Seeing Creation and Evolution in Grand Canyon By JODI WILGOREN
Published: October 6, 2005 Tom Vail, who has been leading
rafting trips down the Colorado River here for 23 years,
corralled his charges under a rocky outcrop at Carbon Creek and
pointed out the remarkable 90-degree folds in the cliff
overhead. Geologists date this sandstone to 550 million years
ago and explain the folding as a result of pressure from
shifting faults underneath. But to Mr. Vail, the folds suggest
the Grand Canyon was carved 4,500 years ago by the great global
flood described in Genesis as God's punishment for humanity's
sin. ''You see any cracks in that?'' he asked. ''Instead of
bending like that, it should have cracked.'' The material ''had
to be soft'' to bend, Mr. Vail said, imagining its formation in
the flood. When somebody suggested that pressure over time could
create plasticity in the rocks, Mr. Vail said, ''That's just a
theory.'' ''It's all theory, right?'' asked Jack Aiken, 63, an
Assemblies of God minister in Alaska wh