For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth. – Genesis 7:4, KJV

As illustrated in The New York Times article Seeing Creation and Evolution in Grand Canyon, evolutionists argue that the only logical, scientific explanation for the Grand Canyon’s formations is time. It took millions of years for the Canyon to form, they claim, and the Canyon’s existence indicates that the Earth is billions of years old. Part of the thinking behind such claims is that gorges, like the Grand Canyon, are formed by rivers (usually found at the bottom of the gorge) slowly eroding the landscape over millions of years.

Here’s the problem: no one has ever observed a gorge being formed over millions of years by river erosion. What people have observed, however, is the formation of gorges in short periods of time by excessive flooding. One such example is Canyon Lake Gorge located in Canyon Lake, Texas, which was cut into the ground by local floodwaters in just a few days in 2002. Another example is Burlingame Canyon near Walla Walla, Washington. According to Creation.com:

In 1904, the Gardena Farming District constructed a series of irrigation canals to provide water to this normally rather arid high desert area.  In March 1926, winds collected tumbleweeds at a concrete constriction along one of the canals situated on an elevated mesa, choking the flow of water, which at 2 m3 (80 cubic ft) per second was unusually high due to spring rains.  To clean out the obstruction, engineers diverted the flow into a diversion ditch leading to nearby Pine Creek.  Before this, the ditch was rather small, at no location greater than 3 m (10 ft) deep and 1.8 m (6 ft) wide, and often with no water in it at all. The abnormally high flow crowded into the ditch and careened along until it cascaded down the mesa in an impressive waterfall.  Suddenly, under this extreme pressure and velocity, the underlying stratum gave way and headward erosion began in earnest.  What once was an insignificant ditch became a gully.  The gully became a gulch.  The gulch became a miniature Grand Canyon.

The Little Grand Canyon in Georgia, which I visited during a high school field trip in the 1980s, has formed within just the last two centuries. As Creation.com reports:

From the 1820s onward, clear-felling of trees (the roots of which deeply stabilize soil), to grow crops such as cotton and corn, set the scene for the start of rampant erosion, as the land was exposed to the ravages of water run-off during the area’s frequent heavy thunderstorms…Heavy rainfall during storms removed vast amounts of sand and silt from the canyon walls to the floor. These were then washed down the braided Turner’s Creek into the Chattahoochee River. On the way, the sediment blocked off the end of neighbouring valleys, forming two lakes known as North and South Glory Holes…Scientists have studied cores to find out how quickly sediments were deposited in the lakes from debris washed down the creek. After they had correlated the core sediment layers with the heavy rainfall records taken at Lumpkin, they tentatively estimated that canyon development started in 1846. It was only 13 years later that the [Providence United Methodist] church had to be shifted to the other side of the road because the canyon had come too close!… Measurements taken between 1984 and 1994 confirm that the canyon is still growing mainly in width. Even now fences have to be relocated and roads rerouted because of these changes.

The point? The scientific method of gaining knowledge requires observation and experimentation to prove a theory to be true. No one has ever observed a canyon being formed over millions of years by the slow process of river erosion, meaning that claims of an ancient Grand Canyon are merely guesses founded on whims. They are not proofs an old, evolved Earth. Observation has proven, on the contrary, that canyons can be formed by rapid erosion due to flood waters cutting violently through the Earth’s surface. Such observation may not be proof of the biblical account of The Flood, but the biblical account of The Flood certainly matches up with what humanity has observed when it comes to canyon creation. The evolutionary account does not.

So, who has the more scientific mind? The Bible believer, whose position matches up with observable reality? Or, the evolutionist, whose faith is founded on something no one has ever seen?