Steven Dutch, Natural and Applied Sciences, Universityof Wisconsin - Green Bay
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Excerpting from Bernard Ramm's The Christian View of Science and Scripture is like eating salted peanuts: impossible to stop. It's a scandal that this work is out of print, ignored by people who put out reams of trash. Significant statements in Ramm's text are highlighted in yellow. My own comments are in blue
There were long cubits and short cubits and royal cubits and Egyptian cubits and Talmudic cubits; 22 inches was the legal cubit of the Talmudists. We can know the actual size only within limits. The dimensions of the ship are large and a vessel of such size was not built till modern times. The ratio of the dimensions of the ark are also modern, and modern ships have been built approximating the dimensions and the ratios (Celtic of the White Star Line, 1901, 700 x 75 x 491/3; Great Eastern, 1858, 629 x 83 x 58).
The most obscure reference is concerning the expression in verse 16. Does this refer to a ventilation system or to a lighting system, or just to a roof? The American Standard Version reads light and puts roof in the margin, whereas the Revised Standard Version reverses them and puts roof in the text and light in the margin. The interpretation about the cubit is just as uncertain. Does it mean that the light system or ventilation system was one cubit wide around the ark, or does it mean that the ark is so to slope as to come within a cubit of closing off the top? The text is too brief to allow us to come to any certain decision (73).
The ark had a door and three stories. The stories functioned the same as the staterooms in providing a division of animals and a bracing of the structure. The shape of the ark was boxy or angular, and not streamlined nor curved. With this shape it increased its carrying capacity by one third. It was a vessel designed for floating, not for sailing. A model was made by Peter Jansen of Holland, and Danish barges called Fleuten were modeled after the ark. These models proved that the ark had a greater capacity than curved or shaped vessels. They were very seaworthy and almost impossible to capsize.
It has been suggested that the ark had sloping sides. If this were the case the waves would hit it and roll, as they do when hitting a beveled dike. This would prevent thewaves from shattering the ark with a direct impact upon it. Long experience with dikes has shown that beveled dikes parry the force of the waves. If the sides of the ark were slanted the waves would roll up the sides and not pound it. The covering of the ark is also a matter of conjecture. Some have thought that it was covered with a skin like the tabernacle was and that Noah had to roll back this skin when he came out of the ark.
The stability of such a barge is great and it increases as it sinks deeper into the water. The lower the center of gravity the more difficult it is to capsize. If the center of gravity were low enough the ark or barge could only be capsized if violently rolled over. Wherever the center of gravity may have been in the ark, it certainly was a most stable vessel (74).
Many other features are left untouched as to its construction. All opinions about the ark must be tempered with the realization as to how meagre are the details of its construction. We are not told of the water supply, sewage disposal, care of the animals, or if Noah had any help in constructing the ark. It was not the purpose of the writer to give anything but the most general details, and we should rest content within the boundaries of revelation at this point. Suffice it to say, the ark was a reasonable structure. For its specific purpose it was of credible shape, credible size, and credible proportions. It was made from a wood well adapted for such a barge and was divided into stories and staterooms for proper bracing. It apparently had some system of lighting and ventilation. All in all, the record of the ark bears witness to the credibility of the construction of such a ship, and we believe its features were matters of revelation to Noah who, living in the plains of Babylon, was a "North Dakota" sailor.
Legends of finding the ark on Mt. Ararat have flourished for centuries. Only those unfamiliar with such matters were surprised by the recent expeditions to find the ark. These legends will be found in Baring-Gould, The Legends of the Patriarchs (n.d.) and should be consulted by those who seek further information of this nature. To date all such legends of finding the ark are fictions. As we shall subsequently indicate, the ark did not come down on the top of Mt. Ararat (some 17,000 feet high), but on the Ararat range. If that is the case the ark disappeared a long time ago through rot, or for fire wood, or for building material.
Even staunch Biblical literalists have known and written for decades that the Biblical term Ararat does not refer to the present-day peak in Turkey, yet we still have expeditions going there in search of the Ark. Ignoring science is bad enough, but those people ignore their own best scholars as well.
B. The Flood.
The flood is one of the most remarkable events in the story of the Bible, and Noah is one of its most remarkable men. Although the flood is mentioned but a few times in the Bible, it receives important attention in the New Testament. It has also been one of the sharpest centers of controversy in the history of the warfare of theology and science.
Heidel's work which we have already cited must be consulted in any serious study of the flood. Heidel shows the great contrasts between the Babylonian and the Hebrew accounts. The Hebrew account is sane, moral, theistic, whereas the Babylonian account is frequently silly or grotesque, and polytheistic. Heidel also tackles the lions of criticism and defends the unity of the flood account (75). The so-called documentary features of the flood narrative have been one of the strongest illustrations of the documentary hypothesis of the Pentateuch.
1. Pertinent facts about the flood today.
a) There is no question that the civilization that forms the setting of the account is the Mesopotamian. The ark was constructed there; we can trace Biblical traditions back to Mesopotamia; Abraham came from there; the tower of Babel was most likely a ziggurat; and the earliest civilization known to historians is Mesopotamian.
b) The time of the flood is more difficult to determine. Ussher has Noah dated around 2300 B.C. The so-calledflood deposits of Ur and Kish date earlier than 3000 B.C. The Babylonian tablets of the flood date around 2000 B.C. The early Babylonian and Egyptian civilizations date earlier than 4000 B.C. The end of the ice age dates from about 10,000 B.C. according to carbon-14 method of dating. This much is certain: (i) The flood deposits cannot be appealed to as proofs of Noah's flood because there are at least four such deposits and they are separated by 600 years. This means that such a flood which could lay down several feet of pure clay was not unprecedented. In that such floods happened at least four times and because the deposits are separated by about 600 years, we must be very cautious in using this material in support of Noah's flood. If one insists upon appealing to the flood deposits of the Mesopotamian valley he must wrestle with all the problems which such an interpretation creates. (ii) We concur with the judgment expressed by such a strong Fundamentalist writer as Unger:
It is archeologically fantastic to place the Noahlc flood so late as 2348 B.C. [Ussher's exact date], as would be the case if the Genesis genealogies are used for chronological purposes. The deluge certainly tookplace long before 4000 B.C.76
c) The causes of the flood according to the Bible are rain and water from the fountains of the deep. This has generally been taken to mean rain from a steady downpour and the coming up of some other source of water from wells, springs, or the ocean. Water from the rain would hardly be sufficient to cause a flood of such proportions, although even this has been maintained on the basis of how much water could come down in one cloudburst of a few minutes duration. Other writers have associated the ice age with the flood, either as a result
Geology 238-9-40-
238 Kish (11/2 feet), at Ur (8 feet), and one at Shuruppak. Then you have to fit all this in with the date of the flood which Unger says is beyond 4000 B.C., which would disqualify all four of these flood deposits.
Third, the appeal to the ice lens theory is extremely problematic. There is no real evidence of the existence of such an ice lens. Rimmer also says that ice age phenomena are proof of the ice lens collapsing. Here again problems mount. If you appeal to the ice age you appeal to just a small part of geological phenomena, whereas if you accept Price all of geological phenomena is caused by the flood. Glaciation is but a mere ripple of evidence. Again, the ice ages end around 10,000 B.C., and lasted a million years.
3. Arguments for a local flood.
Although many Christians still believe in the universal flood, most of the recent conservative scholarship of the church defends a local flood (84) Those who defend a local flood believe that the time of the flood was sometime prior to 4000 B.C. The waters were supplied by the rains from above and the ocean waters beneath. Some sort of geological phenomenon is indicated by the expression "and the fountains of the deep were broken up." This caused the ocean waters to creep up the Mesopotamian valley. The waters carried the ark up to the Ararat range. The Hebrew text does not mean that the ark was deposited on the 17,000 foot summit of the peak, but that the ark rested somewhere on the Ararat range. It would have taken a special miracle to get Noah and his family down from such dizzy mountain heights where the cold would have been extreme. By the reversal of the geological phenomenon, the water is drained back from the valley. The readermust keep in mind, as stated in a leading conservative commentary
There is in Western Asia a remarkably depressed area, extending from the Sea of Aral to the Steppesof the Caucasus on the north, and sweeping round the southern shores of the Caspian, comprehendingArarat and the Great Salt Desert, which, as Ansted has remarked `forms no inconsiderable portion of thegreat recognized centre of the human family. The Caspian Sea (83 1/2 feet below the level of the sea,and in some parts of it 600 feet deep) and the Sea of Aral occupy the lowest part of a vast space,whose whole extent is not less than 100,000 square miles, hollowed out, as it were, in the central regionof the great continent, and no doubt formerly thebed of the ocean,' [and into this natural saucer theocean waters poured] (85 ).
From this natural saucer the waters were drained. The purpose of the flood was to blot out the wicked civilization of Mesopotamia, and being a local flood of a short duration we would not expect to find any specific evidence for it, especially after the minimum of another six thousand years of weathering.
There are three views of the local flood:
(i) Some assert that man never spread beyond the Mesopotamian valley. This is impossible to defend in that it is so well proven that men were to be found outside the Mesopotamian area long before the flood (86)
(ii) G. F. Wright believes that the ice age drove man into the Mesopotamian valley.
(iii) A third view, and the one which we hold, is that the entire record must be interpreted phenomenally. If the flood is local though spoken of in universal terms, so the destruction of man is local though spoken of in universal terms. The record neither affirms nor denies that man existed beyond the Mesopotamian valley. Noah certainly was not a preacher of righteousness to the peoples of Africa, of India, of China or of America - places where there is evidence for the existence of man many thousands of years before the flood (10,000 to 15,000 years in America). The emphasis in Genesis is upon that group of cultures from which Abraham eventually came.
We pause here to call in an authority such as Dawson. He discusses various opinions on the flood and sternly rejects a universal flood.
Such universality could not have been in the mindof the writer [the covering of the entire globe with a sheet of water], and probably has been claimed knowingly by no writer in modern times (87)
That might have been true in the 19th century but is certainly not true now, yet another sad indicator of the intellectual and spiritual retrogression of creationists.
He also rejects the interpretation that the flood was universal as far as man and his special animals are concerned. Rather, he adopts the view we have expounded that the deluge was universal in so far as the area and observation and information of the narrator extended.88 Whatever existed beyond the scope of the narrator's knowledge the record is silent about.
4. Criticisms of the universal flood interpretation. Much of the weight of evidence for the local flood is actually showing the imponderable difficulties of a universal flood. Before we critically examine the universal flood interpretation two things must be said:
(i) It is not a question as to what God can or cannot do. Those who believe in a local flood believe in the omnipotence and power of God as much as any other Christian does. The question is not: "What can God do?" but, "What did God do?"
This point is simply ignored by creationists, some of whom accuse Ramm himself of denying the omnipotence of God.
(ii) The problem is one of interpretation, not inspiration. Those who believe in the local flood believe in the divine inspiration of the Bible; otherwise they would believe in no flood. It is improper to affirm that only those who believe in a universal flood really believe in the inspiration of Scripture and the omnipotence of God. It is also improper to imply that those who believe in a local flood do not believe in the omnipotence of God and believe in the peccability of Scripture.89Geology
The distinction between inspiration and sectarian (or cult) interpretation is one that Ramm repeatedly hammers home, and one that later creationists simply ignore.
a) First of all, in criticism of the universal flood interpretation, this theory cannot demonstrate three of its most necessary propositions.
(i) It cannot demonstrate that totality of language necessitates a universal flood. Fifteen minutes with a Bible concordance will reveal many instances in which universality of language is used but only a partial quantity is meant.All does not mean every last one in all of its usages. Psalm 22:17 reads: "I may tell all my bones," and hardly means that every single bone of the skeleton stood out prominently. John 4:39 cannot mean that Jesus completely recited the woman's biography. Matthew 3:5 cannot mean that every single individual from Judea and Jordan came to John the Baptist. There are cases where all means all, and every means every, but the context tells us where this is intended. Thus, special reference may be made to Paul's statement in Romans about the universality of sin, yeteven that "all" excludes Jesus Christ.
For all that creationists wax militant on the infallibility of the Bible, their own biblical knowledge tends to be superficial at best.
The universality of the flood simply means the universality of the experience of the man who reported it. When God tells the Israelites He will put fear for them upon the peoples under the whole heaven, it refers to all the peoples known to the Israelites (Deuteronomy 2:25). When Genesis 41:57 states that all countries came to Egypt to buy grain, it can only mean all peoples known to the Egyptians. Ahab certainly did not look for Elijah in every country of the earth even though the text says he looked for Elijah so thoroughly that he skipped no nation or kingdom (I Kings 18:10). From the vantage point of the observer of the flood all mountains were covered, and all flesh died. We must concur that: Geology243 242 The Christian View of Science and Scripture
The language of the sacred historian by no meansnecessarily implies that the flood overspread the whole earth. Universal terms are frequently used in apartial and restricted sense in Scripture (90).
The ark had a draft of about 15 cubits (Genesis 7:20) and so the writer inferred that the water rose that high above the mountains because the ark did not ground on any of them. The highest mountain in the region was Ararat at about 17,000 feet; the Himalayan range rises to 29,000 feet. Do those who defend a universal flood wish to assert that the waters mounted to a depth of six miles?
(ii) The universality of flood traditions cannot be uncritically appealed to. Flood stories are to be found widely distributed throughout the world, with such notable exceptions as none in Japan or Egypt and few in Africa 91 We must carefully distinguish between what is certainly related to the Biblical accounts; what is probably related; what is conscious or unconscious assimilation of flood data as related by missionaries and merged into local flood stories; and what are purely local affairs having no connection at all with the Bible. To simply list flood stories and identify them all as versions or perversions of the Biblical flood is not a valid procedure (92). It is a difficult task for a scholar to untangle all of these stories to see how dependent or independent they are. Woods concludes
Though the common derivation of Deluge stories from the Bible deluge can no longer be maintained, the Bible story and those related to it have had in various ways a wide and important influence upon a large number of them (93).
(iii) There are no known geological data to support those who defend a universal flood. A local flood could come and go and leave no trace after a few thousand years, but could a universal flood be a traceless flood? Price's view we cannot but emphatically reject. The appeal to the so-called diluvia of washes, loess, and gravel deposits, can no longer be made. They are the results of the ice age which cannot be identified with the flood of Noah, if for no other reasons than that there were really a series of ice ages lasting over a million years. There remains no distinctive geological proof of a universal flood. Any good book on the history of geology will indicate how theory after theory of identification of the flood with some geological phenomenon had to be given up, till today there is no remaining evidence for a universal flood 94
b) The problems in connection with a universal flood are enormous. We can but summarize here the lengthy refutations found in commentaries and Bible dictionaries and encyclopedias. One point must be clearly understood before we commence these criticisms: the flood is recorded as a natural-supernatural occurrence. It does not appear as a pure and stupendous miracle. The natural and the supernatural work side by side and hand in hand. If one wishes to retain a universal flood, it must be understood that a series of stupendous miracles are required. Further, one cannot beg off with pious statements that God can do anything. We concur enthusiastically with Smith when he wrote:
94 Cf. to the contrary Prestwich's view that some watery catastrophe had to occur as the only possible explanation of the disappearance of late-glacial and post-glacial man about 10,000-12,000 B.C. Prestwich was a great and honored British geologist. G. F. Wright,"Professor Prestwich on Some Supposed New Evidence of the Deluge," BS, 72:724-740, October, 1895.
246 The Christian View of Science and Scriptureget from distant lands to the ark? We have already indicated that an older theory had them transported to and fro by angels. Rehwinkel believes that at the time of the flood there were no high mountains, no deserts, no arctic regions, and that there was a uniform world temperature.99 The animals were not distributed as they are now, but representatives of each species were near the ark. Others have suggested that the North American and South American continents were conjoined to Europe before the flood, and then "floated" apart after the flood (Genesis 10:25, "the name of one was Peleg, for in his days the earth was divided" RSV). There would be no need for the animals to cross oceans.
As far as the science of geology can determine - and how else can we determine it? - no such major shift in the geological formation of the earth has taken place in the past several thousand years. If the world was then as it is now, it would take a series of remarkable miracles to get all the animals of all the world, two of each species, to the ark and back again - over oceans, over deserts, over strange terrain, over difficult terrain.
Once in the ark the problem of feeding and caring for them would be enormous. The task of carrying away manure, and bringing food would completely overtax the few people in the ark. Writes Woods:
In a word, four men and four women were able to do [if the universal flood version is true] under such conditions, without, it would seem, the slightest difficulty, what taxes the utmost skill and ingenuity of zoologists with such space and under such conditions as are possible in our Zoological Gardens.100
Bede long ago suggested that the animals needed only one day's feed as they were all put to sleep.101 To this day defenders of the universal flood teach that all the animals hibernated so that they needed no attention.
There is the problem of the special diets required for the animals, and the problem of special conditions for the animals. Some animals need a moist environment, and others a very dry one; some need it very cold and others very warm. Again, there is no question what Omnipotence can do, but the simplicity of the flood record prohibits the endless supplying of miracles to make a universal flood feasible.
B. C. Nelson (The Deluge Story in Stone, 1931) and A. M. Rehwinkel (The Flood in the Light of the Bible, Geology, and Archaeology, 1951) are modern scholars defending the universal flood. Rehwinkel's volume is a very ambitious work. Both depend on the geology of Price and are therefore, to our thinking, invalid.102
5. The Babylonian Flood account. This account is another factor to be reckoned with. The most detailed analysis of the parallelism between the Biblical account and the Babylonian account written from an evangelical viewpoint is that of G. F. Wright's essay, "The Deluge of Noah" (ISBE, II, 821-826). George Smith in 1872 discovered the twelve tablets of the Gilgamesh Epic, the eleventh tablet of which describes a Babylonian flood. The original copies of the tablets date back to 2000 B.C. Other versions of the flood are found in the Nippur Tablet (2100 B.C.) and tablets found at Nineveh and Kish.
In comparing and contrasting the two accounts, Wright notes that: (i) the Babylonian account is polytheistic and the Biblical account is monotheistic. (ii) Both agree that the flood came as a divine punishment for man's sins.(iii) The dimensions of the Babylonian ark are unreasonable (140 x 140 x 140 cubits), whereas the proportions and size of the Biblical ark are about the same as those of modern ocean vessels. (iv) The moral tone of the Babylonian epic is substandard. (v) There is no mention of geological phenomena in the Babylonian account, but the breaking up of the fountains of the deep means a rising ocean bed to bring waters in, and a falling one to drain them off. (vi) Both agree in the general details for the collecting of the animals, but the Babylonian account omits any reference to clean animals, and also includes other people in the ark. (vii) In the Babylonian account the structure had a mast and a pilot. (viii) The Babylonian flood lasted fourteen days and the Biblical flood one year and ten days. (ix) The Babylonian account has a dove and a raven in reverse order and adds a swallow. (x) The Babylonian account has the altar after the flood but in a polytheistic context. (xi) Both agree that the human race will not be destroyed after the flood. Wright concludes
It is in the highest degree improbable that correct statements of such unobvious facts should be due to the accident of legendary guesswork. At the same time, the duration of the Deluge, according to Genesis, affords opportunity for a gradual progress of events which best accord with scientific conceptions of geological movements.103
The general relationship of all Babylonian and Hebrew parallels is that of cognateness, which means common source without any necessary mutuality, and has been ably defended by J. McKee Adams (Ancient Records and the Bible, 1946). Both came out of the same common ancient tradition and so both possess similarities. The Babylonian account represents the tradition freely corrupted by human imagination; the Hebrew account is that which was kept chaste and pure through divine providence and then recorded through divine inspiration.
The flood was local to the Mesopotamian valley. The animals that came, prompted by divine instinct, were the animals of that region; they were preserved for the good of man after the flood. Man was destroyed within the boundaries of the flood; the record is mute about man in America or Africa or China. The types of vegetation destroyed quickly grew again over the wasted area, and other animals migrated back into the area, so that after a period of time the damaging effects of the flood were obliterated. An examination of the references of the New Testament to the flood are not conclusive, one way or the other, but permit either a local or universal flood interpretation.
We judge then, that within Christian and supernaturalistic premises, there is nothing in the Scriptures about geological matters which should cause offense to anyone; to the contrary, we may believe the Biblical records with full assurance of being in agreement with geological science according to the principles developed in this chapter.
99. Rehwinkel, op. cit., p. 47. But where in the simple record of the flood is the basis of such a profound geological, geographical, and metereological change? Where is the sanction from the science of geology? What is the control put upon such assertions?100. Woods, op. cit., IV, 545.101. Bede, Hexaemeron, i and ii.
102. In the preface Rehwinkel says that he wishes "to acknowledge particularly his debt to Dr. George McCready Price, a noted geologist . . . Dr. Price is a brilliant champion of Biblical truth." Op. cit., pp. vii and viii. Later he calls Price "an able geologist and a brilliant writer," p. 102. He also notes that J. W. Dawson is a great defender of Genesis. Let's keep the facts straight. Price will have nothing to do with Dawson's Lyellian geology, and Dawson will have little to do with diluvialism.
103. Wright: loc. cit., p. 824.
208 The Christian View of Science and Scripture[The gap theory] involves a strained interpretation of the passage, and is contradicted by the fact that nochaotic period intervenes between the human periodand the preceding tertiary age.46
In regard to geology Rimmer pays due tribute to Price. But this cannot be done with any consistency. First, the gap theory is invoked to account for geologic ages 47 Price invokes a universal flood to account for geologic ages. Rimmer appeals to both! He even compounds the contradiction by saying that perhaps the days of Genesis could be epochs (although he vigorously defends the literal day interpretation). This makes a triple problem out of Genesis and geology. First the data of geology are attributed to the catastrophe of Genesis 1:2, and then to the universal flood of Price's theory, and then to the age-day interpretation of the creative week. When a geologist does his work he cannot possibly tell to which of these three he is to assign his strata. Certainly, he cannot practice all three theories at once. The only conclusion is that the gap theorists have not thought their way through to a workable theory. They are to be credited with the realization that geology must have a say, and that the great time periods must be granted to the geologists. Beyond that their theory has more problems than any true theory can bear.
Allis gives them a most interesting problem to struggle with. Almost all gap theorists believe in pre-Adamite man, but of this man the Bible knows nothing. Further, the gap theorists admit to the geologists vast periods of time, but demand the creation of man in one day. He is then advocating twenty-four hour anthropology and limitless-time geology. His only recourse is to make the days into periods,
46. J. W. Dawson, Nature and the Bible (1875), p. 85 fn. Dawson repeatedly and in strong language repudiates the gap theory and his judgment ought to be seriously weighed by Fundamentalists. Seehis further strong condemnations of it in The Origin of the World According to Revelation and Science (1877), pp. 103, 106.
47. Allis correctly observes that if the gap theorists smuggle in great periods of time in Genesis 1:2 they are hardly in a position to oppose those who smuggle it in under the word your. Op. cit., pp. 153-154.
Geology 209and if he does this he has no need for his gap theory. This again emphasizes the undigested state of the gap theory.48
(vii) We shall discuss later the matter of fossils, death, and sin. But the affirmations that: (a) all death comes from sin; (b) fossils are evidence of a judgment; and (c) that ugliness of animals as indicated by fossil remains is a result of judgment, are all dogmas which have not been adequately thought through. The Bible ascribes death from sin to man alone. Plant life had to die even in pristine Eden. To insist that all carnivora were originally vegetarian is another preposterous proposition. Why such huge teeth and sharp claws? Its application to sea life is impossible for the large fish could not possibly survive on a seaweed or plankton diet. With reference to fossils, the process of fossilization is going on right now under identical conditions of past geologic time. This means that fossilization is an ordinary process of Nature. Again, the aesthetic judgment that ugliness implies a judgment is not capable of defense. Is the peacock uncursed because beautiful, and the dogfish cursed because ugly? Is the majestic lion uncursed and the slinking coyote cursed?
We are not the sole critic of this theory. We have already noted Dawson's rejection of it. Pohle49 rejects it and says:
To attribute such a catastrophe to the fallen angels almost verges on superstition.
48. R. A. Torrey, Difficulties in the Bible (1907), pp. 27-32, has the same undigested gap theory. He accepts the gap theory and also the possibility that the days were long periods of time. He then inconsistently appeals to the proposed harmony of the days of Genesis with the epochs of geology. You cannot appeal to both the gap of Genesis 1:2 and the age-day interpretation of the days without throwing the whole process of reconciliation of Genesis and geology into confusion. Who could ever tell which belonged to the ages of the gap, and the ages of the six age-days?
49. J. Pohle, God: The Author of Nature and the Supernatural (1942), p. 113. He says that A. Westermeyer attributed this catastrophe to angels in his Erschaffung der Welt and der Menschen and deren Geschichte bis each der Siindflut (1861).
iii184 The Christian View of Science and Scripture trary, the entire roll call of earth sciences is built on the uniformitarian principle. Fundamentalists, inadequately versed in the philosophy of science, opposed more than they ever should have when they objected to uniformitarianism in geology. To continue Kulp's exposition, the past is like the present because we can imitate the past in our laboratory.
Further objections from such knowledge against flood geology are: (i) The amount of material carried by a water stream varies with the sixth power of the velocity of the stream. There is little deposit far out on the continental shelf where a few feet may represent thousands of years of deposits. Flood geology has no means of accounting for this.
(ii) Hedberg has shown that river mud needs at least one mile of sediment on top of it to form it into rock. Wherever we have this type of rock lithified we know that once upon a time it was a mile underground. Unusually long processes are necessary for mud to be formed into rock, be lifted to the surface of the earth, and then undergo a measure of weathering. Flood geology has no room in its theoretical structure for such a lengthy process as this.
(iii) The huge amount of material carried out of the geosynclines is of such proportions that it is impossible to account for the missing material by a flood of one year's duration.
(iv) It takes a hundred feet of loose vegetable matter to make one foot of coal. There was not enough vegetable matter in the entire world to make a tiny fraction of the coal beds of the earth at the time of the flood. All the vegetation from the central United States multiplied by ten would not be adequate to supply coal for the thirty significant coal horizons of that region. Further, most of the coal was actually formed by the successive growth ofvegetation upon itself building up a great layer of material, Geology 185but according to flood geology coal would have been formed by the deposit of debris.
(v) We may now observe the process of fossil formation which duplicates that which is known from past geological periods. Further, the geologist does not reason in a circle by dating strata by the fossils, and then fossils by the strata. The evidence for the ages of these strata is so monumental that any vestiges of reasoning in a circle are now eliminated.
(vi) In discussing orogeny or the science of mountain formation, Kulp shows that mountain formation can be duplicated in small-scale laboratory models. A universal flood would have mixed everything up but the laboratory models using soft clay or shoe polish can duplicate earth formations which show that the current geological theories are on the right track and that Price is not. Further, the fact that many of these formations are made without the presence of water is fatal to Price's theory. Kulp also shows how juvenile is Price's claim that thrust-faulting is a geologists' invention to save their tottering theory.
70 years of additional detailed mapping in the Canadian Rockies has thoroughly confirmed the thrustfaults - on physical not paleontologic [fossil]grounds.15
(vii) Any genuine demonstration of a long period of time in some geologic process would be fatal to flood geology, for flood geologists must account for all phenomena in a flood of one year's duration about three thousand years before Christ. In the Yellowstone Park are two thousand feet of exposed strata which reveal eighteen successive forests wiped out by lava. The individual forests had to mature, and then be covered with lava. Before another forest could appear the lava would have to be weathered to form soil for trees to grow in. The amount of time involved is far more than the few thousand years flood geologists are able to allow. Gypsum and salt deposits15. Ibid., p. 10. 186 The Christian View of Science and Scriptureare formed by the evaporation of sea water. One thousand feet of water yields 0.7 feet of gypsum. The fastest evaporating body of water known is the Dead Sea which evaporates ten feet of water a year. The fifteen hundred feet of gypsum in West Texas and New Mexico would then require 5 million feet of water evaporating over 500,000 years. Here again flood geology is refuted as it cannot allow this much time. Finally, the data accumulating from radioactive dating of strata is too well established to be discounted by flood geologists. Flood geologists have done their best to disrupt this method and try to show that it is completely unreliable. It is not a matter of this method being 50 per cent wrong or even 75 per cent wrong. It must be over 99 per cent wrong. In fact if it were 99 per cent wrong (or one per cent right) it would still refute flood geology. Five million years is one per cent of the 500 million years of the Cambrian period.16
16. The American Scientific Affiliation has put in mimeographed form a series of essays on the age of the earth entitled A Symposium on the Age of the Earth (1948). It was edited by Dr. Kulp who also contributed an article on "Present Status of Age Determination in Geology," and Dr. Kulp also supplied excellent bibliographical references for the entire symposium.A person who entitled himself only as "An A.S.A. Member" sharply criticized Kulp's criticism of Price (JASA, II, 2, June, 1950). His grounds are (i) that Kulp gives too much weight to uniformitarian geology, and that (ii) Kulp did not scientifically evaluate Price's position but tore it up in terms of his preconceived opinions. As for objection (i) it is peurile. It is condemnation on the grounds that "the enemy believes it; it must be wrong." But that has been the most discouraging thing about Fundamentalists in science, namely, that a theory is judged wrong on the sole grounds that the wrong people believe it. If uniformitarianism makes a scientific case for itself to a Christian scholar, that Christian scholar has every right to believe it, and if he is a man and not a coward he will believe it in spite of the intimidation that he is supposedly gone over into the camp of the enemy. After reading Kulp's article many times, I utterly fail to see how objection (ii) has any merit at all. Kulp has seriously and honestly gone after the facts and carefully presented them. I personally can find no point where Kulp has been unfair, or shoddy, or careless, or unscientific.
R. M. Allen's, "The Evaluation of Radioactive Evidence on the Age of the Earth" (JASA, 4:11-20, December, 1952) is an effort to upset much of the certainty in radioactive dating, but Kulp has an able reply to it. Again, to destroy the testimony of radioactive dating you have to prove it well over 99 per cent wrong.
Geology 187(viii) Finally, Kulp shows that the positive theory of Price, namely of these one thousand mile an hour tidal waves, cannot account for the geological structure of the crust of the earth.
We may add to this imposing list of objections one more which will be discussed at length later on, namely, the assumption of the flood geologists that the flood was universal. They must not only (i) tear up geology as taught and practiced by the overwhelming majority of the world's trained geologists; (ii) throw the entire processes of geological formations into a flood of one year's duration; but (iii) they must also carry some of the unbearable problems of a world-wide deluge. It has been a matter of deep sorrow to this author to see how great and noble men like Dana and Dawson with their sound, Biblical and scientific approach to Genesis and geology have been ruled out of court or forgotten by the hyperorthodox and their places taken over by apologists of the flood geology school. The opposition of the Fundamentalists to the uniformitarian geology has blinded them to the absurdities of floodgeology.
A work which all evangelicals who delve into these matters ought to consider is F. E. Zeuner, Dating the Past: An Introduction to Geochronology (third edition; 1952). Such a book simply demolishes much of Price's The New Geology (1923). Zeuner's book is a thorough compendium of all the methods known to geologists in dating strata. There are essentially seven: tree ring analysis valuable up to 3000 years; varved clay analysis reliable to 15,000 years; radio-carbon dating with a limit of 30,000 years; 'per cent of equilibrium method' (a form of radium dating) serviceable to 300,000 years; solar radiation good to a million years; typical geological methods (sedimentation, denudation, erosion, weathering, and chemical changes) used in all periods; and uranium and radioactive methods giving results up to 3 billion years. In Zeuner's work one will find the painstaking results of the works of geologists all over the 188 The Christian View of Science and Scriptureworld. Further, there is a genuine frankness to Zeuner and he frequently notes that some method is very unreliable, or that certain figures are just plain guesses. But the intersection of data is fatal to the position of Price. For example, the chart of the glacial periods conforms very closely to the chart of solar radiation. Each chart was arrived at independently from the other. When different researchers using different methods and working on different parts of the earth come to similar conclusions it is difficult to doubt that they are on the correct path. It is impossible to conceive that the wealth of data in a book like Zeuner's is fictitious, and that the host of world-wide scientists quoted are all close to one hundred per cent wrong.
D. Successive catastrophes.17 Before geological phenomena were understood mankind could accept Creation as occurring in six literal days a few thousand years ago. When geological phenomena became known and constituted a problem, these phenomena were accounted for by the flood of Noah. Later, when the flood of Noah could no longer account for the data of geology, the restitution theory was invoked. As this theory plays such a vital role in the twentieth century we defer exposition of it till later in this chapter. However, the sheer request for time in the gap theory or restitution theory did not meet the problems presented by a steadily growing science. New efforts had to be made to understand the geological record. This was done by recourse to a series of floods or catastrophes with a series of new creations. This solution was propounded by Cuvier, and then modified by Agassiz to keep up with the strides in geological knowledge.
Cuvier, one of the greatest names in the history of science, propounded a theory of successive floods. He believed that ocean waters shifted about, covering first one territory then another. The flora and fauna would be17. Cf. Brewster, op. cit., p. 196 ff. Geology 189buried under the drifting sands. When the waters had receded animals and vegetation would again migrate into the region. Evidence of this on a limited scale has been demonstrated time and time again. Finally, there was one big flood a few thousand years ago which prepared the world for the now existing geologic conditions and flora and fauna. Cuvier broke with the simple theory of Linnaeus and advocated the disappearance of forms due to these floods. He also indicated clearly that fossil man was late and was not mixed in with the older fossils. The older fossils accordingly could not be counted as part of the evidence for the flood.
Criticism of Cuvier was maintained on the grounds that: (i) certain forms were caught in certain strata; whereas if the ocean waters came in, a regular cross section of life should have been caught; (ii) and if all of certain species were eliminated, the entire world would have had to have been flooded. If the entire earth had to be flooded for the elimination of certain species then recreation, not migration, accounts for the repopulation of the various tracts of the earth. This was precisely what Louis Agassiz argued in the light of the problems of Cuvier's theory. Successive creation would account for the suddenness of the appearance of species; sudden catastrophes would account for their disappearance.Agassiz took the usual data of the flood and regulated it to glaciation. Agassiz realized that geologic processes must take a vast period of time for he figured that the coral reefs of Florida took 200,000 years to form. Following Beaumont's Systemes de Montagnes in which a certain theory of orogeny was propounded, Agassiz believed that there were sudden and short catastrophes which blotted out species and raised the mountains. This was followed by another creation and a long period of quiet and a slow building up of deposits. Agassiz less and less found himself able to make any sort of parallelism between Genesis
73. Heidel, op. cit., n. 2.14. takes it to be a window system one cubit high running around the ark.
74. Considerable details about the ark and its stability will be found in JFB, I. 92 ff.
75. Heidel, op. cit., pp. 245 f.
76. M. F. Unger, Introductory Guide to the Old Testament (1951), p. 194. Discussion of carbon-14 method of dating will be found in Zenner, op. cit., and a popular explanation in Ruth Moore, Man, Time, and Fossils (1953), Chapter XVIII. Any number of materials of human association have been dated prior to 4000 B.C.
84. We consider the best discussion on the flood to be George Frederick Wright, "The Deluge of Noah," ISBE, II, 821-26. The local flood was first advocated in modern times by Bishop Stillingfleet, Origines Sacrae, Book III, Chapter IV. However in recent times H. C. Leupold, Exposition of Genesis (1950, Vol. I), defends a universal flood.
85. JFB, I, p. 100.
86. R. M. Rehwinkel admits this. Op. cit., pp. 32-40.
87. J. W. Dawson, The Meeting-Place of Geology and History (1894), p. 151.
88. Ibid., p. 152.
89. Rehwinkel, op. cit., p. 90, very unfairly identifies his viewwith inspiration, so that to disagree with him is to deny the inspiration of the Bible. There. is also a trace of this in KD, I, 146-147.
90. JFB, I, 98.
91. For a critical discussion of flood legends see F. H. Woods, "Deluge," ERE, IV, 545-557.
92. R. Andree, Die Flutsagen (1891) is considered by scholars as the most thorough collection of these flood legends. The most complete record of them in English is to be found in James Frazer,Folk-lore in the Old Testament (Vol. 1, 1918).
93. Ibid., IV, 550. The data are not such that from a wide spread of flood legends a universal flood may be properly inferred.
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