Creationism - National Center for Science Education

Assuming that present-day scientific laws prevailed from the Fall to the Flood, it is scientifically
impossible to account for the canopy if it remained in liquid form. So unless we want to appeal to a 2,000year
miracle (Fall to Flood), we must reject the liquid ocean canopy. If, of course, the Bible gave any
indication that the miraculous reigned during that era, we might be justified in appealing to some sort of
miraculous support mechanism and some more miracles to remove the kinetic energy... The significance of
the “waters above” for science, then, is that they must have been maintained in a way that is scientifically
possible as far as known scientific law today. As we will demonstrate in the following discussion, only if
the water was maintained in a vapor form would it be possible to contain it above the atmosphere and, at
the same time, solve the related scientific problems. For this reason, we propose that when God lifted up
the deep from the surface of the earth and arched it over the ancient atmosphere, He instantly turned those
waters into vapor form (superheated transparent steam) and established them in a pressure-temperature
distribution that would not require miracles to maintain. The only basis for assuming this switch is that
there is no indication in the Bible that these waters were maintained miraculously, we assume that God
maintained them according to the laws of nature that are known today and that He Himself had established.
We readily admit that Genesis does not teach the existence of a pre-Flood vapor canopy. Moses simply
says that God placed a canopy of liquid water above the ancient atmosphere. However, if scientific laws
today existed then, it is necessary that God turned that water into vapor,even though Moses does not tell us
that He did this... What follows, then, is a theory—a theory based on the significance of the words of
Moses for modern science—but a theory that is not explicitly taught in Genesis. Should the physical
assumptions on which the following theory is based be one day disproved by scientific advance, the
veracity of the words of Moses will not be affected in anyway. It will simply mean that our model of the
ancient atmosphere was deficient. [1981:221-222]
BIBLE-SCIENCE HARMONIZATIONS PRIOR TO THE 1920S
A popular scheme of reconciling the Bible with science is the “Double
Revelation” view: that there are two revelations from God—Nature and Scripture. One
famous liberal statement of the “Double Revelation” view (it can also be interpreted
conservatively) is Henry Ward Beecher’s “The Two Revelations” (from Evolution and
Religion, reprinted in G. Kennedy 1957). The world did not come about by chance or
self-development; it is indeed the product of Intelligent design and will. The Bible,
God’s written Word, tells us of the development of man and the unfolding of the human
mind; the other record tells us of the development—eevolution—of physical matter.
Beecher was pastor of Brooklyn’s Plymouth Congregational Church, the nation’s largest,
and a tremendously influential voice of liberal religion. Beecher goes on to cite Dana,
Mivart, Wallace, the Duke of Argyll, McCosh, and UC (Berkeley) geology professor
LeConte as supporters of evolution and religion both (though not all of these supported
Darwinian or purely naturalistic evolution).
Well before Darwin, Thomas Dick, in The Christian Philosopher; or The
Connection of Science and Philosophy ith Religion (fourth American edition 1829), had
described the harmony between nature and God’s written revelation in the Bible. Dick
declared that “there must exist a complete harmony between the revelations of his word,
and the facts or relations which are observed in the material universe.” With regard to
the natural world, interpretation of the Bible must yield to the authority of science:
“Where a passage of Scripture is of doubtful meaning, or capable of different
interpretations, that interpretation ought to be preferred which will best agree with the
established tiscoveries of science” (1829:310). Dick stressed how necessary it is, in
interpreting the Word of God, to keep our eye fixed upon his Works; for we may rest
assured, that :ruth in the one will always correspond with fact in the other” (1829:310).