Geology Reference
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recite the same story.” 9 Ramm advised evangelical Christians not to confuse interpretation
with revelation. Just because the Bible was the infallible Word of God did not mean that it
was always obvious as to what it meant regarding scientific matters. Confidence that one
understood the clear meaning of scripture did not necessarily mean one did.
In defending radioactive dating of rocks, Ramm related how experiments under a wide
range of pressures and temperatures showed no effect on the rate of radioactive decay. Ra-
dioactive isotopes changed at a constant rate. Geologists could tell how long a sample of
uranium (or carbon) had been decaying in a similar way to how we could “measur[e] how
much gas we have left in the tank [to get] an idea how many miles we have driven.” 10
For Ramm, the idea that Earth existed for millions of years before God reconditioned
it for human use adequately reconciled Genesis and geology. In the epilogue to his topic,
Ramm pointed out that not only did evangelicals of his day not believe that Earth is either
flat or at the center of the universe but that many considered the findings of modern geo-
logy to be perfectly consistent with their faith.
Ramm's topic caused quite a stir among fundamentalists. A leader of the self-described
new evangelicals, he sought to engage modern culture, avoided belligerency, and embraced
scholarship. Shortly after it was published Billy Graham praised Ramm's topic and called
for a new view of biblical inspiration that respected and accommodated modern science. It
seemed as though the idea of a global flood was vanquished. No serious scientist or main-
stream theologian still gave it any thought. The key to accepting the fact that science and
scripture could peacefully coexist lay in how one interpreted the Bible—just as it always
had.
Meanwhile, twentieth-century geologists had settled into a comfortably uniformitarian
worldview. Studying processes active today, they believed, was the key to understanding
the worlds of the past. Anti-catastrophist views were so embedded in conventional thinking
that when a young upstart discovered evidence for an enormous flood, it took most of the
century for his colleagues to accept his heretical notion. But as geologists reluctantly came
to appreciate, once again, the geologic role and topographic signature of catastrophic flood-
ing, they developed a foundation for rational explanations of many of the world's flood
stories, including, some would argue, Noah's Flood.
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