Geology Reference
In-Depth Information
old, hiding fossils in rocks back at the initial Creation. In this split lay the roots of modern
creationism.
Cockburn may have failed to convince the British Association, but he was by no means
a lone voice. Scriptural geologists with little to no geological training ignored problemat-
ic geological evidence, promoted discredited theories, and invoked exceptions to biblical
literalism when it suited their arguments. These forerunners of modern creationists banded
together against the coalescing views of ever more geologists who rejected the idea that the
Creation and Noah's Flood were all there was to earth history.
Today geologists view all processes as fair game—from slow and steady everyday
change to dramatic catastrophes. It's not one or the other, as Lyell and Cockburn both por-
trayed things. Over the past several centuries, generations of geologists built their ideas on
top of preceding theories, disproving or reinforcing what they had heard before. In the pro-
cess, they learned how everyday change really does add up to big effects—given time—and
that geological catastrophes really did happen, causing mass extinctions not just once but
at least five times in the history of the world.
Along the way, the tension over how to read the geologic record—whether as an unima-
ginably long progression of everyday events or as a series of grand disasters—has charac-
terized the earth sciences. Misunderstanding the nature of this tension caused friction in the
relationship between geology and Christianity and still fuels conflict between science and
religion.
By the end of the nineteenth century, geologists had disproved a young Earth and a global
flood. Archaeologists, however, had begun to unearth ancient flood deposits in the sandy
floodplains of Mesopotamia, setting off new arguments for and against evidence thought to
record the biblical flood. Their discoveries carried startling implications about the age and
origins of the biblical flood story.
