Two centuries ago the first scientific geologists realized
that the Earth was much older than the 6,000 years estimated by biblical
scholars. The most compelling early observation was made by James Hutton (1726-1797)
when he visited Siccar Point in Scotland. Hutton and others had already
established that sandstone, limestone, and shale were produced by the
accumulation of sediment in deep basins, and that these formed layers
relatively flat and horizontal to the earth’s surface. What Hutton saw at
Siccar Point was that sediments had filled a marine basin, the sediment had
cemented and compressed (lithified) into sandstones and shale, the resulting
rock mass had been uplifted and tilted nearly 90 degrees and then exposed to
erosion, the eroded massive block then was again submerged becoming the bottom
rock of a new marine basin, which then accumulated new sediments in horizontal
layers or strata, now nearly perpendicular to the older strata. Further, these
later strata also had time to lithify and then the entire mass was again
uplifted, tilted and eroded.
These rock features, called Hutton’s unconformities, can be
found all over the world. Some such as the Grand Canyon Unconformity, document
in rock the tilting of most of North America.
Hutton realized what is now obvious, that these events
could not have occurred in 6,000 years, or as the result of a cataclysmic flood
such as described in Genesis.