Creation ex nihilo and the Earth

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.