Mount St. Helens: A Catastrophic Wake-Up Call for Geology

On May 18, 1980, Mount St. Helens in Washington State unleashed one of the most powerful eruptions in U.S. history. The blast, equivalent to 400 million tons of TNT, flattened forests, reshaped landscapes, and buried regions under ash and debris. While the event captivated the world, it also became a pivotal case study for creation scientists, revealing how rapidly geological and ecological features can form—challenging the slow-and-steady uniformitarian model that underpins secular geology's deep-time narratives.

This article explores three key divergences: the swift carving of canyons, the rapid deposition of layered sediments, and the astonishing speed of ecological rebound. We'll compare data from creationist observations with secular interpretations, highlighting how the latter often overlooks or minimizes evidence that supports a young earth framework.

Rapid Canyon Formation: Days, Not Millions of Years

One of the most striking outcomes was the creation of deep canyons through catastrophic mudflows, not gradual river erosion. On March 19, 1982, a secondary eruption melted snowpack, unleashing a mudflow that carved the "Little Grand Canyon"—a channel up to 140 feet deep and 150 feet wide—in just one day. This feature, about 1/40th the scale of Arizona's Grand Canyon, features meandering paths and amphitheater-like side canyons, mimicking structures secular geologists attribute to eons of slow erosion.

Other examples include Loowit Canyon (over 100 feet deep, cut through hard basalt in months) and Step Canyon (up to 600 feet deep, eroded in the same period). These demonstrate that high-velocity water and debris can sculpt hard rock via processes like cavitation, far faster than uniformitarian models allow.

Secular scientists acknowledge the mudflows but frame them as localized anomalies, not paradigm-shifters. USGS reports emphasize volcanology lessons, like flank collapses, without integrating rapid erosion into broader timelines—effectively sidelining data that questions millions-of-years canyon formation.

Layered Sediment Deposits: Layers in Hours, Not Ages

The eruption deposited up to 600 feet of sediments, including a 25-foot-thick sequence of finely layered ash beds formed in just three hours on June 12, 1980. Pyroclastic flows at 90 mph sorted materials into thin laminae (alternating coarse and fine bands), cross-bedding, and graded bedding—features identical to those in ancient rock formations like the Grand Canyon's sandstones.

Laboratory tests confirm these layers form from turbulent, high-speed fluids, not slow settling. Yet, uniformitarian geology insists such strata represent seasonal or annual deposits over thousands to millions of years, ignoring rapid analogs like this.

Secular analyses focus on ash distribution and monitoring, rarely addressing how these quick layers undermine deep-time interpretations. This selective emphasis preserves the status quo, even as creationist field studies provide eyewitness-backed evidence.

Quick Ecological Recovery: Life Bounces Back Fast

Post-eruption, Spirit Lake became a natural lab for recovery. Over a million logs floated initially; by 1985, 20,000 upright, rootless ones sank, forming a 3-foot-thick peat layer in five years—mimicking coal beds thought to require millennia. Fungi appeared in weeks, pioneer plants like lupine in months, and pocket gophers accelerated soil turnover, aiding broader regrowth.

By the late 1980s, vegetation patches were visible via satellite, with forests reclaiming areas in decades—far quicker than models predict for post-"millions-of-years" extinctions. This aligns with creationist views of rapid post-Flood recovery, not slow evolutionary adaptation.

Secular ecology notes "biological legacies" like surviving roots aiding rebound but attributes long-term patterns to deep time, dismissing accelerated recovery as exceptional rather than indicative of resilient design. Creationist data, however, shows these "exceptions" mirror biblical catastrophe scales.

Why Secular Science Overlooks This Data

While USGS and others have monitored Mt. St. Helens for 40+ years, advancing volcanology, their reports rarely engage creationist findings. Uniformitarianism remains the lens: rapid events are "anomalies" not redefining history. Yet, ignoring eyewitness-documented rapid processes—like those equating to "millions of years" of work in days—perpetuates a worldview at odds with observable evidence. Creation scientists, drawing from the eruption's real-time lessons, argue these align with a global Flood just thousands of years ago, offering a more coherent explanation for earth's features.

Radiometric Dating: A Faulty Clock for Earth’s Age

Radiometric dating, hailed as the cornerstone of secular geology’s deep-time framework, claims to measure the age of rocks and fossils by tracking the decay of radioactive isotopes like uranium-238, potassium-40, and carbon-14. Secular scientists assert these methods confirm an Earth 4.5 billion years old. However, creation scientists, grounded in a biblical worldview, expose inconsistencies—discordant results, inflated ages in rocks of known age, and untested assumptions—that challenge the reliability of these techniques and support a much younger Earth, consistent with a recent creation and global Flood.

This article examines three key areas where creationist and secular data sharply diverge: discordant radiometric results, inflated ages in rocks of known age, and flawed assumptions about initial conditions. We’ll compare the data, showing how secular science often overlooks evidence that undermines its long-age paradigm.

Discordant Radiometric Results: Inconsistent Ages

Radiometric dating often yields conflicting ages for the same rock sample when different isotopes or methods are used. For example, at the Uinkaret Plateau in the Grand Canyon, lava flows dated by potassium-argon (K-Ar) gave ages ranging from 10,000 years to 2.81 billion years, despite being from the same volcanic event. Creation scientists argue this scatter reflects issues like contamination or argon retention, not deep time. Similarly, uranium-lead (U-Pb) dating of zircon crystals often disagrees with K-Ar or rubidium-strontium (Rb-Sr) results, sometimes by hundreds of millions of years.

Secular geologists dismiss these as anomalies or adjust results using “isochron” methods, assuming consistency over billions of years. Yet, creationist studies, like those from the RATE project, show these discrepancies are common, suggesting decay rates or initial conditions are not as stable as claimed.

Inflated Ages in Known-Age Rocks: A Calibration Crisis

Rocks of known historical age often yield absurdly old radiometric dates. For instance, Mount St. Helens’ 1980 lava dome, formed just decades ago, was dated by K-Ar to 0.35–2.8 million years. Similarly, Hawaiian basalts from the 1801 Hualalai eruption gave K-Ar ages up to 1.6 million years. Creation scientists argue excess argon, trapped during rapid cooling, inflates these ages, a factor secular models rarely account for.

Secular scientists often reject these results as “outliers” or claim contamination, without addressing why modern rocks consistently produce such errors. Creationist data, backed by field tests, shows these methods are unreliable for absolute dating, aligning with a young Earth.

Flawed Assumptions: The Crumbling Foundation

Radiometric dating rests on three assumptions: constant decay rates, known initial isotope ratios, and a closed system free of contamination. Creation scientists challenge these. The RATE project found evidence of accelerated decay in zircon crystals, with helium retention suggesting ages of 4,000–14,000 years, not billions. Initial conditions, like daughter isotopes present at formation, are often unknown, skewing results. Flood-related mixing could contaminate samples, yet secular models assume isolation over eons.

Secular science sidesteps these issues, assuming uniformity despite evidence of catastrophic processes (e.g., Mount St. Helens). Creationist models, rooted in a global Flood, better explain rapid geological changes and inconsistent isotope data.

Why Secular Science Overlooks This Data

Secular geology clings to uniformitarian assumptions, framing radiometric dating as reliable despite persistent anomalies. USGS and other sources emphasize refined techniques like U-Pb dating, ignoring discordant results or modern rock errors as exceptions. Creationist research, like the RATE project, directly tests these assumptions, finding evidence of rapid processes and young ages. By dismissing these findings, secular science upholds a deep-time narrative that conflicts with observed data, while a biblical Flood model offers a coherent alternative.

Dinosaur Soft Tissue Discoveries: Defying Deep Time

The discovery of preserved soft tissues in dinosaur fossils—blood vessels, proteins, and collagen—has sent shockwaves through paleontology. Secular science, rooted in uniformitarian assumptions, claims dinosaurs lived 65–250 million years ago, with fossils too old to retain organic material due to inevitable decay. Creation scientists, however, argue these findings align with a young Earth, rapid burial during a global Flood, and preservation in conditions that defy millions-of-years expectations. This article examines three key areas of divergence: the presence of soft tissues, the persistence of original proteins, and carbon-14 in dinosaur bones, revealing how secular science sidesteps data supporting a biblical timeline.

Soft Tissues in Fossils: Unexpected Preservation

In 2005, Dr. Mary Schweitzer reported flexible blood vessels and red blood cell-like structures in a Tyrannosaurus rex femur, dated by secular methods to 68 million years. Since then, similar finds—elastic tissues, bone cells (osteocytes), and hemoglobin fragments—have been documented in hadrosaur, triceratops, and other dinosaur bones. Creation scientists note that soft tissues degrade rapidly under normal conditions, with lab studies showing collagen breakdown in years to decades, not millions of years. Rapid burial in anoxic, mineral-rich environments during a global Flood could preserve such tissues, aligning with a young Earth.

Secular researchers propose preservation mechanisms like iron-mediated crosslinking to explain these anomalies, but these are speculative and untested over millions of years. They avoid rethinking deep-time assumptions, framing soft tissues as exceptions rather than evidence of a flawed timeline.

Original Proteins: Defying Decay Rates

Proteins like collagen, elastin, and hemoglobin have been identified in dinosaur fossils, confirmed by mass spectrometry and antibody tests. Collagen, a tough protein, degrades in less than 30,000 years under ideal conditions, per experimental data. Yet, secular science claims these proteins survived 65+ million years. Creationist studies, including those by the Institute for Creation Research, argue such preservation is consistent with fossils buried thousands, not millions, of years ago during a catastrophic Flood.

Secular explanations rely on unproven preservation mechanisms, like mineral encasement, without addressing why proteins remain intact across supposed eons. These theories often ignore creationist data showing rapid mineralization in Flood-like conditions.

Carbon-14 in Dinosaur Bones: A Young Earth Signal

Carbon-14 (C-14), with a half-life of 5,730 years, should be undetectable after 100,000 years. Yet, C-14 has been found in multiple dinosaur bones, including Allosaurus, Triceratops, and Acrocanthosaurus, yielding ages of 16,000–41,000 years. Creation scientists argue this indicates recent burial, consistent with a Flood event 4,000–6,000 years ago. Tests by the RATE project and others confirm C-14 in fossils worldwide, ruling out contamination in controlled settings.

Secular science dismisses C-14 as contamination from modern carbon or lab errors, despite rigorous protocols showing otherwise. They rarely engage with creationist data, maintaining a 65-million-year dinosaur extinction timeline.

Why Secular Science Overlooks This Data

Secular paleontology, tied to a deep-time framework, marginalizes soft tissue and C-14 findings as anomalies or errors, proposing untested preservation theories to uphold dinosaur ages of 65+ million years. Creationist research, from sources like Answers in Genesis and the Institute for Creation Research, leverages these discoveries to argue for rapid burial during a global Flood, consistent with a young Earth. By ignoring robust data—soft tissues, intact proteins, and detectable C-14—secular science clings to a paradigm that struggles to explain these findings, while a biblical model offers a coherent alternative.