This argument holds no water (pun intended
).
If the canyon were the cause of a massive flood, you wouldn't see the orderly winding, river-like crag that we have today. The waters running off would leave an imprint very similar to that we see in floodplains. Basically, it would be like a big, wide, mud slick.
You wouldn’t see such a localized canyon either, because the rock the canyon is carved from is uniform for miles around it. Why would the waters only carve a hole in that specific location?
To shine more detail on the matter lets take a look at the wiki again:
A canyon, or gorge, is a valley walled by cliffs. Most canyons originate by a process of long-time erosion from a plateau level, with a stream gradually carving out its valley. The cliffs form because harder rock strata that are resistant to erosion and weathering remain exposed on the valley walls. Canyons are much more common in arid areas than in wetter areas because weathering has a lesser effect in arid zones. Canyons' walls are often formed of resistant sandstones or granite.
So you see, if the entire area was covered by water, we would not see a river like canyon but rather the entire plato carved away to nothing. This would give it the resemblance of a flood.
Furthermore, were it the cause of runoff from the flood, you would have to explain why the canyon is a) localized around the Colorado River b) is the only spectacular canyon in the area.
Certainly all the flood waters wouldn't have concentrated themselves into one single stream? Even more unlikely considering that the entire area is essentially flat as a pancake.
Imagine scraping something with a knife. You shave off a wide area of the top right? this is the action we see in a flood, slice something with a knife and we see a long, deep, slender gash. This is the action we expect with a river.
This whole discussion has alerted me to another contradiction of the Noahic flood.
Why are rivers still here?
Wouldn't a gigantic flood, capable of carving through solid rock and destroying all of humanity, also wipe away the channels and wells that make up the worlds lakes and rivers?
Why is the Nile still here? Why is the Amazon still here unchanged?
Yikes! The contradictions are falling like dominoes in my head... how did the Amazon forest survive a world wide flood?
Those trees can’t grow in salt water. Not only that, if they all died by submersion, how on earth could they have all grown back in time?
It seems like flood theologians have allot more explaining to do far beyond how a runoff from a world wide flood, coalesced into one single river, carving one single gash, in a perfectly flat plato.
This message has been edited by Yaro, 10-13-2004 03:39 PM