of the church, and how to reconcile the Genesis creation narrative with the findings of modern science.
Future posts will delve into some of these Bible/science issues. For now, here are some photos (courtesy Steve Gjerstad) of my daughter going deep in a hiking trip with college friends. From the top, showing the upper horizontal layers that were laid down on the ocean floor at various times between 250 million and 500 million years ago:
The bottom third of the Canyon is the “Inner Gorge”, consisting largely of exposed dark Vishnu Schist. This rock is over a billion years old, and has undergone lots of reworking from heat and pressure under the earth.
Finally at the bottom overlooking the Colorado River, which carved the Canyon:
Letters to Creationists 