|
|
|
CREATIONISM VS EVOLUTION, (CONT.)
II) SCRIPTURAL TESTIMONY & PHYSICAL EVIDENCE OF A RECENT CREATION, (cont.)
B) SCRIPTURAL TESTIMONY & PHYSICAL EVIDENCE FROM EARTH WHICH TESTIFY TO A RECENT CREATION, (cont.)
6) THE POST FLOOD PERIOD, (cont.)
c) EVIDENCE OF ICE AGE POINTS TO A RECENT CATASTROPHIC WORLDWIDE FLOOD, (cont.)
a) SUDDEN WARMING OF THE CLIMATE
[pp. 303-306]
"...Geophysical and paleontological evidence... ...indicate that the glacial age ended rather suddenly. Both the evidence of foraminiferal types (different species inhabit cold waters and warm waters) and oxygen isotope composition in the carbonate of their shells (the ratios of these isotopes is also dependent upon water temperature) unite in indicating a somewhat sharp change from glacial to temperate conditions.
[Cesare Emiliani: 'Ancient Temperatures,' Scientific American, Vol. 198, February 1958, pp. 54-63]
'The data indicate a rather sudden change from more or less stable glacial conditions to postglacial conditions.'
[D. B. Ericson, W. S. Broeker, J. L. Kulp and G. Wollin: 'Late-Pleistocene Climates and Deep-Sea sediments,' Science, Vol. 124, August 31, 1956, p. 388]
...Other lines of evidence, such as a sudden change from deposition of sand to silt in the Mississippi delta and a rapid desication of pluvial lakes, all dated more or less simultaneously point to the same conclusion...
[Ibid]
...Richard J. Russell, an authority on Mississippi Basin geology and recent president of the Geological Society of America, says:
'In summary, shoreline irregularity and the alluvial filling of valleys indicate a recent general rise of sea level. Comparatively small areas of deltas and topographic instability along coasts, which is evidenced by rapid advance of delta fronts and anomalous features such as Sapanca Lake, suggest that the rise in sea level has been rapid.'
[Richard J. Russell 'Instability of Sea Level,' American Scientist, Vol. 45, December 1957, pp. 419-420]
...Still more recently, geologists from Columbia's Lamont Geological Laboratories, have noted the recency (geologically speaking) of this sudden warming of the earth's temperatures:
'From the evidence listed above it is clear that a major fluctuation in climate occurred close to 11,000 years ago [their estimate]. The primary observation that both surface ocean temperatures and deep sea sedimentation rates were abruptly altered at this time is supplemented by evidence from more local systems. The level of the Great Basin lakes fell from the highest terraces to a position close to that observed at present. The silt and clay load of the Mississippi river was suddenly retained in the alluvial valley and delta. A rapid ice retreat opened the northern drainage systems of the Great Lakes and terrestrial temperatures rose to nearly interglacial levels in Europe. In each case the transition is the most obvious features of the entire record.'
...It is obvious, from our previous discussion of the radio-carbon dating assumptions, that the 11,000-year date must be too high, so these worldwide events clearly date from about the time of the Flood and its after-effects. Neither was this warming of the earth a gradual process occupying thousands or millions of years.
'Evidence from a number of geographically isolated systems suggests that the warming which occurred at the close of Wisconsin glacial times was extremely abrupt.'
[Ibid., p. 429]
..It seems there must have been a rather abrupt warming of the climate in order for the glaciers to melt and the oceanic temperature to change as rapidly as the evidence indicates. This again argues for some sort of explanation outside the scope of doctrinaire uniformitarianism....
..The Flood events, and particularly the associated atmospheric changes, can once again suggest a cause adequate to explain this event...
'Most of the incident solar energy is contained in the visible radiation which can penetrate right through the atmosphere. The earth re-emits the energy it receives from the sun, but being a much cooler body it does so mainly in the infra-red region of the spectrum. Infra-red radiation is strongly absorbed by water vapour, carbon dioxide and ozone. These constituents therefore act like the glass of a greenhouse - they trap the out-going energy. The effect is of the utmost importance for without it the mean surface temperature would be lower by almost 40 degrees Centigrade and life could not exist.'
[D. R. Bates: 'Composition and Structure of the Atmosphere,' in The Earth and Its Atmosphere, D. R. Bates, Ed., (New York, Basic Books Inc., 1957), p. 111]
..These three constituents - water vapor, ozone and carbon dioxide - must have been present in large amounts in the antediluvian atmosphere. The first [water vapor] we have already discussed, in connection with the inferred... ...canopy, the 'waters above the firmament.'. Ozone would have been formed by reaction of the sun's ultra-violet radiation with molecules of oxygen and of water vapor, as at present...
..However, the 'equilibrium amount' of ozone in the atmosphere depends also on the temperature of the atmosphere, so that the location of the antediluvian ozonosphere may have been different from the present..
..The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a function of the amount of carbon-producing and carbon-extracting mechanisms on the earth's surface. Through the process of photosynthesis, carbon dioxide is taken out of the air and used in plant growth, then returned to the air through the processes of expiration, decay, excreta, burning, etc. Also, the waters of the ocean exchange carbon dioxide with the atmosphere, the amount increasing as the surface temperature increases. The formation of carbonates in rocks and shells, as well as their weathering out and return to the atmosphere also enter the cyclic balance. The amount in the antediluvian atmosphere must have been very high, in order to maintain equilibrium with the large amounts of plant life, the large amount of continental relative to oceanic areas, and the large amount of carbonate-fixing organisms in the seas. The effect of this large carbon dioxide and ozone concentration in the antediluvian atmosphere augmented the effect of the... ...canopy in maintaining the global greenhouse effect and in shielding the earth from harmful short wave length radiation coming from the sun and outer space.
With the Flood, these balances were all profoundly modified. The vast areas of plants were buried, and their carbon content was concentrated in coal seams. Extensive bodies of organic materials were converted into petroleum hydrocarbons. The Deluge precipitated the atmospheric ozone and carbon dioxide, in all probability... [along with the canopy] ...temporarily partially denuding the atmosphere of these constituents."
b) ABUNDANT CARBON DIOXIDE PRODUCED PLANT GROWTH & A RISE IN TEMPERATURE: ENDING THE ICE AGE
[pp. 306-311]
"The lowering of the atmospheric temperature after the Flood, as a result of these atmospheric changes, especially in higher latitudes, certainly supplies a potent mechanism for initiating glaciation of continental magnitudes. The carbon dioxide remaining in the air would support only limited plant life, as compared with the luxuriant preFlood stands and, there, only limited animal life as well.
However, in time, there is no doubt but that the shielding effect of the... [firmament canopy] ...would have been at least in part restored [by the formation of the following:]...
..The ozonosphere would have soon formed in essentially its present character, once the new hydrologic cycle was established and more or less stabilized. More important, as plants and animals began to grow again and gradually to multiply, their life processes would gradually restore carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, approaching the balance that has in general characterized present times. Along with this, carbon dioxide equilibrium between ocean and atmosphere required gradual discharge of the gas from the ocean into the air; further, volcanic sources undoubtedly yielded a certain amount to the atmosphere. And all of this in turn would have caused a gradual rise in terrestrial temperatures, probably at an accelerating rate..
..One might think from... ...the destruction of plant and animal life on the earth's surface by the Deluge would likewise have enriched the air with CO2, rather than reduced it... [Through burning and decomposition] ...However, most of the organic matter was evidently trapped in the sediments and buried. But undoubtedly many of the higher animals must have floated on the waters after death, finally decaying, and thereby have contributed to the atmospheric reservoir of carbon dioxide. Likewise much plant life also must have decayed on the surface without burial. There is no doubt therefore that, in view of the sparsity of living organisms on the earth in the early years after the Flood, there was an excess of carbon dioxide over that necessary to support whatever life might be able to grow. And as the (much reduced) continental areas began to be repopulated by both plant and animal life and as sea water gave up a portion of its excess CO2 into the atmosphere, it is highly probable that the CO2 content of the atmosphere began to increase and thereby terrestrial temperatures likewise.
Another factor may also have been involved. We have seen that a great amount of volcanic activity occurred during the Flood. This activity, which is evidenced by the tremendous amounts of volcanic rocks found associated with the strata of all the geologic systems, must have released an indefinitely large amount of carbon dioxide gas. Much of this was released beneath the waters and probably contributed chemically to the formation of the extensive carbonate rock deposits. But also much may have been released above the ground and added to the atmospheric carbon reservoir. In addition, after the Flood, although the high intensity of volcanic activity was restrained, there continued to be much more activity than occurs at present, as witnessed by the large amount of... ...lava and ash beds that have been found... [which can be reasonably attributed to the post Flood time period]
Although the volcanic eruptions thus may have made a substantial contribution to the post-Deluge increment of CO2 in the air, this effect was undoubtedly masked and more than offset for a time by the fine dust that was also discharged into the air by the volcanic actions. This volcanic dust served to reduce the 'insolation' (the amount of solar energy reaching the earth's surface). In fact, the volcanic dust discharged into the air by the intense volcanic activity near the beginning of the [so called period named] Pleistocene has been one of the main theories advocated as an explanation of the glacial age. It may well have been a contributing factor, along with the removal of the... [ice canopy] ...by the Flood, to the initiation of the actual glaciation. Dr. Wexler, of the U.S. Weather Bureau, one of the chief advocates of this theory, estimates that the solar radiation reaching the ground may be reduced by as much as 20 per cent by volcanic dust after a severe eruption.
[H. Wexler: 'On the Effects of Volcanic Dust on Insolation and Weather,' Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Vol. 32, January 1951, p.12]
...However, it [the volcanic dust] would have remained in the air only a few years at most. Speaking of the dust produced by the most prolific volcanic explosion of modern times, that of Krakatoa in the East Indies, the biochemist Asimov says:
'Pretty nearly all that dust had settled back to earth after two years.'
[Isaac Asimov: '14 Million Tons of Dust Per Year,' Science Digest, Vol. 45, January 1959, p. 34, See also Wexler, op. cit., p. 10, which says the effect lasted three years]
The Krakatoa dust caused a definite lowering of temperatures for two or three years but had no particular effect after that. The much more extensive volcanic activity of the Deluge and post-Deluge periods would probably have reduced temperatures for somewhat longer periods but at best only for a few years. This effect likely contributed to the initiation of the Ice Age, but the greater cause was the loss of the earth's... [ice canopy]
But the carbon dioxide contributed by the volcanoes remained after the dust had settled and combined with that already present and gradually being added by geological and oceanic exchange mechanisms to cause a gradual warming of the temperature of the earth.
One particular biological mechanism may have acted to contribute an abnormally large amount of carbon dioxide, namely the development of bogs. These are not the same as the familiar coastal salt marshes but may form on uplands as well as low areas. The cool, moist conditions of the proglacial regions would have been unusually well suited for the development of bog lands...
...The present peat bogs of the world are of great extent, in spite of great areas that have been drained or burned.
'George Jazakov, a Russian peat expert now living in this country computes that there are 223 billion dry tons of peat available on earth, more than half of it in the U.S.S.R.'
[E. S. Deevey, Jr.: 'Bogs,' Scientific American, Vol. 199. 199, October 1958, p. 115]
..The significance of large amounts of peat vegetation, in fairly close proximity to the ice sheets, is that they could have had a material influence on the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the air over the ice sheet, and probably over the whole world...
..It would have taken some decades or centuries for extensive bogs to develop around the ice, and it is likely that some other factor, such as volcanic carbon dioxide, increased atmospheric ozone, or carbon dioxide from biological mechanisms in general would have initiated the warming. But this in turn may then have begun to oxidize the peat already developed and cause an accelerated warming which in effect finally brought a relatively sudden termination to the Ice Age.
Whatever may have been the detailed processes which initiated and terminated the great glaciations, it seems evident that the Great Flood provides an abundantly adequate ultimate explanation thereof.
Certain of the above concepts as to the effect of carbon dioxide on the antediluvian and glacial climates are supported by the studies of Dr. Gilbert Plass of Johns Hopkins University, whose work is sponsored by the Office of Naval Research, and probably the greatest present authority on the subject. He says, for example:
'There is some interesting evidence which suggests that the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere was once much larger than at present. It is known that plants grow more luxuriantly and rapidly in an atmosphere that has from five to ten times the normal carbon dioxide amount. In fact, carbon dioxide is sometimes released in greenhouses in order to promote growth. Since plants are perfectly adapted to make maximum use of the spectral range and intensity of the light that reaches them from the sun for photosynthesis, it seems strange that they are not better adapted to the present carbon dioxide content in the atmosphere. The simplest explanation of this fact is that the plants evolved at a time when the carbon dioxide concentration was considerably higher than it is today and that it has been at a higher level during most of the ensuing time. Higher temperatures than today during most of the earth's history would have resulted from this higher carbon dioxide content. In fact the geological evidence shows that warmer climates than today have existed for at least nine-tenths of the time since the Cambrian period.' "
[G. N. Plass: 'Carbon Dioxide and the Climate,' American Scientist, Vol. 44, July, 1956, p. 313]
6) POST FLOOD PERIOD, (cont.)
3) SUMMARY: THE ICE AGE: UNIQUE POSTFLOOD SHORT TERM EVENT
[p. 311]
"Glaciation was only one of the after-effects of the Deluge, though undoubtedly the most spectacular..."
d) TREE RINGS INDICATE A RECENT CATASTROPHIC FLOOD & A RECENT EARTH
[pp. 392-393]:
"One valuable natural chronometric device is the common tree and its annual growth rings and their patterns. Both living and dead trees can be used in this science, known as dendrochronology...
'Perhaps the most intriguing of the unanswered questions regarding longevity in conifers [evergreen trees] has to do with Sequoia gigantea trees, which, some believe, may enjoy perpetual life in the absence of gross destruction, since they appear immune to pest attack... ...Does this mean that shortly preceding 3275 years ago [the age of the oldest conifers] all the then living giant sequoias were wiped out by some catastrophe?' [like the Flood]
[Edmund Schulman: 'Longevity Under Adversity in Conifers.' Science, Vol. 119, March 26, 1934. p. 399]
'Microscopic study of growth rings reveals that a bristlecone pine tree found last summer at nearly 10,000 feet began growing more than 4,600 years ago and thus surpasses the oldest known sequoia by many centuries... Many of its neighbors are nearly as old; we have now dated 17 bristle-cone pines 4,000 years old or more...'
[Edmund Schulman: 'Bristlecone Pine, Oldest Living Thing,' National Geographic Magazine, Vol. 113, March 1958, p. 355]
Since these, as well as the sequoias and other ancient trees, are still living, it is pertinent to ask why these oldest living things apparently have had time to develop only one generation since they acquired their present stands at some time after the Deluge. There is no record of a tree, or any other living thing, being older than any reasonable date for the Deluge."
e) HISTORICAL RECORDS INDICATE A RECENT CIVILIZATION NOT AN OLD EVOLVED ONE
[pp. 393-395]:
"In the last analysis, the only really reliable recorder of time is man himself! In any kind of natural process that might be used to determine past time, there is always the possibility that the rates may have changed as well as uncertainty regarding its initial condition. It is absolutely impossible to know beyond question that such and such a formation or deposit has an age of so many years, unless that age is supported by reliable human records of some kind.
And it is, therefore, highly significant that no truly verified archaeological datings antedate the time of about 3000 B.C. or even later. Larger dates are of course frequently ascribed to various localities and cultures, but they are always based on radiocarbon or other geological methods rather than written human records. There are numerous extant chronologies that have been handed down from various ancient peoples, and it is bound to be significant that none of them yield acceptable evidence that the histories of these or other peoples antedate the Biblical date for the Deluge.
The Bible pictures the dispersal of post-diluvian man from the geographical areas implied also by archaeology and secular history. The most ancient peoples leaving historical records were, of course, the inhabitants of the Tigris-Euphrates valley, the Nile Valley of Egypt, and other near-Eastern areas. This correlates perfectly with the Bible records, which picture the centrifugal movement of tribes out from the first kingdom of Babylon (Babel, Genesis 11:9)...
..It is remarkable how many different lines of evidence of a historical nature point back to a time around 3000 B.C. as dating the beginning of true civilization...
..The worldwide testimony of trustworthy, recorded, history is therefore that such history begins about 3000 B.C. and not substantially earlier. This is indeed surpassingly strange if men actually have been living throughout the world for many tens or hundreds of thousands of years! But on the other hand, if the Biblical records are true, then this is of course exactly the historical evidence we would expect to find. And it is pertinent to mention, in passing, the worldwide incidence of flood legends...
It is not at all unreasonable to conclude that the clear reality of the great world Deluge, which remade the world in the days of Noah."
f) THE WORLD'S POPULATION TESTIFIES TO A YOUNG EARTH
[pp. 396-399]:
"...Ever since the famous studies of Malthus, it has been known that human populations... ...have tended to increase geometrically with time...
...At the time of the birth of Christ, there presumably were from 250 to 350 million persons on this planet. Some 700 years later, there was about the same number - say 300 million - a long slow decline in total population having been followed by a compensating increase.
It took roughly 950 more years, namely, until 1650, for this 300 million to double to 600 million. But then it took only 200 years, from 1650 to 1850, for the next doubling up to 1200 million, or 1.2 billion. From 1850 to 1950, in only 100 years, the earth's population doubled again, to about 2.4 billion.'
[Warren Weaver: "People, Energy, and Food,' Scientific Monthly, Vol. 78, June 1954, p. 359]
..It could not be maintained, of course, that this calculation is completely rigorous, but it certainly is reasonable - far more so than to say that the population has been doubling itself since a hypothetical beginning several hundred thousand years ago. [which would bring the world's population to number in the trillions]
..One must also reckon with the probability that population increase rates in the early centuries after the Flood, as well as those before the Flood (when 'men began to multiply on the face of the earth' as recorded in Genesis 6:1), may have been abnormally high, owing to the great longevity of mankind at the time. According to the records, men lived 900 years or more before the Flood! One of the strongest evidences of the validity of these figures is the fact that, after the Flood, the ages of the patriarchs exhibit a slow but steady decline from that of Noah, who lived 950 years, through Eber, who lived 464 years; Abraham, who died at 175 years; moses, who died an old man at 120 years; to the familiar Biblical 70 year life-span (Psalm 90:10), which is very close to where we have returned today. Large early post-diluvial populations are also intimated by the Table of Nations in Genesis 10 and the account of the dispersion in Genesis 11. Thus, these early high rates of doubling would more than counterbalance whatever evidence there may be of slower rates during the first 1,500 years of after Christ...
...and, incidentally, the declining life-span after the Flood seems to fit in perfectly with our concept of the dissipation of the earth's protective blanket [super frozen water canopy] during the Flood... As we noted, this canopy... provided a warm, pleasant, presumably heathful environment throughout the world. Perhaps the most important effect of the canopy was the shielding action provided against the intense radiations impinging upon the earth from space. Short wave-length radiation, as well as bombardment of elementary particles of all kinds, is known to have damaging effects - both somatic and genetic effects - on organisms and this is generally true for all types of radiations...
'...a single dose of radiation which does not kill an animal within the period of acute radiation sickness may tend to shorten life....'
[Autin M. Brues: "Somatic Effects of Radiation," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Vol. 14, January 1958, pp. 13-14]
...If such effects can be observed in a short lifetime as a result of artificial radiations, it is certainly possible that much greater effects on longevity would have been produced over the millenniums by the natural background radiation... ...Even more significant than these somatic effects, however, are the genetic effects of radiation, which injure not only the individual receiving the first exposure but also his descendants as well...
'And the nature of these mutations is practically always - perhaps unqualifiedly always, so far as the laboratory evidence goes - harmful!'
[James F. Crow: "Genetic Effects of Radiation," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, vol. 14, January 1958, pp. 19-20]
...As a matter of fact, only the rare gross mutations tend to die out naturally... The great majority of them are only slightly harmful and continue to survive. Their descendants also survive, perhaps with additional mutations, and the net result is bound to be an over-all deterioration of the species. This undoubtedly is why the fossil record reveals living creatures before the Flood, of all kinds, to be larger and better equipped than their modern descendants!...
...it surely is quite reasonable in view of what is known about the somatic and genetic effects of radiations to infer that, over the centuries since the Flood, the accumulation of these effects in man in particular has resulted in gradual deterioration and decreasing life-span.
g) CONTINUING CATASTROPHIC ACTIVITY CONTRADICTS UNIFORMITARIANISM
[p. 312-313]
"...the tectonic and volcanic disturbances which played such a large part in the initiation of the Flood, as well as in the uplift of the land at its close, continued with only gradually-lessening intensity for many centuries thereafter...
..from the viewpoint of Biblical catastrophism... [it is] ...very difficult to determine precisely which deposits were laid down in the Deluge proper and which are attributable to the disturbed centuries after the Flood...
..This is exactly what we should expect, in light of the Biblical implications concerning the character and extent of the Deluge. Although the Flood subsided enough so that Noah and the animals could disembark from the ark after only one year, the profoundly disturbed and altered hydrological and isostatic balances of the earth undoubtedly continued to manifest themselves in what might be called residual catastrophism for many centuries at least."
|
This vase was found in 1851 in Dorchester, Mass., U.S.A.. It was discovered in solid rock. The rock formation is known as the Roxbury Conglomerate which is "Precambrian", supposedly over 534 million years old. This rock is supposed to be a record of life on earth before any multicellular life "evolved". Yet here is an undeniable human artifact. Man supposedly appeared no more than 2 1/2 million years ago in his most primitive form (according to evolution). This object refutes the whole evolutionary interpretation of the strata we see world wide, and supports the creationist's assertion that most of the strata were formed during the global flood. This could be an artifact from a pre-flood civilization. The June 5, 1852 Scientific American article (pages 298-299) about this alloy vessel says something interesting. The editor suggests the vessel may have been made by Tubal-Cain, the Biblical father of metallurgy. Tubal-Cain is found in Gen. 4:22 (before the flood). This same scientific magazine today is totally anti-creationist and anti-Biblical. Darwin had not succeded in getting the educational institutions to preach his theory yet. The evidence supports a literal reading of Genesis and totally destroys the evolutionary idea of millions and billions of years for the formation of the geologic record. |
7) CONCLUSION: A CATASTROPHIC, UNIVERSAL FLOOD IS THE ONLY WAY TO EXPLAIN THE EARTH TODAY
[pp. 113-115]
"Throughout the eighteenth century, and well into the nineteenth, most theologians and scientists of the western world [correctly] believed that the Deluge was responsible for the major fossiliferous strata of the earth. But the rise of Cuvier's [false] theory of successive catastrophes, which assigned most of the fossil strata to ages long before the creation of man [which is totally unBiblical], caused many to abandon the older [and Biblical] Flood theory of geology [inspite of unsubstantiated claims].
William Buckland led the way in Great Britain by [falsely] pointing to 'diluvium' deposits as positive evidence of the last and greatest catastrophe [in a fictitious series of catastrophes] in the history of the earth - the Genesis Flood.
But no sooner had a large number of Christians accepted the 'successive catastrophes' view than Buckland and Sedgwick, along with other geologists, began to make public recantations of their former views. The 'diluvium' deposits were no longer attributed to the Flood, but to the last of a series of pre-Adamic catastrophes. The Flood, though still regarded as universal, was now [falsely] depicted as a comparatively 'tranquil' affair, which left no discernible geologic effects...
[All of the geologic effects on the earth were thereby falsely attributed to events occurring over a fictitious period of time before Adam when Scripture indicates no such thing]
...By now, the Church was ready for the final [and false] stage of the [forced] harmonization process [between the true Biblical Flood account and the false theory of a local flood]; for in 1839 John Pye Smith set forth his theory that the Flood was nothing but a local inundation in the Mesopotamian Valley. Freed at long last from the necessity of harmonizing [false theories of] geology with Genesis, scientists dismissed the Genesis Flood from their minds and joined Sir Charles Lyell in his efforts to 'patiently untie the Gordian knot' of fossiliferous strata according to the [false] uniformitarian principles which he had enunciated as early as 1830.
Thus it was that under the steadily increasing blows of [erroneous] geological theorizing the Biblical Flood faded from the intellectual horizon of the western world to a mere shadow of its former awe-inspiring grandeur - from a world-engulfing cataclysm to a mere Mesopotamian inundation. Many theologians of the nineteenth century, nurtured by a somewhat anemic philosophy of revelation [i.e., by utilizing a liberal approach of interpretation which permited false spiritualizing of Scriptural passages to mean whatever one desired them to mean], fell into line with the latest scientific speculations [which were actually unscientific and false], fearing lest they might be found at odds with Copernicus and Galileo again (as the geologists were always ready to remind them) [rather than fearing being at odds with God]. Since the books of nature and revelation cannot ultimately contradict each other, it was [falsely] assumed that the new discoveries of the geologists and the [false] interpretations which they were giving to these discoveries were God's own clues for exegeting the early chapters of Genesis [rather than the other way around] and that men like Buckland and Lyell were the inspired prophets of God's Book of Nature.
The viewpoint that science rather than Scripture must speak the final word on the magnitude of the Flood certainly did not die with the nineteenth century, as the wholehearted acceptance by evangelical theologians of the 'evidence' of Sir Leonard Woolley's 'Flood stratum' so clearly demonstrates. Nevertheless, a significant minority of Christians have continued to look upon these [false] 'harmonizations' of Genesis and geology with profound misgivings and would concur with the judgment of Andrew E. White that 'each mixed up more or less of science with more or less of Scripture, and produces a result more or less absurd.'
[White, op. cit., p. 234]
From this study we may draw one vitally important lesson for the present hour: the Biblical doctrine of the Flood cannot be harmonized with the [false] uniformitarian theories of geology. A careful examination of the various 'blind alleys' into which evangelical Christians have been led should serve as a solemn warning to those who are still persisting in the hopeless task of harmonizing two mutually exclusive philosophies of nature and history. It is the conviction of the writers, at least, that a true historical geology will never be formulated until the Genesis Flood, as a universal aqueous catastrophe, is granted its rightful and vital place in the thinking of Christian men of science."
