Remembering spill over Erosion of the Grand Canyon

Share the screen, that's my computer.

Okay, or you can push stop. Okay, I'm gonna pray and announce, just introduce Steve, all right, here we go. All right, guys, I'm gonna open in prayer. Lord God, thank you for this day. Thank you for this meeting and all those who put it together and that we have such a wonderful guest speaker.

May we learn from him and glean from the knowledge that God has gifted him with, and be with us this night, Lord, and may the words that come from Steve's mouth come from you, and may we see the apologetics and the creation that you have given us, Lord.

In Jesus' name, amen. All right, so I guess the first time I met Steve Austin was Dr. Steve Austin was on, oh, what was it?

Anzobrego Desert Field Trip.

Yeah, is Joyce frozen? Okay, everyone's on mute.

She's muted.

Yeah, okay, so yeah, I met Steve Austin on the Anzobrego Spring Trip with the Creation and Earth History Museum in Santee, California, and I was just, when I heard him and saw him climb those mountains, and he was just an inspiration, and I just got so much more excited about learning about geology and the formation of the Grand Canyon, and just to see the evidence, and to know that we have a fault line going through like just an hour from my house was just amazing in itself.

So you guys are gonna love hearing him, and hold your questions till the end, and he has several trips coming up, one next year, but one this year that a couple of our girls in our group are attending, Mount St. Helens.

It's June McGriffey, and yeah, June McGriffey is attending the group, and then also Diane will be going. I think so far, maybe Robin will be going as well.

Eric was doing that, it's not Steve.

No, actually, Steve is one of the speakers, and Eric is not doing it, and I'll let Steve tell you about that. Steve is a part of it, but it's actually a Living Waters organization.

Okay, all right, I'm muting now.

Yeah, without any further ado, Dr. Steve Austin, go ahead and take over.

Okay, well, I do Zoom meetings a lot, and sometimes I do PowerPoint, and what I'd like to share with you informally is a little bit of what is going on with my new paper, and the paper is called, what?

Remembering Spillover Erosion of the Grand Canyon, and that paper has just been submitted to Answers Research Journal, and their technical journal, and so I'm gonna show some of the graphics from that paper as I talk about Remembering Spillover Erosion from Grand Canyon.

So all you gotta do is push this share screen button, and I can bring up my desktop, I hope. Host disabled participating screen sharing, okay.

What?

Okay, it says host disabled participant screen sharing, so it has me as a participant.

Let me make you a host.

A host.

Okay, wait.

Host has a completely different meaning for me.

Different screen sharing.

Yeah, we're working on it.

Okay.

Joyce is doing that, and normally I...

While you're, while they're working on that, Steve, would you care to tell them what the testing you're doing in Israel, that you've been there a couple times?

Okay.

Steve, you are the host now. You are the host.

Okay, now I'm ready to go, okay, and I can share my screen, okay. I see, I think I see it. I saw I push share here, it may work. Okay, do you see a screen?

Yep, we do.

Okay, I'm gonna show a slideshow from beginning. Okay, let's see. Remembering spillover erosion at Grand Canyon, did you see that?

Yep.

Okay, good, and nice girl, Stacey's able to talk to me, but the rest of you, I guess, are muted, so I'm gonna spend about 20 minutes working on this PowerPoint, and then we'll open up for questions. How's that sound?

20, maybe 25 minutes. How's that sound?

Excellent, thank you.

Okay, well, let's say there's three authors on the paper, myself, Dr. Edmund Holroyd, physicist with, retired with the Bureau of Land Management, and David R. McQueen, an educator in Louisiana, and the three of us wrote this paper.

So if I go to the next slide, I'll see what happens. There it is. Okay, do you see my, there we go, I can go like this, maybe. Okay, I see.

Yes, we got it, we got it.

You can see my text on the screen.

Yep, spillover.

When you talk about erosion at Grand Canyon, there are three theories or hypotheses about the origin of Grand Canyon, and you need to very carefully consider these three different explanations, and they're in historical order.

Spillover is number one. It was first to be proposed. Antecedency is number two, and piracy is number three. Now, let me talk briefly about the definitions of these terms. Yeah, the idea of spillover is the terrain in Arizona at one time was very uneven, and there was basins, and there were, between basins, there were ridges, and those ridges were overtopped by flowing water that filled basins, and that spillover cut the basin from the basin through the arched-up area, what we call the Kaibab Upwarp, and one of these main spillways from spillover was Grand Canyon.

That's the spillover explanation for Grand Canyon. Believe it or not, it was the first to be proposed. The second theory to be proposed was the antecedency idea. The antecedency idea was proposed by John Wesley Powell, who took a raft trip through Grand Canyon, wasn't the first Grand Canyon raft, wasn't the first Grand Canyon geologist, but he had the idea of antecedency.

Different than spillover, Powell's idea was that the uneven terrain of Arizona formed after the river was established. In other words, there was an old river, and the path of the river was established over a low plain, and then the terrain in northern Arizona was lifted, and the lifting of the terrain created the erosion, and so there's an old river and the establishment of the drainage.

That's called antecedency, and antecedency goes back almost as early as spillover, and I'll talk about that a little bit, but certainly by 1869, 1870, antecedency was proposed, and then later, after the turn of the century, the idea of piracy, stream piracy, and headwater erosion was suggested, and William Morris Davis, a famous geologist at Harvard University, became famous for his ideas of evolution of landscapes.

The idea was that there was an uneven landscape with an upper river basin that flowed through where I'm pointing. Maybe I can see this here, but do you see the pointer on the screen there, Stacey?

Yes, it's Robin, and yes.

Okay, Robin. Okay, I'm pointing to, yeah, there you go. I'm pointing to the upper basin, and that's where there was a river, and that river was flowing some different direction, and then what happened is a Grand Canyon gully formed, and that gully formed from west to east through the Kaibab upwarp, and it created the piracy and the diversion of the Colorado River from the upper drainage basin into the lower drainage basin through this upwarp.

That's the idea of stream or river piracy and headward erosion. So gullies eroded headward through elevated terrain and established the completely different course of the Colorado River. Those are the three theories for the erosion of Grand Canyon.

Here I am showing you the satellite oblique image of Grand Canyon. You can see Grand Canyon Village, south rim of Grand Canyon, and across the canyon, six to 18 miles wide, you can see the width of the canyon, and then, of course, the whole upper part of the Grand Canyon.

This is amazing canyon, four to 18 miles wide, 277 miles long.

Troy, can you mute Stacey?

Okay, we're still going here.

Okay.

Here's what happened at no name point 32 years ago. And at no name point 32 years ago, that's April 10, 1988. Okay, believe it or not, I know the date. I know the time. At 9 a .m. in the morning, we convened a group, and you'll see something interesting here.

Three Greyhound buses and a whole bunch of streetcars showed up. 140 people appeared at no name point, and I gave a lecture on spillover, the idea that ponded drainage occurred on the east side of the Kaibab Upwarp, and that the lake that was formed breached the dam and drained catastrophically.

It was a breached dam. That's the explanation I offered 32 years ago, and it was a worship service. It was really a great worship service. I remember we sang, When I walk through forest, wander through forest glades, and stand on mountains, and how great thou art, we sang the song.

And it was a really good experience. But anyway, 32 years ago, I started talking about spillover. Now, here's my story. My story, I think you can see it here. Here's my story, the brief history of spillover.

Grand Canyon spillover was proposed by John Newberry in 1861. In 1861, John Newberry was on the first railroad survey expedition of the Southwest United States, and he came up the Colorado River exploring Grand Canyon.

And he issued a report, and he said, it looks like basins were filled with water. There was no ancient Colorado River till the river spilled over the divides between the basins and made the Colorado River drainage.

John Newberry had a brilliant idea. The first geologist to ever see the Grand Canyon understood the spillover explanation, which is the one that I'm talking to you today. So 160 years ago, John Newberry, a man of incredible genius, understood after going through the terrain, a good hypothesis for the origin of Grand Canyon.

Lake sediment was identified below river gravel by Elliott Blackwelder in 1834, I believe it was. Yeah, in 1834, Elliott Blackwelder. And he saw limestone lake sediment, and then he saw river gravel in the survey of the lower Colorado River around Lake Mead.

And so Elliott Blackwelder proposed that spillover was the explanation for the Grand Canyon on the basis of what he saw in the lower river drainage. And he already knew that John Newberry had proposed it 70 years before.

And so Elliott Blackwelder, Chairman of the Geology Department at Stanford University, sketched a spillover explanation for the whole Colorado River drainage basin. There was a student of his, Elmer Ellsworth, in 1934, who had already been studying the Mojave Desert.

And he found a spillover canyon called Afton Canyon in the Mojave River drainage in Mojave Desert. And he called it a Little Grand Canyon. Elmer Ellsworth proposed that the Little Grand Canyon of the Mojave Desert formed by lake spillover.

And he added about 1 10th the scale of the real Grand Canyon. So he proposed a Little Grand Canyon. That's Elmer Ellsworth. He went on to be a successful geologist, by the way. His theory was largely forgotten though.

Beta Hochi Formation was defined as a lake deposit by Howell Williams in 1936. 1936, they identified the lake sediment in Northeastern Arizona as Hopi Lake. That was Howell Williams. And then in the 1960s, creationists started mentioning spillover.

Creationists mentioned spillover. And Henry Morris wrote a book, The Genesis Flood. And he proposed that Grand Canyon was formed by spillover of a post-flood lake. Have you ever read that in The Genesis Flood?

And Clifford Burdick was the geologist that proposed it before Morris. And Burdick was working on that idea. And then Bernard Northrop, also in the 1960s. So in the 1960s, who did I meet? I met Henry Morris, Clifford Burdick, and Bernard Northrop in the late 1960s.

And they told me about spillover, about Grand Canyon being a spillover. And so that is kind of the pedigree of what I was thinking. In 1986, I did a lunch discussion in Pittsburgh at the International Conference on Creationism at Duquesne University.

And the three of us, Edmund Holroyd, who's the co-author of the paper, and David McQueen and I had lunch and we started talking about spillover explanations. And in 1986, we proposed that we could do some mapping and we could do some evidence of locating the spillover points.

And by 1988, pieces of the puzzle were being put together. In 1988, other pieces of the puzzle were being assembled. There was a geologist in Tucson named Bob Scarborough, who also was looking at the Hopi Lake deposits called the Bitohochi Formation.

And he was proposing Hopi Lake. And another geologist named Norman Meek. Norman Meek proposed, he rediscovered the little Grand Canyon discovered by Elmer Ellsworth and it was forgotten. So he rediscovered the forgotten Grand Canyon of the Mojave Desert.

Okay, and that was 1988. All the pieces of the puzzle starting coming together. 12 years later, by 2000, geologists had put enough pieces of the spillover puzzle together. So an unbiased observer said spillover theory was nudged to the forefront of explanations concerning the Grand Canyon.

That's by 2000. And then early in the 2000, by about 2010, spillover overflows into the popular press. 2008, there was a TV documentary history channel and posted on YouTube, National Geographic Channel on spillover.

And by 2012, geologists are talking candidly about their backyards and data about spillover. And so it becomes very important. And it overflows. How do you like that? It transferred from the technical literature to the popular, okay, in about 2010.

Dr. Steeve.

Excuse me, Dr. Steeve. This is Robin. And I just wanna quick say on spillover, when you say, if you could just quickly, very briefly explain spillover, because I think some people believe that the Grand Canyon was carved out when the flood waters retreated, but this is different, right?

Spillover is different than the retreating water theory.

Right. And the early creationists didn't propose the retreating flood water theory. They proposed a post-flood spillover.

Okay.

All right. Thank you very much.

Yeah. And we often hear the, so a fourth theory is that flood formed a Grand, flood retreat formed the Grand Canyon. Yeah, good point. Okay, Lake Manix and Hopi Lake were challenged in 2003 to 2013. The, what's called the, Afton Canyon Controversy and the Crooked Ridge River were challenges that were issued.

And by 2014 to 2016, the establishment issued the challenge and then geologists came back and defeated the challenge. And Lake Manix, the old lake that made the little Grand Canyon in the Hopi, in Mojave Desert and Hopi Lake, the lake which spilled to make Grand Canyon was verified.

And so Lake Manix and Hopi Lake hold water. How do you like that? And more creationists and evolutionists are recognizing spillover. And today there's about 20 geologists who have PhDs and understand spillover explanation well enough and respect the geology of Hopi Lake, Bittahochee Formation in Arizona to say that it's not a minor explanation for the origin of Grand Canyon.

Here you see the basin. You have the upper basin of the Colorado River separated by Glen Canyon and Lee's Ferry. And then you have the lower Grand Canyon, lower Colorado River drainage basin with Grand Canyon.

Okay, so there's a natural basin, upper basin and lower basin. The lower basin could have a lake. We call that Hopi Lake. The upper basin could have a lake. We call that Canyonlands Lake. And so here's my map of how the spillover may have occurred.

Here you see Grand Canyon and here you see a scale in miles. And so the width is about 75 miles, say, of the map here. And the Hopi Lake, which was up against the Kaibab Upwarp in Northern Arizona, spilled out of its basin right near East Kaibab Spillover next to No Name Point, right where I gave the lecture in 1988.

As the lake drained, it broke into two, formed two lakes and a second spillover formed the Northern Nantcoui part of the drainage basin. And then the spillway was formed. And then there's another lake called Canyonlands Lake north of the Hopi Lake area.

And that Canyonlands Lake was at a little lower elevation and it spilled over at Lee's Ferry, I believe, but it wasn't involved directly with eroding Grand Canyon. Okay, here's the computer map that was made in 1987 by Ed Holroyd.

On his computer, he plotted the lakes which would form behind Grand Canyon if the Grand Canyon was blocked at the 5 ,700 foot elevation. You can see a dominant lake here that would be Hopi Lake in Northeastern Arizona and a big Utah Lake, the size of Lake Michigan up there.

And that lake drained across a different way. So the whole Colorado River Drainage Basin could contain big lakes that spilled. Holroyd worked on the drainage near where he lived. That's the Black Canyon of the Gunnison River, a famous canyon.

And he noticed things about the Black Canyon of the Gunnison River that were in his backyard where he lived in Montrose, Colorado. He recognized Cimarron spillover and the faults and this canyon formed the Gunnison River upstream of Grand Canyon.

Anyway, he proposed the Gunnison River formed by spillover. And that's the explanation that many are now favoring. And of course, downstream in the Grand Canyon area. But he saw a canyon and he used that to interpret another canyon.

And he saw what he, and discovered that. Okay, take a look at the spillway at Mount St. Helens breached by mud, March 19th, 1982. The spillway at Mount St. Helens was overtopped. The terrain was breached and a mud spillway was eroded.

You see the U-shaped canyon, the meandering channel, the cup-shaped side canyons, gully headed side canyons. And the breach did not occur straight through it as kind of a snaky path. And here is directly below the breach point there at East Kaibab structure.

And you can see the meandering channel in the Grand Canyon on the right here. So Grand Canyon and Mount St. Helens are analogies. And of course, Mount St. Helens mud flows on March 19th, 1982, eroded by spillover and formed a new canyon that's very similar to Grand Canyon.

Okay, in 1934, Elmer Ellsworth was doing his PhD dissertation on the Mojave Desert in California. And he proposed that there was a large lake in the area called between Barstow and Baker, California along the Mojave River.

And this lake, he called Lake Mannix, it was about 90 square miles in area, elevation about 5 ,400 feet, probably 540 meters, about 1 ,700 feet elevation. And he proposed that this 90 square mile area lake drained right through this location called Afton Canyon, four mile long Afton Canyon.

And that lake drained catastrophically and the catastrophic drainage of the lake by spillover formed the Afton Canyon and the drainage basin of the old Lake Mannix. And that was Elmer Ellsworth's theory.

It was proposed in 1834 and it was forgotten till 1988 when Norman Meek at University of California, Los Angeles did his PhD dissertation on the lake deposits in Lake Mannix area. He rediscovered the theory and he was shocked to know that the evolutionists had proposed spillover for the origin of the drainage basin in a Mannix area, in Lake Mannix area.

And he was shocked. And then he was very concerned because what? It was suppressed and forgotten. So Norman Meek did his PhD dissertation on spillover drainage of Lake Mannix. And then he went on crusade and he started pointing to all kinds of spillover explanations for canyons elsewhere.

Take a look at the drainage basin. You're looking from above the breach spillway up into the lake drainage of Lake Mannix. And here's a spillway. There's not a highway through Afton Canyon. The Afton Canyon drainage has the Union Pacific Railroad that runs through it.

There's no major highway that runs through it. And it's 440 feet deep. A major part of that Elmer Ellsworth believed formed catastrophically by drainage of the lake. You can see the upstream in the drainage basin.

You see, look at this amazing erosion topography. All kinds of lake bed sediments have been eroded. The canyon is now deeper, almost 400 feet. And so it's created a canyon lands area somewhat like above Grand Canyon.

And he noticed, Meek noticed that it was above Grand Canyon. Take a look at the Oregon pipe kind of a drainage. It looks like a canyon lands area in Southern Utah and even up into Bryce Canyon. There's a lot of interesting features, but it's a one 10th scale of Grand Canyon.

It's the forgotten Grand Canyon of the Mojave Desert. Let's put it that way. And Meek wants you to know about it. Norman Meek, PhD in geology, specialized in the catastrophic drainage theory, spillover theory for the origin of Afton Canyon.

There you see looking up toward Afton Canyon. The Bittahochee Formation and the Roberts Mesa. This is the lake beds in Northeastern Arizona. That was originally discovered and described by Newberry in 1860.

He had described it in 1860 and experienced it. He thought this was the evidence of the lake and the lake spilled. The genius of the geologist that originally looked at this area. And so the Bittahochee Formation, here it is, Bittahochee Formation, Roberts Mesa near Indian Wells, Northeastern Arizona.

You see 200 feet of lake deposits. And in the lake deposits are fish, fish fossils, freshwater fish fossils, like these pike minnow. These are juvenile pike minnow that you see. Fossils from the upper part of the Bittahochee Formation.

And so there's fossil evidence and sedimentary evidence of a lake that spilled over in Northern Arizona. And the history that I've told you about makes this really stand out.

So that lake formed after the flood, right? And then the Grand Canyon formed after the lakes gave way.

Yes, you got the idea. That's an excellent way to think. Okay, so I've given you my paper on history of spillover. And I've talked in generally about it over the last, what? 160, 170 years this has been proposed.

And it's been talked about by geologists. It's been debated back and forth. And now it's becoming a recognized explanation for the origin of Grand Canyon. And let's go back to my title slide. And we can remember the spillover erosion of Grand Canyon.

Okay, well, let me just say, sorry, I went a little over, but we'll talk in questions here. You can give me your questions and I'll try to field those. We have some experts on Grand Canyon. I see Jim Tufford there, people who have been with me in Grand Canyon on some of those trips.

Steve, if you wanna make me host again, then you can have the full screen so that we can see you.

Okay, I'm stopping sharing. How's that? Now you see me back again, right?

Yes.

Okay, good, good.

And unmute if they want, as long as you're being quiet.

Yeah, if you wanna unmute and I can listen to you and interact with you.

I have a question. I'd like to find out if you think that earthquake faults were responsible for the direction of these canyons. I guess what I'm saying is, was there a fault before the canyon formed where it formed?

There probably were lots of faults and it shows a weak point. And the weak point was probably tipped up strata that weren't a fault for the crossing point of the Kaibab Upwarp in Northeastern Arizona.

There's no major fault running east-west through the Grand Canyon at the spillover point. So it spilled out of the basin, just over the top. It may have notched a weak area, probably tipped up strata that provided the original channel for the Colorado River.

Anybody else wanna talk? Hi, Jim. Hey. I just, I'm about ready to lose you here.

I have a couple more questions, Steve.

Sure.

Okay. So, so when I first started learning about creation, which was from Kent Hovine, he was under the impression that the retreating water created the Grand Canyon. But then for the last seven years, coming to the Creation Museum and the Creation Fellowship, I've learned about this lake idea.

So, can you briefly, okay, so the flood happened, and then just the lakes formed. I know I'm, I'm sorry, I come from a different point of view, but this sounds much more viable. So can you just kind of, the lake happened, or the flood happened, then the lakes happened, and then the spillage happened, and et cetera.

Okay, here's what I wanna do. There's a creation explanation around several people talk about retreating floodwater formed Grand Canyon, but the principals who worked on erosion of Grand Canyon, those principal people proposed that spillover was the explanation, not channeled floodwater drainage.

And,.

You're still tired? And I was one of those. So I'm claiming the higher ground in my paper. You see what I'm saying? The heroes of the, my heroes of the creation movement, Henry Morris, and who?

Walter Brown?

Yeah, people like Walter Brown, people like Clifford Burdick, people like that have had this explanation all around in front of them, and have been pointing to the evidence of the lake that breached, and breached rapidly after the flood.

And of course, Go ahead.

Of course, the other geologists who looked at the terrain first saw the evidence of spillover. And of course, we have modern laboratory for spillover, Mount St. Helens, and we have a little Grand Canyon in the Mojave Desert, okay?

Do you see what the high ground is being claimed? Okay, somebody has an explanation for the Grand Canyon. They need to pay attention to the things that I've seen. Okay, I've seen evidence of a lake, post-flood lake in northeastern Arizona, could that have drained across the Kaibab up?

Or I've seen evidence of another canyon in the Mojave Desert. You see that kind of thing? So that's my point of view. And I wanna be, and that's why I'm defending in the paper. And yeah, so I wanna be considerate of those who propose flood drainage, but it's obviously formed in hard rock, and maybe after the flood.

So I would think you wanna think about my explanation, which goes back to the founders of the creation science movement. Let's put it that way.

Can I have your idea here?

Hey, Jeff. Hi, Jeff, it's Robin.

Hi, Robin.

Haven't seen you in a while.

It sounds to me like Robin has the question of what was the order of events from the flood? And I think the idea is that the lakes, the formation of the lakes happened when the Ice Age runoff collected.

Exactly right. That is what I'm asking.

Good question. And I think as the flood retreated, it left the sedimentary strata at the Grand Canyon. And then the retreating flood beveled the surface, beveled the surface, made a flat, very widespread surface.

Then ponding occurred after the flood, and animals and plants were recolonizing the drainage basin post-flood. And this lake was the habitat, higher drainage in the Colorado River drainage basin. So this is almost simultaneously with the Ice Age.

And the drainage of Afton Canyon, Mannix Lake in California, Mojave Desert, that drained in the post-flood period, approximately associated with the Ice Age as well. So there were Ice Age lakes, Lake Bonneville, for example, in Salt Lake area.

And that was one of these lakes that didn't completely breach. And large part, some of it survived. But Hopi Lake was at 6 ,000 feet elevation, and it drained catastrophically in the years after the flood, creating Grand Canyon.

Oh, thank you. Yeah, I was just trying to figure out, because I believe, here's a little pun, your theory holds water, like the lake did. That was so bad. And I've seen that evidence, and I was just really amazed by it.

And I was in Grand Canyon in February, and they have the whole millions and billions of years explanations. And a lot of times, when I go to the Grand Canyon fairly often, I wanna be able to tell people the real deal, but I'm always kind of not sure what to say.

I would say spillover is the best explanation for the erosion at Grand Canyon. And the river and the lake aren't that old. The lake was very young, and so the spillover occurred recently, and then the Colorado River is established.

And our culture has given us this myth about the ancient river, the antecedent river, that from the time of the dinosaurs flowed across Arizona, and then the whole plateau was uplifted slowly over a hundred million years.

And over tens of millions of years, Grand Canyon was eroded, the idea of antecedency. And that basically died early in the 20th century when Blackwell was working on the lake deposits associated with Lake Mead underneath the river gravels.

He proved that there was no old river, ancient river, old river, but there was lakes west of the Grand Canyon. So therefore, the Colorado River established itself recently. And that's what we see. And of course, the piracy idea was the primary theory that was taught to me in grammar school in the 1950s, 1960s, when I was listening to geologists explain how Grand Canyon formed.

It was a giant gully that intercepted the upper drainage basin of the Colorado River and diverted it through the Grand Canyon gully. It was a unique and precocious gully that formed Grand Canyon. We often smiled and talked about it, but yeah, we know it's a recent river and spillover is the best explanation.

I have a question, Jeff. Jeff McGreevey.

Yeah, in the piracy theory, Steve, you mentioned the event happened from the west to the east.

Yes.

Is that like the southwest towards the northeast?

Yes.

And what's the direction of the river?

The river spills from northeast to southwest, right? So

So the piracy event was against the natural flow of the river or something?

Yeah, in other words, headward. It was erosion headward. Headward erosion.

Okay.

And a lot of geologists appointed to the idea how kind of illogical headward erosion by a gully is and why aren't there Grand Canyon gullies all over the world? Why is it so uniquely displayed here? Well, obviously it's a plateau with a large lake at 6 ,000 feet that breached.

That's a good reason why there's a unique Grand Canyon here and a lot of flood sediment could be breached. So it makes a convenient explanation. So yeah, piracy was championed between about 1960 and about the year 2010.

The year 2010 marked a challenge point for piracy and a lot of geologists questioned it being so extremely accidental and improbable and that spillover would nudge to the front of the explanations. And so that's why I'm preaching to you about spillover.

I think spillover has very adequately replaced the idea of stream piracy. And isn't that interesting that John Newberry in 1861, the first geologist ever to see Grand Canyon proposed the spillover idea before anybody even dreamed of an evolutionary idea of a hundred million year old river, that kind of thing.

And here's a geologist proposing spillover, so cool.

Well, when you say piracy, I'm sorry, I know I'm dominating the questions here, but it's just fascinating to me. When you say piracy, you're talking about the myth that the river cut the canyon.

A gully cut the canyon and the gully diverted the upper part of the river through the canyon through into the lower Colorado River drainage basin. That's what piracy is, it's stealing. The Colorado River was stolen by a pirate gully.

Being on these Grand Canyon trips, which he will probably plan one next year, if all goes well, I highly, and his are intense. They're not intense, but you just get in the ground, right, Steve? And you go on, do you see White Rapids?

Oh yeah.

He is wild. Don't, he is, he does a lot, he's a strong guy.

I think he needs to go on this trip sometime.

I know, I know.

And I'll watch, I'll watch.

Jim Tuffer's already done it, so he knows all about it.

Yeah, so one more thing, we have a friend on here, I just noticed that Jim Taplin is on there. Hey Jim, you wanna unmute yourself? Unlin, who's, oh, but probably that's him, right? Is Jim here?

That's Jim Taplin, Logos Research Associates, is that right?

Yeah, can he unmute himself?

Or did we mute?

Robin?

He can unmute.

Oh, he can? Maybe he, Joyce, can you unmute him?

Joyce, you're the host, right? Can you just right click and unmute him?

Well, I think he has access to mute himself.

I can't make him unmute.

I asked him to do it.

Right.

Yeah, that's okay. When he, Jim, when you're ready, unmute. Yeah, so Jim actually has a Creation Fellowship in Costa Mesa, and it's Calvary Chapel Creation Fellowship in the Logos building, and they meet every first and third Saturday of every, twice a month.

And they have a great ministry over there as well in Costa Mesa, and Steve is a part of his board. Correct, Steve?

That's right. So I'm, we founded an organization called Logos Research Associates. It's a fellowship of scientists who are mentoring each other, and it's good. Now, it looks like Jim unmuted. Are you there, Jim?

Yeah, he did unmute.

He must be having

Maybe he's shy like Stacy.

Maybe his sound's a little, he's working the sound of his computer, the volume.

Okay, well, isn't Grand Canyon wonderful? It's the world's premier erosional wonder. There's no other canyon on Earth that has the reputation and the wide appreciation of erosion as Grand Canyon. No other canyon on Earth, even close.

Grand Canyon's one of those seven wonders of the world, and of course, most people put it number one on the wonders of the world, and then geologists have been studying it for what? 160 years? And so intensely studied, and now we're understanding and appreciating how Grand Canyon formed, and we're still talking after 160 years about the possibility of spillover being the explanation, not millions of years, and so that is the coolest thing ever.