Geology Reference
In-Depth Information
nothing in the sacred writing forbidding us to suppose that [fossils] are the ruins of a former
starting to shape biblical interpretation.
A prominent Protestant, Cuvier did little to counter the impression that the most recent
of his long series of grand catastrophes was the biblical flood. He asserted it could not have
been all that ancient: “If there is any circumstance thoroughly established in geology, it is
that the crust of our globe has been subjected to a great and sudden revolution, the epoch of
that a small number of people and animals survived the most recent cataclysm, about the
time conventionally ascribed to Noah's Flood.
Those seeking geological support for the biblical flood now looked to the sediments on
top of the rocks, assuming Noah's Flood was a more recent catastrophe than the geolo-
gical revolutions recorded in hard rock. The most influential nineteenth-century diluvialist
was William Buckland, a minister in the Church of England and Oxford's first professor of
geology. He passionately defended the traditional view of Noah's Flood but acknowledged
that the six days of Creation could not be taken literally. The son of a clergyman, Buckland
knew that geology would instantly become a respectable science if he could show that it
validated the Genesis flood.
A man of his times, Buckland straddled both worlds—those of the church and field geo-
logy. He wanted to forge links between human history as recorded in classical texts and
biblical stories and earth history as revealed by geology. Like many of his contemporaries,
he believed that Moses disregarded most of earth history because it did not concern man-
kind.
Confident of the reality of Noah's Flood, Buckland saw its signature in the sculpting of
topography and the geologically recent deposition of the blanket of gravel covering much
of Britain. He saw geological evidence as supporting the universality of the Deluge. What
else could explain the giant out-of-place boulders in northern Europe from Norway to the
Alps? Made of rock with no local source, boulders the size of barns had obviously been
transported from distant sources. A really big flood seemed like the only reasonable way
to explain how to move huge rocks. Lacking reasonable alternatives, Buckland and his
