Creationism - National Center for Science Education
Creationism - National Center for Science Education
Creationism - National Center for Science Education
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produces various different types of strata with different fossils in each (heavier, denser<br />
ones settling first); differential mobility of organisms fleeing the rising Flood waters<br />
(swifter and more active animals escaping to higher levels); and the layering of some<br />
strata due to great currents sweeping back and <strong>for</strong>th during the Flood, depositing first one<br />
type of sediment, then another from a different source. Oil and coal were <strong>for</strong>med from<br />
plant remains buried by the Flood.<br />
Whitcomb and Morris allow <strong>for</strong> some gaps in the biblical genealogies, so that a<br />
precise dating of Creation and the Flood cannot be reckoned directly from the Bible, but<br />
they assert that the Flood cannot have occurred more than five thousand years be<strong>for</strong>e<br />
Abraham.<br />
Chapter IV, “Uni<strong>for</strong>mitarianism and the Flood: A Study of Attempted<br />
Harmonizations,” is a discussion of many of the older creationist and Flood theories.<br />
More so than in Morris’s other books (with the exception of his History), this chapter<br />
reminds us that Flood Geology is not a new discovery, but a venerable (and discarded)<br />
tradition. Whitcomb and Morris criticize, in detail, all “concordist” theories which tried<br />
to reconcile scientific findings with biblical inerrancy. All such attempted compromises<br />
betray the only correct interpretation of the Bible, which plainly teaches recent, literal<br />
creation and a Flood which profoundly altered the earth. As Morris expressed it later<br />
(1984:329b):<br />
The Bible clearly teaches the special creation of all things in six literal days (e.g., Exodus 20:8-11) and a<br />
worldwide cataclysmic destruction by the flood (e.g., II Peter 3:3-6), and it is only special pleading and<br />
strained exegesis that can <strong>for</strong>ce any other meaning into the Biblical record. This teaching is so<br />
transparently clear and definite in Scripture that it seems redundant even to have to discuss it. It ought to<br />
be considered a “given,” like the deity of Christ, <strong>for</strong> all who profess to be Bible-believing Christians.<br />
Whitcomb and Morris praise their predecessors who believed in a worldwide Flood as the<br />
key event in geology and earth history: Burnet, Woodward, Whiston, and later Flood<br />
champions such as Byron Nelson, and Rehwinkel (Price gets favorable mentions, but<br />
only in passing). They castigate compromisers such as Cuvier (<strong>for</strong> introducing the notion<br />
of other catastrophes in addition to Noah’s Flood), Buckland, Pye Smith and other<br />
“tranquil” or “local” Flood advocates, and, of course, all uni<strong>for</strong>mitarian evolutionists.<br />
The Genesis Flood remains a rich source of references, theological and scientific (and<br />
both), on attitudes and theories regarding the Flood through the centuries.<br />
Many of the ideas in The Genesis Flood predate even Price’s twentieth-century<br />
scientific version. John Williams, <strong>for</strong> instance, who surveyed and described British coal<br />
strata, developed at length the theory that coal was <strong>for</strong>med by the Deluge. In The<br />
Natural History of the Mineral Kingdom (1789), he argued that coal was <strong>for</strong>med from<br />
antediluvian timber. Most of the earth was covered by a luxuriant growth of trees be<strong>for</strong>e<br />
the Flood—enough to account <strong>for</strong> all present coal deposits. Vast amounts of timber<br />
floated on the turbulent chaos of the Flood waters, turning mushy during the year of the<br />
Flood. Then it was deposited on the ocean bottom, often in finely laminated strata<br />
alternating with other deposits (such as Williams observed in his British coal seams).<br />
These many fine strata resulted from the great tidal currents of the Flood, “several miles<br />
in perpendicular depth,” which swept back and <strong>for</strong>th, at times exposing dry land in<br />
between the currents. Williams emphasizes that the various strata are “promiscuously”<br />
arranged with respect to gravitational sorting—that is, “hydrodynamic sorting” by itself<br />
cannot account <strong>for</strong> the various alternating layers—and thus must be the result of