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{{Short description|Pseudoscientific attempt to reconcile geology with the Genesis flood narrative}} | |||
{{Use dmy dates|date=June 2022}} | |||
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{{creationism2}} | {{creationism2}} | ||
'''Flood geology''' (also '''creation geology''' or '''diluvial geology''') is a ] attempt to interpret and reconcile ] of the Earth in accordance with a literal belief in the ], the ] in the ]. In the early 19th century, ] geologists hypothesized that specific surface features provided evidence of a worldwide flood which had followed earlier ]; after further investigation they agreed that these features resulted from local floods or from ]s. In the 20th century, ] revived flood geology as an overarching concept in their opposition to ], assuming a recent six-day Creation and cataclysmic geological changes during the biblical flood, and incorporating creationist explanations of the ]. | |||
'''Flood geology''' (also '''creation geology''' or '''diluvial geology''') is a prominent subset of beliefs under the umbrella of ] that assumes the literal truth of a ] as described in the ] account of ]. For adherents, the global flood and its aftermath is believed to be the origin of most of the Earth's geological features, including ], ]ization, ], ]s, ]s, and frozen ]s. As such, flood geology is directly contradicted by ] disciplines such as ], ] and ]. | |||
In the early stages of ], ] were interpreted as evidence of past flooding. The "theories of the Earth" of the 17th century proposed mechanisms based on natural laws, within a timescale set by the ]. As modern geology developed, geologists found evidence of an ancient Earth and evidence inconsistent with the notion that the Earth had developed in a ], like the Genesis flood. In early 19th-century Britain, "diluvialism" attributed ]s and surface features (such as beds of gravel and ]) to the destructive effects of this supposed global deluge, but by 1830 geologists increasingly found that the evidence supported only relatively local floods. So-called ]s attempted to give primacy to ] explanations, but they lacked a background in geology and were marginalised by the scientific community, as well as having little influence in the churches. | |||
Most ] regard Genesis as providing a historically and scientifically accurate record for the ] of the ] and also believe that there exists evidence that can back up the ] of the flood. However, creationist presentations of what they believe is ] are routinely dismissed out-of-hand by the ] and as such flood geology is generally considered ]. | |||
Creationist flood geology was only supported by a minority of the 20th century anti-evolution movement, mainly in the ], until the 1961 publication of '']'' by ] and ]. Around 1970, proponents adopted the terms "scientific creationism" and ].{{sfn|Parkinson|2004|pp= 24–27}}<ref>{{harvnb|Evans|2009}} Its supporters were first known as flood geologists. Then, in about 1970, they renamed themselves "scientific creationists" or "young-earth creationists".</ref>{{sfn|Numbers|2006|p= 10}} | |||
==Flood geology compared to scientific geology == | |||
Proponents of flood geology hold to a literal reading of ] and view its passages as ]; they use the Bible's internal chronology to place the Genesis flood and the story of ] within the last 5,000 years.<ref>Carol A. Hill and Stephen O. Moshier, "," ''],'' 61:2 (June 2009), 100. Retrieved 6 June 2014. Note: This article was electronically published by ] on his ] webpage, . See item No. 17.</ref> | |||
Flood geology is advocated mostly by proponents of Young Earth creationism, who usually profess ] as their baseline for research. | |||
Scientific analysis has refuted the key tenets of flood geology.{{sfn|Young|1995}}{{sfn|Isaak|2006}}{{sfn|Morton|2001}}{{sfn|Isaak|2007|p=173}}{{sfn|Stewart|2010|p=123}} Flood geology contradicts the ] in geology, stratigraphy, geophysics, physics, paleontology, biology, anthropology, and archaeology.<ref>Isaak, Mark. ''.'' Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007.</ref><ref>Senter, Phil. "The Defeat of Flood Geology by Flood Geology." ''Reports of the National Center for Science Education'' 31:3 (May–June 2011). Printed electronically by . Retrieved 7 June 2014. | |||
Though flood geology is not a ], belief in a global flood was widespread in the early history of ] and ]. Evidence against this belief began to collect with scientific discoveries in the first half of the ] and the idea was abandoned as an impossibility by the middle of that century. The modern incarnation of flood geology appeared in the late ] within the ] in the ] as adherents hope to directly counter prevailing scientific notions.<ref>{{cite web | |||
</ref>{{sfn|Montgomery|2012}} Modern geology, its sub-disciplines and other scientific disciplines use the ]. In contrast, flood geology does not adhere to the scientific method, making it a pseudoscience.<ref> | |||
| last = Numbers | |||
{{Cite journal | |||
| first = R | |||
|title= Pseudoscience: A fringe too far |journal= Nature |volume= 490 |issue= 7421 |pages= 480–481 | |||
| authorlink = Ronald L. Numbers | |||
|last= Morrison |first= David |date= 24 October 2012 |doi= 10.1038/490480a |bibcode= 2012Natur.490..480M | |||
| coauthors = | |||
|doi-access= free | |||
| title = The Creationist Revival after 1961 | |||
|quote = Henry Morris and John Whitcomb's 1961 publication The Genesis Flood (Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing) became the foundation of the 'creation science' movement. Like Velikovsky, these authors postulated a catastrophic history of Earth, reinterpreting all geology in terms of a single universal flood, as described in chapters 6–11 of Genesis. They based their conclusions solely on a literal interpretation of scripture, and rejected Velikovsky's naturalist explanations.}} | |||
| work = | |||
</ref> | |||
| publisher = | |||
| date =2002 | |||
| url = http://counterbalance.net/history/creatrev-frame.html | |||
| format = | |||
| doi = | |||
| accessdate = 2007-03-29}}</ref> | |||
==History of theories== | |||
Many scientific objections have been raised concerning the physical mechanics of flood geology. A flood of the size suggested by creationists has almost absurd physical implications. In particular, the amount of water required to cover the Earth's entire surface is enormous enough that no observed mechanism can plausibly explain where it came from or where it went. The mechanisms proposed by creationists to account for the ], ], and ] are also all firmly rejected by the scientific community. | |||
].]] | |||
{{main|History of geology|History of paleontology}} | |||
], Kentucky, a representation of Noah's ark, operated by ], a ] organization.]] | |||
In pre-Christian times, ]s found on land were thought by Greek philosophers—including ], ] and ]—to be evidence that the sea had in past ages covered the land. Their concept of vast time periods in an eternal cosmos was rejected by early Christian writers as incompatible with their belief in Creation by God. Among the church fathers, ] spoke of fossils demonstrating that mountains had been overrun by water without explicitly saying when. ] and ] believed that fossils were the remains of animals that were killed and buried during the brief duration of the ], and later ] viewed fossils as having resulted from the flood.{{sfn|Young|Stearley|2008|pp=28–30, 63}}{{sfn|Berry|2003|p=5}} The earliest documentation of the famous fossil fishes of the ] comes from ], who cites them as being evidence of the Biblical flood.<ref name=":21">{{Cite journal |last=Capasso |first=Luigi |date=2017 |title=The history and the situation of the world famous fossil fish quarries in Lebanon |url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/330841435 |journal=Bollettino del Museo Civico di Storia Naturale di Verona |volume=41 |pages=53–76}}</ref> | |||
Other scholars, including ], thought fossils were produced in the rock by "petrifying virtue" acting on "seeds" of plants and animals. In 1580, ] speculated that fossils had formed in lakes, and ] subsequently disputed the alternatives. ] made empirical investigations and doubted that the numbers of fossil shells or depth of shell beds could have formed in the one year of Noah's flood. In 1616, ] showed how chemical processes changed organic remains into stone fossils. His fundamental principles of ] published in 1669 established that rock strata formed horizontally and were later broken and tilted, though he assumed these processes would occur within 6,000 years including a worldwide flood.{{sfn|Young|Stearley|2008|pp=48–56}} | |||
Flood geology should not be confused with episodic ] as observed by geologists and earth scientists at many locations throughout the Earth's ~4.55 billion year natural history. Such confusion surrounded the observations of the geologist ] who discovered the ] in the ] of the United States. His observations and theories were rejected out of hand for many years by geologists and scientists on the basis that catastrophism was not science, but rather religion. Today, it is recognized by geologists that while periodic catastrophes may occur, there are ] principles at work in geologic history as well. | |||
== |
===Theories of the Earth=== | ||
In his influential '']'' of 1644, ] applied his mechanical ]s to envisage swirling particles forming the Earth as a layered sphere. This ] was recast in biblical terms by the theologian ], whose ''Sacred Theory of the Earth'' published in the 1680s proposed complex explanations based on natural laws, and explicitly rejected the simpler approach of invoking ]s as incompatible with the methodology of natural philosophy (the precursor to science). Burnet maintained that less than 6,000 years ago the Earth had emerged from chaos as a perfect sphere, with paradise on land over a watery abyss. This crust had dried out and cracked, and its collapse caused the biblical deluge, forming mountains as well as caverns where the water retreated. He made no mention of fossils but inspired other diluvial theories that did.{{sfn|Young|Stearley|2008|pp=62–65}}{{sfn|Gould|1982}} | |||
===The great flood in the history of geology=== | |||
In 1695, ]'s ''An Essay Toward a Natural History of the Earth'' viewed the Genesis flood as dissolving rocks and soil into a thick slurry that caught up all living things, which, when the waters settled, formed strata according to the ] of these materials, including fossils of the organisms. When it was pointed out that lower layers were often less dense and forces that shattered rock would destroy organic remains, he resorted to the explanation that a divine miracle had temporarily suspended gravity. | |||
The modern science of ] was founded in ] in the ]. Its practitioners sought to understand the history and shaping of the Earth through the physical evidence laid down in rocks and minerals. As many early geologists were clergymen, they naturally sought to link the geological history of the world with that set out in the ]. The ancient theory that ]s were the result of "plastic forces" within the Earth's crust had by this time been abandoned, with the recognition that they represented the remains of once-living creatures. This, though, raised a major problem: how did fossils of sea creatures end up on land, or on the tops of mountains? | |||
]'s ''New Theory of the Earth'' of 1696 combined scripture with ] to propose that the original chaos was the atmosphere of a ] with the days of creation each taking a year, and the Genesis flood had resulted from a second comet. His explanation of how the flood caused mountains and the fossil sequence was similar to Woodward's. ] wrote in support of Woodward's ideas in 1708, describing some fossil vertebrae as bones of sinners who had perished in the flood. A skeleton found in a quarry was described by him in 1726 as '']'', a giant human testifying to the flood. This was accepted for some time, but in 1812 it was shown to be a prehistoric salamander.{{sfn|Young|Stearley|2008|pp=65–68}} | |||
As early as the ], ] thinkers had proposed that fossils represented organisms that were killed and buried during the brief duration of the Flood. This idea became commonly held, aided by the geological peculiarity that much of northern Europe is covered by layers of ] and ] as well as ] deposited hundreds of miles from their original sources. This was interpreted as being the result of massive flooding, though it is now known that they are the product of ] glaciations (an unknown phenomenon at that time). Prevailing notions of the time held that the global flood was associated with massive geographical upheavals, with old continents sinking and new ones rising, thus transforming ancient seabeds into mountain tops. | |||
===Beginnings of modern geology=== | |||
During the ], there were significant attempts made to provide natural causes for the ]s recounted in the Bible. ] explanations for a global flood can be found in such works as ''An Essay Toward a Natural History of the Earth'' (1695) by ] and ''New Theory of the Earth'' (1696) by Woodward’s student ].<ref>{{cite book|last=Porter|first=R|coauthors=Lindberg, DC & Numbers, RL|date=2003|title=The Cambridge History of Science: Volume 4, Eighteenth-Century Science|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=0-521-57243-6}}</ref> | |||
The modern science of geology developed in the 18th century; the term "geology" was popularised by the '']'' of 1751.{{citation needed|date=June 2014}} Steno's categorisation of strata was expanded by several geologists, including ] who believed that the oldest mountains had formed early in the Creation, and categorised as ''Flötz-Gebürge'' stratified mountains with few ore deposits but with thin layers containing fossils, overlain by a third category of superficial deposits. In his 1756 publication he identified 30 different layers in this category which he attributed to the action of the Genesis deluge, possibly including debris from the older mountains. Others including ] attributed secondary strata to natural causes: ] said that geologists had to take as standard the processes in which nature currently produces solids, "we know no other way", and only the most recent deposits could be attributed to a great flood.{{sfn|Young|Stearley|2008|pp=71–74}} | |||
Lehman's classification was developed by ] who thought that rock strata had been deposited from a primeval global ocean rather than by Noah's flood, a doctrine called ]. The idea of a young Earth was further undermined in 1774 by ], whose studies of a succession of extinct volcanoes in Europe showed layers which would have taken long ages to build up. The fact that these layers were still intact indicated that any later flood had been local rather than universal. Against Neptunism, ] proposed an indefinitely old cycle of eroded rocks being deposited in the sea, consolidated and heaved up by volcanic forces into mountains which in turn eroded, all in natural processes which continue to operate.{{sfn|Young|Stearley|2008|pp=74–89}} | |||
By the early ], however, this view had fallen into disrepute. It was already thought that the Earth's lifespan was far longer than that suggested by literal readings of the Bible (an age of 75,000 years had been suggested as early as ], as against the 6,000 years proposed by Archbishop ]'s ]). ]'s promotion of ]'s ideas of ] advocated the principle that geological changes that occurred in the past may be understood by studying present-day phenomena. In common with ], Hutton assumed that the world-system had been in a steady state since the day of creation, but unlike Newton he included in this vision not only the motion of celestial bodies and processes like chemical change on earth, but also processes of geological change. Christopher Kaiser writes: | |||
===Catastrophism and diluvialism=== | |||
:''In other words, in comparison with Newton's, Hutton's was a higher order concept of the system of nature which included not only the present structure of the world, but the ''process'' (or ]) by which the present structure had come into existence and was maintained. As with Newton, and in contrast to materialists like ] and neomechanists like ], the ''origins'' of the system were beyond the scope of science for Hutton: in nature itself he found 'no vestige of a beginning - no prospect of an end'. But Hutton came about as close to being a neomechanist as one possibly could without changing the Newtonian framework of God and nature. Only the Newtonian stipulation that God had personally designed the present system of nature stood between natural theology and the retirement of God from science altogether... Like ] and ], Hutton believed that God had implanted active principles in nature at creation sufficient to account for all its natural functions.''<ref>{{cite book|last=Kaiser|first=CB|date=1997|title=Creational Theology and the History of Physical Science: The Creationist Tradition from Basil to Bohr|publisher=Brill Academic Publishers|isbn=90-04-10669-3|pages=290-291}}</ref> | |||
The first professional geological society, the ], was founded in 1807.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/gsl/society/bicentenary|title=The Geological Society Bicentenary |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070513043846/http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/gsl/society/bicentenary |archive-date=13 May 2007}}</ref> By this time, geologists were convinced that an immense time had been needed to build up the huge thickness of rock strata visible in quarries and cliffs, implying extensive pre-human periods. Most accepted a basic ] classifying rocks as primitive, transition, ], or ]. Several researchers independently found that strata could be identified by characteristic fossils: secondary strata in southern England were mapped by ] from 1799 to 1815.{{sfn|Young|1995}} | |||
====Cuvier and Jameson==== | |||
The idea that ''all'' geological strata were produced by a single flood was rejected in ] by the Reverend ], the first professor of geology at ], who wrote: | |||
], working with ], examined tertiary strata in the region around Paris. Cuvier found that fossils identified rock formations as alternating between marine and terrestrial deposits, indicating "repeated irruptions and retreats of the sea" which he identified with a long series of sudden catastrophes which had caused ].{{sfn|Young|1995}} In his 1812 ''Discours préliminaire'' to his ''Recherches sur les ossemens fossiles de quadrupeds'' put forward a synthesis of this research into the long prehistoric period, and a historical approach to the most recent catastrophe. His historical approach tested empirical claims in the biblical text of Genesis against other ancient writings to pick out the "real facts" from "interested fictions". In his assessment, ] had written the account around 3,300 years ago, long after the events described. Cuvier only discussed the Genesis flood in general terms, as the most recent example of "an event of an ]''] universal catastrophe, occasioned by an irruption of the waters" not set "much further back than five or six thousand years ago". The historical texts could be loosely related to evidence such as overturned strata and "heaps of ''debris'' and rounded pebbles". An English translation was published in 1813 with a preface and notes by ], ] of ] at the ]. He began the preface with a sentence which ignored Cuvier's historical approach and instead deferred to ]:{{sfn|Herbert|2005|pp=181–183}} | |||
{{quote|"Although the Mosaic account of the creation of the world is an inspired writing, and consequently rests on evidence wholly independent of human observation and experience, still it is interesting, and in many respects important, to know that it coincides with the various phenomena observable in the mineral kingdom."{{sfn|Herbert|2005|p=183}}{{sfn|Haldane|1816|pp=168–169}}}} This sentence was removed after the second edition, and Jameson's position changed as shown by his notes in successive editions, but it influenced British views of Cuvier's concept.{{sfn|Herbert|2005|p=183}} In 1819, ], first president of ], issued ''A Critical Examination of the First Principles of Geology'' stating that unless erratic boulders deposited hundreds of miles from their original sources had been moved by seas, rivers, or collapsing lakes, "the only remaining cause, to which these effects can be ascribed, is a Debacle or Deluge."{{sfn|Young|1995}} | |||
====Buckland and the English school of geologists==== | |||
:''Some have attempted to ascribe the formation of all the stratified rocks to the effects of the ] Deluge; an opinion which is irreconcilable with the enormous thickness and almost infinite subdivisions of these strata, and with the numerous and regular successions which they contain of the remains of animals and vegetables, differing more and more widely from existing species, as the strata in which we find them are placed at greater depths. The fact that a large proportion of these remains belong to extinct genera, and almost all of them to extinct species, that lived and multiplied and died on or near the spots where they are now found, shows that the strata in which they occur were deposited slowly and gradually, during long periods of time, and at widely distant intervals.''<ref>{{cite book|title=Geology and Mineralogy Considered With Reference to Natural Theology (History of Paleontology)|last=Buckland|first=W|publisher=Ayer Company Publishing|date=1980|isbn=978-0405127069}}</ref> | |||
Conservative geologists in Britain welcomed Cuvier's theory to replace Werner's Neptunism, and the ] clergyman ] became the foremost proponent of flood geology as he sought to get the new science of geology accepted on the curriculum of the ]. In 1818, he was visited by Cuvier, and in his inaugural speech in 1819 as the first professor of geology at the university he defended the subject against allegations that it undermined religion.{{sfn|Bowler|2003|p=116}} His speech, published as ''Vindiciae Geologicae; or, The Connexion of Geology with Religion Explained'', equated the last of a long series of catastrophes with the Genesis flood, and said that "the grand fact of an universal deluge at no very remote period is proved on grounds so decisive and incontrovertible, that, had we never heard of such an event from Scripture, or any other, authority, Geology of itself must have called in the assistance of some such catastrophe, to explain the phenomena of diluvian action which are universally presented to us, and which are unintelligible without recourse to a deluge exerting its ravages at a period not more ancient than that announced in the Book of Genesis." The evidence he proposed included erratic boulders, extensive areas of gravel, and landforms which appeared to have been scoured by water.{{sfn|Young|1995}}{{sfn|Buckland|1820|pp=23–24}} | |||
This inaugural address influenced the geologists ] and ]. In their 1822 book on ''Outlines of the Geology of England and Wales'' Conybeare referred to the same features in an introduction about the relationship between geology and religion, describing how a deluge causing "the last great geological change to which the surface of our planet appears to have been exposed" left behind the debris (which he named in ] '']'') as evidence for "that great and universal catastrophe to which it seems most properly assignable". In 1823 Buckland published his detailed account of "Relics of the Flood", ''Reliquiae Diluvianae;'' or, ''Observations on the Organic Remains Contained in Caves, Fissures, and Diluvial Gravel and on Other Geological Phenomena Attesting the Action of an Universal Deluge'', incorporating his research suggesting that animal fossils had been dragged into the ] by ]s then covered by a layer of red mud washed in by the deluge.{{sfn|Young|1995}} | |||
Although Buckland continued for a while to insist that ''some'' geological layers related to the Great Flood, he was forced to abandon this idea as the evidence increasingly indicated multiple inundations which occurred well before humans existed. He was convinced by the ] geologist ] that much of the evidence on which he relied was in fact the product of ancient ice ages, and became one of the foremost champions of Agassiz's theory of glaciations. Mainstream science gave up on the idea of flood geology, which required major deviations from known physical processes. | |||
Buckland's views were supported by other Church of England clergymen naturalists: his Oxford colleague ] proposed in 1820 that the volcanoes of the ] showed a sequence of lava flows from before and after the flood had cut valleys through the region.{{sfn|Young|1995}} In an 1823 article "On the deluge", ], professor of mineralogy at the ], affirmed the concept and proposed that the flood had originated from a comet, but this was his only comment on the topic. ], ] at Cambridge, presented two supportive papers in 1825, "On the origin of alluvial and diluvial deposits", and "On diluvial formations". At this time, most of what Sedgwick called "The English school of geologists" distinguished superficial deposits which were "diluvial", showing "great irregular masses of sand, loam, and coarse gravel, containing through its mass rounded blocks sometimes of enormous magnitude" and supposedly caused by "some great irregular inundation", from "alluvial" deposits of "comminuted gravel, silt, loam, and other materials" attributed to lesser events, the "propelling force" of rivers, or "successive partial inundations".{{sfn|Henslow|1823|p=344–348}}{{sfn|Herbert|1991|pp=171–172}} | |||
===Emergence of flood geology=== | |||
In America, ] at ] spread the concept and in an 1833 essay dismissed the earlier idea that most stratified rocks had been formed in the flood, while arguing that surface features showed "wreck and ruin" attributable to "mighty floods and rushing torrents of water". He said that "we must charge to moving waters the undulating appearance of stratified sand and gravel, often observed in many places, and very conspicuously in the plain of ], and in other regions of Connecticut and New England", while both "bowlder stones" and sandy deserts across the world could be attributed to "diluvial agency".{{sfn|Young|1995}} | |||
Flood geology was developed as a creationist endeavor in the ] by ], a ] and amateur geologist who wrote ''The New Geology'' in ] to provide an explicitly ] perspective on geology. His work was adapted and updated by ] and ] in their book '']'' in ]. Morris and Whitcomb argued that the Earth was geologically recent, that the ] had triggered the ], and that the Great Flood had laid down most of the geological strata in the space of a single year (the same model that Buckland had rejected 130 years earlier). Given this history, they argued, "the last refuge of the case for evolution immediately vanishes away, and the record of the rocks becomes a tremendous witness . . . to the holiness and justice and power of the living God of Creation!" | |||
====Criticisms and retractions: the downfall of diluvialism==== | |||
This became the foundation of a new generation of Young Earth creationist thinkers, who organized themselves around Morris' ]. Subsequent research by the ] has observed and analyzed, and interpreted geological formations, within a flood geology framework, including the ],<ref>{{cite journal|url=http://www.creationresearch.org/crsq/articles/40/40_1/LaBrea3.htm|last=Weston|first=W|title=La Brea Tar Pits: Evidence of a Catastrophic Flood|journal=Creation Research Society Quarterly Journal|volume=40|issue=1|date=2003|pages=25-33|accessdate=2007-03-29}}</ref> the ] in the Crimean peninsula<ref>{{cite journal|url=http://www.creationresearch.org/crsq/articles/38/38_3/Crimean.htm|title=Flood Geology of the Crimean Peninsula Part I: Tavrick Formation|last=Lalomov|first=AV|date=2001|journal=Creation Research Society Quarterly Journal|volume=38|issue=3|pages=118-124|accessdate=2007-03-29}}</ref> and ], ].<ref>{{cite journal|url=http://www.creationresearch.org/crsq/articles/31/31_4b.html|title=Stone Mountain Georgia: A Creation Geologist's Perspective|last=Froede|first=CR|date=1995|journal=Creation Research Society Quarterly Journal|volume=31|issue=4|pages=214|accessdate=2007-03-29}}</ref> In each case, the creationists claimed that the flood geology interpretation had superior explanatory power than the uniformitarian explanation -- a claim totally rejected by geologists. The Creation Research Society argues that "uniformitarianism is wishful thinking".<ref>{{cite journal|url=http://www.creationresearch.org/crsq/notes/39/39_1/Note0206.htm|title=Surface and Subsurface Errors in Anti-Creationist Geology|date=2002|first=JK|last=Reed|coauthors=Woodmorappe, J|journal=Creation Research Society Quarterly Journal|volume=39|issue=1|accessdate=2007-03-29}}</ref> | |||
Other naturalists were critical of diluvialism: ] minister ] published opposing arguments in a series of articles from 1823 onwards. He was critical of the assumption that fossils resembling modern tropical species had been swept north "by some violent means", which he regarded as absurd considering the "unbroken state" of fossil remains. For example, fossil ]s demonstrated adaptation to the same northern climates now prevalent where they were found. He criticized Buckland's identification of red mud in the Kirkdale cave as diluvial, when nearly identical mud in other caves had been described as ].{{sfn|Young|1995}} While Cuvier had reconciled geology with a loose reading of the biblical text, Fleming argued that such a union was "indiscreet" and turned to a more literal view of Genesis:{{sfn|Herbert|2005|p=186}} | |||
{{quote|But if the supposed impetuous torrent excavated valleys, and transported masses of rocks to a distance from their original repositories, then must the soil have been swept from off the earth to the destruction of the vegetable tribes. Moses does not record such an occurrence. On the contrary, in his history of the dove and the olive-leaf plucked off, he furnishes a proof that the flood was not so violent in its motions as to disturb the soil, nor to overturn the trees which it supported.{{sfn|Herbert|2005|p=186}}}} | |||
When Sedgwick visited Paris at the end of 1826 he found hostility to diluvialism: ] ridiculed it "beyond measure", and ] "lectured against it". In the summer of 1827 Sedgwick and ] travelled to investigate the geology of the ], where they found "so many indications of ''local diluvial'' operations" that Sedgwick began to change his mind about it being worldwide. When ] published his investigations into the Auvergne in 1827, he did not use the term "diluvium". He was followed by Murchison and ] whose account appeared in 1829. All three agreed that the valleys could well have been formed by rivers acting over a long time, and a deluge was not needed. | |||
The impact on creationism and fundamentalist Christianity of these ideas was considerable. Armed with the backing of wealthy conservative organizations and individuals,{{Fact|date=June 2007}} Morris' brand of flood geology was widely promoted throughout the ] and overseas, with his books being translated into many other languages. Flood geology is still a major theme of modern creationism, though it (and creationism in general) is not part of ]. | |||
Lyell, formerly a pupil of Buckland, put strong arguments against diluvialism in the first volume of his '']'' published in 1830, though suggesting the possibility of a deluge affecting a region such as the low-lying area around the ]. Sedgwick responded to this book in his presidential address to the Geological Society in February 1830, agreeing that diluvial deposits had formed at differing times. At the society a year later, when retiring from the presidency, Sedgwick described his former belief that "vast masses of diluvial gravel" had been scattered worldwide in "one violent and transitory period" as "a most unwarranted conclusion", and therefore thought "it right, as one of my last acts before I quit this Chair, thus publicly to read my recantation." However, he remained convinced that a flood as described in Genesis was not excluded by geology.{{sfn|Young|1995}}{{sfn|Herbert|1991|pp=171–174}}{{sfn|Herbert|2005|pp=186–188}} | |||
== Creationist interpretations of the geologic column == | |||
One student had seen the gradual abandonment of diluvialism: ] had attended Jameson's geology lectures in 1826 and at Cambridge became a close friend of Henslow before learning geology from Sedgwick in 1831. At the outset of the ] Darwin was given a copy of Lyell's ''Principles of Geology'' and at the first landfall began his career as a geologist with investigations which supported Lyell's concept of ] while also describing loose rocks and gravel as "part of the long disputed Diluvium". Debates continued over the part played by repeated exceptional catastrophes in geology, and in 1832 ] dubbed this view ], while naming Lyell's insistence on explanations based on current processes ].{{sfn|Herbert|2005|pp=70, 152–156, 185}} | |||
Generally, the ] and the ] are used as major pieces of evidence in the modern scientific explanation of the development and ] of life on Earth as well as a means to establish the ]. As such, a major task for many creationists is to reinterpret these pieces of scientific data in their general project of discrediting modern scientific explanations. There are three main explanations offered by different factions in the creationist community: | |||
Buckland, too, gradually modified his views on the deluge. In 1832 a student noted Buckland's view on cause of diluvial gravel, "whether is Mosaic inundation or not, will not say". In a footnote to his '']'' of 1836, Buckland backed down from his former claim that the "violent inundation" identified in his ''Reliquiae Diluvianae'' was the Genesis flood:{{sfn|Herbert|2005|pp=185, 408}} | |||
* The classical explanation is to deny the existence of the ]. This is the approach taken by Morris and Whitcomb in their 1961 book, '']'', and it is continued today by leading creationists such as ] and ].<ref>{{cite journal|url=http://www.trueorigin.org/geocolumn.asp|title=The Geologic Column: Does it Exist?|last=Woodmorappe|first=J|date=1999|journal=Creation Ex Nihilo Technical Journal|volume=13|issue=2|pages=77-82|accessdate=2007-03-29}}</ref> Their main objections to the existence of the ] are (1) there are no places in the world where the entire column can be seen in one location, (2) the index fossils used to date sections of the column are increasingly found in different layers, and (3) there are numerous examples of inverted succession.<ref>{{cite journal|url=http://www.creationresearch.org/crsq/articles/40/40_2/ucolumn.htm|title=The Uniformitarian Stratigraphic Column—Shortcut or Pitfall for Creation Geology?|last=Reed|first=JK|coauthors=Froeede,Jr,CR|date=2003|journal=Creation Research Society Quarterly Journal|volume=40|issue=2|pages=90-98|accessdate=2007-03-29}}</ref> | |||
{{quote|it seems more probable, that the event in question, was the last of the many geological revolutions that have been produced by violent irruptions of water, rather than the comparatively tranquil inundation described in the Inspired Narrative. It has been justly argued, against the attempt to identity these two great historical and natural phenomena, that, as the rise and fall of the waters of the Mosaic deluge are described to have been gradual and of short duration, they would have produced comparatively little change on the surface of the country they overflowed.{{sfn|Buckland|1836|pp=94–95}}}} | |||
For a while, Buckland had continued to insist that ''some'' geological layers were related to the Great Flood, but grew to accept the idea that they represented multiple inundations which occurred well before humans existed. In 1840 he made a field trip to Scotland with the Swiss geologist ] and became convinced that the "diluvial" features which he had attributed to the deluge had, in fact, been produced by ancient ]s. Buckland became one of the foremost champions of Agassiz's theory of ], and diluvialism went out of use in geology. Active geologists no longer posited sudden ancient catastrophes with unknown causes and instead increasingly explained phenomena by observable processes causing slow changes over great periods.{{sfn|Imbrie|Imbrie|1986|p=40}}{{sfn|Young|Stearley|2008|p=99}} | |||
* Other creationists accept the existence of the ] and seek to interpret it in terms of a sequence of events that might have occurred during the Flood. This is the approach taken by ] creationists such as ], ] and ]. They would place the Flood/post-Flood boundary somewhere between the ]/] boundary and the ] in the ]. There is greater debate about the location of the pre-Flood/Flood boundary - some place it as high as the base of the ], others put it within the ], and some (eg. Max Hunter) argue that no pre-Flood rocks remain at all, but that the pre-Flood/Flood boundary is within the earth's ].{{Fact|date=March 2007}} | |||
===Scriptural geologists, and later commentary=== | |||
* More recently a minority of creationists (particularly in Britain) have been advocating a third possibility, known as recolonisation theory. On the basis of the Genesis text they argue that the "flood" was a 40-day event which blotted out terrestrial life and completely destroyed the land. They therefore identify this cataclysm with the ] or 'lunar cataclysm' that shook at least part of the solar system around the end of the ]. Rocks from this earliest segment of geological time are missing from Earth's rock record. The earliest part of the succeeding ] is identified with the remaining 330 days of the flood narrative. The subaqueous nature of early Archaean deposits is not inconsistent with this correlation. The fossil sequence which follows, beginning with ] and continuing with algae, the sudden colonisation of the seafloors known as the ] and the appearance of jawless and jawed fish, is interpreted as an ecological succession reflecting the first stages of recovery from the cataclysm. The order in which terrestrial fossils appear, from lichens to trees, is similarly interpreted. This approach shares some ground with geology and departs from most of the tenets of flood geology. For example, it accepts that large-scale evolution has taken place during geological history. On the other hand, it rejects ] as a driver, arguing that evolution consisted of diversification within created kinds that were programmed for diversification: the biological world, like the geological, had changeability built into it. It also accepts that the geological record built up over a substantial span of time, though it rejects the radioisotope-based timescale.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.earthhistory.org.uk/images/1/|title=Two views of geological time|date=2007|last=Robinson|first=Steve|accessdate=2007-03-29}}</ref> | |||
]s were a heterogeneous group of writers in the early 19th century who claimed "the primacy of ] biblical ]" and a short ] time scale. Their views were marginalised and ignored by the ] of their time.{{sfn|Rudwick|1988|pp=42–44}}{{sfn|Rudwick|2008|p=84, "But since ] and other geologists regarded as scientifically worthless…"}}{{sfn|Wood|2004|p=168}} They generally lacked any background in geology and had little influence even in church circles.{{sfn|Piccardi|Masse|2007|p=46}}{{sfn|Livingstone|Hart|Noll|1999|pp=186–187}} | |||
Many of them quoted obsolete geological writings. Among the most prominent, ] argued in 1822 that "mineral geology" rejected revelation, while true "Mosaical geology" showed that God had created primitive rock formations directly, in correspondence with the laws which God then made to produce subsequent effects. A first revolution on the third day of creation deepened the oceans so water rushed in, and in the deluge 1,656 years afterwards a second revolution sank land areas and raised the sea bed to cause a swirling flood which moved soil and fossil remains into stratified layers, after which God created new vegetation. As Genesis appeared to show that the rivers of ] had survived this catastrophe, he argued that the verses concerned were an added "parenthesis" which should be disregarded. In 1837 ] expressed disappointment about disappearing belief in the deluge, and about Sedgwick and Buckland recanting diluvialism while putting forward his own ''New and Conclusive Physical Demonstrations'' which ignored geological findings to claim that strata had been deposited in a quick continuous process while still moist.{{sfn|Young|1995}} | |||
== Geological observations and explanations == | |||
Geology was popularized by several authors. ]'s lectures published in 1840 reconciled an extended time frame with Genesis by the increasingly common ] or ], and said it was likely that the gravel and boulder formations were not diluvium but had taken long ages predating the creation of humans. He reaffirmed that the flood was historical as a local event, something which the 17th century theologians ] and ] had already suggested on a purely biblical basis. Smith also denounced the "fanciful" writings of the scriptural geologists. ] sought to ensure that geological findings could be corroborated by scripture and dismissed the scriptural geology of Penn and Fairholme as misrepresenting both scripture and the facts of geology. He noted the difficulty of equating a violent deluge with the more tranquil Genesis account. ] supported similar points with considerable detail.{{sfn|Young|1995}} | |||
{{Unreferencedsect|date=March 2007}} | |||
Little attention was paid to flood geology over the rest of the 19th century, its few supporters included the author ] in the 1850s and the Lutheran scholar ] in 1860 and 1878. The visions of ] published in 1864 formed ] views and influenced 20th century creationism.{{sfn|Young|Stearley|2008|p=119}} | |||
], a transported quartzite block in Cambrian sedimentary strata, identical to quartzite found in the Precambrian layer hundreds of feet below, which flood geology supporters argue came to rest there by means of large-scale liquefaction.]] | |||
==Creationist flood geology== | |||
If the global flood actually occurred, then it would have had a radical effect on geology, and evidence of that flood would be observable today, making the idea falsifiable. Scientists hold that the evidence available is sufficient to conclusively falsify the notion of a recent global flood. | |||
The ], led by ], took a six-day creation literally and believed that ] supplementing and supporting the Bible. Her visions of the flood and its aftermath, published in 1864, described a catastrophic deluge which reshaped the entire surface of the Earth, followed by a powerful wind which piled up new high mountains, burying the bodies of men and beasts. Buried forests became coal and oil, and where God later caused these to burn, they reacted with limestone and water to cause "earthquakes, volcanoes and fiery issues".{{sfn|Numbers|2006|p=90}}{{sfn|White|1864|pp=}} | |||
===George McCready Price=== | |||
Eighty percent of the Earth's ] is covered by ]. Sedimentary rocks are formed as particles of ] ] out of air, ice, or water flows carrying the particles in ]. As sediment deposition builds up, ] squeezes the sediment into layered solids in a process known as ] ("rock formation") and the original ] are expelled. Amongst creationists there is ongoing debate about which sediments are flood sediments, which are pre-flood sediments, and which are post-flood sediments. | |||
White's visions prompted several books by one of her followers, ], leading to the 20th-century revival of flood geology.{{sfn|Young|Stearley|2008|p=119}} After years selling White's books door-to-door, Price took a one-year teacher-training course and taught in several schools. When shown books on evolution and the ] which contradicted his beliefs, he found the answer in White's "revealing word pictures" which suggested how the fossils had been buried. He studied textbooks on geology and "almost tons of geological documents", finding "how the actual facts of the rocks and fossils, ''stripped of mere theories'', splendidly refute this evolutionary theory of the invariable order of the fossils, ''which is the very backbone of the evolution doctrine''". In 1902, he produced a manuscript proposing geology based on Genesis, in which the sequence of fossils resulted from the different responses of animals to the encroaching flood. He agreed with White on the origins of coal and oil and conjectured that mountain ranges (including the ] and ]) formed from layers deposited by the flood which had then been "] and elevated to their present height by the great lateral pressure that accompanied its ]". He then found a report describing ] and a paper on ]s. He concluded from these "providential discoveries" that it was impossible to prove the age or overall sequence of fossils and included these points in his self-published paperback of 1906, ''Illogical Geology: The Weakest Point in the Evolution Theory''. His arguments continued this focus on disproving the sequence of strata, and he ultimately sold more than 15,000 copies of his 1923 college textbook ''The New Geology''.{{sfn|Numbers|2006|pp=91–99}}{{sfn|Price|1926}} | |||
Price increasingly gained attention outside ] groups, and in the ] other leading ] praised his opposition to evolution – though none of them followed his young Earth arguments, retaining their belief in the gap or in the day-age interpretation of Genesis. Price corresponded with ] and was invited to be a witness in the ] of 1925 but declined as he was teaching in England and opposed to teaching Genesis in public schools as "it would be an infringement on the cardinal American principle of ]". Price returned from England in 1929 to rising popularity among fundamentalists as a scientific author.{{sfn|Numbers|1993|pp= 97–100}} In the same year his former student ] self-published the short book ''Back to Creationism'', which recommended Price's flood geology as the new "science of creationism", introducing the label "]" as a replacement for "anti-evolution" of "Christian Fundamentals".<ref name="Antievolutionists and Creationists">{{cite web | url= http://www.counterbalance.net/history/anticreat-body.html | title= History Topic: Antievolutionists and Creationists | first= Ron| last= Numbers | publisher= counterbalance | access-date= 1 July 2014}}</ref> | |||
Some flood geology supporters have proposed that a global flood is the most reasonable explanation for the means by which sediment came to precipitate in such depth over so much of the Earth's surface. They further argue that the ] predicted by the flood can explain many geological formations they believe are left inadequately explained by geology grounded on the scientific method. | |||
In 1935, Price and ] (a rancher who had co-founded the Lindcove Community Bible Church) founded the Religion and Science Association (RSA). They aimed to resolve disagreements among fundamentalists with "a harmonious solution" which would convert them all to flood geology. Most of the organising group were Adventists; others included conservative Lutherans with similarly literalist beliefs. ] of the ] had included Price's geological views in a 1927 book, and in 1931 published ''The Deluge Story in Stone: A History of the Flood Theory of Geology'', which described Price as the "one very outstanding advocate of the Flood" of the century. The first public RSA conference in March 1936 invited various fundamentalist views but opened up differences between the organisers on the antiquity of creation and on life before ]. The RSA went defunct in 1937, and a dispute continued between Price and Nelson, who viewed creation as occurring over 100,000 years previously.{{sfn|Numbers|1993|pp=102–}} | |||
They do not assert that ''all'' geological phenomena are a result of the flood. Flood geology supporters acknowledge many geological formations were formed by other processes. However, they argue that there are a large number of geological formations which can only be explained with reference to massive cataclysmic action involving enormous amounts of water and sediment which rapidly precipitated from solution, liquefied, and dried. | |||
In 1938, Price, with a group of Adventists in Los Angeles, founded what became the Deluge Geology Society (DGS), with membership restricted to those believing that the creation week comprised "six literal days, and that the Deluge should be studied as the cause of the major geological changes since creation". Not all DGS adherents were Adventists; early members included the ] ] and the ] ]. The DGS undertook field work: in June 1941 their first ''Bulletin'' hailed the news that the ] dinosaur trackways in Texas appeared to include human footprints. Though Nelson had advised Price in 1939 that this was "absurd" and that the difficulty of human footprints forming during the turmoil of the deluge would "knock the Flood theory all to pieces", in 1943 the DGS began raising funds for "actual excavation" by a Footprint Research Committee of members including the consulting geologist ]. Initially they tried to keep their research secret from "unfriendly scientists". Then in 1945, to encourage backing, they announced giant human footprints, allegedly defeating "at a single stroke" the theory of evolution. The revelation that locals had carved the footprints, and an unsuccessful field trip that year, failed to dampen their hopes. | |||
This explanation has been met with much derision in the ], scientists point out that a large number of sedimentary formations are inconsistent with a short-timescale creation. Indeed, this problem was one of the principal reasons why early 19th century geologists such as William Buckland came to abandon the global flood as a sustainable hypothesis. | |||
However, by then doctrinal arguments had riven the DGS. The most extreme dispute began in late 1938 after Harold W. Clark observed deep drilling in oil fields and had discussions with practical geologists which dispelled the belief that the fossil sequence was random, convincing him that the evidence of thrust faults was "almost incontrovertible". He wrote to Price, telling his teacher that the "rocks do lie in a much more definite sequence than we have ever allowed", and proposing that the fossil sequence was explained by ecological zones before the flood. Price reacted with fury, and despite Clark emphasising their shared belief in literal recent creation, the dispute continued. In 1946 Clark set out his views in a book, ''The New Diluvialism'', which Price denounced as ''Theories of Satanic Origin''.{{sfn|Numbers|1993|pp=102–135}} | |||
=== Liquefaction === | |||
], a phenomenon commonly seen in ] and ]s, is claimed to have played a major role during the posited flood. It is argued that the resulting periods of liquefaction due to the catastrophe would cause the sediments to layer into strata. | |||
In 1941, ] co-founded the ] (ASA) as a less confrontational forum for ] scientists. Some deluge geologists, including Lammerts and Price, urged close cooperation with the DGS, but Everest began to see their views as presenting an "insurmountable problem" for the ASA. In 1948, he requested ], a geologist in fellowship with the ], to explore the issue. At the convention that year, Kulp examined ] antiquity demonstrated by radiocarbon dating.{{sfn|Numbers|1993|pp= 158–165}}{{sfn|Yang|1993}} At the 1949 convention a paper by Kulp was presented, giving a detailed critique of ''Deluge Geology'', which he said had "grown and infiltrated the greater portion of fundamental Christianity in America primarily due to the absence of trained Christian geologists". Kulp demonstrated that "major propositions of the theory are contraindicated by established physical and chemical laws". He focused on "four basic errors" commonly made by flood geologists: | |||
Other processes cause the strata to bend smoothly in places to explain bends and folds, while earthquakes would still be the major cause of radical ] in others. | |||
* saying that geology was the same as evolution | |||
* assuming "that life has been on the earth only for a few thousand years, therefore the flood ''must'' account for geological strata" | |||
* misunderstanding "the physical and chemical conditions under which rocks are formed" | |||
* ignoring recent discoveries such as radiometric dating that undermined their assumptions | |||
Kulp accused Price of ignorance and deception, concluding that "this unscientific theory of flood geology has done and will do considerable harm to the strong propagation of the gospel among educated people". Price said nothing during the presentation and discussion. When invited to speak, he "said something very brief which missed what everyone was waiting for". Further publications made the ASA's opposition to flood geology clear.{{sfn|Numbers|1993|pp= 165–169}}{{sfn|Kulp|1950|pp= 1–15}} | |||
Flood geology proponents claim that massive liquefaction can explain phenomena such as transported blocks, sand plumes, ] and ] deposits, and ]s. | |||
===Morris and Whitcomb=== | |||
=== Submarine canyon formation === | |||
In 1942, Irwin A. Moon's ''Sermons from Science'' persuaded engineer ] of the importance of harmonising science and the Bible, and introduced him to the concepts of a vapor canopy causing the flood and its geological effects. About a year later Morris found Price's ''New Geology'' a "life-changing experience", and joined the DGS. His book ''That You Might Believe'' (1946) for college students included Price's flood geology.{{sfn|Numbers|1993|pp=192–197}} | |||
Proponents of Flood Geology argue that such ]s were formed as the floodwaters receded from the continents. Such extensions are found in the ], ], ], and ] rivers, they are generally understood to be ]s which have developed when ]s were significantly lower than today. | |||
Morris had joined the ASA in 1949, and in the summer of 1953 he made a presentation on "The Biblical Evidence for a Recent Creation and Universal Deluge" at their annual conference, held at ]. He impressed a graduate student there, ] who was teaching Old Testament and Hebrew. To Whitcomb's distress, the ASA members at the presentation "politely denounced" Morris.{{sfn|Numbers|1993|pp= 187, 197}} | |||
Creationists argue that uniformitarian explanations are inferior to flood explanations, because the submarine canyons are extremely long, deep, and the sides are steep and often vertical, and thus do not show evidence of the erosion predicted by long periods of time, and being much more consistent with a shorter time frame. This claim is unsupported by the ] description of ] processes which allow for a wide variety of formations to occur over the (relatively) long timeframes seen in scientific descriptions of such formations. | |||
In 1955, the ASA held a joint meeting with the ] (ETS) at the same campus, where theologian ]'s ''The Christian View of Science and Scripture'' (1954) caused considerable discussion. This book dismissed flood geology as typifying the "ignoble tradition" of fundamentalism and stated that Price could not be taken seriously, as lacking the necessary competence, training and integrity. Instead, Ramm proposed what he called ], in which the Genesis days functioned as pictorial images revealing a process that had taken place over millions of years. ASA scientists praised Ramm's views, but the ETS theologians proved unwilling to follow Ramm.{{sfn|Numbers|1993|pp=184–189}} | |||
These are explained in the scientific model as being due to persistent water flow which creates over a period of thousands if not millions of years structural breaks in the ]. These fractures are even modeled in geological simulations which show the processes occurring as described by scientists. | |||
This encouraged Whitcomb to make his doctoral dissertation a response to Ramm and a defence of Price's position. He systematically asked evangelical professors of ], archaeology and the Old Testament about creation and the flood and in October told Morris that Ramm's book had been sufficient incentive for him to devote his dissertation to the topic. In 1957 Whitcomb completed his 450-page dissertation, "The Genesis Flood", and he promptly began summarising it for a book. ] responded positively and agreed with him that chapters on scientific aspects should be carefully checked or written by someone with a PhD in science, but Whitcomb's attempts to find someone with a doctorate in geology were unsuccessful. Morris gave helpful advice, expressing concern that sections were too closely based on Price and on ] who were "both considered by scientists generally as crackpots".{{sfn|Numbers|1993|p=191}} Morris produced an outline of his planned three chapters and in December 1957 agreed to co-author the book.{{sfn|Numbers|1993|pp=188–192}} | |||
=== Fossilization === | |||
Counter to the scientific understanding of fossilization, creationists claim that ]s are evidence of the flood, where the remains of many of the Earth's lifeforms were quickly buried by sediments in the short period of the flood. In support of their argument, flood geology supporters point to the fact that fossilization can only take place when the matter is buried quickly so that the matter does not decompose. They also point to a recent discovery of '']'' bones in which, after demineralization, ] having the appearance of tissue were found. The bones cannot be reasonably understood to have survived for millions of years without the soft tissue either decomposing or fossilizing. However, an expert in ancient biomolecules has proposed a novel unknown mechanism for this unusual find: "My suspicion is this process has led to the reaction of more resistant molecules with the normal proteins and carbohydrates which make up these cellular structures, and replaced them, so that we have a very tough, resistant, very lipid-rich material - a polymer that would be very difficult to break down and characterise, but which has preserved the structure".<ref>{{cite news|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4379577.stm|title=''T. rex'' fossil has 'soft tissues'|publisher=BBC News|date=2005|accessdate=2007-03-29}}; quote attributed to Dr. Matthew Collins, ], UK</ref> | |||
Fossil dating by using ]s is rejected, because fossils are dated with reference to uniformitarian assumptions regarding the rate at which the sediments were laid down. They argue that there is no reason that these assumptions must be held, that the evidence could just as easily be interpreted as rapid sedimentation during a recent flood, and if the sediments were laid down quickly, fossil dating methods are meaningless. This ignores the fact that fossil dating (]) was a strictly relative dating method until the advent of ]. Until then, there were no assumptions about deposition rate involved. Relative dating –''i.e.'' this section is older/younger than that one – only requires the ]. ] and evolution rates proved to be congruent with the timespans obtained from radiometric dating.{{Fact|date=June 2007}} | |||
Morris sent on his draft for comment in early 1959. His intended 100 pages grew to almost 350, around twice the length of Whitcomb's eventual contribution. Recalling Morris's earlier concerns about how Price was viewed by scientists, Whitcomb suggested that "For many people, our position would be somewhat discredited" by multiple references to Price in the draft, including a section headed "Price and Seventh-Day Adventism". Morris agreed and even suggested avoiding the term "flood geology", but it proved too useful. After discussion, the co-authors minimised these references and removed any mention of Price's Adventist affiliation. By early 1960 they became impatient at delays when Moody Publishers expressed misgivings about the length and literal views of the book, and they went along with ]'s recommendation of a small Philadelphia publisher.{{sfn|Numbers|2006|pp=222–224}} | |||
=== Fossil fuels === | |||
Flood geology supporters argue that the existence of large ] deposits are the result of the flood's accumulation and subsequent subsurface compression of large amounts of dead plant matter. They argue that this explains how so much organic matter came to be buried and pooled beneath enormous amounts of sediment before the organic matter decomposed, and explains how the sediments came to quickly dry into sedimentary rock atop the fossil fuels. | |||
====''The Genesis Flood'' (1961)==== | |||
The scientific theory of ] formation holds that they were formed when layers of accumulating sediment covered ancient organic debris. Most such debris is destroyed at the earth's surface by oxidation or by being digested by microorganisms, but organic material that survives to become buried under sediments, or deposited in other oxygen-poor environments, can be subjected, over millions of years, to increasing temperatures and pressures and undergo chemical transformations resulting in petroleum, natural gas, or coal. Deposits of these fossil fuels typically occur in sedimentary basins and along continental shelves. Sediments may accumulate to depths of several thousand feet and in these conditions organic material is subjected to pressures of tens of thousands of pounds per square inch and temperatures of several hundred degrees. The ], during which the land was covered with swamps filled with huge trees, ferns and other large leafy plants, is the time in which most fossil fuels were formed. It occurred from about 360 to 286 million years ago. Some deposits of coal can be dated to the late ], 65 million years ago. | |||
The ] of Philadelphia published Whitcomb and Morris's '']'' in February 1961. The authors took as their premise ]: "the basic argument of this volume is that the Scriptures are true". For Whitcomb, Genesis describes a worldwide flood which covered all the high mountains, ] with a capacity equivalent to eight freight-trains, flood waters from a canopy and the deeps, and subsequent dispersal of animals from Mount Ararat to all the continents via ]. He disputed the views published by Ramm and ]. Morris then confronted readers with the dilemma of whether to believe Scripture or to accept the interpretations of trained geologists, and instead of the latter proposed "a new scheme of historical geology"—true both to Scripture and to "God's work" revealed in nature. This was essentially Price's ''The New Geology'' of 1923 updated for the 1960s, though with few direct references to Price.{{sfn|Numbers|1993|pp=200–202}} | |||
Like Price before him, Morris argued that most fossil-bearing strata had formed during a global deluge, disputing uniformitarianism, multiple ], and the ]. He explained the apparent ] as the outcome of marine organisms dying in the slurry of sediments in early stages of the flood, of moving currents sorting objects by size and shape, and of the mobility of vertebrates (allowing them to initially escape the flood waters). He cited Walter E. Lammerts in support of Price's views about the thrust fault at ] disproving the sequence. | |||
=== Fossil layering === | |||
The book went beyond Price in some areas. Morris extended the six-day creation from the Earth to the entire universe and wrote that death and decay had only begun with the ], which had therefore introduced ] and the ]. He proposed that a vapor canopy, before providing water for the flood, created a mild, even climate and shielded the Earth from ] – so radiocarbon dating of antediluvian samples would not work.{{sfn|Numbers|1993|pp= 202–204}} He cited the testimony of ] from the 1950s that some of the ] dinosaur trackways near the ] in ] overlapped human footprints, but Burdick failed to confirm this, and the claim disappeared from the third edition of ''The Genesis Flood''.<ref>{{harvnb|Numbers|1993|loc=''John C. Whitcomb, Jr., Henry M. Morris, and ''The Genesis Flood, p. 203}}: "Burdick continued to keep Whitcomb and Morris informed about the disputed tracks because, as he sheepishly wrote Morris, 'you sort of stuck your neck out in publishing those Glen Rose tracks.' Indeed they had, and for the third printing they silently revised the text."</ref> | |||
The ordering of fossil layers is often used as evidence for the scientific explanation of geological features. Flood geology tries to explain that while ]s never share the same layers as ]s, this is not due to temporal separation of the organisms. Instead an unspecified and unmodeled "hydraulic sorting action" is claimed to be able to sort out fossils according to their shape, density, size, and the gases released from the body after death. This is claimed to account for the layering observed as reported by Walt Brown of the Center for Scientific Creation: | |||
===Creation Research Society=== | |||
:"In an unpublished experiment at Loma Linda University, a dead bird, mammal, reptile, and amphibian were placed in an open water tank. Their buoyancy in the days following death depended on their density while living, the build-up and leakage of gases from their decaying bodies, the absorption or loss of water by their bodies, and other factors. That experiment showed that the natural order of settling following death was amphibian, reptile, mammal, and finally bird. This order of relative buoyancy correlates closely with 'the evolutionary order,' but, of course, evolution did not cause it." | |||
In a 1957 discussion with Whitcomb, Lammerts suggested an "informal association" to exchange ideas, and possibly research, on flood geology. Morris was unavailable to get things started, then {{circa|1961}} ] got in touch, and they set about recruiting others. They had difficulty in finding supporters with scientific qualifications. The Creation Research Committee of ten they put together on 9 February 1962 had varying views on the age of the Earth, but all opposed evolution. They then succeeded in recruiting others into what became the ] (CRS) in June 1963, which grew rapidly. Getting an agreed statement of belief was problematic; they affirmed that the Bible was "historically and scientifically true in the original autographs" so that "the account of origins in Genesis is a factual presentation of simple historical truths" and "The great flood described in Genesis, commonly referred to as the Noachian Flood, was an historic event worldwide in its extent and effect", but to Morris's disappointment they did not make flood geology mandatory. They lacked a qualified geologist, and Morris persuaded the group to appoint Burdick as their ], overcoming initial concerns raised by Lammerts. The CRS grew rapidly, with an increasing proportion of the membership adhering to strict young Earth flood geology.{{sfn|Numbers|1993|pp=214–215, 222–233}} | |||
The resources of the CRS for its first decade went into publication of the CRS ''Quarterly'' and a project to publish a creationist school book. Since the 1920s most U.S. schools had not taught pupils about evolution, but the launch of ] exposed apparent weaknesses of U.S. science education, and the ] produced textbooks in 1963 which included the topic. When the ] held a hearing in October 1964 about adopting these textbooks, creationist objectors were unable to name suitable creationist alternatives. Lammerts organised a CRS textbook committee which lined up a group of authors, with John N. Moore as senior editor bringing their contributions together into a suitable textbook.{{sfn|Numbers|1993|pp=238–240}} | |||
Others have proposed that more "advanced" animals were better able to escape the rising flood waters, so that they were not overtaken until later. This idea is criticized by scientists as untenable since there are "advanced" and "simple" animals found throughout the entire fossil record. | |||
=== Creation science === | |||
In general, there is a lack of any evidence for any of the above effects proposed by flood geologists and their claims of fossil layering are not taken seriously by scientists.<ref name="Isaak">{{cite web|url=http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-noahs-ark.html|title=Problems with a Global Flood|last=Isaak|first=M|date=1998|publisher=|accessdate=2007-03-29}}</ref> | |||
{{main|Creation science}} | |||
The teaching of evolution, reintroduced in 1963 by the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study textbooks, was prohibited by laws in some states. These bans were contested; the '']'' case which began late in 1965 was decided in 1968 by the ] ruling that such laws violated the ] of the ].{{sfn|Numbers|1993|pp=238–239, 241}} | |||
Some creationists thought a legal ] should shield their children from teachings hostile to their religion; Nell J. Segraves and Jean E. Sumrall (a friend of Lammerts who was also associated with the CRS and the ]) petitioned the ] to require that school biology texts designate evolution as a theory. In 1966 ] as ] suggested that they demand equal time for creation, as the ] allowed teachers to mention religion as long as they did not promote specific doctrines. Their first attempt failed, but in 1969 controversy arose over a proposed ''Science Framework for California Schools''. Anticipating success, they and others in the Bible-Science Association formed Creation Science, Inc., to produce textbooks. A compromise acceptable to Segraves, Sumrall and the Board was suggested by ], and the revised 1970 ''Framework'' included "While the Bible and other philosophical treatises also mention creation, science has independently postulated the various theories of creation. Therefore, creation in scientific terms is not a religious or philosophical belief." The result kept school texts free of creationism but downgraded evolution to mere speculative theory.{{sfn|Numbers|1993|pp=243–244}} | |||
=== Frozen mammoths === | |||
<!-- Unsourced image removed: ], nicknamed Dima, found enclosed in a lens of ice six feet below the surface in Siberia in 1977, with grass and sand still in its mouth.]] --> | |||
Creationists reacted to the California developments with a new confidence that they could introduce their ideas into schools by minimizing biblical references. ] declared "Creationism is on the way back, this time not primarily as a religious belief, but as an alternative scientific explanation of the world in which we live." In 1970 Creation Science, Inc., combined with a planned studies center at ] as the Creation-Science Research Center. Morris moved to ] to become director of the center and academic vice-president of the college. In the fall he presented a course at the college on "Scientific Creationism", the first time he is known to have used the term in public. (Two years later, the Creation-Science Research Center split with part becoming the ] (ICR) led by Morris.){{sfn|Numbers|1993|p=244}} | |||
According to scientists, the giant ]s went extinct about 11,000 years ago, although remnant populations are believed to have persisted on an island off the coast of ] based on fossil remains dated to about 2000 BC.<ref>{{cite journal|last = Vartanyan|first = SL|title = Radiocarbon Dating Evidence for Mammoths on Wrangel Island, Arctic Ocean, until 2000 BC|journal = Radiocarbon|pages = 1-6|url = http://www.radiocarbon.org/Journal/v37n1/vartanyan.html|volume=37|issue=1|date=1995|accessdate=2007-03-29}}</ref> Some proponents of Flood Geology have claimed that this extinction is evidence of catastrophism because certain mammoths have been found with grass in their mouths. Proponents of the ] flood model claim it can explain these mammoth remains. They argue mammoths were suddenly frozen solid when large quantities of water vapour in the atmosphere were deposited as ice at the poles. Scientists do not view the few instances of grass in the mouths of frozen mammoth carcasses as sufficient evidence for a global catastrophe. Moreover, the extraordinary temperatures needed to quick-freeze a mammoth are way below any temperature ever measured on earth and the idea of a canopy itself is considered so extreme as to cause the surface of the Earth to have the conditions of a pressure boiler before the flood. | |||
CRS had found schoolbook publishers reluctant to take on their textbook, and eventually the Christian publishing company ] brought out ''Biology: A Search for Order in Complexity'' in 1970. The 10,000 prints sold out within a year, and they produced 25,000 as the second impression, but hardly any public schools adopted the book. A preface by Morris claims that there were two philosophies of creation, "the doctrine of evolution and the doctrine of special creation", attempting to give both equal validity.{{sfn|Numbers|1993|pp=238–241}} The book mostly covers uncontroversial details of biology but asserts that these were correctly seen as "God's creation" or "divine creation", and presents biblical creation as the correct scientific view. A chapter on "Weaknesses of Geologic Evidence" disputes evolutionary theories while asserting a "fact that most fossil material was laid down by the flood in Noah's time". Another chapter disputes evolutionary theory.<ref name="TOA Hendren">, ], ], 20 August 2006. Retrieved 27 July 2014</ref> | |||
However, there are so many problems with this that even the Young Earth Creationist ministry ] states that it is an argument that should not be used.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/faq/dont_use.asp|title=Arguments we think creationists should NOT use|date=2007|publisher=|accessdate=2007-03-29}}</ref> Rather, they claim that mammoths and the surrounding circumstances are best explained by radical climate change in a supposed ice-age following the flood, although that answer is not to be found in Genesis. Other creationists counter that there is no evidence for an ] before 10,000 years ago. Science, however, recognises a large number of earlier Ice Ages, with the earliest so far identified occurring 2.3 billion years ago. | |||
In the CRS ''Quarterly'' for September 1971, Morris introduced the "]" asserting that evolution and creation were both equally scientific and equally religious, and soon afterwards he said they were "competing scientific hypotheses". For the third printing of ''Biology: A Search for Order in Complexity'' in 1974, the editor John N. Moore added a preface setting out this approach as "the two basic viewpoints of origins", the "evolution model" and the "creation model". When an Indiana school decided to use the book as their biology text, the '']'' district court case banned its use in public schools as infringing the Establishment Clause. Judge Michael T. Dugan, II, described it as "a text obviously designed to present ''only'' the view of Biblical Creationism in a favorable light", contravening the constitution by promotion of a specific sectarian religious view.<ref name="TOA Hendren" />{{sfn|Numbers|1993|pp=239–245}} | |||
== Proposed mechanisms of the flood == | |||
As a tactic to gain the same scientific status as evolution, flood geology proponents had effectively relabeled the Bible-based flood geology of George McCready Price as "creation science" or "scientific creationism" by the mid-1970s. At the CRS board meeting in spring 1972, members were told to start using "scientific creationism", a phrase used interchangeably with "creation science"; Morris explained that preferences differed, though neither was ideal as "one simple term" could not "identify such a complex and comprehensive subject." In the 1974 ICR handbook for high-school teachers titled ''Scientific Creationism'', Morris uses the two-model approach to support his argument that creationism could "be taught without reference to the book of Genesis or to other religious literature or to religious doctrines", and in public schools only the "basic scientific creation model" should be taught, rather than biblical creationism which "would open the door to wide interpretations of Genesis" or to non-Christian ]. He did not deny having been influenced by the Bible. In his preface to the book dated July 1974, Morris as editor outlines how the "Public School Edition" of the book evaluates evidence from a "strictly scientific point of view" without "reference to the Bible or other religious literature", while the "General Edition" is "essentially identical" except for an additional chapter on "Creation according to Scripture" that "places the scientific evidence in its proper biblical and theological context."{{sfn|Numbers|1993|pp=242–246}}{{sfn|Morris|1974|p=}} | |||
For the cause of the flood, Genesis states only that God deliberately caused the flood, indicating that the cause of the flood was supernatural in origin. Beyond that, the account states that the "fountains of the great deep" broke open and the "windows of heaven" were opened, which brought the flood. It rained for 40 days, but the waters continued to rise for 110 more days, indicating that there was another water-source, probably the subterranean "fountains of the great deep." The waters then slowly began to recede amidst a "great wind," until the ark came to rest on the mountains of ] (not necessarily Mount Ararat, but the mountains in that region). Beyond that account of the events, creationists have very little basis for determining exactly what caused the flood. | |||
The main ideas in creation science are: the belief in "creation '']''" (Latin: out of nothing); the conviction that the Earth was created within the last 6,000 years; the belief that mankind and other life on Earth were created as distinct fixed "baraminological" ''kinds''; and the idea that fossils found in geological strata were deposited during a cataclysmic flood which completely covered the entire Earth.<ref name=ag>{{cite court | litigants = Edwards v. Aguillard | vol = 482 | reporter = U.S. |opinion=578 |court=Supreme Court of the United States | url = http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0482_0578_ZC.html}}, cited by {{Harvnb|Numbers|2006|p=}} as "ne of the most precise explications of creation science"</ref> As a result, creation science also challenges the commonly accepted geologic and ] theories for the age and origins of the Earth and Universe, which creationists acknowledge are irreconcilable to the account in the Book of Genesis.<ref name = "larson"> | |||
At least four separate explanations have been proposed for the mechanism that caused the flood: | |||
{{Cite book | last = Larson | first = Edward J. | author-link = Edward Larson | year = 2004 | title = Evolution: The Remarkable History of a Scientific Theory | publisher = Modern Library | isbn = 978-0-679-64288-6 | url = https://archive.org/details/evolutionremarka00lars }} | |||
</ref> | |||
==Creationist arguments for a global flood== | |||
*That the water may have come from an ice comet that melted when it hit the Earth's atmosphere. | |||
=== Fossils === | |||
* ], proposed by mechanical engineer ], Director of the Center for Scientific Creation, are the concept that the Earth was originally created with a great deal of subterranean water, and that the flood was brought on when the crust of the Earth was cracked, allowing this water to escape violently to the surface, and broke the surface into "hydroplates" which rapidly divided during and after the flood.<ref>{{cite book|author=Brown, W|date=2001|title=In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood|publisher=Center for Scientific Creation|page=105|isbn=1-878026-08-9}}</ref> | |||
The ] and the fossil record are used as major pieces of evidence in the modern scientific explanation of the development and evolution of life on Earth as well as a means to establish the ]. Young Earth creationists such as Morris and Whitcomb in their 1961 book, ''The Genesis Flood'', say that the age of the fossils depends on the amount of time credited to the geologic column, which they ascribe to be about one year. Some flood geologists dispute geology's assembled global geologic column since index fossils are used to link geographically isolated strata to other strata across the map. Fossils are often dated by their proximity to strata containing index fossils whose age has been determined by its location on the geologic column. Oard{{sfn|Oard|Reed|2006|p=99}} and others say that the identification of fossils as index fossils has been too error-prone for index fossils to be used reliably to make those correlations, or to date local strata using the assembled geologic scale.{{citation needed|date=December 2018}} | |||
Other creationists accept the existence of the geological column and believe that it indicates a sequence of events that might have occurred during the global flood.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://answersingenesis.org/geology/geologic-time-scale/geologic-column/|title=Geologic Column|website=Answers in Genesis|language=en-US|access-date=2017-09-26}}</ref> ] creationists such as Andrew Snelling, Steven A. Austin and ] take this approach, as does Creation Ministries International. They cite the ]—the appearance of abundant fossils in the upper ] (Vendian) period and lower Cambrian period—as the pre-flood/flood boundary,{{sfn|Hunter|2000|pp=60–74}} the presence in such sediments of fossils that do not occur later in the geological record as part of a pre-flood biota that perished{{sfn|Wise|1995|pp=216–222}} and the absence of fossilized organisms that appear later (such as ]s and ]s) as a result of erosion of sediments deposited by the flood as waters receded off the land.{{sfn|Austin|Baumgardner|Humphreys|Snelling|1994}} Creationists say that ] can only take place when the organism is buried quickly to protect the remains from destruction by scavengers or decomposition.{{sfn|Whitcomb|Morris|1961|pp=128–129}} They say that the fossil record provides evidence of a single cataclysmic flood and not of a series of slow changes accumulating over millions of years.{{sfn|Brown|2008|p=}} | |||
* The Runaway ] model or ], proposed by geophysicist ], and supported by the ] and ]. This holds that rapid plunge of the original continental plates into the ] could have heated silicates to a temperature at which ] motion would have happened extremely quickly. Proponents point to subducted slabs in the mantle which are still relatively cool, which they regard as evidence that they have not been there for millions of years of temperature equilibration.<ref>{{cite conference|last=Baumgardner|first=JR|date=2003|url=http://www.globalflood.org/papers/2003ICCcpt.html|title=CATASTROPHIC PLATE TECTONICS: THE PHYSICS BEHIND THE GENESIS FLOOD|booktitle=Fifth International Conference on Creationism|acessdate=2007-03-29}}</ref> | |||
Flood geologists have proposed numerous hypotheses to reconcile the sequence of fossils evident in the fossil column with the literal account of Noah's flood in the Bible. Whitcomb and Morris proposed three possible factors: | |||
* In addition, a ] was proposed by Henry Morris in his book ''The Genesis Flood'' in the 1960s. It holds that a canopy of water vapor existed over the atmosphere prior to the flood, and that the floodwaters were brought on when this vapor canopy collapsed. This model has been rejected by many creationists, including the Institute for Creation Research and Answers in Genesis<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/faq/dont_use.asp#canopy|title=What arguments are doubtful, hence, inadvisable to use? Canopy theory|date=2007|publisher=|accessdate=2007-03-29}}</ref> founded by Henry Morris himself, but is still accepted by some. | |||
# hydrological, whereby the relative buoyancies of the remains (based on the organisms' shapes and densities) determined the sequence in which their remains settled to the bottom of the flood-waters | |||
Others propose that the continental motion occurred about 100 years after the Flood, when the Bible records that during the lifetime of ], "the Earth was divided". But ] argues that this was the ''linguistic'' division at the Tower of Babel.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/faq/dont_use.asp#peleg|title=“Earth’s division in the days of Peleg (Gen. 10:25) refers to catastrophic splitting of the continents.”|date=2007|publisher=|accessdate=2007-03-29}}</ref> | |||
# ecological, suggesting organisms living at the ocean bottom succumbed first in the flood and those living at the highest altitudes last | |||
# anatomical/behavioral, the ordered sequence in the fossil column resulting from the very different responses to the rising waters between different kinds of organisms due to their diverse mobilities and original habitats.{{sfn|Gould|1984|p=132}} In a scenario put forth by Morris, the remains of marine life settled to the bottom first, followed by the slower-moving lowland reptiles, and culminating with humans, whose superior intelligence and ability to flee enabled them to reach higher elevations before the flood waters overcame them.{{sfn|Schadewald|1982|pp=12–17}} | |||
Some creationists believe that ] and ] deposits formed rapidly in sedimentary layers as volcanoes or flood waters flattened forests and buried the debris. They believe the vegetation decomposed rapidly into oil or coal due to the heat of the subterranean waters as they were unleashed from the Earth during the flood or by the high temperatures created as the remains were compressed by water and sediment.{{sfn|Snelling|2006}} | |||
== Theological basis == | |||
Creationists continue to search for evidence in the natural world that they consider consistent with the above description, such as evidence of rapid formation. For example, there have been claims of raindrop marks and water ripples at layer boundaries, sometimes associated with the claimed fossilized footprints of men and dinosaurs walking together. Such footprint evidence has been debunked,{{sfn|Schadewald|1986|pp=1–9}} and some have been shown to be fakes.{{sfn|Kuban|1996}} | |||
Flood geology starts from the viewpoint that the Biblical '']'' is an accurate and impartial description of actual historical events. | |||
=== Widespread flood stories === | |||
The idea that Genesis is literally accurate is not universally held within ], being associated principally with Protestant fundamentalist and evangelical sects in the United States. The ] and the ], for instance, both regard Genesis as being a non-literal description of the Earth's creation. Indeed, the literalness of Genesis had been rejected in Jewish thought as early as the ] by ] and the ] by ] in Christian thought. Although Origen was followed by the ] and such ] as ], the ], which preferred a more literal interpretation of Scripture, was always numerically superior.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/scopes/gen1st.htm |title=The History of Genesis and the Creation Stories |author=Linder, Doug |year=2004 |work=Famous Trials: Tennessee vs. John Scopes, The "Monkey Trial" |publisher=University of Missouri—Kansas City School of Law}}</ref> | |||
{{see also|List of flood myths}} | |||
Proponents of flood geology state that "native global flood stories are documented as history or legend in almost every region on earth". "These flood tales are frequently linked by common elements that parallel the biblical account including the warning of the coming flood, the construction of a boat in advance, the storage of animals, the inclusion of family, and the release of birds to determine if the water level had subsided." They suggest that "the overwhelming consistency among flood legends found in distant parts of the globe indicates they were derived from the same origin, but oral transcription has changed the details through time".{{sfn|Northwest Creation Network}} | |||
Anthropologist Patrick Nunn rejects this view and highlights the fact that much of the human population lives near water sources such as rivers and coasts, where unusually severe floods can be expected to occur occasionally and will be recorded in local mythology.{{sfn|Nunn|2001|pp=125–138}} | |||
Opponents of flood geology within the church such as ] argue that it and ], as well as ] err in reducing all truth to scientific truth. Gilkey’s key claim is that these endeavors confuse religion’s language of ultimate origins with scientific theories about proximate origins and as a result give the impression that independent domains of knowledge are competing exhaustive explanations of reality.<ref>{{cite book|last=Gilkey|first=L|date=2001|title=Blue Twilight: Nature, Creationism, and American Religion|publisher=Augsburg Fortress Publishers|isbn=0-8006-3294-X}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Pleins|first=JD|date=2003|title=When the Great Abyss Opened: Classic and Contemporary Readings of Noah's Flood|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn= 0-19-515608-0}}</ref> Others regard flood geology as both unscientific and an impediment to ].<ref>{{cite book|last=Goff|first=P|last=Harvey|first=P|date=2004|title=Themes in Religion and American Culture|publisher=University of North Carolina Press|isbn=0-8078-5559-6}}</ref> | |||
== |
== Proposed mechanisms of flood geology == | ||
Price attempted to fit a great deal of Earth's geologic history into a model based on a few accounts from the Bible. Price's simple model was used by Whitcomb and Morris initially, but they did not build on the model in the 1960s and 1970s.{{sfn|Heaton|2008|p=1342}} However, a rough sketch of a creationist model could be constructed from creationist publications and debate material.{{sfn|Awbrey|1980|p=1}} Recent creationist efforts attempt to build complex models that incorporate as much scientific evidence as possible into the biblical narrative. Some scientific evidence used for these models was formerly rejected by creationists. These models attempt to explain continental movements in a short time frame, the order of the fossil record, and the ] ice age.{{sfn|Heaton|2008|p=1341}} | |||
=== Runaway subduction === | |||
{{Unreferencedsect|date=March 2007}} | |||
In the 1960s and 1970s a simple creationist model proposed that, "The Flood split the land mass into the present continents."{{sfn|Awbrey|1980|p=1}} Steve Austin and other creationists proposed a preliminary model of catastrophic plate tectonics (CPT) in 1994.{{sfn|Austin|Baumgardner|Humphreys|Snelling|1994}} Their work built on earlier papers by ] and Russell Humphreys in 1986.{{sfn|Baumgardner|1986}}{{sfn|Humphreys|1986}} Baumgardner proposed a model of ] that allows for runaway ], and Humphrey associated mantle convection with rapid ] in Earth history. Baumgardner's proposal holds that the rapid plunge of former ] into the ] (caused by an unknown trigger mechanism) increased local mantle pressures to the point that its viscosity dropped several magnitudes according to known properties of mantle silicates. Once initiated, sinking plates caused the spread of low viscosity throughout the mantle, resulting in runaway mantle convection and catastrophic tectonic motion which dragged continents across the surface of the Earth. Once the former ocean plates (which are thought to be denser than the mantle) reached the bottom of the mantle, an equilibrium resulted. Pressures dropped, viscosity increased, runaway mantle convection stopped, leaving the surface of the Earth rearranged. Proponents point to subducted slabs in the mantle which are still relatively cool, which they regard as evidence that they have not been there for millions of years which would result in temperature equilibration.{{sfn|Baumgardner|2003}} | |||
{{weasel}} | |||
Given that conventional ] accounts for much of the geomorphic features of continents and oceans, it is natural that creationists would seek to develop a high speed version of the same process. CPT explains many geological features, provides mechanisms for the biblical flood, and minimizes appeals to miracles.{{sfn|Heaton|2008|p=1348}} Some prominent creationists (Froede, Oard, Read) oppose CPT for various technical reasons. One main objection is that the model assumes the supercontinent ] was intact at the initiation of the year-long flood. The CPT process then tore Pangaea apart creating the current configuration of the continents. But the breakup of Pangaea started early in the ], meaning that CPT only accounts for part of the entire ] geological record. CPT in this form only explains part of the geological column that flood geology normally explains. Modifying the CPT model to account for the entire Phanerozoic including multiple ]s would complicate the model considerably.{{sfn|Heaton|2008|pp=1348–1349}} | |||
Modern ] relies on a number of established principles, one of the most important of which is Charles Lyell's principle of ]. In relation to geological forces it states that the shaping of the Earth has occurred by means of mostly slow-acting forces that can be seen in operation today. By applying this principle, geologists have determined that the Earth is some ]. They study the ] of the Earth to gain information on the history of the planet. Geologists divide ] into ], ], ], ], and ] characterized by well-defined breaks in the ] (see ]). | |||
Other objections of CPT include the amount of heat produced for the rapid plate movements, and the fact that the cooling of hot oceanic plates and the raising of continental plates would take a great deal of time and require multiple small scale catastrophes after the flood ended. The original CPT proposal of Austin and others in 1994 was admittedly preliminary, but the major issues have not been solved.{{sfn|Heaton|2008|pp=1349–1350}} | |||
By contrast, creation geology relies on the Biblical account to define three key eras of history: | |||
The vast majority of geologists regard the hypothesis of catastrophic plate tectonics as pseudoscience; they reject it in favor of the conventional geological theory of plate tectonics. It has been argued that the tremendous release of energy necessitated by such an event would boil off the Earth's oceans, making a global flood impossible.{{sfn|Wise|1998|pp=160–173}} Not only does catastrophic plate tectonics lack any plausible ] mechanism by which its changes might occur, it also is contradicted by considerable geological evidence (which is in turn consistent with conventional plate tectonics), including:{{sfn|Isaak|2007|p=173 }} | |||
* The original creation of the Earth by God, in which God separated the land from the primordial waters as recorded in Genesis 1:9. Some creationists have asserted that this original dry land corresponds to a type of ]. | |||
* Many volcanic ] chains, such as the ], yield evidence of the ocean floor having moved over volcanic ]. These islands have widely ranging ages (determined via both radiometric dating and relative ]) that contradict the catastrophic tectonic hypothesis of rapid development and thus a similar age. | |||
* A ] which lasted for a year and occurred between 4500-6000 years ago, and altered or destroyed many antediluvian geological formations and species. | |||
* Radiometric dating and ] rates on the ] likewise contradict the hypothesis that it all came into existence nearly contemporaneously. | |||
* The years between the end of the flood and the present day, during which geological phenomena behaved in much the same way as they do today. | |||
* Catastrophic tectonics does not allow sufficient time for ]s to have their peak eroded away (leaving these ]s' characteristic flat tops). | |||
* Runaway subduction does not explain the kind of ] illustrated by that of the ] and ]s. (For further information see ].) | |||
Conventional plate tectonics accounts for the geological evidence already, including innumerable details that catastrophic plate tectonics cannot, such as why there is gold in California, silver in Nevada, salt flats in Utah, and coal in Pennsylvania, without requiring any extraordinary mechanisms to do so.{{sfn|Isaak|2007|p=173 }}{{sfn|McPhee|1998}} | |||
In general, the geological record of Earth is divided by flood geology supporters into four main stages: | |||
=== Vapor/water canopy === | |||
* The lowest levels of sediments would be rocks and sediments formed during creation week, when God caused the dry land to appear. These sediments should be devoid of all fossils, as nothing existed to be fossilised. | |||
], a ] schoolteacher, in his 1912 work ''The Earth's Annular System'', extrapolated from the ] what he called the annular system of Earth history, with the Earth being originally surrounded by rings resembling ], or "canopies" of ]. Vail hypothesised that, one by one, these canopies collapsed on the Earth, resulting in fossils being buried in a "succession of stupendous cataclysms, separated by unknown periods of time". The Genesis flood was thought to have been caused by "the last remnant" of this vapor. Although this final flood was geologically significant, it was not held to account for as much of the fossil record as George McCready Price had asserted.{{sfn|Numbers|2006|pp=347–348}} | |||
* Next would be sediments formed in the time between Creation week and the Flood, a period of 1700 years according to Biblical chronology. These would comprise only a tiny part of the geological record. | |||
* The bulk of the geological record would have been laid down during the year-long Flood, which began with violent eruptions of water. These should show evidence not of a calm flood leaving a layer of silt, but of large tectonic upheavals, massive erosion, deposition, and transport, and reworking of sediments more than once. It would also include the mass burial of many creatures. | |||
* Above the flood sediments would be evidence of minor post-flood catastrophes, a relatively recent ice age, and normal geological processes as we see occurring today. | |||
Vail's ideas about geology appeared in ]'s 1912 '']'' and subsequently in ]'s ''Creation'' of 1927 and later publications.{{sfn|Numbers|2006|pp=347–348}}<ref name="Penton1997">{{cite book |author=M. James Penton |title=Apocalypse Delayed: The Story of Jehovah's Witnesses |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=38SYXalMLeQC |year=1997 |publisher=University of Toronto Press |isbn=978-0-8020-7973-2 |pages=196–197, 429–430}}</ref> The Seventh-day Adventist physicist Robert W. Woods also proposed a vapor canopy,{{sfn|Numbers|2006|p=501. (footnote 47)}} before ''The Genesis Flood'' gave it prominent and repeated mention in 1961.{{sfn|Numbers|2006|p=229}} | |||
] (or ]) continue to search for evidence in the natural world that they consider to be consistent with the above description, such as evidence of rapid formation. For example, there have been claims of raindrop marks and water ripples at layer boundaries, sometimes associated with the claimed fossilized footprints of men and dinosaurs walking together. Most of this evidence has been debunked by scientists<ref>{{cite journal|url=http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/cre-error.html|last=Shadewald|first=Robert|date=1986|title=Scientific Creationism and Error|journal=Creation/Evolution|volume=6|issue=1|pages=1-9|accessdate=2007-03-29}}</ref> and some have been shown to be fakes.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/paluxy/wilker5.html|title=The "Burdick Print"|first=GJ|last=Kuban|date=1996|publisher=|accessdate=2007-03-29}}</ref> Creationists highlight unexplained phenomena in order to point out what they see as inconsistencies in the scientific view, and they often profess a general incredulity about geological mechanisms of ], ], and ] formation. | |||
Although the vapor-canopy theory has fallen into disfavour among most creationists, Dillow in 1981 and Vardiman in 2003 attempted to defend the idea.<ref>" ''Answers in Genesis, 2014.'' Retrieved 4 July 2014.</ref>{{sfn|Dillow|1981}}{{sfn|Vardiman|2003}} Among its more vocal adherents, controversial young earth creationist ] uses it as the basis for his eponymous ]. Jehovah's Witnesses propose as the water source of the deluge a "heavenly ocean" that was over the Earth from the second creative day until the flood.<ref>Insight into the Scriptures Volume 1 (1988) pp. 609–612: http://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/1200001150</ref> | |||
Believers in Flood Geology also point out that ] can be found in many cultures, places and religions, not just in the Bible; this, they suggest, is evidence of an actual event in the historic past because local floods would not explain the similarities in the flood stories.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://nwcreation.net/noahlegends.html|title=Flood Legends from Around the World|publisher=|accessdate=2007-06-27}}</ref> Anthropologists generally reject this view and highlight the fact that much of the human population lives near water sources such as rivers and coasts, where unusually severe floods can be expected to occur occasionally and will be recorded in tribal mythology.{{cn}} Geologists ] and ] have suggested that a massive local flood in the ] area, or possibly even the huge rise in sea levels at the end of the last ], may be responsible for the preponderance of the flood myths in the Near East and across the world.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.nationalgeographic.com/blacksea/ax/frame.html|publisher=]|title=Balard and the Black Sea: the search for Noah's flood|year=1999|accessdate=2007-06-27}}</ref> | |||
== Modern geology == | |||
Most{{cn}} creationists believe that the Earth prior to the global flood was significantly different from the Earth today. The ] is explained as a record of the pre-flood Earth, with most of the fossils being formed during the forty-day catastrophe and the ensuing 110 days of global flooding. The principles used by geology to characterize the development of the layers in the lithosphere and the fossil record over time are rejected. | |||
] showing layers tilted, eroded, and overlaid, demonstrated the "abyss of time" in the ].]] | |||
Modern geology, its sub-disciplines and other scientific disciplines use the ] to analyze the geology of the earth. The key tenets of flood geology are refuted by scientific analysis and do not have any standing in the ].{{sfn|Young|1995}}{{sfn|Isaak|2006}}{{sfn|Morton|2001}}{{sfn|Isaak|2007|p=173}}{{sfn|Stewart|2010|p=123}} Modern geology relies on established principles, one of the most important of which is Charles Lyell's principle of uniformitarianism. In relation to geological forces it states that the shaping of the Earth has occurred by means of mostly slow-acting forces that can be seen in operation today. By applying these principles, geologists have determined that the Earth is approximately 4.54 billion years old. They study the ] of the Earth to gain information on the history of the planet. Geologists divide ] into ], ], ], ], and ] characterized by well-defined breaks in the ] (see ]).{{sfn|Lutgens|Tarbuck|Tasa|2005}}{{sfn|Tarbuck|Lutgens|2006}} In general, there is a lack of any evidence for any of the above effects proposed by flood geologists, and their claims of fossil layering are not taken seriously by scientists.{{sfn|Isaak|1998}} | |||
===Geochronology=== | |||
== Age of the Earth == | |||
] carbonate hardground shows generations of ] and extensive ], features incompatible with the conditions and timing postulated for the Flood.{{sfn|Morton|2001}}]] | |||
{{main|Age of the Earth}} | |||
].{{sfn|Sandberg|1983|pp=19–22}}]] | |||
Most believers in ] – a position held by the majority of proponents of flood geology – accept the ]{{Fact|date=February 2007}} which in turn is based on the ] version of the ]. They believe that God created the universe approximately 6000 years ago, in the space of six days. Much of creation geology is devoted to debunking the dating methods used in ], ], and ] that give ages in conflict with the young Earth theories. In particular, creationists dispute the reliability of ] and ] analysis, both of which are central to geological theories of the age of the Earth. They usually dispute these methods based on uncertainties concerning initial concentrations of individually considered species and the associated measurement uncertainties caused by ] of the parent and daughter isotopes. However, a full critique of the entire parameter-fitting analysis, which relies on dozens of radionuclei parent and daughter pairs, has not been done by creationists hoping to cast doubt on the technique. | |||
] is the science of determining the ] age of rocks, fossils, and sediments by a variety of techniques. These methods indicate that the Earth as a whole is about 4.54 billion years old and that the strata that, according to flood geology, were laid down during the flood some 6,000 years ago, were actually deposited gradually over many millions of years. | |||
===Paleontology=== | |||
Radiometric dating analysis indicates that the Earth is at least 4.5 billion years old. Young Earth creationists reject these ages on the grounds of what they regard as being tenuous and untestable assumptions in the methodology. Apparently inconsistent radiometric dates are often quoted to cast doubt on the utility and accuracy of the method. Scientists who get involved in this ] point out that dating methods only rely on the assumptions that the ] governing ] have not been violated since the sample was formed (harking back to Lyell's doctrine of ]). They also point out that the "problems" that creationists publicly mentioned can be shown to either not be problems at all, are issues with known contamination, or simply the result of incorrectly evaluating legitimate data. | |||
If the flood were responsible for fossilization, then all the animals now fossilized must have been living together on the Earth just before the flood. Based on estimates of the number of remains buried in the ] in Africa, this would correspond to an abnormally high density of vertebrates worldwide, close to 2,100 per acre.{{sfn|Schadewald|1982|pp=12–17}} Creationists argue that evidence for the geological column is fragmentary, and all the complex layers of chalk occurred in the approach to the 150th day of Noah's flood.{{sfn|Wilson|2001}}{{sfn|Matthews|2009}} However, the entire geologic column is found in several places and shows multiple features, including evidence of erosion and burrowing through older layers, which are inexplicable on a short timescale. Carbonate hardgrounds and the fossils associated with them show that the sediments include evidence of long hiatuses in deposition that are not consistent with flood dynamics or timing.{{sfn|Morton|2001}} | |||
===Geochemistry=== | |||
Creationists do not claim to have a scientifically verifiable method for dating the Earth, and instead rely solely on Biblical chronologies. | |||
Proponents of flood geology are unable to account for the alternation between ]s and ]s through the Phanerozoic. The cyclical pattern of ], calcitic and aragonitic ooids, and calcite-shelled fauna has apparently been controlled by ] rates and the flushing of seawater through ]s which changes its Mg/Ca ratio.{{sfn|Stanley|Hardie|1999|pp=1–7}} | |||
===Sedimentary rock features=== | |||
== Counterpoints == | |||
Phil Senter's 2011 article, "The Defeat of Flood Geology by Flood Geology", in the journal '']'', discusses "sedimentologic and other geologic features that Flood geologists have identified as evidence that particular strata cannot have been deposited during a time when the entire planet was under water...and distribution of strata that predate the existence of the Ararat mountain chain." These include continental basalts, terrestrial tracks of animals, and marine communities preserving multiple in-situ generations included in the rocks of most or all Phanerozoic periods, and the basalt even in the younger Precambrian rocks. Others, occurring in rocks of several geologic periods, include lake deposits and eolian (wind) deposits. Using their own words, flood geologists find evidence in every Paleozoic and Mesozoic period, and in every epoch of the Cenozoic period, indicating that a global flood could not have occurred during that interval.<ref name="Defeat of Flood Geology by Flood Geology">{{cite journal |url=http://reports.ncse.com/index.php/rncse/article/view/44/36 |title=The Defeat of Flood Geology by Flood Geology |volume=31 |issue=3 |author=Phil Senter |year=2011 |journal=Reports of the National Center for Science Education |access-date=13 June 2014 |archive-date=14 July 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140714162420/http://reports.ncse.com/index.php/rncse/article/view/44/36 |url-status=dead }}</ref>] found by ] in 1788 at ] demonstrated the time taken for erosion of tilted rock and deposition of overlying layers.]] | |||
The global flood cannot explain geological formations such as ], where ]s have been tilted and eroded then more sedimentary layers deposited on top, needing long periods of time for these processes.<ref>{{cite magazine |last=Rice |first=Stanley |date=July–August 2020 |title=Creationist Funhouse, Episode Four: God Plays In The Mud |url=https://skepticalinquirer.org/2020/06/creationist-funhouse-episode-four-god-plays-in-the-mud/ |url-status= |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210304161021/https://skepticalinquirer.org/2020/06/creationist-funhouse-episode-four-god-plays-in-the-mud/ |archive-date=4 March 2021 |access-date=4 March 2021 |magazine=] |publisher=] |location=Amherst, New York}}</ref> There is also the time needed for the erosion of valleys in sedimentary rock mountains. Furthermore, the flood should have produced large-scale effects spread throughout the entire world. Erosion should be evenly distributed, yet the levels of erosion in, for example, the ] and the ] differ significantly.{{sfn|Isaak|1998}} | |||
=== Physics === | |||
{{Unreferencedsect|date=March 2007}} | |||
The engineer Jane Albright notes several scientific failings of the canopy theory, reasoning from first principles in physics. Among these are that enough water to create a flood of even {{convert|5|cm|in}} of rain would form a vapor blanket thick enough to make the Earth too hot for life, since water vapor is a ]; the same blanket would have an ] sufficient to effectively obscure all incoming starlight.<ref name="Albright 2016">{{cite web |last1=Albright |first1=Jane |title=Vapor Canopy and the Hydroplate Theory (Albright's Flood Models Controversy Series) (text and audio) |url=https://kgov.com/vapor-canopy-theory-jane-albright-series-on-global-flood-models-controversy |publisher=Real Science Radio |date=22 July 2016}}</ref> | |||
=== Water source === | |||
If the flood were a global flood, a source of water would need to be found which could provide such a deluge. Flood geology supporters have proposed several sources at different times: (1) a ] in the upper atmosphere; (2) a comet strike; (3) the Earth's crust was much flatter, requiring less water in order to cover the face of the planet; and (4), subterranean water sources.<ref name="Isaak"/> | |||
== |
== See also == | ||
* ] | |||
The proposed ] suggested a layer of water vapor in the upper atmosphere which, triggered by a meteoroid, caused a giant rain shower and so contributed to the flood. However, such a volume of water held suspended in the atmosphere would give rise to an atmospheric pressure in the order of nine atmospheres. The atmospheric temperature would also have to be extremely high to prevent the saturated atmosphere from condensing. The vapor canopy model has lost favour and is no longer accepted by most creationist scientists.<ref name="Isaak"/> | |||
* ] | |||
* ] | |||
* ] | |||
* ] | |||
* ] | |||
== |
== Notes == | ||
{{reflist}} | |||
Had the Earth been struck by a comet providing enough water for a great deluge, gravitational heating would have boiled the water and nothing would have survived; any unprotected life on the surface would have been ]. | |||
== References == | |||
====Subterranean water deposits==== | |||
;Books | |||
Water is less dense than rock; therefore, scientists claim, it would be forced to the surface long before the date of the flood. They add that at any significant depth beneath the surface of the Earth, the water would have been boiled, causing giant steam plumes which would be further heated by falling back to earth. | |||
{{div col}} | |||
* {{cite book | |||
| last1 = Aune | |||
| first1 = David E. | |||
| title = Westminster Dictionary of the New Testament and Early Christian Literature | |||
| chapter = Cosmology | |||
| year = 2003 | |||
| publisher = Westminster John Knox Press | |||
| isbn = 978-0664219178 | |||
| chapter-url = https://books.google.com/books?id=nhhdJ-fkywYC&q=cosmology | |||
}} | |||
* {{cite book| last = Berry| first = Robert James| title = God's book of works: the nature and theology of nature| year = 2003| publisher = T & T Clark| location = London| isbn = 978-0-567-08876-5}} | |||
* {{cite book |last = Bowler | |||
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|url = https://archive.org/details/evolutionhistory0000bowl_n7y8 | |||
}} | |||
* {{cite book| last = Brown| first = Walt| author-link=Walt Brown (creationist)| title = In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood| publisher = Center for Scientific Creation| edition = 8th| year = 2008|isbn=978-1-878026-09-5| chapter = Chapter 21: Rapid Burial| chapter-url = http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/LifeSciences25.html}} | |||
* {{cite book|last=Buckland|first=William|title=Vindiciæ Geologicæ: The Connexion of Geology with Religion, Explained in an Inaugural Lecture Delivered Before University of Oxford, May 15, 1819, on the Endowment of Readership in Geology|url=https://archive.org/details/b22393304|page=|year=1820|publisher=Oxford University Press}} | |||
* {{cite book|last=Buckland|first=William|title=Bridgewater treatises on the power, wisdom, and goodness of God, as manifested in the creation|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8v1LAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA95|year=1836|publisher=William Pickering|chapter=Geology and Mineralogy Considered With Reference to Natural Theology}} | |||
* {{Cite book| last=Dalrymple| first=G. Brent| author-link=Brent Dalrymple| title=Ancient Earth, ancient skies: the age of Earth and its cosmic surroundings| year=2004| publisher=Stanford University Press| location=Stanford, Calif.| isbn=978-0-8047-4933-6| pages=| url=https://archive.org/details/ancientearthanci0000dalr/page/264}} | |||
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* {{Cite book |last = Davies | |||
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|chapter = Introduction to the Pentateuch | |||
|editor1-last = Barton | |||
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|editor2-first = John | |||
|title = Oxford Bible Commentary | |||
|publisher = Oxford University Press | |||
|chapter-url = https://books.google.com/books?id=wCRYl9Ikk6EC&q=J.+Review+and+assessment.+1.+In+reviewing&pg=PA37 | |||
|year = 2001 | |||
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|url-access = registration | |||
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}} | |||
* {{Cite book|last=Dillow |first=J. C.|title=The Waters Above|year=1981|publisher=Moody Press, Chicago}} | |||
* {{Cite book| last = Gould| first = Stephen Jay| author-link = Stephen Jay Gould| date = 1984| editor-last = Montagu| editor-first = Ashley| editor-link = Ashley Montagu| title = Science and Creationism| chapter-url = https://www.questia.com/read/28181616| location = Oxford| publisher = Oxford University Press| pages = | chapter = Creationism: Genesis versus Geology| isbn = 978-0-19-503252-9| url = https://archive.org/details/sciencecreationi00mont/page/416}} | |||
* {{cite book|last=Haldane|first=Robert|author-link=Robert Haldane|title=The Evidence and Authory of Divine Revelation: Being a View of the Testimony of the Law and the Prophets to the Messiah, with the Subsequent Testimonies|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JaIUAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA168|year=1816|location=Edinburgh}} | |||
* {{cite book|last=Herbert|first=Sandra|title=Charles Darwin, Geologist|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2gF9Mkvgf_kC|year= 2005|publisher=Cornell University Press|isbn=978-0-8014-4348-0|chapter=Negotiating Genesis and Geology|pages=179–196}} | |||
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* {{Cite book| last = Isaak| first = Mark| title = The Counter Creationism Handbook| chapter = Creationist claim CD750| chapter-url = http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CD/CD750.html| publisher = University of California Press| date = 2007| location = Berkeley and Los Angeles, California| pages = | isbn = 978-0-520-24926-4| url = https://archive.org/details/countercreationi0000isaa/page/330}} | |||
* {{cite book|last=Kaiser|first= Christopher B.|year=1997|title=Creational Theology and the History of Physical Science: The Creationist Tradition from Basil to Bohr|publisher=Brill Academic Publishers|isbn=978-90-04-10669-7|pages=449}} | |||
* {{cite book|title=Essentials of Geology|last1=Lutgens|first1= FK|last2= Tarbuck|first2= EJ|last3= Tasa|first3= D|year=2005|publisher=Prentice Hall|isbn= 978-0-13-149749-8}} | |||
* {{Cite book| last = McCann| first = T. (Tom)| title = The Geology of Central Europe: Mesozoic and Cenozoic| year = 2008| volume = 2| publisher = Geological Society of London| location = Bath| isbn = 978-1-86239-265-6| pages = 736}} | |||
* {{cite book|last=McPhee|first= John|year= 1998 |title=Annals of the Former World|location= New York|publisher=Farrar, Straus and Giroux}} | |||
* {{cite book|last=Montgomery|first= David R.|year= 2012 |title=The Rocks Don't Lie: A Geologist Investigates Noah's Flood|publisher=W. W. Norton & Company}} | |||
* {{cite book|last=Morris|first=Henry Madison|author-link=Henry M. Morris|title=Scientific Creationism|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ppBA_81xGysC&pg=PT9|year=1974|publisher=New Leaf Publishing Group|isbn=978-0-89051-003-2}} | |||
* {{cite book|first=Ronald L.|last=Numbers|title=The Creationists|url=https://archive.org/details/creationistsevol0000numb|url-access=registration|page=|year=1993|publisher=University of California Press|isbn=978-0-520-08393-6}} | |||
* {{Cite book| last = Numbers| first = Ronald L.| author-link = Ronald Numbers| title = The Creationists: From Scientific Creationism to Intelligent Design, Expanded Edition| publisher = Harvard University Press| year = 2006| pages = | isbn = 978-0-674-02339-0| title-link = The Creationists}} | |||
* {{cite book| last1 = Oard| first1 = Michael| last2=Reed| first2=John K| title = The Geological Column: Perspectives within Diluvial Geology| publisher = Creation Research Society Books| year = 2006| location = Chino Valley, A | pages = 157}} | |||
* {{cite book|last1=Porter|first1=R|last2=Lindberg|first2=DC|last3=Numbers|first3=RL|year=2003|title=The Cambridge History of Science: Volume 4, Eighteenth-Century Science|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0-521-57243-9}} | |||
* {{cite book| last = Price| first = George McCready| author-link = George McCready Price|year=1926|title=Evolutionary Geology & the New Catastrophism|publisher=Pacific Press Publishing Association|isbn=978-0-915554-13-3|pages=352}} | |||
* {{cite book | last = Rupke | first = Nicolaas | author-link = Nicolaas Adrianus Rupke | title = The Great Chain of History | publisher = Clarendon Press | location = Oxford | year = 1983 | isbn = 978-0-19-822907-0 | pages = | url = https://archive.org/details/greatchainofhist0000rupk/page/42 }} | |||
* {{Cite book| last=Shrock| first=Robert Rakes| title=Geology at M.I.T., 1865–1965: a history of the first hundred years of geology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology| year=1977| publisher=MIT Press| location=Cambridge, Mass.| isbn=978-0-262-19211-8| pages=30}} | |||
* {{Cite book | last1 = Stewart | first1 = Melville Y. | title = Science and religion in dialogue | year = 2010 | publisher = Wiley-Blackwell | location = Malden, MA | isbn = 978-1-4051-8921-7 | pages = 123}} | |||
* {{Cite book| first1 = Howard J.| last1 = Van Till| first2 = Robert J.| last2 = Snow| first3 = John H.| last3 = Stek| first4 = Davis A.| last4 = Young| author-link = Howard J. Van Till| author-link3 = John H. Stek| title = Portraits of creation: biblical and scientific perspectives on the world's formation| year = 1990| publisher = Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co.| location = Grand Rapids, Mich.| isbn = 978-0-8028-0485-3| pages = | url = https://archive.org/details/portraitsofcreat0000unse/page/296}} | |||
* {{cite book| last = Wenham| first = Gordon| title = Exploring the Old Testament: A Guide to the Pentateuch| series = Exploring the Bible Series| volume = 1| year = 2008| publisher = IVP Academic| isbn = 978-0-8308-2541-7| pages = 223}} | |||
* {{cite book| last1 = Whitcomb| first1 = J.C. Jr.|author1-link=John C. Whitcomb| first2=H.M.| last2=Morris| author2-link = Henry M. Morris| title = The Genesis Flood: The Biblical Record and Its Scientific Implications| publisher = Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co| year = 1961| location = Philadelphia, PA| isbn = 978-0-87552-338-5| title-link = The Genesis Flood: The Biblical Record and Its Scientific Implications}} | |||
* {{Cite book|last=Young|first=Davis A.|title=The Biblical Flood: a case study of the Church's response to extrabiblical evidence|publisher=Eerdmans|location=Grand Rapids, Mich|year=1995|pages=340|isbn=978-0-8028-0719-9}} – , adapted from the book. Retrieved 2008-09-16 | |||
* {{Cite book | last1 = Young | first1 = Davis A. | last2 = Stearley | first2 = Ralph F. | title = The Bible, rocks, and time : geological evidence for the age of the earth | year = 2008 | publisher = IVP Academic | location = Downers Grove, Ill. | isbn = 978-0-8308-2876-0}} | |||
* {{cite book | last1 = Livingstone | first1 = David | author-link = David N. Livingstone | first2 = Darryl G. | last2 = Hart | first3 = Mark A. | last3 = Noll | title = Evangelicals and Science in Historical Perspective | publisher = ] | year = 1999 | isbn = 978-0-19-511557-4|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_4K720YRj88C&q=Evangelicals+and+Science+in+Historical+Perspective}} | |||
* {{cite book | last1 = Piccardi | first1 = L. |first2=W. Bruce |last2=Masse | title = Myth and Geology | publisher = ] | location = London | year = 2007 | isbn = 978-1-86239-216-8 |page = 46}} | |||
* {{cite book| last=Rudwick|first=Martin J. S. |author-link=Martin J. S. Rudwick|title=The Great Devonian Controversy|year= 1988|isbn= 978-0-226-73102-5|pages= 42–44|title-link=The Great Devonian Controversy |publisher=Springer }} | |||
* {{cite book|title= Worlds before Adam|first= Martin J. S. |last= Rudwick|author-link=Martin J. S. Rudwick |year=2008|isbn= 978-0-226-73128-5|page=84|publisher= University of Chicago Press }} | |||
* {{cite book |last1=White |first1=Ellen G. |year=1864 |title=Spiritual Gifts Vol 3 & 4 |publisher=Review and Herald Pub Assoc |isbn=978-0-8280-1231-7 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YuwHXyy4Q34C&pg=PA64 |language=en}} | |||
* {{cite book | last = Wood | first = Paul | title = Science and Dissent in England, 1688–1945 | publisher = Ashgate | location = Aldershot | year = 2004 | isbn = 978-0-7546-3718-9|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vPWTn9DNBMEC&q=science+and+Dissent+in+England,+1688-1945}} | |||
{{end div col}} | |||
;Journals | |||
====Crust transformation==== | |||
{{div col}} | |||
Some flood geology supporters have proposed that the Earth's surface was much flatter in the past, thus allowing a much smaller volume of water to cover the planet. However, in order for the Earth's crust to reach its present form from such a flat stage over the past four thousand years, geologists point out, a tremendous amount of work would be required by a mechanism unstated by creationists. They point out that heating caused by the raising of the mountains and the lowering of the sea in about 150 days would be enough to raise oceanic temperatures on the order of 10 degrees Celsius (18 degrees Fahrenheit). | |||
* {{cite journal| | |||
last=Awbrey|first=Frank| | |||
date=Summer 1980| | |||
title = Yes, Virginia, There is a Creation Model| | |||
journal = Creation/Evolution Journal| volume = 1| issue = 1| page = 1| | |||
url = http://ncse.com/cej/1/1/yes-virginia-there-is-creation-model| access-date = 9 July 2014}} | |||
* {{cite journal|url=http://www.creationresearch.org/crsq/articles/31/31_4b.html|title=Stone Mountain Georgia: A Creation Geologist's Perspective|last=Froede|first=CR|year=1995|journal=Creation Research Society Quarterly Journal|volume=31|issue=4|page=214|access-date=2007-03-29|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110403204942/http://www.creationresearch.org/crsq/articles/31/31_4b.html|archive-date=2011-04-03|url-status=dead}} | |||
* {{cite journal | |||
|last=Heaton|first=Timothy H.|author-link=Timothy H. Heaton | |||
|title=Recent Developments in Young-Earth Creationist Geology|year=2008 | |||
|doi=10.1007/s11191-008-9162-6|volume=18|issue=10|journal=Science & Education|pages=1341–1358|bibcode=2009Sc&Ed..18.1341H|s2cid=129485726}} | |||
* {{cite journal| last =Herbert| first = Sandra| year = 1991| title =Charles Darwin as a prospective geological author| periodical =British Journal for the History of Science| volume = 24| issue = 2| pages = 159–192| url = http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?viewtype=text&itemID=A342&pageseq=13| access-date = 6 November 2010| doi = 10.1017/s0007087400027060 | s2cid = 143748414}} | |||
* {{cite journal|last=Henslow|first=John Stevens|author-link=John Stevens Henslow |title=On the Deluge |journal=Annals of Philosophy|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xbY4AAAAMAAJ&pg=PA348|year=1823|editor1=Richard Phillips|editor2=Edward William Brayley|publisher=Baldwin, Cradock, and Joy}} | |||
* {{cite journal|last=Hunter|first=M.J.|url=http://www.creationontheweb.com/content/view/5016/ |title=The pre-Flood/Flood boundary at the base of the earth's transition zone| journal= Journal of Creation| volume=14|pages=60–74|year=2000|access-date=2009-01-24}} | |||
* {{cite journal | last = Kulp | first = J. Laurence | author-link = J. Laurence Kulp | title = Deluge Geology | journal = Journal of the American Scientific Affiliation | volume = 2 | issue = 1 | pages = 1–15 | year = 1950 | url = http://www.asa3.org/aSA/PSCF/1950/JASA3-50Kulp.html| access-date = 2007-11-23 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20110607014037/http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/1950/JASA3-50Kulp.html | archive-date = 2011-06-07 | url-status = dead }} | |||
* {{cite journal|url=http://www.creationresearch.org/crsq/articles/38/38_3/Crimean.htm|title=Flood Geology of the Crimean Peninsula Part I: Tavrick Formation|last=Lalomov|first=AV|year=2001|journal=Creation Research Society Quarterly Journal|volume=38|issue=3|pages=118–124|access-date=2007-03-29|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070406110629/http://www.creationresearch.org/crsq/articles/38/38_3/Crimean.htm|archive-date=2007-04-06|url-status=dead}} | |||
* {{cite journal| last = Lippsett| first = Lonnie| date = 6 March 2010| title = Noah's Not-so-big Flood:New evidence rebuts controversial theory of Black Sea deluge| journal = Oceanus}} | |||
* {{cite journal| last = Millhauser| first = Milton| title = The Scriptural Geologists: An Episode in the History of Opinion| journal = Osiris| volume = 11| issue = 1| pages = 65–86| year = 1954| jstor = 301663| doi = 10.1086/368571| s2cid = 144093595}} | |||
* {{cite journal|first=Patrick D|last=Nunn|title=On the convergence of myth and reality: examples from the Pacific Islands|journal= The Geographical Journal|year=2001|issue=2|volume=167|pages=125–138|doi=10.1111/1475-4959.00012|bibcode=2001GeogJ.167..125N }}{{subscription required}} | |||
* {{cite journal| last1 = O’Connor| first1 = Ralph| year = 2007| title = Young-Earth Creationists in Early Nineteenth-century Britain? Towards a reassessment of 'Scriptural Geology' | url = http://www.abdn.ac.uk/staffpages/uploads/his221/young-earth-creationists.pdf| journal = History of Science| volume = 45| issue = 150| pages = 357–403|issn = 0073-2753| doi = 10.1177/007327530704500401| s2cid = 146768279}} | |||
* {{cite journal |last=Parkinson| first=William|date=January–February 2004|title=Questioning 'Flood Geology': Decisive New Evidence to End an Old Debate|journal=NCSE Reports|volume=24|issue=1| url=http://ncse.com/rncse/24/1/questioning-flood-geology|access-date=2 November 2010}} | |||
* {{cite journal|url=http://www.creationresearch.org/crsq/notes/39/39_1/Note0206.htm |title=Surface and Subsurface Errors in Anti-Creationist Geology |year=2002 |first1=JK |last1=Reed |last2=Woodmorappe |first2=J |journal=Creation Research Society Quarterly Journal |volume=39 |issue=1 |access-date=2007-03-29|url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130128125415/http://www.creationresearch.org/crsq/notes/39/39_1/Note0206.htm |archive-date=2013-01-28 }} | |||
* {{cite journal|last = Sandberg|first= P.A. | year = 1983 | title = An oscillating trend in Phanerozoic non-skeletal carbonate mineralogy | journal = Nature | volume = 305 | pages = 19–22 | doi = 10.1038/305019a0| issue=5929|bibcode = 1983Natur.305...19S|s2cid= 4368105 }} | |||
* {{cite book |last = Sarna | |||
|first = Nahum M. | |||
|author-link = Nahum Sarna | |||
|editor-last = Feyerick | |||
|editor-first = Ada | |||
|title = Genesis: World of Myths and Patriarchs | |||
|year = 1997 | |||
|publisher = NYU Press | |||
|location = New York | |||
|isbn = 978-0-8147-2668-6 | |||
|chapter = The Mists of Time: Genesis I–II | |||
|chapter-url = https://books.google.com/books?id=c7BSe16MeRsC&q=The+Mists+of+Time%3A+Genesis+I-II+Nahum+Sarna&pg=PA49 | |||
|url = https://archive.org/details/genesisworldofmy00feye | |||
}} | |||
* {{cite journal|last=Schadewald|first=Robert J.|date=Summer 1982| title = Six Flood Arguments Creationists Can't Answer| journal = Creation/Evolution Journal| volume = 3| issue = 3| pages = 12–17| url = http://ncse.com/cej/3/3/six-flood-arguments-creationists-cant-answer| access-date = 16 November 2010}} | |||
* {{cite journal|url=http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/cre-error.html| last=Schadewald|first=Robert|year=1986|title=Scientific Creationism and Error|journal=Creation/Evolution|volume=6|issue=1|pages=1–9|access-date=2007-03-29}} | |||
* {{cite journal| last = Seely| first = Paul H.| year = 1991| title = The Firmament and the Water Above: The Meaning of ''Raqia'' in Genesis 1:6–8| journal = Westminster Theological Journal| volume = 53| url = http://faculty.gordon.edu/hu/bi/Ted_Hildebrandt/OTeSources/01-Genesis/Text/Articles-Books/Seely-Firmament-WTJ.pdf| access-date = 13 November 2010| archive-date = 5 March 2009| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20090305132849/http://faculty.gordon.edu/hu/bi/Ted_Hildebrandt/OTeSources/01-Genesis/Text/Articles-Books/Seely-Firmament-WTJ.pdf| url-status = dead}} | |||
* {{cite journal| last = Seely| first = Paul H.| year = 1997| title = The Geographical Meaning of 'Earth' and 'Seas' in Genesis 1:10| journal = Westminster Theological Journal| volume = 59| url = http://faculty.gordon.edu/hu/bi/Ted_Hildebrandt/OTeSources/01-Genesis/Text/Articles-Books/Seely_EarthSeas_WTJ.pdf| access-date = 13 November 2010| archive-date = 16 October 2020| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20201016190009/http://faculty.gordon.edu/hu/bi/ted_hildebrandt/OTeSources/01-Genesis/Text/Articles-Books/Seely_EarthSeas_WTJ.pdf| url-status = dead}} | |||
* {{cite journal | last1 = Stanley|first1= S.M.|last2= Hardie|first2= L.A. | year = 1999 | title = Hypercalcification; paleontology links plate tectonics and geochemistry to sedimentology | journal = GSA Today | volume = 9 | pages = 1–7}} | |||
* {{cite book|title=Earth Science|last1=Tarbuck|first1= EJ |last2= Lutgens|first2= FK|publisher=Pearson Prentice Hall|year=2006|isbn=978-0-13-125852-5}} | |||
* {{cite journal|url=http://www.creationresearch.org/crsq/articles/40/40_1/LaBrea3.htm|last=Weston|first=W|title=La Brea Tar Pits: Evidence of a Catastrophic Flood|journal=Creation Research Society Quarterly Journal|volume=40|issue=1|year=2003|pages=25–33|access-date=2007-03-29|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070406104153/http://www.creationresearch.org/crsq/articles/40/40_1/LaBrea3.htm|archive-date=2007-04-06|url-status=dead}} | |||
* {{cite journal| last = Wise |first=D.U.| year = 1998| title = Creationism's Geologic Time Scale| journal = American Scientist| volume = 86| pages = 160–173| doi = 10.1511/1998.2.160| issue = 2| bibcode = 1998AmSci..86..160W|s2cid=119873896 }}{{subscription required}} | |||
* {{cite journal|last=Wise|first=K.|author-link=Kurt Wise|title=Towards a Creationist Understanding of "Transitional Forms"|journal=CEN Tech. J.|volume=9|pages=216–222|year=1995|url=http://www.bryancore.org/anniversary/04.pdf|access-date=2009-01-24}} | |||
{{end div col}} | |||
;Web | |||
===Geological evidence=== | |||
{{div col}} | |||
]; geologists do not believe the Rockies share erosion traits consistent with a great flood - erosion would be expected equal to the Appalachian Mountains, shown at left.]] | |||
* {{cite conference |url=https://www.icr.org/article/catastrophic-plate-tectonics-flood-model/ |title=Catastrophic Plate Tectonics: A Global Flood Model of Earth History | last1 =Austin | first1 =Stephen A. | last2=Baumgardner| first2=J.R.|last3= Humphreys|first3= R.D.|last4= Snelling|first4= A.A.|last5= Vardiman|first5= L. |last6=Wise|first6= K.P. |date=1994 |publisher=Institute for Creation Research |book-title= |pages= |location=Pittsburgh, PA |conference=Third International Conference on Creationism |id=}} | |||
] show an immense level of erosion. Geologists assert that if a flood had occurred, similar erosion should be found in the Rocky Mountains, shown at right.]] | |||
* {{cite magazine|url=http://www.nationalgeographic.com/blacksea/ax/frame.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/19991004183813/http://www.nationalgeographic.com/blacksea/ax/frame.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=4 October 1999|magazine=]|last=Ballard|title=Ballard and the Black Sea: the search for Noah's flood|year=1999|access-date=2007-06-27}} | |||
Geologists claim that the flood, had it occurred, should also have produced large-scale effects spread throughout the entire world. Erosion should be evenly distributed, yet the levels of erosion in, for example, the Appalachians and the Rocky Mountains differ significantly.<ref name="Isaak"/> However, different regions of the Flood need not have the same erosional intensities, because that depends on depth and gradient as well as rock hardness. | |||
* {{cite web|url=http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03731a.htm |title=Biblical Chronology|publisher= Catholic Encyclopedia|year=1913|ref={{harvid|Catholic encyclopedia|1913}} }} | |||
* {{cite web |url=http://www.news.wisc.edu/16176 |title=Reason or faith? Darwin expert reflects |first=Gwen |last=Evans |date=3 February 2009 |work=UW-Madison News |publisher=University of Wisconsin-Madison |access-date=2010-06-18}} | |||
* {{cite magazine |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/09/genesis-vs-geology/306198/?single_page=true |title=Genesis vs. Geology |first= Stephen Jay |last= Gould|author-link= Stephen Jay Gould|date=1 September 1982 |magazine= The Atlantic |access-date=2014-06-17}} | |||
* {{cite web|url= http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html#CD|title=Index to Creationist Claims, Geology|first=Mark|last=Isaak|publisher=]|date=5 November 2006|access-date =2 November 2010}} | |||
* {{cite web|url=http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-noahs-ark.html|title=Problems with a Global Flood|last=Isaak|first=M|year=1998|publisher=]|access-date=2007-03-29}} | |||
* {{cite web|url=http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/paluxy/wilker5.html|title=The "Burdick Print"|first=GJ|last=Kuban|year=1996|publisher=]|access-date=2007-03-29}} | |||
* {{cite web | last=Matthews | first=John | title=Chalk & Upper Cretaceous Deposits from Noachian Flood | website=Answers in Genesis | date=25 March 2009 | url=https://answersresearchjournal.org/chalk-upper-cretaceous-deposits-flood/ | access-date=25 September 2022}} | |||
* {{cite web|url=http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/geocolumn/|title=The Geologic Column and its Implications for the Flood|first=Glenn|last=Morton|publisher=]|access-date =2 November 2010|date=17 February 2001}} | |||
* {{cite web|url=http://nwcreation.net/noahlegends.html|title=Flood Legends from Around the World|access-date=2007-06-27|ref={{harvid|Northwest Creation Network}} }} | |||
* {{citation|url=http://ncse.com/rncse/23/1/my-favorite-pseudoscience |first=Eugenie C. |last=Scott|title=My Favorite Pseudoscience|volume= 23|issue= 1|date=January–February 2003}} | |||
* {{cite web | last=Snelling | first=Dr. Andrew A. | title=The Origin of Oil | website=Answers in Genesis | date=27 December 2006 | url=https://answersingenesis.org/geology/the-origin-of-oil/ | access-date=25 September 2022}} | |||
* {{cite web |url=http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/1992/PSCF3-92Spradley.html |title=Changing Views of Science and Scripture: Bernard Ramm and the ASA |last=Spradley |first=Joseph L. |access-date=2009-01-12|year=1992}} | |||
* {{Cite web|first=Larry |last=Vardiman|title=Temperature Profiles for an optimized Water Vapor Canopy| url=http://www.icr.org/article/temperature-water-vapor-canopy/| year=2003|publisher=ICR}} | |||
* {{cite web | last=Wilson | first=Mark A. | title=Are hardgrounds really a challenge to the global Flood? | website=answersingenesis.org | date=5 April 2001 | url=http://www.answersingenesis.org/Home/area/feedback/negative13-mar-2001.asp | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20011004152204/http://www.answersingenesis.org/Home/area/feedback/negative13-mar-2001.asp | archive-date=4 October 2001 | url-status=dead | access-date=25 September 2022}} | |||
* {{cite web |url=http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/1993/PSCF12-93Yang.html |title=Radiocarbon Dating and American Evangelical Christians |last=Yang |first=Seung-Hun |access-date=2009-01-12|year=1993}} | |||
* {{cite web|url=http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/r/rsv/rsv-idx?type=DIV1&byte=1801 |title=Genesis 6–9|ref={{harvid|Genesis|6–9}} }} | |||
{{end div col}} | |||
;Other | |||
===Archaeological evidence=== | |||
* {{cite conference|last=Baumgardner|first=JR|year=1986| | |||
Archaeology proves to be a potent source of evidence. Flood geology claims that the current sedimentary layers were produced by liquefaction, and that objects caught in the flood (including living creatures) were sorted by mass and location at the time when the flood engulfed them. However, archaeologists state that if this sorting actually took place, heavy, dense objects (such as human artifacts) would be expected to sink to the bottom. In actuality, man-made artifacts are very close to the top of the sedimentary layers. | |||
url=http://static.icr.org/i/pdf/technical/Numerical-Simulation-of-the-Large-Scale-Tectonic-Changes.pdf| | |||
title=Numerical Simulation of the Large-Scale Tectonic Changes Accompanying the Flood | |||
|book-title=First International Conference on Creationism| | |||
access-date=2014-07-15}} | |||
* {{cite conference|last=Baumgardner|first=JR|year=2003|url=http://www.globalflood.org/papers/2003ICCcpt.html|title=Catastrophic Plate Tectonics: The Physics Behind the Genesis Flood|book-title=Fifth International Conference on Creationism|access-date=2007-03-29|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161106155146/http://www.globalflood.org/papers/2003ICCcpt.html|archive-date=2016-11-06|url-status=dead}} | |||
* {{cite conference|last=Humphreys|first=Russell|year=1986 | |||
|url=http://static.icr.org/i/pdf/technical/Reversals-of-Earths-Magnetic-Field-During-the-Genesis-Flood.pdf | |||
|title=Reversals of the Earth's Magnetic Field During the Genesis Flood | |||
|book-title=First International Conference on Creationism| | |||
access-date=2014-07-15}} | |||
==Further reading== | |||
Furthermore, archaeologists claim that a number of ancient cultures (such as those of ], Egypt and Mesopotamia), are older than the alleged date of the Flood, and that the flood would have destroyed much of the evidence of these civilisations and deeply buried the rest. Creationists don't dispute the latter point - they reject the dates of those civilisations. Archaeologists claim that these methods of dating have been verified time and time again (see ]). They also point out that carbon dating methods are entirely independent of the detailed records kept by those civilizations. See ] and ]. | |||
* {{cite journal | title = The Defeat of Flood Geology by Flood Geology | journal = Reports of the National Center for Science Education | date = May–June 2001 | first = Phil | last = Senter | volume = 31 | issue = 3 | url = http://reports.ncse.com/index.php/rncse/article/download/44/36 | access-date = 2011-07-19 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20190218150243/http://reports.ncse.com/index.php/rncse/article/download/44/36 | archive-date = 2019-02-18 | url-status = dead }} | |||
* H. Neuville, "On the Extinction of the Mammoth," Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution, 1919. | |||
* Patten, Donald W. ''The Biblical Flood and the Ice Epoch'' (Seattle: Pacific Meridian Publishing Company, 1966). | |||
* Patten, Donald W. ''Catastrophism and the Old Testament'' (Seattle: Pacific Meridian Publishing Company, 1988). {{ISBN|0-88070-291-5}} | |||
{{Noah's Ark}} | |||
{{Creationism topics}} | |||
===Paleontological evidence=== | |||
If fossilization took place extremely quickly during the Flood, then — paleontologists assert — fossilized remains should be far more numerous and widespread than is actually seen. | |||
Furthermore, if creatures were differentiated by body size and density, then massive dinosaurs such as '']'' and '']'' should be found near the top sediments, rather than in sediments containing all the other Jurassic dinosaurs. | |||
{{DEFAULTSORT:Flood Geology}} | |||
Additionally, paleontologists note that if all the fossilized animals were killed in the flood, and the flood is responsible for fossilization, then the average density of vertebrates was an abnormally high number, close to 2100 creatures per acre, judging from ] found worldwide.<ref>Schadewald, R. (1982) . ''Creation/Evolution'' '''9''', 12-17.</ref> | |||
] | |||
] | |||
===Grass evidence=== | |||
] | |||
One example of fossil distribution that is hard to explain for flood geology is the distribution of grass. Grass leaves, grass seeds and grass pollen are found only in the upper layers of the geological column. The conventional explanation is the relatively recent evolution of grasses. Since wet grass readily sinks, it is unlikely that natural sorting would lead to the observed distribution of plant fossils in the geological column. | |||
==Philosophical objections== | |||
The scientific community objects to Flood Geology, and Creationism in general, on philosophical grounds as well as scientific ones. Perhaps the most fervent objection is grounded in ]. Occam's razor is a principle of parsimony formulated so as to "slice out" redundant assumptions from scientific theories: "It is vain to do with more what can be done with less." Therefore, say scientists, because science can comprehensively describe the relevant data, flood geology, which inherently requires on God, is redundant because of its underlying assumption of divine intervention. See ] for a more thorough discussion. | |||
Scientists also object to Flood Geology on methodological grounds: they point out that flood geology supporters approach geology with the initial purpose of finding evidence for a worldwide flood, rather than looking at the evidence and then formulating a conclusion. To cement this point, they note that the ] recounts that geologists had looked at the evidence for a worldwide flood in the century before Darwin, and found it lacking, dismissing it in favor of uniformitarian models.<ref name="Isaak"/> | |||
As a result of these objections, the scientific community considers Flood Geology and Creationism a form of religiously-based ]. | |||
== Footnotes == | |||
{{reflist|2}} | |||
==References== | |||
* Brown, Walt, ''In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood,'' 2001. | |||
* Dubrovo, N. A. et al., “Upper Quaternary Deposits and Paleogeography of the Region Inhabited by the Young Kirgilyakh Mammoth,” ''International Geology Review'', Vol. 24, No. 6, June 1982, p. 630. | |||
* Hapgood, Charles H. ''The Path of the Pole'' (Philadelphia: Chilton Book Company, 1970), p. 267. | |||
* Howorth, Henry H. ''The Mammoth and the Flood'' (London: Samson Low, Marston, Searle, and Rivington, 1887), pp. 2–4, 74–75. | |||
* M. Huc, ''Recollections of a Journey through Tartary, Thibet , and China, During the Years 1844, 1845, and 1846''. Vol. 2 (New York: D. Appleton & Company, 1852), pp. 130–131. | |||
* H. Neuville, “On the Extinction of the Mammoth,” Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution, 1919. | |||
* Numbers, R.L. 1991. The Creationists: The Evolution of Scientific Creationism, Berkely: University of California Press. | |||
* E. W. Pfizenmayer, ''Siberian Man and Mammoth'', translated from ] by Muriel D. Simpson (London: Black & Son Limited, 1939). | |||
* Ukraintseva, Valentina V. ''Vegetation Cover and Environment of the “Mammoth Epoch” in Siberia'' (Hot Springs, South Dakota: The Mammoth Site of Hot Springs, 1993), pp. 12–13. | |||
== See also == | |||
*] | |||
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==External links== | |||
===Evidence For and Against === | |||
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===Flood geology sites=== | |||
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* - Richard M. Davidson - John Nevin Andrews Professor of Old Testament Interpretation - Old Testament Department - Andrews University, Berrien Springs, Michigan | |||
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=== Sites critical of Flood Geology === | |||
* and . Old earth creationist websites explaining the problems of young earth flood geology. | |||
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*, adapted from the book ''The Biblical Flood'' by Davis A. Young, ISBN 0-8028-0719-4 | |||
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Pseudoscientific attempt to reconcile geology with the Genesis flood narrative
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Flood geology (also creation geology or diluvial geology) is a pseudoscientific attempt to interpret and reconcile geological features of the Earth in accordance with a literal belief in the Genesis flood narrative, the flood myth in the Hebrew Bible. In the early 19th century, diluvial geologists hypothesized that specific surface features provided evidence of a worldwide flood which had followed earlier geological eras; after further investigation they agreed that these features resulted from local floods or from glaciers. In the 20th century, young-Earth creationists revived flood geology as an overarching concept in their opposition to evolution, assuming a recent six-day Creation and cataclysmic geological changes during the biblical flood, and incorporating creationist explanations of the sequences of rock strata.
In the early stages of development of the science of geology, fossils were interpreted as evidence of past flooding. The "theories of the Earth" of the 17th century proposed mechanisms based on natural laws, within a timescale set by the Ussher chronology. As modern geology developed, geologists found evidence of an ancient Earth and evidence inconsistent with the notion that the Earth had developed in a series of cataclysms, like the Genesis flood. In early 19th-century Britain, "diluvialism" attributed landforms and surface features (such as beds of gravel and erratic boulders) to the destructive effects of this supposed global deluge, but by 1830 geologists increasingly found that the evidence supported only relatively local floods. So-called scriptural geologists attempted to give primacy to literal biblical explanations, but they lacked a background in geology and were marginalised by the scientific community, as well as having little influence in the churches.
Creationist flood geology was only supported by a minority of the 20th century anti-evolution movement, mainly in the Seventh-day Adventist Church, until the 1961 publication of The Genesis Flood by Morris and Whitcomb. Around 1970, proponents adopted the terms "scientific creationism" and creation science.
Proponents of flood geology hold to a literal reading of Genesis 6–9 and view its passages as historically accurate; they use the Bible's internal chronology to place the Genesis flood and the story of Noah's Ark within the last 5,000 years.
Scientific analysis has refuted the key tenets of flood geology. Flood geology contradicts the scientific consensus in geology, stratigraphy, geophysics, physics, paleontology, biology, anthropology, and archaeology. Modern geology, its sub-disciplines and other scientific disciplines use the scientific method. In contrast, flood geology does not adhere to the scientific method, making it a pseudoscience.
History of theories
Main articles: History of geology and History of paleontologyIn pre-Christian times, fossils found on land were thought by Greek philosophers—including Xenophanes, Xanthus and Aristotle—to be evidence that the sea had in past ages covered the land. Their concept of vast time periods in an eternal cosmos was rejected by early Christian writers as incompatible with their belief in Creation by God. Among the church fathers, Tertullian spoke of fossils demonstrating that mountains had been overrun by water without explicitly saying when. Chrysostom and Augustine believed that fossils were the remains of animals that were killed and buried during the brief duration of the Genesis flood, and later Martin Luther viewed fossils as having resulted from the flood. The earliest documentation of the famous fossil fishes of the Sannine Formation comes from Eusebius, who cites them as being evidence of the Biblical flood.
Other scholars, including Avicenna, thought fossils were produced in the rock by "petrifying virtue" acting on "seeds" of plants and animals. In 1580, Bernard Palissy speculated that fossils had formed in lakes, and natural historians subsequently disputed the alternatives. Robert Hooke made empirical investigations and doubted that the numbers of fossil shells or depth of shell beds could have formed in the one year of Noah's flood. In 1616, Nicolas Steno showed how chemical processes changed organic remains into stone fossils. His fundamental principles of stratigraphy published in 1669 established that rock strata formed horizontally and were later broken and tilted, though he assumed these processes would occur within 6,000 years including a worldwide flood.
Theories of the Earth
In his influential Principles of Philosophy of 1644, René Descartes applied his mechanical physical laws to envisage swirling particles forming the Earth as a layered sphere. This natural philosophy was recast in biblical terms by the theologian Thomas Burnet, whose Sacred Theory of the Earth published in the 1680s proposed complex explanations based on natural laws, and explicitly rejected the simpler approach of invoking miracles as incompatible with the methodology of natural philosophy (the precursor to science). Burnet maintained that less than 6,000 years ago the Earth had emerged from chaos as a perfect sphere, with paradise on land over a watery abyss. This crust had dried out and cracked, and its collapse caused the biblical deluge, forming mountains as well as caverns where the water retreated. He made no mention of fossils but inspired other diluvial theories that did.
In 1695, John Woodward's An Essay Toward a Natural History of the Earth viewed the Genesis flood as dissolving rocks and soil into a thick slurry that caught up all living things, which, when the waters settled, formed strata according to the relative density of these materials, including fossils of the organisms. When it was pointed out that lower layers were often less dense and forces that shattered rock would destroy organic remains, he resorted to the explanation that a divine miracle had temporarily suspended gravity.
William Whiston's New Theory of the Earth of 1696 combined scripture with Newtonian physics to propose that the original chaos was the atmosphere of a comet with the days of creation each taking a year, and the Genesis flood had resulted from a second comet. His explanation of how the flood caused mountains and the fossil sequence was similar to Woodward's. Johann Jakob Scheuchzer wrote in support of Woodward's ideas in 1708, describing some fossil vertebrae as bones of sinners who had perished in the flood. A skeleton found in a quarry was described by him in 1726 as Homo diluvii testis, a giant human testifying to the flood. This was accepted for some time, but in 1812 it was shown to be a prehistoric salamander.
Beginnings of modern geology
The modern science of geology developed in the 18th century; the term "geology" was popularised by the Encyclopédie of 1751. Steno's categorisation of strata was expanded by several geologists, including Johann Gottlob Lehmann who believed that the oldest mountains had formed early in the Creation, and categorised as Flötz-Gebürge stratified mountains with few ore deposits but with thin layers containing fossils, overlain by a third category of superficial deposits. In his 1756 publication he identified 30 different layers in this category which he attributed to the action of the Genesis deluge, possibly including debris from the older mountains. Others including Giovanni Arduino attributed secondary strata to natural causes: Georg Christian Füchsel said that geologists had to take as standard the processes in which nature currently produces solids, "we know no other way", and only the most recent deposits could be attributed to a great flood.
Lehman's classification was developed by Abraham Gottlob Werner who thought that rock strata had been deposited from a primeval global ocean rather than by Noah's flood, a doctrine called Neptunism. The idea of a young Earth was further undermined in 1774 by Nicolas Desmarest, whose studies of a succession of extinct volcanoes in Europe showed layers which would have taken long ages to build up. The fact that these layers were still intact indicated that any later flood had been local rather than universal. Against Neptunism, James Hutton proposed an indefinitely old cycle of eroded rocks being deposited in the sea, consolidated and heaved up by volcanic forces into mountains which in turn eroded, all in natural processes which continue to operate.
Catastrophism and diluvialism
The first professional geological society, the Geological Society of London, was founded in 1807. By this time, geologists were convinced that an immense time had been needed to build up the huge thickness of rock strata visible in quarries and cliffs, implying extensive pre-human periods. Most accepted a basic time scale classifying rocks as primitive, transition, secondary, or tertiary. Several researchers independently found that strata could be identified by characteristic fossils: secondary strata in southern England were mapped by William Smith from 1799 to 1815.
Cuvier and Jameson
Georges Cuvier, working with Alexandre Brongniart, examined tertiary strata in the region around Paris. Cuvier found that fossils identified rock formations as alternating between marine and terrestrial deposits, indicating "repeated irruptions and retreats of the sea" which he identified with a long series of sudden catastrophes which had caused extinctions. In his 1812 Discours préliminaire to his Recherches sur les ossemens fossiles de quadrupeds put forward a synthesis of this research into the long prehistoric period, and a historical approach to the most recent catastrophe. His historical approach tested empirical claims in the biblical text of Genesis against other ancient writings to pick out the "real facts" from "interested fictions". In his assessment, Moses had written the account around 3,300 years ago, long after the events described. Cuvier only discussed the Genesis flood in general terms, as the most recent example of "an event of an universal catastrophe, occasioned by an irruption of the waters" not set "much further back than five or six thousand years ago". The historical texts could be loosely related to evidence such as overturned strata and "heaps of debris and rounded pebbles". An English translation was published in 1813 with a preface and notes by Robert Jameson, Regius Professor of Natural history at the University of Edinburgh. He began the preface with a sentence which ignored Cuvier's historical approach and instead deferred to revelation:
"Although the Mosaic account of the creation of the world is an inspired writing, and consequently rests on evidence wholly independent of human observation and experience, still it is interesting, and in many respects important, to know that it coincides with the various phenomena observable in the mineral kingdom."
This sentence was removed after the second edition, and Jameson's position changed as shown by his notes in successive editions, but it influenced British views of Cuvier's concept. In 1819, George Bellas Greenough, first president of The Geological Society, issued A Critical Examination of the First Principles of Geology stating that unless erratic boulders deposited hundreds of miles from their original sources had been moved by seas, rivers, or collapsing lakes, "the only remaining cause, to which these effects can be ascribed, is a Debacle or Deluge."
Buckland and the English school of geologists
Conservative geologists in Britain welcomed Cuvier's theory to replace Werner's Neptunism, and the Church of England clergyman William Buckland became the foremost proponent of flood geology as he sought to get the new science of geology accepted on the curriculum of the University of Oxford. In 1818, he was visited by Cuvier, and in his inaugural speech in 1819 as the first professor of geology at the university he defended the subject against allegations that it undermined religion. His speech, published as Vindiciae Geologicae; or, The Connexion of Geology with Religion Explained, equated the last of a long series of catastrophes with the Genesis flood, and said that "the grand fact of an universal deluge at no very remote period is proved on grounds so decisive and incontrovertible, that, had we never heard of such an event from Scripture, or any other, authority, Geology of itself must have called in the assistance of some such catastrophe, to explain the phenomena of diluvian action which are universally presented to us, and which are unintelligible without recourse to a deluge exerting its ravages at a period not more ancient than that announced in the Book of Genesis." The evidence he proposed included erratic boulders, extensive areas of gravel, and landforms which appeared to have been scoured by water.
This inaugural address influenced the geologists William Conybeare and William Phillips. In their 1822 book on Outlines of the Geology of England and Wales Conybeare referred to the same features in an introduction about the relationship between geology and religion, describing how a deluge causing "the last great geological change to which the surface of our planet appears to have been exposed" left behind the debris (which he named in Latin Diluvium) as evidence for "that great and universal catastrophe to which it seems most properly assignable". In 1823 Buckland published his detailed account of "Relics of the Flood", Reliquiae Diluvianae; or, Observations on the Organic Remains Contained in Caves, Fissures, and Diluvial Gravel and on Other Geological Phenomena Attesting the Action of an Universal Deluge, incorporating his research suggesting that animal fossils had been dragged into the Kirkdale Cave by hyenas then covered by a layer of red mud washed in by the deluge.
Buckland's views were supported by other Church of England clergymen naturalists: his Oxford colleague Charles Daubeny proposed in 1820 that the volcanoes of the Auvergne showed a sequence of lava flows from before and after the flood had cut valleys through the region. In an 1823 article "On the deluge", John Stevens Henslow, professor of mineralogy at the University of Cambridge, affirmed the concept and proposed that the flood had originated from a comet, but this was his only comment on the topic. Adam Sedgwick, Woodwardian Professor of Geology at Cambridge, presented two supportive papers in 1825, "On the origin of alluvial and diluvial deposits", and "On diluvial formations". At this time, most of what Sedgwick called "The English school of geologists" distinguished superficial deposits which were "diluvial", showing "great irregular masses of sand, loam, and coarse gravel, containing through its mass rounded blocks sometimes of enormous magnitude" and supposedly caused by "some great irregular inundation", from "alluvial" deposits of "comminuted gravel, silt, loam, and other materials" attributed to lesser events, the "propelling force" of rivers, or "successive partial inundations".
In America, Benjamin Silliman at Yale College spread the concept and in an 1833 essay dismissed the earlier idea that most stratified rocks had been formed in the flood, while arguing that surface features showed "wreck and ruin" attributable to "mighty floods and rushing torrents of water". He said that "we must charge to moving waters the undulating appearance of stratified sand and gravel, often observed in many places, and very conspicuously in the plain of New Haven, and in other regions of Connecticut and New England", while both "bowlder stones" and sandy deserts across the world could be attributed to "diluvial agency".
Criticisms and retractions: the downfall of diluvialism
Other naturalists were critical of diluvialism: Church of Scotland minister John Fleming published opposing arguments in a series of articles from 1823 onwards. He was critical of the assumption that fossils resembling modern tropical species had been swept north "by some violent means", which he regarded as absurd considering the "unbroken state" of fossil remains. For example, fossil mammoths demonstrated adaptation to the same northern climates now prevalent where they were found. He criticized Buckland's identification of red mud in the Kirkdale cave as diluvial, when nearly identical mud in other caves had been described as fluvial. While Cuvier had reconciled geology with a loose reading of the biblical text, Fleming argued that such a union was "indiscreet" and turned to a more literal view of Genesis:
But if the supposed impetuous torrent excavated valleys, and transported masses of rocks to a distance from their original repositories, then must the soil have been swept from off the earth to the destruction of the vegetable tribes. Moses does not record such an occurrence. On the contrary, in his history of the dove and the olive-leaf plucked off, he furnishes a proof that the flood was not so violent in its motions as to disturb the soil, nor to overturn the trees which it supported.
When Sedgwick visited Paris at the end of 1826 he found hostility to diluvialism: Alexander von Humboldt ridiculed it "beyond measure", and Louis-Constant Prévost "lectured against it". In the summer of 1827 Sedgwick and Roderick Murchison travelled to investigate the geology of the Scottish Highlands, where they found "so many indications of local diluvial operations" that Sedgwick began to change his mind about it being worldwide. When George Poulett Scrope published his investigations into the Auvergne in 1827, he did not use the term "diluvium". He was followed by Murchison and Charles Lyell whose account appeared in 1829. All three agreed that the valleys could well have been formed by rivers acting over a long time, and a deluge was not needed.
Lyell, formerly a pupil of Buckland, put strong arguments against diluvialism in the first volume of his Principles of Geology published in 1830, though suggesting the possibility of a deluge affecting a region such as the low-lying area around the Caspian Sea. Sedgwick responded to this book in his presidential address to the Geological Society in February 1830, agreeing that diluvial deposits had formed at differing times. At the society a year later, when retiring from the presidency, Sedgwick described his former belief that "vast masses of diluvial gravel" had been scattered worldwide in "one violent and transitory period" as "a most unwarranted conclusion", and therefore thought "it right, as one of my last acts before I quit this Chair, thus publicly to read my recantation." However, he remained convinced that a flood as described in Genesis was not excluded by geology.
One student had seen the gradual abandonment of diluvialism: Charles Darwin had attended Jameson's geology lectures in 1826 and at Cambridge became a close friend of Henslow before learning geology from Sedgwick in 1831. At the outset of the Beagle voyage Darwin was given a copy of Lyell's Principles of Geology and at the first landfall began his career as a geologist with investigations which supported Lyell's concept of slow uplift while also describing loose rocks and gravel as "part of the long disputed Diluvium". Debates continued over the part played by repeated exceptional catastrophes in geology, and in 1832 William Whewell dubbed this view catastrophism, while naming Lyell's insistence on explanations based on current processes uniformitarianism.
Buckland, too, gradually modified his views on the deluge. In 1832 a student noted Buckland's view on cause of diluvial gravel, "whether is Mosaic inundation or not, will not say". In a footnote to his Bridgewater Treatise of 1836, Buckland backed down from his former claim that the "violent inundation" identified in his Reliquiae Diluvianae was the Genesis flood:
it seems more probable, that the event in question, was the last of the many geological revolutions that have been produced by violent irruptions of water, rather than the comparatively tranquil inundation described in the Inspired Narrative. It has been justly argued, against the attempt to identity these two great historical and natural phenomena, that, as the rise and fall of the waters of the Mosaic deluge are described to have been gradual and of short duration, they would have produced comparatively little change on the surface of the country they overflowed.
For a while, Buckland had continued to insist that some geological layers were related to the Great Flood, but grew to accept the idea that they represented multiple inundations which occurred well before humans existed. In 1840 he made a field trip to Scotland with the Swiss geologist Louis Agassiz and became convinced that the "diluvial" features which he had attributed to the deluge had, in fact, been produced by ancient ice ages. Buckland became one of the foremost champions of Agassiz's theory of glaciations, and diluvialism went out of use in geology. Active geologists no longer posited sudden ancient catastrophes with unknown causes and instead increasingly explained phenomena by observable processes causing slow changes over great periods.
Scriptural geologists, and later commentary
Scriptural geologists were a heterogeneous group of writers in the early 19th century who claimed "the primacy of literalistic biblical exegesis" and a short young Earth time scale. Their views were marginalised and ignored by the scientific community of their time. They generally lacked any background in geology and had little influence even in church circles.
Many of them quoted obsolete geological writings. Among the most prominent, Granville Penn argued in 1822 that "mineral geology" rejected revelation, while true "Mosaical geology" showed that God had created primitive rock formations directly, in correspondence with the laws which God then made to produce subsequent effects. A first revolution on the third day of creation deepened the oceans so water rushed in, and in the deluge 1,656 years afterwards a second revolution sank land areas and raised the sea bed to cause a swirling flood which moved soil and fossil remains into stratified layers, after which God created new vegetation. As Genesis appeared to show that the rivers of Eden had survived this catastrophe, he argued that the verses concerned were an added "parenthesis" which should be disregarded. In 1837 George Fairholme expressed disappointment about disappearing belief in the deluge, and about Sedgwick and Buckland recanting diluvialism while putting forward his own New and Conclusive Physical Demonstrations which ignored geological findings to claim that strata had been deposited in a quick continuous process while still moist.
Geology was popularized by several authors. John Pye Smith's lectures published in 1840 reconciled an extended time frame with Genesis by the increasingly common gap theology or day-age theology, and said it was likely that the gravel and boulder formations were not diluvium but had taken long ages predating the creation of humans. He reaffirmed that the flood was historical as a local event, something which the 17th century theologians Edward Stillingfleet and Matthew Poole had already suggested on a purely biblical basis. Smith also denounced the "fanciful" writings of the scriptural geologists. Edward Hitchcock sought to ensure that geological findings could be corroborated by scripture and dismissed the scriptural geology of Penn and Fairholme as misrepresenting both scripture and the facts of geology. He noted the difficulty of equating a violent deluge with the more tranquil Genesis account. Hugh Miller supported similar points with considerable detail.
Little attention was paid to flood geology over the rest of the 19th century, its few supporters included the author Eleazar Lord in the 1850s and the Lutheran scholar Carl Friedrich Keil in 1860 and 1878. The visions of Ellen G. White published in 1864 formed Seventh-day Adventist Church views and influenced 20th century creationism.
Creationist flood geology
The Seventh-day Adventist Church, led by Ellen G. White, took a six-day creation literally and believed that she received divine messages supplementing and supporting the Bible. Her visions of the flood and its aftermath, published in 1864, described a catastrophic deluge which reshaped the entire surface of the Earth, followed by a powerful wind which piled up new high mountains, burying the bodies of men and beasts. Buried forests became coal and oil, and where God later caused these to burn, they reacted with limestone and water to cause "earthquakes, volcanoes and fiery issues".
George McCready Price
White's visions prompted several books by one of her followers, George McCready Price, leading to the 20th-century revival of flood geology. After years selling White's books door-to-door, Price took a one-year teacher-training course and taught in several schools. When shown books on evolution and the fossil sequence which contradicted his beliefs, he found the answer in White's "revealing word pictures" which suggested how the fossils had been buried. He studied textbooks on geology and "almost tons of geological documents", finding "how the actual facts of the rocks and fossils, stripped of mere theories, splendidly refute this evolutionary theory of the invariable order of the fossils, which is the very backbone of the evolution doctrine". In 1902, he produced a manuscript proposing geology based on Genesis, in which the sequence of fossils resulted from the different responses of animals to the encroaching flood. He agreed with White on the origins of coal and oil and conjectured that mountain ranges (including the Alps and Himalayas) formed from layers deposited by the flood which had then been "folded and elevated to their present height by the great lateral pressure that accompanied its subsidence". He then found a report describing paraconformities and a paper on thrust faults. He concluded from these "providential discoveries" that it was impossible to prove the age or overall sequence of fossils and included these points in his self-published paperback of 1906, Illogical Geology: The Weakest Point in the Evolution Theory. His arguments continued this focus on disproving the sequence of strata, and he ultimately sold more than 15,000 copies of his 1923 college textbook The New Geology.
Price increasingly gained attention outside Adventist groups, and in the creation–evolution controversy other leading Christian fundamentalists praised his opposition to evolution – though none of them followed his young Earth arguments, retaining their belief in the gap or in the day-age interpretation of Genesis. Price corresponded with William Jennings Bryan and was invited to be a witness in the Scopes Trial of 1925 but declined as he was teaching in England and opposed to teaching Genesis in public schools as "it would be an infringement on the cardinal American principle of separation of church and state". Price returned from England in 1929 to rising popularity among fundamentalists as a scientific author. In the same year his former student Harold W. Clark self-published the short book Back to Creationism, which recommended Price's flood geology as the new "science of creationism", introducing the label "creationism" as a replacement for "anti-evolution" of "Christian Fundamentals".
In 1935, Price and Dudley Joseph Whitney (a rancher who had co-founded the Lindcove Community Bible Church) founded the Religion and Science Association (RSA). They aimed to resolve disagreements among fundamentalists with "a harmonious solution" which would convert them all to flood geology. Most of the organising group were Adventists; others included conservative Lutherans with similarly literalist beliefs. Bryon C. Nelson of the Norwegian Lutheran Church of America had included Price's geological views in a 1927 book, and in 1931 published The Deluge Story in Stone: A History of the Flood Theory of Geology, which described Price as the "one very outstanding advocate of the Flood" of the century. The first public RSA conference in March 1936 invited various fundamentalist views but opened up differences between the organisers on the antiquity of creation and on life before Adam. The RSA went defunct in 1937, and a dispute continued between Price and Nelson, who viewed creation as occurring over 100,000 years previously.
In 1938, Price, with a group of Adventists in Los Angeles, founded what became the Deluge Geology Society (DGS), with membership restricted to those believing that the creation week comprised "six literal days, and that the Deluge should be studied as the cause of the major geological changes since creation". Not all DGS adherents were Adventists; early members included the Independent Baptist Henry M. Morris and the Missouri Lutheran Walter E. Lammerts. The DGS undertook field work: in June 1941 their first Bulletin hailed the news that the Paluxy River dinosaur trackways in Texas appeared to include human footprints. Though Nelson had advised Price in 1939 that this was "absurd" and that the difficulty of human footprints forming during the turmoil of the deluge would "knock the Flood theory all to pieces", in 1943 the DGS began raising funds for "actual excavation" by a Footprint Research Committee of members including the consulting geologist Clifford L. Burdick. Initially they tried to keep their research secret from "unfriendly scientists". Then in 1945, to encourage backing, they announced giant human footprints, allegedly defeating "at a single stroke" the theory of evolution. The revelation that locals had carved the footprints, and an unsuccessful field trip that year, failed to dampen their hopes.
However, by then doctrinal arguments had riven the DGS. The most extreme dispute began in late 1938 after Harold W. Clark observed deep drilling in oil fields and had discussions with practical geologists which dispelled the belief that the fossil sequence was random, convincing him that the evidence of thrust faults was "almost incontrovertible". He wrote to Price, telling his teacher that the "rocks do lie in a much more definite sequence than we have ever allowed", and proposing that the fossil sequence was explained by ecological zones before the flood. Price reacted with fury, and despite Clark emphasising their shared belief in literal recent creation, the dispute continued. In 1946 Clark set out his views in a book, The New Diluvialism, which Price denounced as Theories of Satanic Origin.
In 1941, F. Alton Everest co-founded the American Scientific Affiliation (ASA) as a less confrontational forum for evangelical scientists. Some deluge geologists, including Lammerts and Price, urged close cooperation with the DGS, but Everest began to see their views as presenting an "insurmountable problem" for the ASA. In 1948, he requested J. Laurence Kulp, a geologist in fellowship with the Plymouth Brethren, to explore the issue. At the convention that year, Kulp examined hominid antiquity demonstrated by radiocarbon dating. At the 1949 convention a paper by Kulp was presented, giving a detailed critique of Deluge Geology, which he said had "grown and infiltrated the greater portion of fundamental Christianity in America primarily due to the absence of trained Christian geologists". Kulp demonstrated that "major propositions of the theory are contraindicated by established physical and chemical laws". He focused on "four basic errors" commonly made by flood geologists:
- saying that geology was the same as evolution
- assuming "that life has been on the earth only for a few thousand years, therefore the flood must account for geological strata"
- misunderstanding "the physical and chemical conditions under which rocks are formed"
- ignoring recent discoveries such as radiometric dating that undermined their assumptions
Kulp accused Price of ignorance and deception, concluding that "this unscientific theory of flood geology has done and will do considerable harm to the strong propagation of the gospel among educated people". Price said nothing during the presentation and discussion. When invited to speak, he "said something very brief which missed what everyone was waiting for". Further publications made the ASA's opposition to flood geology clear.
Morris and Whitcomb
In 1942, Irwin A. Moon's Sermons from Science persuaded engineer Henry M. Morris of the importance of harmonising science and the Bible, and introduced him to the concepts of a vapor canopy causing the flood and its geological effects. About a year later Morris found Price's New Geology a "life-changing experience", and joined the DGS. His book That You Might Believe (1946) for college students included Price's flood geology.
Morris had joined the ASA in 1949, and in the summer of 1953 he made a presentation on "The Biblical Evidence for a Recent Creation and Universal Deluge" at their annual conference, held at Grace Theological Seminary. He impressed a graduate student there, John C. Whitcomb, Jr. who was teaching Old Testament and Hebrew. To Whitcomb's distress, the ASA members at the presentation "politely denounced" Morris.
In 1955, the ASA held a joint meeting with the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS) at the same campus, where theologian Bernard Ramm's The Christian View of Science and Scripture (1954) caused considerable discussion. This book dismissed flood geology as typifying the "ignoble tradition" of fundamentalism and stated that Price could not be taken seriously, as lacking the necessary competence, training and integrity. Instead, Ramm proposed what he called progressive creationism, in which the Genesis days functioned as pictorial images revealing a process that had taken place over millions of years. ASA scientists praised Ramm's views, but the ETS theologians proved unwilling to follow Ramm.
This encouraged Whitcomb to make his doctoral dissertation a response to Ramm and a defence of Price's position. He systematically asked evangelical professors of apologetics, archaeology and the Old Testament about creation and the flood and in October told Morris that Ramm's book had been sufficient incentive for him to devote his dissertation to the topic. In 1957 Whitcomb completed his 450-page dissertation, "The Genesis Flood", and he promptly began summarising it for a book. Moody Publishers responded positively and agreed with him that chapters on scientific aspects should be carefully checked or written by someone with a PhD in science, but Whitcomb's attempts to find someone with a doctorate in geology were unsuccessful. Morris gave helpful advice, expressing concern that sections were too closely based on Price and on Immanuel Velikovsky who were "both considered by scientists generally as crackpots". Morris produced an outline of his planned three chapters and in December 1957 agreed to co-author the book.
Morris sent on his draft for comment in early 1959. His intended 100 pages grew to almost 350, around twice the length of Whitcomb's eventual contribution. Recalling Morris's earlier concerns about how Price was viewed by scientists, Whitcomb suggested that "For many people, our position would be somewhat discredited" by multiple references to Price in the draft, including a section headed "Price and Seventh-Day Adventism". Morris agreed and even suggested avoiding the term "flood geology", but it proved too useful. After discussion, the co-authors minimised these references and removed any mention of Price's Adventist affiliation. By early 1960 they became impatient at delays when Moody Publishers expressed misgivings about the length and literal views of the book, and they went along with Rousas Rushdoony's recommendation of a small Philadelphia publisher.
The Genesis Flood (1961)
The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company of Philadelphia published Whitcomb and Morris's The Genesis Flood in February 1961. The authors took as their premise biblical infallibility: "the basic argument of this volume is that the Scriptures are true". For Whitcomb, Genesis describes a worldwide flood which covered all the high mountains, Noah's Ark with a capacity equivalent to eight freight-trains, flood waters from a canopy and the deeps, and subsequent dispersal of animals from Mount Ararat to all the continents via land bridges. He disputed the views published by Ramm and Arthur Custance. Morris then confronted readers with the dilemma of whether to believe Scripture or to accept the interpretations of trained geologists, and instead of the latter proposed "a new scheme of historical geology"—true both to Scripture and to "God's work" revealed in nature. This was essentially Price's The New Geology of 1923 updated for the 1960s, though with few direct references to Price.
Like Price before him, Morris argued that most fossil-bearing strata had formed during a global deluge, disputing uniformitarianism, multiple ice ages, and the geologic column. He explained the apparent fossil sequence as the outcome of marine organisms dying in the slurry of sediments in early stages of the flood, of moving currents sorting objects by size and shape, and of the mobility of vertebrates (allowing them to initially escape the flood waters). He cited Walter E. Lammerts in support of Price's views about the thrust fault at Chief Mountain disproving the sequence.
The book went beyond Price in some areas. Morris extended the six-day creation from the Earth to the entire universe and wrote that death and decay had only begun with the fall of man, which had therefore introduced entropy and the second law of thermodynamics. He proposed that a vapor canopy, before providing water for the flood, created a mild, even climate and shielded the Earth from cosmic rays – so radiocarbon dating of antediluvian samples would not work. He cited the testimony of Clifford L. Burdick from the 1950s that some of the Glen Rose Formation dinosaur trackways near the Paluxy River in Dinosaur Valley State Park overlapped human footprints, but Burdick failed to confirm this, and the claim disappeared from the third edition of The Genesis Flood.
Creation Research Society
In a 1957 discussion with Whitcomb, Lammerts suggested an "informal association" to exchange ideas, and possibly research, on flood geology. Morris was unavailable to get things started, then c. 1961 William J. Tinkle got in touch, and they set about recruiting others. They had difficulty in finding supporters with scientific qualifications. The Creation Research Committee of ten they put together on 9 February 1962 had varying views on the age of the Earth, but all opposed evolution. They then succeeded in recruiting others into what became the Creation Research Society (CRS) in June 1963, which grew rapidly. Getting an agreed statement of belief was problematic; they affirmed that the Bible was "historically and scientifically true in the original autographs" so that "the account of origins in Genesis is a factual presentation of simple historical truths" and "The great flood described in Genesis, commonly referred to as the Noachian Flood, was an historic event worldwide in its extent and effect", but to Morris's disappointment they did not make flood geology mandatory. They lacked a qualified geologist, and Morris persuaded the group to appoint Burdick as their Earth scientist, overcoming initial concerns raised by Lammerts. The CRS grew rapidly, with an increasing proportion of the membership adhering to strict young Earth flood geology.
The resources of the CRS for its first decade went into publication of the CRS Quarterly and a project to publish a creationist school book. Since the 1920s most U.S. schools had not taught pupils about evolution, but the launch of Sputnik exposed apparent weaknesses of U.S. science education, and the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study produced textbooks in 1963 which included the topic. When the Texas Education Agency held a hearing in October 1964 about adopting these textbooks, creationist objectors were unable to name suitable creationist alternatives. Lammerts organised a CRS textbook committee which lined up a group of authors, with John N. Moore as senior editor bringing their contributions together into a suitable textbook.
Creation science
Main article: Creation scienceThe teaching of evolution, reintroduced in 1963 by the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study textbooks, was prohibited by laws in some states. These bans were contested; the Epperson v. Arkansas case which began late in 1965 was decided in 1968 by the United States Supreme Court ruling that such laws violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Some creationists thought a legal decision requiring religious neutrality in schools should shield their children from teachings hostile to their religion; Nell J. Segraves and Jean E. Sumrall (a friend of Lammerts who was also associated with the CRS and the Bible-Science Association) petitioned the California State Board of Education to require that school biology texts designate evolution as a theory. In 1966 Max Rafferty as California State Superintendent of Public Instruction suggested that they demand equal time for creation, as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 allowed teachers to mention religion as long as they did not promote specific doctrines. Their first attempt failed, but in 1969 controversy arose over a proposed Science Framework for California Schools. Anticipating success, they and others in the Bible-Science Association formed Creation Science, Inc., to produce textbooks. A compromise acceptable to Segraves, Sumrall and the Board was suggested by Vernon L. Grose, and the revised 1970 Framework included "While the Bible and other philosophical treatises also mention creation, science has independently postulated the various theories of creation. Therefore, creation in scientific terms is not a religious or philosophical belief." The result kept school texts free of creationism but downgraded evolution to mere speculative theory.
Creationists reacted to the California developments with a new confidence that they could introduce their ideas into schools by minimizing biblical references. Henry M. Morris declared "Creationism is on the way back, this time not primarily as a religious belief, but as an alternative scientific explanation of the world in which we live." In 1970 Creation Science, Inc., combined with a planned studies center at Christian Heritage College as the Creation-Science Research Center. Morris moved to San Diego to become director of the center and academic vice-president of the college. In the fall he presented a course at the college on "Scientific Creationism", the first time he is known to have used the term in public. (Two years later, the Creation-Science Research Center split with part becoming the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) led by Morris.)
CRS had found schoolbook publishers reluctant to take on their textbook, and eventually the Christian publishing company Zondervan brought out Biology: A Search for Order in Complexity in 1970. The 10,000 prints sold out within a year, and they produced 25,000 as the second impression, but hardly any public schools adopted the book. A preface by Morris claims that there were two philosophies of creation, "the doctrine of evolution and the doctrine of special creation", attempting to give both equal validity. The book mostly covers uncontroversial details of biology but asserts that these were correctly seen as "God's creation" or "divine creation", and presents biblical creation as the correct scientific view. A chapter on "Weaknesses of Geologic Evidence" disputes evolutionary theories while asserting a "fact that most fossil material was laid down by the flood in Noah's time". Another chapter disputes evolutionary theory.
In the CRS Quarterly for September 1971, Morris introduced the "two-model approach" asserting that evolution and creation were both equally scientific and equally religious, and soon afterwards he said they were "competing scientific hypotheses". For the third printing of Biology: A Search for Order in Complexity in 1974, the editor John N. Moore added a preface setting out this approach as "the two basic viewpoints of origins", the "evolution model" and the "creation model". When an Indiana school decided to use the book as their biology text, the Hendren v. Campbell district court case banned its use in public schools as infringing the Establishment Clause. Judge Michael T. Dugan, II, described it as "a text obviously designed to present only the view of Biblical Creationism in a favorable light", contravening the constitution by promotion of a specific sectarian religious view.
As a tactic to gain the same scientific status as evolution, flood geology proponents had effectively relabeled the Bible-based flood geology of George McCready Price as "creation science" or "scientific creationism" by the mid-1970s. At the CRS board meeting in spring 1972, members were told to start using "scientific creationism", a phrase used interchangeably with "creation science"; Morris explained that preferences differed, though neither was ideal as "one simple term" could not "identify such a complex and comprehensive subject." In the 1974 ICR handbook for high-school teachers titled Scientific Creationism, Morris uses the two-model approach to support his argument that creationism could "be taught without reference to the book of Genesis or to other religious literature or to religious doctrines", and in public schools only the "basic scientific creation model" should be taught, rather than biblical creationism which "would open the door to wide interpretations of Genesis" or to non-Christian cosmogonies. He did not deny having been influenced by the Bible. In his preface to the book dated July 1974, Morris as editor outlines how the "Public School Edition" of the book evaluates evidence from a "strictly scientific point of view" without "reference to the Bible or other religious literature", while the "General Edition" is "essentially identical" except for an additional chapter on "Creation according to Scripture" that "places the scientific evidence in its proper biblical and theological context."
The main ideas in creation science are: the belief in "creation ex nihilo" (Latin: out of nothing); the conviction that the Earth was created within the last 6,000 years; the belief that mankind and other life on Earth were created as distinct fixed "baraminological" kinds; and the idea that fossils found in geological strata were deposited during a cataclysmic flood which completely covered the entire Earth. As a result, creation science also challenges the commonly accepted geologic and astrophysical theories for the age and origins of the Earth and Universe, which creationists acknowledge are irreconcilable to the account in the Book of Genesis.
Creationist arguments for a global flood
Fossils
The geologic column and the fossil record are used as major pieces of evidence in the modern scientific explanation of the development and evolution of life on Earth as well as a means to establish the age of Earth. Young Earth creationists such as Morris and Whitcomb in their 1961 book, The Genesis Flood, say that the age of the fossils depends on the amount of time credited to the geologic column, which they ascribe to be about one year. Some flood geologists dispute geology's assembled global geologic column since index fossils are used to link geographically isolated strata to other strata across the map. Fossils are often dated by their proximity to strata containing index fossils whose age has been determined by its location on the geologic column. Oard and others say that the identification of fossils as index fossils has been too error-prone for index fossils to be used reliably to make those correlations, or to date local strata using the assembled geologic scale.
Other creationists accept the existence of the geological column and believe that it indicates a sequence of events that might have occurred during the global flood. Institute for Creation Research creationists such as Andrew Snelling, Steven A. Austin and Kurt Wise take this approach, as does Creation Ministries International. They cite the Cambrian explosion—the appearance of abundant fossils in the upper Ediacaran (Vendian) period and lower Cambrian period—as the pre-flood/flood boundary, the presence in such sediments of fossils that do not occur later in the geological record as part of a pre-flood biota that perished and the absence of fossilized organisms that appear later (such as angiosperms and mammals) as a result of erosion of sediments deposited by the flood as waters receded off the land. Creationists say that fossilization can only take place when the organism is buried quickly to protect the remains from destruction by scavengers or decomposition. They say that the fossil record provides evidence of a single cataclysmic flood and not of a series of slow changes accumulating over millions of years.
Flood geologists have proposed numerous hypotheses to reconcile the sequence of fossils evident in the fossil column with the literal account of Noah's flood in the Bible. Whitcomb and Morris proposed three possible factors:
- hydrological, whereby the relative buoyancies of the remains (based on the organisms' shapes and densities) determined the sequence in which their remains settled to the bottom of the flood-waters
- ecological, suggesting organisms living at the ocean bottom succumbed first in the flood and those living at the highest altitudes last
- anatomical/behavioral, the ordered sequence in the fossil column resulting from the very different responses to the rising waters between different kinds of organisms due to their diverse mobilities and original habitats. In a scenario put forth by Morris, the remains of marine life settled to the bottom first, followed by the slower-moving lowland reptiles, and culminating with humans, whose superior intelligence and ability to flee enabled them to reach higher elevations before the flood waters overcame them.
Some creationists believe that oil and coal deposits formed rapidly in sedimentary layers as volcanoes or flood waters flattened forests and buried the debris. They believe the vegetation decomposed rapidly into oil or coal due to the heat of the subterranean waters as they were unleashed from the Earth during the flood or by the high temperatures created as the remains were compressed by water and sediment.
Creationists continue to search for evidence in the natural world that they consider consistent with the above description, such as evidence of rapid formation. For example, there have been claims of raindrop marks and water ripples at layer boundaries, sometimes associated with the claimed fossilized footprints of men and dinosaurs walking together. Such footprint evidence has been debunked, and some have been shown to be fakes.
Widespread flood stories
See also: List of flood mythsProponents of flood geology state that "native global flood stories are documented as history or legend in almost every region on earth". "These flood tales are frequently linked by common elements that parallel the biblical account including the warning of the coming flood, the construction of a boat in advance, the storage of animals, the inclusion of family, and the release of birds to determine if the water level had subsided." They suggest that "the overwhelming consistency among flood legends found in distant parts of the globe indicates they were derived from the same origin, but oral transcription has changed the details through time".
Anthropologist Patrick Nunn rejects this view and highlights the fact that much of the human population lives near water sources such as rivers and coasts, where unusually severe floods can be expected to occur occasionally and will be recorded in local mythology.
Proposed mechanisms of flood geology
Price attempted to fit a great deal of Earth's geologic history into a model based on a few accounts from the Bible. Price's simple model was used by Whitcomb and Morris initially, but they did not build on the model in the 1960s and 1970s. However, a rough sketch of a creationist model could be constructed from creationist publications and debate material. Recent creationist efforts attempt to build complex models that incorporate as much scientific evidence as possible into the biblical narrative. Some scientific evidence used for these models was formerly rejected by creationists. These models attempt to explain continental movements in a short time frame, the order of the fossil record, and the Pleistocene ice age.
Runaway subduction
In the 1960s and 1970s a simple creationist model proposed that, "The Flood split the land mass into the present continents." Steve Austin and other creationists proposed a preliminary model of catastrophic plate tectonics (CPT) in 1994. Their work built on earlier papers by John Baumgardner and Russell Humphreys in 1986. Baumgardner proposed a model of mantle convection that allows for runaway subduction, and Humphrey associated mantle convection with rapid magnetic reversals in Earth history. Baumgardner's proposal holds that the rapid plunge of former oceanic plates into the mantle (caused by an unknown trigger mechanism) increased local mantle pressures to the point that its viscosity dropped several magnitudes according to known properties of mantle silicates. Once initiated, sinking plates caused the spread of low viscosity throughout the mantle, resulting in runaway mantle convection and catastrophic tectonic motion which dragged continents across the surface of the Earth. Once the former ocean plates (which are thought to be denser than the mantle) reached the bottom of the mantle, an equilibrium resulted. Pressures dropped, viscosity increased, runaway mantle convection stopped, leaving the surface of the Earth rearranged. Proponents point to subducted slabs in the mantle which are still relatively cool, which they regard as evidence that they have not been there for millions of years which would result in temperature equilibration.
Given that conventional plate tectonics accounts for much of the geomorphic features of continents and oceans, it is natural that creationists would seek to develop a high speed version of the same process. CPT explains many geological features, provides mechanisms for the biblical flood, and minimizes appeals to miracles. Some prominent creationists (Froede, Oard, Read) oppose CPT for various technical reasons. One main objection is that the model assumes the supercontinent Pangaea was intact at the initiation of the year-long flood. The CPT process then tore Pangaea apart creating the current configuration of the continents. But the breakup of Pangaea started early in the Mesozoic, meaning that CPT only accounts for part of the entire Phanerozoic geological record. CPT in this form only explains part of the geological column that flood geology normally explains. Modifying the CPT model to account for the entire Phanerozoic including multiple Wilson Cycles would complicate the model considerably.
Other objections of CPT include the amount of heat produced for the rapid plate movements, and the fact that the cooling of hot oceanic plates and the raising of continental plates would take a great deal of time and require multiple small scale catastrophes after the flood ended. The original CPT proposal of Austin and others in 1994 was admittedly preliminary, but the major issues have not been solved.
The vast majority of geologists regard the hypothesis of catastrophic plate tectonics as pseudoscience; they reject it in favor of the conventional geological theory of plate tectonics. It has been argued that the tremendous release of energy necessitated by such an event would boil off the Earth's oceans, making a global flood impossible. Not only does catastrophic plate tectonics lack any plausible geophysical mechanism by which its changes might occur, it also is contradicted by considerable geological evidence (which is in turn consistent with conventional plate tectonics), including:
- Many volcanic oceanic island chains, such as the Hawaiian Islands, yield evidence of the ocean floor having moved over volcanic hotspots. These islands have widely ranging ages (determined via both radiometric dating and relative erosion) that contradict the catastrophic tectonic hypothesis of rapid development and thus a similar age.
- Radiometric dating and sedimentation rates on the ocean floor likewise contradict the hypothesis that it all came into existence nearly contemporaneously.
- Catastrophic tectonics does not allow sufficient time for guyots to have their peak eroded away (leaving these seamounts' characteristic flat tops).
- Runaway subduction does not explain the kind of continental collision illustrated by that of the Indian and Eurasian Plates. (For further information see orogeny.)
Conventional plate tectonics accounts for the geological evidence already, including innumerable details that catastrophic plate tectonics cannot, such as why there is gold in California, silver in Nevada, salt flats in Utah, and coal in Pennsylvania, without requiring any extraordinary mechanisms to do so.
Vapor/water canopy
Isaac Newton Vail, a Quaker schoolteacher, in his 1912 work The Earth's Annular System, extrapolated from the nebular hypothesis what he called the annular system of Earth history, with the Earth being originally surrounded by rings resembling those of Saturn, or "canopies" of water vapor. Vail hypothesised that, one by one, these canopies collapsed on the Earth, resulting in fossils being buried in a "succession of stupendous cataclysms, separated by unknown periods of time". The Genesis flood was thought to have been caused by "the last remnant" of this vapor. Although this final flood was geologically significant, it was not held to account for as much of the fossil record as George McCready Price had asserted.
Vail's ideas about geology appeared in Charles Taze Russell's 1912 The Photo-Drama of Creation and subsequently in Joseph Franklin Rutherford's Creation of 1927 and later publications. The Seventh-day Adventist physicist Robert W. Woods also proposed a vapor canopy, before The Genesis Flood gave it prominent and repeated mention in 1961.
Although the vapor-canopy theory has fallen into disfavour among most creationists, Dillow in 1981 and Vardiman in 2003 attempted to defend the idea. Among its more vocal adherents, controversial young earth creationist Kent Hovind uses it as the basis for his eponymous "Hovind Theory". Jehovah's Witnesses propose as the water source of the deluge a "heavenly ocean" that was over the Earth from the second creative day until the flood.
Modern geology
Modern geology, its sub-disciplines and other scientific disciplines use the scientific method to analyze the geology of the earth. The key tenets of flood geology are refuted by scientific analysis and do not have any standing in the scientific community. Modern geology relies on established principles, one of the most important of which is Charles Lyell's principle of uniformitarianism. In relation to geological forces it states that the shaping of the Earth has occurred by means of mostly slow-acting forces that can be seen in operation today. By applying these principles, geologists have determined that the Earth is approximately 4.54 billion years old. They study the lithosphere of the Earth to gain information on the history of the planet. Geologists divide Earth's history into eons, eras, periods, epochs, and faunal stages characterized by well-defined breaks in the fossil record (see Geologic time scale). In general, there is a lack of any evidence for any of the above effects proposed by flood geologists, and their claims of fossil layering are not taken seriously by scientists.
Geochronology
Geochronology is the science of determining the absolute age of rocks, fossils, and sediments by a variety of techniques. These methods indicate that the Earth as a whole is about 4.54 billion years old and that the strata that, according to flood geology, were laid down during the flood some 6,000 years ago, were actually deposited gradually over many millions of years.
Paleontology
If the flood were responsible for fossilization, then all the animals now fossilized must have been living together on the Earth just before the flood. Based on estimates of the number of remains buried in the Karoo fossil formation in Africa, this would correspond to an abnormally high density of vertebrates worldwide, close to 2,100 per acre. Creationists argue that evidence for the geological column is fragmentary, and all the complex layers of chalk occurred in the approach to the 150th day of Noah's flood. However, the entire geologic column is found in several places and shows multiple features, including evidence of erosion and burrowing through older layers, which are inexplicable on a short timescale. Carbonate hardgrounds and the fossils associated with them show that the sediments include evidence of long hiatuses in deposition that are not consistent with flood dynamics or timing.
Geochemistry
Proponents of flood geology are unable to account for the alternation between calcite seas and aragonite seas through the Phanerozoic. The cyclical pattern of carbonate hardgrounds, calcitic and aragonitic ooids, and calcite-shelled fauna has apparently been controlled by seafloor spreading rates and the flushing of seawater through hydrothermal vents which changes its Mg/Ca ratio.
Sedimentary rock features
Phil Senter's 2011 article, "The Defeat of Flood Geology by Flood Geology", in the journal Reports of the National Center for Science Education, discusses "sedimentologic and other geologic features that Flood geologists have identified as evidence that particular strata cannot have been deposited during a time when the entire planet was under water...and distribution of strata that predate the existence of the Ararat mountain chain." These include continental basalts, terrestrial tracks of animals, and marine communities preserving multiple in-situ generations included in the rocks of most or all Phanerozoic periods, and the basalt even in the younger Precambrian rocks. Others, occurring in rocks of several geologic periods, include lake deposits and eolian (wind) deposits. Using their own words, flood geologists find evidence in every Paleozoic and Mesozoic period, and in every epoch of the Cenozoic period, indicating that a global flood could not have occurred during that interval.
The global flood cannot explain geological formations such as angular unconformities, where sedimentary rocks have been tilted and eroded then more sedimentary layers deposited on top, needing long periods of time for these processes. There is also the time needed for the erosion of valleys in sedimentary rock mountains. Furthermore, the flood should have produced large-scale effects spread throughout the entire world. Erosion should be evenly distributed, yet the levels of erosion in, for example, the Appalachians and the Rocky Mountains differ significantly.
Physics
The engineer Jane Albright notes several scientific failings of the canopy theory, reasoning from first principles in physics. Among these are that enough water to create a flood of even 5 centimetres (2.0 in) of rain would form a vapor blanket thick enough to make the Earth too hot for life, since water vapor is a greenhouse gas; the same blanket would have an optical depth sufficient to effectively obscure all incoming starlight.
See also
- Baraminology
- Creation biology
- List of topics characterized as pseudoscience
- Polystrate fossil
- Pre-Adamite
- Searches for Noah's Ark
Notes
- Parkinson 2004, pp. 24–27.
- Evans 2009 Its supporters were first known as flood geologists. Then, in about 1970, they renamed themselves "scientific creationists" or "young-earth creationists".
- Numbers 2006, p. 10.
- Carol A. Hill and Stephen O. Moshier, "Flood Geology and the Grand Canyon: A Critique," Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith, 61:2 (June 2009), 100. Retrieved 6 June 2014. Note: This article was electronically published by Lorence G. Collins on his California State University, Northridge webpage, "Articles in Opposition to Creationism". See item No. 17.
- ^ Young 1995.
- ^ Isaak 2006.
- ^ Morton 2001.
- ^ Isaak 2007, p. 173.
- ^ Stewart 2010, p. 123.
- Isaak, Mark. The Counter-Creationism Handbook. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007.
- Senter, Phil. "The Defeat of Flood Geology by Flood Geology." Reports of the National Center for Science Education 31:3 (May–June 2011). Printed electronically by California State University, Northridge. Retrieved 7 June 2014.
- Montgomery 2012.
-
Morrison, David (24 October 2012). "Pseudoscience: A fringe too far". Nature. 490 (7421): 480–481. Bibcode:2012Natur.490..480M. doi:10.1038/490480a.
Henry Morris and John Whitcomb's 1961 publication The Genesis Flood (Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing) became the foundation of the 'creation science' movement. Like Velikovsky, these authors postulated a catastrophic history of Earth, reinterpreting all geology in terms of a single universal flood, as described in chapters 6–11 of Genesis. They based their conclusions solely on a literal interpretation of scripture, and rejected Velikovsky's naturalist explanations.
- Young & Stearley 2008, pp. 28–30, 63.
- Berry 2003, p. 5.
- Capasso, Luigi (2017). "The history and the situation of the world famous fossil fish quarries in Lebanon". Bollettino del Museo Civico di Storia Naturale di Verona. 41: 53–76.
- Young & Stearley 2008, pp. 48–56.
- Young & Stearley 2008, pp. 62–65.
- Gould 1982.
- Young & Stearley 2008, pp. 65–68.
- Young & Stearley 2008, pp. 71–74.
- Young & Stearley 2008, pp. 74–89.
- "The Geological Society Bicentenary". Archived from the original on 13 May 2007.
- Herbert 2005, pp. 181–183.
- ^ Herbert 2005, p. 183.
- Haldane 1816, pp. 168–169.
- Bowler 2003, p. 116.
- Buckland 1820, pp. 23–24.
- Henslow 1823, p. 344–348.
- Herbert 1991, pp. 171–172.
- ^ Herbert 2005, p. 186.
- Herbert 1991, pp. 171–174.
- Herbert 2005, pp. 186–188.
- Herbert 2005, pp. 70, 152–156, 185.
- Herbert 2005, pp. 185, 408.
- Buckland 1836, pp. 94–95.
- Imbrie & Imbrie 1986, p. 40.
- Young & Stearley 2008, p. 99.
- Rudwick 1988, pp. 42–44.
- Rudwick 2008, p. 84, "But since William Henry Fitton and other geologists regarded as scientifically worthless…".
- Wood 2004, p. 168.
- Piccardi & Masse 2007, p. 46.
- Livingstone, Hart & Noll 1999, pp. 186–187.
- ^ Young & Stearley 2008, p. 119.
- Numbers 2006, p. 90.
- White 1864, pp. 64–89.
- Numbers 2006, pp. 91–99.
- Price 1926.
- Numbers 1993, pp. 97–100.
- Numbers, Ron. "History Topic: Antievolutionists and Creationists". counterbalance. Retrieved 1 July 2014.
- Numbers 1993, pp. 102–.
- Numbers 1993, pp. 102–135.
- Numbers 1993, pp. 158–165.
- Yang 1993.
- Numbers 1993, pp. 165–169.
- Kulp 1950, pp. 1–15.
- Numbers 1993, pp. 192–197.
- Numbers 1993, pp. 187, 197.
- Numbers 1993, pp. 184–189.
- Numbers 1993, p. 191.
- Numbers 1993, pp. 188–192.
- Numbers 2006, pp. 222–224.
- Numbers 1993, pp. 200–202.
- Numbers 1993, pp. 202–204.
- Numbers 1993, John C. Whitcomb, Jr., Henry M. Morris, and The Genesis Flood, p. 203: "Burdick continued to keep Whitcomb and Morris informed about the disputed tracks because, as he sheepishly wrote Morris, 'you sort of stuck your neck out in publishing those Glen Rose tracks.' Indeed they had, and for the third printing they silently revised the text."
- Numbers 1993, pp. 214–215, 222–233.
- Numbers 1993, pp. 238–240.
- Numbers 1993, pp. 238–239, 241.
- Numbers 1993, pp. 243–244.
- Numbers 1993, p. 244.
- Numbers 1993, pp. 238–241.
- ^ Hendren v. Campbell: Decision Against a Creationist Textbook, Nick Matzke, TalkOrigins Archive, 20 August 2006. Retrieved 27 July 2014
- Numbers 1993, pp. 239–245.
- Numbers 1993, pp. 242–246.
- Morris 1974.
- Edwards v. Aguillard, 482 U.S. 578 (Supreme Court of the United States)., cited by Numbers 2006, p. 272 as "ne of the most precise explications of creation science"
- Larson, Edward J. (2004). Evolution: The Remarkable History of a Scientific Theory. Modern Library. ISBN 978-0-679-64288-6.
- Oard & Reed 2006, p. 99.
- "Geologic Column". Answers in Genesis. Retrieved 26 September 2017.
- Hunter 2000, pp. 60–74.
- Wise 1995, pp. 216–222.
- ^ Austin et al. 1994.
- Whitcomb & Morris 1961, pp. 128–129.
- Brown 2008.
- Gould 1984, p. 132.
- ^ Schadewald 1982, pp. 12–17.
- Snelling 2006.
- Schadewald 1986, pp. 1–9.
- Kuban 1996.
- Northwest Creation Network.
- Nunn 2001, pp. 125–138.
- Heaton 2008, p. 1342.
- ^ Awbrey 1980, p. 1.
- Heaton 2008, p. 1341.
- Baumgardner 1986.
- Humphreys 1986.
- Baumgardner 2003.
- Heaton 2008, p. 1348.
- Heaton 2008, pp. 1348–1349.
- Heaton 2008, pp. 1349–1350.
- Wise 1998, pp. 160–173.
- ^ Isaak 2007, p. 173 Creationist claim CD750.
- McPhee 1998.
- ^ Numbers 2006, pp. 347–348.
- M. James Penton (1997). Apocalypse Delayed: The Story of Jehovah's Witnesses. University of Toronto Press. pp. 196–197, 429–430. ISBN 978-0-8020-7973-2.
- Numbers 2006, p. 501. (footnote 47).
- Numbers 2006, p. 229.
- "Noah’s Flood – Where did the water come from?" Answers in Genesis, 2014. Retrieved 4 July 2014.
- Dillow 1981.
- Vardiman 2003.
- Insight into the Scriptures Volume 1 (1988) pp. 609–612: http://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/1200001150
- Lutgens, Tarbuck & Tasa 2005.
- Tarbuck & Lutgens 2006.
- ^ Isaak 1998.
- Sandberg 1983, pp. 19–22.
- Wilson 2001.
- Matthews 2009.
- Stanley & Hardie 1999, pp. 1–7.
- Phil Senter (2011). "The Defeat of Flood Geology by Flood Geology". Reports of the National Center for Science Education. 31 (3). Archived from the original on 14 July 2014. Retrieved 13 June 2014.
- Rice, Stanley (July–August 2020). "Creationist Funhouse, Episode Four: God Plays In The Mud". Skeptical Inquirer. Amherst, New York: Center for Inquiry. Archived from the original on 4 March 2021. Retrieved 4 March 2021.
- Albright, Jane (22 July 2016). "Vapor Canopy and the Hydroplate Theory (Albright's Flood Models Controversy Series) (text and audio)". Real Science Radio.
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Further reading
- Senter, Phil (May–June 2001). "The Defeat of Flood Geology by Flood Geology". Reports of the National Center for Science Education. 31 (3). Archived from the original on 18 February 2019. Retrieved 19 July 2011.
- H. Neuville, "On the Extinction of the Mammoth," Annual Report of the Smithsonian Institution, 1919.
- Patten, Donald W. The Biblical Flood and the Ice Epoch (Seattle: Pacific Meridian Publishing Company, 1966).
- Patten, Donald W. Catastrophism and the Old Testament (Seattle: Pacific Meridian Publishing Company, 1988). ISBN 0-88070-291-5
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