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The Grand Canyon is proof of the biblical tale of Noah’s Ark existed, according to a leading theologist.
Dr John Bergsma, a Professor of Theology says the layers of sedimentary rock visible in the mile-deep canyon are proof that the entire continental US was once covered by water.
And that, he says, could only be as part of a global flood.
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Many modern experts think that the flood legend – which is present in a number of cultures from Iran to the Cheyenne tribe in America’s great plains – is based on a single catastrophic event early in humanity’s history, probably in the Black Sea area.
“If we're going to take Noah seriously and the flood seriously, there's basically two options,” Dr Bergsma told the Pints with Aquinas podcast,
“There's a local flood option, and there's a global flood option. if you're going to go with a local flood one of the best candidates is the inundation of the Black Sea Basin which is thought to have happened around 5000 BC.”
In that case, a narrow strip of land near modern Istanbul is thought to have collapsed around 7,500 years ago.
This allowed salt water from the Mediterranean to flood into the Black and Caspian seas, which had previously been shallow freshwater lakes.
That would have made quite an impression on anyone living in the area at the time – who would have then gone on to spread a flood myth around the world.
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Dr Bergsma isn’t convinced by that explanation as a local flood, even a huge one, wouldn’t have required any one to build a massive Ark.
“You could just migrate to high ground, so it doesn't make sense," he continued.
“The Ark really demands a global flood and if you're going to go with the global flood then you need to reinterpret the geological column. There are reasons to believe that a lot of the geological column was laid down very quickly."
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The geological column, the layers of rock beneath our feet, is a geological record of the distant past – and Dr Bergsma says it’s also proof of the Great Flood.
“If you go to the Grand Canyon it's all exposed there because a post Ice Age Lake collapsed and tore out the Grand Canyon so we can see all the the layers down like a layer cake,” he explained.
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In many cases these layers reveal sea creatures “frozen” as if they were buried in a sudden mud-slide.
Dr Bergsma added: “We have fossils of one fish in the act of eating another fish …and a fish giving birth, and there's a lot of a lot of evidence of catastrophic virtually instantaneous fossilisation in the geological column.
“Young Earth Creationists – people who really take the global flood seriously – point to this kind of data as evidence that points to a global catastrophic flood.”
He dismisses the fact that some animals – for example kangaroos – exist in only one part of the world as mere details.
“These are questions that atheists throw at us,” he says, “so it's nice to know that there's a couple of options that the Christians have”.
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