The Silly World of AiG Creation “Museum,” Answering the Clues of Mount St Helens -- An Overview

As much as Mount St Helens and volcanology fascinates me, I must admit getting a little kick to learn what young-earth creationists are saying about my favorite little mountain.

As I explained in my last blog entry, there is a room inside the newly opened Creation Science “Museum” that is dedicated to explaining the world according to flood geology, as told through the eruption of Mount St Helens. For all of the world catastrophes to obsess over, it seems odd that little young-earth creationists “scientists” and organizations would be most fixated with the 1980 eruption. There had been much larger and more devastating natural disasters that wrought wreck and ruin over human lives, a few one would think, matches precisely with how would one expect to find in a world covered by a flood (like the 2004 Sumatra Earthquake and Indian Ocean Tsunami), but if YECers wish to build their world around the eruption of Mount St Helens, I am the more happier to knock it down for them.

In the flood geology room, there are 10 “clues” from Mount St Helens which a person can draw from to lead to the conclusion that the world is a product of a recent flood, instead of vast periods of time for an ever changing earth. Over the next several days and weeks, I will post commentary on each of these “clues” and why they don’t lend themselves well towards explanations of a recent earth.

These 10 “clues” are:

1. Ash Cloud: A single ash cloud cools the earth a fraction of a degree – A miniature example 0f the earth cooling after the flood.
2. Lava Dome – When 11 years old, a new lava dome dates greater than 350,000 years old by potassium-argon (K-Ar) dating – An example of radioisotope dating difficulties.
3. “Looit” (the word should be Loowit) and Step Canyon – Mudflows cut canyons out of solid rock in just a few years – A miniature example of rapid erosion immediately during and after the flood.
4. Engineers and Little Grand Canyon – Mudflows cut soft sediments in hours – A miniature example of rapid erosion immediately during and after the flood.
5. Pyroclastic Deposits – Pyroclastic flows (fluid hot ash) deposit 25 feet of finely layered sediments in a few hours – A miniature example of rapid sedimentation during and after the flood.
6. Coldwater Delta – Hundreds of feet of delta form in just a few years – A miniature example of delta formation during and after the flood.
7. Elk Recovery – Thousands of elk killed in the eruption are replaced within a decade – A clue about how animals refill the earth after the flood.
8. Plant Recovery – Ecosystems develop in years rather than decades – A picture of the rapid development of ecosystems after the flood.
9. Vertical floating logs – Uprooted trees float vertically and sink to the bottom of Spirit Lake. A clue about how petrified forests and polystrate fossils formed as a result of the flood.
10. Bark Peat – Bark rubs off floating logs and accumulate at the bottom of Spirit Lake – A clue about how coal layers formed as a result of the flood.

Most of these “clues” are just plain silly. A few really does a disservice to educating visitors on geological and biological processes. It should be fun debunking them.