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Index to Creationist Claims,  edited by Mark Isaak,    Copyright © 2005
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Claim CD102.1:

At the Lewis Overthrust in Alberta and Montana, Precambrian limestone rests on top of Cretaceous shales, which conventionally are dated much later. The evidence, and common sense, does not support the explanation that the discontinuity is caused by a thrust fault.

Source:

Price, George McCready, 1913. The Fundamentals of Geology. Mountain View, CA: Pacific Press Publishing Assoc., pp. 7-8, 86-101.
Whitcomb, John C. Jr. and Henry M. Morris. 1961. The Genesis Flood. Philadelphia, PA: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., pp. 185-195.

Response:

  1. Contrary to the claim, geologists do find convincing evidence of a thrust fault between the strata (Strahler 1987, chap. 40). This is true even of young-earth creationists with geology training. For example, Kurt Wise (1986, 136) said that "[a] close examination of the contact between the Cretaceous and Precambrian rocks leaves no doubt that the contact is a fault contact."

  2. The strata on either side of the discontinuity are well ordered and have the order one would expect from a thrust fault.

  3. The photo in Whitcomb and Morris's (1961) book The Genesis Flood showing the "Lewis Overthrust contact line" (Figure 17, p. 190) is not really a photo of the contact line, but of rocks 200 feet above it. The photographs that Whitcomb and Morris used were taken by Walter Lammerts, a botanist and geneticist, on his vacation (Numbers 1992, 216-219).

  4. Whitcomb and Morris (1961, 187) quoted a description of the Lewis Overthrust out of context to give the impression that rocks along the fault are undisturbed. They quoted Ross and Rezak (1959),
    Most visitors, especially those who stay on the roads, get the impression that the Belt strata are undisturbed and lie almost as flat today as they did when deposited in the sea which vanished so many [million] years ago.
    Whitcomb and Morris silently omit the word "million," and the original paper (Ross and Rezak 1959, 420) continues:
    Actually, they are folded, and in certain zones they are intensely so. From points on and near the trails in the park it is possible to observe places where the beds of the Belt series, as revealed in outcrops on ridges, cliffs, and canyon walls, are folded and crumpled almost as intricately as the soft younger strata in the mountains south of the park and in the Great Plains adjoining the park to the east.

Links:

Hanes, Joel. n.d. Geology in error? The Lewis Thrust. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/lewis-overthrust.html

Solum, John G. 2001. Thrust faults. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/lewis/

References:

  1. Numbers, Ronald L., 1992. The Creationists. New York: Knopf.
  2. Ross, C. P. and Richard Rezak, 1959. The rocks and fossils of Glacier National Park: The story of their origin and history. U. S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 294-K.
  3. Strahler, Arthur N., 1987. Science and Earth History: The Evolution/Creation Controversy. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books.
  4. Weber, C. G., 1980. Common creationist attacks on geology. Creation/Evolution 2: 10-25.
  5. Whitcomb, John C. Jr. and Henry M. Morris. 1961. The Genesis Flood. Philadelphia, PA: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co..
  6. Wise, K. P., 1986. The way geologists date! In: Proceedings of the First International Conference on Creationism, R. E. Walsh, C. L. Brooks and R. S. Crowell (eds.), Pittsburgh, PA: Creation Science Fellowship, 1: 135-138.

Further Reading:

Weber, Christopher Gregory, 1980. Common creationist attacks on geology. Creation/Evolution 2: 10-25.
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created 2001-2-18, modified 2005-10-3