World in Ruins - The Rocks Don't Lie - page 58

ward invoked a violent torrent to rip up and dissolve the planet's entire crust, mix it up, and
suspend it in the raging waters. As the Flood receded, dense stuff settled out first, followed
by lighter stuff. This resurfacing created the modern world, leaving fossils set in the reso-
lidified detritus after the show was over.
To Woodward the problem was what triggered wholesale dissolution of Earth's surface.
Inverting Newton's recognition that gravity held solid bodies together, he proposed that a
temporary suspension of gravity dissolved the world into a chaotic mass. If God just flicked
gravity off and then on again, it would create an instant deluge. Things settled out when
gravity turned back on, sorted by weight into distinct layers—like those seen in rocks. Or-
ganic fibers, the very fabric of nature, would hold plant and animal tissue together, allow-
ing fossils to remain intact in the resolidified earth. Then, after the Flood, some of the new
layers settled and others rose, forming modern topography.
Woodward also appreciated the theological implications of a remodeled world. Foremost
to him was how it revealed the second half of God's plan: “ 'Tis very plain that the Deluge
was not sent only as an Executioner to Mankind: but that its prime Errand was to Reform
and New-mold the Earth.” 8 Before the Flood, the world was incredibly fertile, a perfect
Eden where one need not plow or even plant to reap nature's bounty. But with idle hands
having led to humanity's downfall, it made sense that God would remake the world into a
place of no free rides, where eking out an existence required constant labor. Destroying the
world, and mankind along with it, was the ultimate act of kindness.
For the Destruction of the Earth was not only an Act of the profoundest Wisdom and Forecast, but the most monu-
mental Proof, that could ever possibly have been, of Goodness, Compassion, and Tenderness, in the Author of our
Being. 9
For naturalists, Woodward's theory improved upon Burnet's in that it explained how
fossils came to be incorporated into rocks. Still, Woodward caught even more flack than
Burnet because he made a simple testable prediction—what we today consider a hallmark
of good science. If Woodward was right, then the rocks and fossils within them would be
ordered from densest on the bottom to lightest on top, reflecting the order in which things
settled out.