The Rocks Don't Lie: A Geologist Investigates Noah's Flood (36 page)

Geologists have uncovered a grand story of the coming and going of life and the making and remaking of whole worlds as continents wandered the globe over billions of years. We are still unraveling the secrets behind the great extinction events of the past and learning to understand the causes of ancient climate changes that ushered in times hotter than today and periods when the whole planet froze over. Even now, as we send robots off to explore the geology of Mars, our nearest celestial neighbor, we are discovering new planets circling distant stars. We will likely soon confront the discovery of other inhabitable planets in a universe far grander than ever imagined in our intellectual infancy.

The scientific story of the origin and evolution of life, the vast sweep of geologic time, and the complexity of the processes that shaped the world we know today inspire more awe and wonder than the series of one-off miracles from Genesis that I read about in Sunday school. Miracles do not fuel curiosity or innovation. If we embrace the claim that Earth is a few thousand years old, we must also throw out the most basic findings of geology, physics, chemistry, and biology. The concept of geologic time, on the other hand, opens up an entirely new creation story, along with the idea that the world is unfinished and creation is ongoing. And a complex, evolving world is one we would be well advised to do our best to understand. Personally, I find a world that invites exploration and learning more inspiring than a world where all is known.

While science has much to offer us, from vaccines to space travel, religion can help humanity frame essential social, moral, and ethical decisions, such as those arising from the development and uses of science and technology. Of course, history is also replete with examples of religion being used to subjugate, control, and persecute. Ethics and morality do not require a religious basis any more than vociferous professions of religious belief guarantee ethical or moral behavior. Faith and reason offer different lenses through which people seek to understand the world and our place in it.

I find that the wonder in reading rocks and topography, and in understanding the vast scope of geologic time, rivals that of religious belief. In either one can find a taste of the infinite and of things far grander than ourselves. Yet no honest search for truth can deny geological discoveries—not when Earth’s marvelous story is laid out for all to see in the very fabric of our world. We may argue endlessly about how to interpret the Bible, but the rocks don’t lie. They tell it like it was.

Notes

1.   Buddha’s Dam

1
.   Atoms of the same element have the same number of protons, but different isotopes of an element have different numbers of neutrons. For example, atoms of carbon-12 have six protons and six neutrons, whereas atoms of carbon-14 have six protons and eight neutrons. Different isotopes of an element therefore have different atomic mass, which allows their relative abundance to be measured in a mass spectrometer.

2
.   Polls reporting the widespread acceptance of creationist ideas among the American public include: a 2001 National Science Foundation survey of science literacy that found more than half of American adults did not know that dinosaurs went extinct before people walked the earth; a 2004 ABC News Poll that reported more than half of Americans believed that the biblical account of the creation was “literally true,” and that Noah’s Flood was a global flood; and a 2005 Gallup Poll (August 5-7, 2005) that reported more than half of Americans believed that “creationism” was definitely or probably true.

2.   A Grand Canyon

1
.   When the presidents of the Geological Society of America and the American Geophysical Union urged the Park Service to stop selling the book, political appointees in Washington overruled the park superintendent’s decision to pull it from the shelves. Instead, the book moved to its own specially created inspirational reading section. In defending the continuing sale of the book, Park Service spokesperson Elaine Sevy was quoted by National Center for Science Education deputy director Glenn Branch as saying, “Now that the book has become quite popular, we don’t want to remove it” (Branch, 2004).

2
.   Igneous rocks form by cooling from hot magma, whether below ground (intrusive rocks) or when erupted out of a volcano (extrusive rocks). Metamorphic rocks form when preexisting rocks get heated enough under enough pressure that their minerals are transformed (metamorphosed) into new minerals and deform, sometimes to the point where they flow like taffy and produce wild swirling patterns cast in stone.

3.   Bones in the Mountains

1
.   There is some controversy about the height and name of the mountain. While new technology has allowed more accurate measurements, the mountain also has been rising since it was first surveyed. In May 1999, the former official height of Mt. Everest of 29,029 feet was revised upward to 29,035 feet based on a multireceiver global positioning system (GPS) survey. The name of the mountain is a bit more complicated because several cultures have a claim on it. In 1865, the Royal Geographical Society named the peak after the British surveyor general of India, Sir George Everest, who first recorded a surveyed height and location of the mountain. He called it peak XV, peak fifteen, because at the time local names were not known to the British due to the area’s being off-limits to foreigners. The far older Tibetan name for the mountain is Chomolungma, which I’ve seen variously translated as Saint Mother, Holy Mother, Goddess Mother of Mountains, or Mother Goddess of the Earth. Its Nepali name is Sagarmatha, literally sky head or Goddess of the Sky. The most recent, Chinese name is Mount Qomolangma, a transliteration of the traditional Tibetan name.

2
.   Origen, 1966, 288.

3
.   Augustine, 1982, 47-48.

4
.   White, 1910, 8.

5
.   Luther, 1960, vol. 2, 65.

6
.   Ibid., vol. 2, 93.

7
.   White, 1910, 126.

8
.   Drake, 1957, 181.

9
.   Ibid., 186.

10
.   White, 1910, 137.

4.   World in Ruins

1
.   Cutler, 2003, 59.

2
.   Burnet, 1684, 140.

3
.   Ibid., 18.

4
.   Ibid., a2.

5
.   Nicholson, 1997, 235.

6
.   Davies, 1969, 73.

7
.   Burnet, 1684, a.

8
.   Woodward, 1723, 105.

9
.   Ibid., 105-6.

10
.   Cutler, 2003, 178.

11
.   Cohn, 1996, 135.

12
.   Keill, 1698, 26.

13
.   Ibid., 58.

14
.   Ibid., 151.

5.   A Mammoth Problem

1
.   Cohn, 1996, 88.

2
.   Levin, 1988, 762, 764.

3
.   Mammoths roamed both northern Asia and North America, while the somewhat smaller mastodons that grew up to just ten feet in height only lived in North America. Fossils of the two species can be distinguished based on their distinctively different teeth. Grassland-dwelling mammoths had molars characterized by long ridges that could cut through grass like scissors, whereas the woodland-dwelling mastodons had multipointed molars designed to crush leaves, twigs, and bark.

4
.   Cuvier, 1978, 15.

5
.   Ibid., 16.

6.   The Test of Time

1
.   White, 1910, 215.

2
.   Playfair, 1805, 73.

3
.   Hutton, 1788, 304.

4
.   Kirwan, 1799, 105.

5
.   Playfair, 1802, 351, 401.

6
.   Ibid., 471, 472-473.

7.   Catastrophic Revelations

1
.   Klaver, 1997, 19.

2
.   Cuvier, 1978, 171.

3
.   Buckland, 1820, 23-24.

4
.   Ibid., 20.

5
.   Ibid., 146.

6
.   Sedgwick, 1825, 35.

7
.   Buckland, 1837, vol. 1, 22.

8
.   Ibid., 18.

9
.   Ibid., 35.

10.
   Klaver, 1997, 19.

11
.   Ibid., 25.

12
.   Lyell, 1833, 6.

13
.   Ibid., 270.

14
.   Wilson, 1972, 310.

15
.   Klaver, 1997, 49.

16
.   Ibid., 113.

17
.   Sedgwick, 1834, 313.

8.   Fragmented Stories

1
.   Smith, 1876, 4.

2
.   Genesis 1:21; translated as “whales” in the King James Bible.

9.   Recycled Tales

1
.   Allen, 1963, 43.

2
.   Paine, 1824, 90.

3
.   The King James Bible mentions unicorns nine times based on the translation of the Hebrew word re’em, which was translated as monoceros (one horn) in the Greek Bible and then as unicornis in the Latin Bible (Numbers 23:22, 24:8; Deuteronomy 33:17; Job 39:9, 39:10; Psalms 22:21, 29:6, 92:10; Isaiah 34:7). While re’em is now translated as “wild ox” in most other English versions of the Bible, it remains unclear whether the original description of an untamable animal with great strength was meant to refer to a rhinoceros or an auroch, the now extinct wild ancestor of the modern cow that in antiquity was generally depicted in profile as having a single horn.

4
.   Zimmern, 1901, 60.

5
.   Ryle, 1892, ix.

6
.   Ibid., 112-13.

7
.   Lenormant, 1883, 488.

8
.   Frazier, 1918, 335, 359.

9
.   Lewis, 2006, 30.

10
.   Ibid., 31.

11
.   Huxley, 1893, 215.

10.   Dinosaurs in Paradise

1
.   Numbers, 1982, 74.

2
.   Numbers, 1982, 540.

3
.   Schofield, 1917, 3.

4
.   Miller, 1922, 701, 702, 703.

5
.   Ibid., 1922, 702.

6
.   Price, 1923, 280.

7
.   Numbers, 1982, 540.

8
.   Ramm, 1956, iii.

9
.   Ibid., 32.

10
.   Ibid., 177.

11.   The Heretic’s Flood

1
.   Bretz, 1978, 2.

2
.   Baker, 1978, 14.

3
.   Bretz, 1978, 1.

12.   Phantom Deluge

1
.   Whitcomb and Morris, 1961, preface to the sixth printing.

2
.   Ibid., 118.

3
.   Ibid., 214.