Was the World Created in Six Days?

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.