Catastrophic Revelations - The Rocks Don't Lie - page 110

reality. By the third volume of his Principles he explicitly dismissed the likelihood that a
global flood ever happened. Any current capable of gouging deep valleys into hard rock
would have swept away the fragile cinder cones of central France. Besides, Lyell's reading
of Genesis implied a tranquil flood rather than Buckland's raging waters. That an olive tree
remained standing demonstrated little, if any, scriptural support for erosion during the De-
luge. He saw no case for a globe-wrecking flood.
Lyell suggested that a local flood could have wiped out the then inhabited world if there
had been “extensive lakes elevated above the level of the ocean” in a region with “large
tracts of dry land depressed below that level.” 13 He went on to describe how this might
occur in various places. An earthquake that breached the topographic barrier holding back
Lake Superior would unleash a mighty flood down the Mississippi River valley. The low
ground surrounding the Caspian Sea sat three hundred feet below the Black Sea. Breach the
barrier between these inland seas and the lower basin would rapidly fill with rising water.
Lyell speculated that if even deeper depressions had existed in the past, similar situations
could have flooded what previously had been mountains. Here were plausible processes by
which great floods might occur.
Despite his care to avoid confrontational language, the implications of Lyell's views were
not lost on the panel reviewing him for appointment to a position at King's College in 1831,
a post he desperately needed. The decision was in the hands of an archbishop, a pair of
bishops, and two medical doctors, each of whom had the right to veto Lyell's nomination.
When Lyell was informed of their concern about his unorthodox convictions, he fired off a
letter to explain that although it was clear that the Flood could not have covered the entire
planet, there was no evidence that “the whole inhabited earth… may not have been deluged
within the last 3 or 4,000 years.” 14
Lyell's artful dance worked. He got the job and made a point of quoting one of the bish-
ops to conclude his second lecture: “it is impossible that true religion can be injured by the
ascertainment and establishment of any fact… [no science] affords a greater number of il-
lustrations of the power & wisdom exhibited in the creation than Geology.” 15 To Lyell, his
geology demonstrated the manifest wisdom of the Creator, which meant the challenge lay
in correctly interpreting both the rocks and the Bible.