Jay Hall
Genesis tells us that the Lord created the animals and plants “after their kind” (Gen. 1:12,21,24). That is, crabs (spiny crab above), alligators and beavers are unique types of creatures and reproduce their own type. Hens don’t lay snake eggs. Alligators and beavers will not cross – now that would be scary.
The idea of essential types of life is widely recognized and clearly conflicts with evolution. Paleontologist Jean Louis Agassiz (who proposed the Ice Age) wrote “Evolution and the Permanence of Type” in the Atlantic Monthly in 1874 and opposed Darwin.1
Now we don’t find turtles in the Cambrian with trilobites, yet we know they coexisted. Was there something special about the Cambrian period that kept turtles from becoming fossils? We do not observe new kinds of life being created now or throughout recorded history. All kinds of life were made during Creation Week. Since most of the geologic formations were deposited during the Flood, we would expect an order in the fossils due to ecological zonation and other factors. That is, most of the rock record was formed rapidly during a global catastrophe.
Gravity flows of sediment that cause turbidity currents and form graded beds are called turbidites. Turbidites form quickly and are one of the most common types of sedimentary rock.2 So, much of the rock record is catastrophic (v. the uniformitarian view). The Burgess Shale in Canada is famous for the exceptional preservation of the soft parts of Cambrian creatures. This is considered to be a turbidite as well.3
The evidence for catastrophe is clear. Pioneer paleontologist Georges Cuvier (d. 1832) held to multiple creations and cataclysms. Cuvier was at least correct in opposing evolution and the uniformitarian geologists. There was only one Creation Week and there is no need to multiply catastrophes. As Henry Morris pointed out, since the individual deposits were formed rapidly and there is no evidence of a long time gap between the layers, then the bulk of the Geologic Column must be part of a single event – the Great Flood.4
Notes:
1) Darwin’s Doubt by Stephen Meyer (HarperCollins, New York, 2014), p. 11.
2) Origins: Linking Science and Scripture by Ariel Roth (Review and Herald, 1998), p. 217.
3) Meyer, p. 45.
4) The Scientific Case for Creation by Henry Morris (Creation-Life Pub., San Diego, 1977), pp. 36-41.
