The Rocks Don't Lie: A Geologist Investigates Noah's Flood Read Free Page B

apart and reassembled the whole world. It was not the flood that they thought the Bible described. They saw the suggestion that Noah’s Flood was a regional disaster, and not a global event, as an attack on Christianity. For completely different reasons, many geologists also were immediately skeptical—hadn’t science dispelled Noah’s Flood as an ancient myth?
    I thought Ryan and Pitman’s idea made sense. It was geologically plausible. Had they solved the puzzle of Noah’s Flood?
    No other story has had as profound an influence on geology as that of Noah’s Flood. Today almost half of the American public believes in young Earth creationism—that the world is about six thousand years old and that Noah’s Flood reshaped Earth’s surface into today’s world a few thousand years before the time of Christ. 2 While there is no doubt that the world is far older than creationists allow, it is this most fundamental feature—time—eons of it, that causes creationists to so vociferously deny modern geology. Why this reaction? Because if the world is old, it allows time not only for mountains to rise and erode but, more problematically, for evolution to work. In defending an interpretation of God’s word contradicted by geological evidence, creationists abandon a long-standing Christian belief that rocks don’t lie.
    For centuries, Christians interpreted scientific discoveries through faith that God’s word (the Bible) and Creation (nature) must be consistent with one another. In combing through historical material—both geological and theological—I saw that previous generations had reconciled geological evidence with how to read the biblical story of Noah’s Flood. Although harsh rhetoric is by no means a modern invention, for centuries few considered science and religion mortal enemies. Most early geologists were clergy who believed that stories preserved in rock revealed the nature of God’s works as surely as the Bible revealed His Word. Scientifically inclined clergy had faith that discoveries about the natural world would illuminate biblical interpretation. They knew their efforts could only enhance biblical authority because a deeper understanding of the workings of nature led to a deeper understanding of God.
    Exploring the history of geologic thinking about the biblical flood reveals how cultural friction generated conflict and change within both scientific and religious circles. After all, the story of Noah’s Flood provided the first geologic theory to be tested against field observations. Perplexing questions, like the origin of valleys and marine fossils found within mountains, became fodder for a grand debate over Noah’s Flood. And arguing about evidence for a global flood likewise helped shape how biblical interpretations adapted to scientific advances. Today, unraveling the origin of traditional flood stories involves not only the interpretation of foundational Judeo-Christian traditions but understanding conflict between visionaries and orthodoxy within scientific and religious establishments.
    Scientifically inclined creationists tend to be engineers, chemists, and physicists with little to no geological training. Perhaps this helps explain why the creationist view of Earth as only a few thousand years old contrasts with geology textbooks based on decades of research confirming that we live on a planet that is four and a half billion years old. Rejecting conventional geology out of hand, creationists selectively interpret the rock record to support their view that Noah’s Flood deposited all the fossil-bearing rocks and sculpted the world’s topography over the course of a single year. In such a short span of time a flood of epic proportions is the only geological mechanism that could do it. It’s all creationists have that can explain earth history, and without it their intellectual house of cards comes crashing down.
    Whatever you may think about evolution, the creationist belief in a