Geology Reference
In-Depth Information
Then it hit him. The world was completely different before the Flood. The water in
today's oceans would cover a smooth, topography-free globe to a depth of about the bib-
lically proscribed fifteen cubits (just under twenty-five feet). And if Earth was originally
featureless, there was no ocean aboveground. Instead, a primordial ocean must have exis-
ted underground.
In Burnet's view of the Creation, God commanded the elements to sort out by density,
the heaviest sinking to the center and lighter stuff forming outer layers. Gravity then settled
the original chaotic mass into a dense core surrounded by a layer of water and an outer en-
velope of air. A greasy floating layer eventually coalesced into an outer crust like the shell
of an egg. In this way, disorganized chaos became a habitable planet. Close to a perfect
sphere, the primitive Earth had the perfect shape for a perfect paradise, something worthy
of divine creation.
Burnet's early Earth also enjoyed an endless summer. And while this may have sounded
like paradise to an Englishman, all that sunshine gradually warmed the planet, causing it to
expand and form fissures at the base of the crust. It also began to dry and crack the planet's
outer shell. As the great subterranean ocean heated up, its expanding vapors pressed against
the planet's weakened crust.
Burnet's imagination ran with the idea as he proposed that divinely timed cracks propag-
ated to the surface right at the peak of human wickedness, just after Noah finished building
his ark. When the outer crust collapsed into the interior sea, humanity's ancestral paradise
foundered into the abyss. Water shot high into the air and sloshed around for months, cre-
ating and sculpting topography. This left the planet in ruins, rugged mountains replacing
smooth plains as tumultuous waves resurfaced the world.
To get rid of all the water, Burnet simply had it drain back down into cracks in the sea-
floor. Deep caves and volcanoes proved the presence of cavities beneath the continents.
Shouldn't there be similar caverns beneath the seas? A subterranean drain also provided a
handy explanation for how the seas never overflowed even though rivers drained continu-
ously into them (although evaporation, of course, turned out to provide a better explana-
tion).
Taking his cue from natural philosophers, Burnet did not invoke divine intervention to
explain Noah's Flood. He called upon divine planning. Using reason to explain the origin
