Four million people per year visit the Grand Canyon and ponder at the incredible forces which cut this chasm out of the earth. Did the small river at the bottom carve through the many layers of sediment over eons of time or did a catastrophic event carve the canyon more rapidly? These are the competing explanations for the origin of the Grand Canyon. But how could a flood have accomplished so much? As the following examples show, moving water has enormous erosion capabilities.

In the spring of 1983 the spillway tunnel of the Glen Canyon Dam had to be operated to allow drainage of water from Lake Powell. When one of the spillways was fully opened the flow pattern changed and blocks of rock were seen hurtling out of the spillway exit. The water became red with dissolved sandstone and there were noticeable earth tremors. The spillway was immediately closed for inspection. The survey team discovered incredible erosion damage to the spillway tunnel cause by cavitation of the flowing water. In a matter of minutes, flowing water had penetrated the three foot thick, steel reinforced, walls and ripped holes into the surrounding bedrock. A 150 foot diameter hole had been cut into the rock requiring 63,000 cubic feet of concrete to repair the damage.

In the scab lands of eastern Washington is an even more dramatic example of the incredible erosion force of rapidly flowing water. An ancient lake was blocked at the end of the ice age by an ice dam in northern Idaho. When the water breached the dam it ripped through Montana, Idaho, and Washington leaving 16,000 square miles of scarred terrain and deeply cut valleys. At one location the flood cut a 50 mile long trench 6 miles wide and 900 feet deep through solid rock! An estimated 10 cubic miles of Columbia Plateau basalt was eroded in a matter of hours by this single event. The process by which moving water can cause such extensive damage is illustrated above.

Could the Grand Canyon have been carved out by a similar catastrophic events and processes? Many qualified geologist are coming to believe this is exactly what has happened. These geologists have proposed that a large area of the Southwestern United States was covered by water which apparently broke through a natural dam and very rapidly eroded much of the Grand Canyon to its current depth. The water for this massive erosion came from gigantic lakes left on the plateau when the worldwide flood receded.

There are many other examples of moving water accomplishing massive geological changes. Yet all of these local examples pale in comparison with the effect a worldwide flood would have in regional geological features. If there were a worldwide flood, the illustrated destructive forces would have been in operation during and subsequent to this event. The result would be the rapid accumulation of very thick sedimentary deposits over massive regions. During such an event, valleys would be filled with sediment thousands of feet thick.

Neither the inability of moving water to produce the massive geological features nor the lack of evidence for a worldwide flood prevents geologists from accepting the Biblical flood account as reality. Could it be a philosophical version to accepting that which is supernatural in its origin? Would a geologist who accepted a worldwide flood for the formation of our planet’s geologist features be welcomed into the present science community? Or would this “politically incorrect” interpretation cause him to be ostracized? To accept a worldwide flood as a factual event would profoundly affect other areas of science, including biology, paleontology, and anthropology. Would such an interpretation be allowed by the scientific community?

Source: http://www.drdino.com/articles.php?spec=36

Wolfwalker, of course Bush isn’t directly responsible, your attempt to distract from the main point was childishly transparent. And yes, this is an undisguised Bush-bashing post, yours was a thinly veiled Bush apologist post.

Apologies, I know this is a political rather than a scientific rant, however, this is the real issue, it is nothing to do with science

Seriously, though! People need to be kicked in a very uncomfortable place, and I don’t mean the back of a station wagon. The only thing keeping me from calling Bush the Antichrist is the fact that he could never, in a million years, bring about world peace.

That doesn’t keep me from calling him Satan, though….

Couple that with other policy decisions out of NPS headquarters affecting First Amendment issues – like the upholding of religious plaques with bible verses at several locations, the removal of “objectionable” material from the Lincoln Memorial video, etc – and there is a pattern of top-down decisions catering to religious interests at the expense of rationality, scientific integrity, and historical accuracy (see Lincoln video issue).

The NPS is a subsidiary of the Department of the Interior, which is an Executive Branch government agency, so it is under the authority of the President of the United States. If he is not directly making the individual decisions (and nobody is saying that he is), he has appointed the people running the show who are making the decisions, and he has enacted Executive Orders to circumvent Congress and enact the “faith-based” policies. This book is not an isolated incident, but one instance out of a pattern of behavior.