We have records going back to at least the 2nd Century AD of Christians interpreting rock layers as evidence from Noah's flood. However, even before the middle of the last Century (before Darwin's ideas on evolution) the Flood was relegated to a superficial veneer of sediments largely irrelevant to global geology. Modern day creationists attempt to restore the Flood as a global, Earth-transforming event that is explained ultimately as God's judgment on sinful humanity. However, there are some serious differences of opinion amongst creationists about the way basic geologic evidences should be interpreted. This article reviews some of the more significant issues and provides an introduction to recolonisation approaches to understanding Earth history.
The pioneering scholars of geology in the 17th Century developed their thinking in the context of the Creation, the Flood and the New Creation (as you might expect of people influenced by Biblical literature). The Flood was perceived to have eroded the antediluvian world and have left sediments, which are still to be seen covering the Earth. Some pointed to fossils in mountains as confirmation of this reconstruction of the past.
As time went on, it became less fashionable to link Earth science with the Biblical text and this trend was accompanied by a proliferation of speculative thinking. People explored geological models involving cometary impacts, earthquakes, stratification governed by the specific gravity of materials, chemical precipitation, earth cooling, and so on. The problem was that whilst these ideas appeared to work with specific data, they did not work outside those selected data. The quest continued for a coherent interpretative approach to the earth's geological history.
A major change in thinking came with James Hutton in the late 18th Century, who based his geological ideas on two philosophical positions: empiricism and Deism. Empiricism meant that the processes of interest must be exclusively accessible to our senses and consequently amenable to scientific enquiry (this was a conscious move away from speculative models and from any lingering tendency to work with biblical revelation) and Deism meant that these same processes were ordained of God to maintain the Earth as a fit home for mankind, animals and plants. Hutton developed the concept of a rock cycle, which he regarded as God's way of renewing the surface of the Earth in a continuous series of cycles. Deism led Hutton to make some appeal to God's government of the world, and he did have a place for creation in the remote past, but most significantly Hutton had no concept of the Flood.
Geologists in the early part of the 19th Century became less interested in "global models" and instead were absorbed in clarifying their understanding of the stratified rocks. They realised that the geological strata exhibited patterns. The lower rocks were often altered and hard, with marine fossils and extinct life forms. The upper rocks were much softer and had fossils of land animals and plants as well as marine animals (often more closely identifiable with living forms). Distinctive sequences of fossils were found, enabling rocks separated by large distances to be correlated. (Note 1)
Many of this generation of geologists had a Christian background and wanted to retain a belief in the Flood. As they came to recognise the Earth's widespread sequence of rocks, which came to be known as the Geological Column, they identified its uppermost layers as Flood deposits. They called this horizon the Diluvium (after the Deluge). It comprised sands, clays and pebble-beds, often with the remains of mammal bones and a great variety of other animals and plants. A few protests were made by a group of writers known as the "Scriptural geologists". They were rightly convinced that the Flood should have left a more significant record, but they were either ignored or treated as incompetent. Some of them deserved to be heard, but because they put so little effort into explaining field data, and because they wrote in isolation, their message carried little weight. (Note 2)
This situation continued for several decades until in the 1840s Louis Agassiz reinterpreted the Diluvium as deposits left by glacial activity. These deposits are now classed as "Quaternary". After Agassiz, the local flood theory became popular in Christian circles.
The trend in interpretation was to push the strata associated with the Deluge "up" the geological column until it disappeared from sight as a global phenomenon. This may be understood by reference to Figure 1.
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Figure 1: The Geological Column (simplified) |
By the end of the 19th Century, most Bible-believing Christians accepted the local Flood concept and generally adopted biblical interpretations that meant that they did not have to engage in a debate about how rocks should be understood. This situation continued until the 1920s, when George McCready Price, a member of the Seventh Day Adventists, picked up the issue. Following a lead given by Ellen White, who he regarded as a prophetess, Price threw himself into the work of challenging many of the accepted "truths" of earth science. He argued that the sequence of fossils that was associated with the Geological Column was illusory; he suggested that glacial deposits were actually late-stage Flood deposits; he disputed the concept of overthrusting. He set out to revive the idea that the fossiliferous rock record testified to the Flood and, despite many rebuffs, he did convince some people that he was on the right lines.
Price's wholesale rejection of the Geological Column did not satisfy Harold Clark (1944). Clark had once been a student of Price and promulgated his views until field experience persuaded him otherwise. He chose to defend the Geological Column and justified the practice of correlating strata within and between continents utilising fossils. He explained the order of fossils in terms of ecological zonation (that is, the rising floodwaters overwhelmed different ecosystems at different times during the Flood year). Clark affirmed the glacial interpretation of Agassiz, although he regarded some of "glacial" features as deposits of retreating floodwaters. (Note 3)
These two men failed to reach agreement over these important issues, and their differences of view have continued to affect the advocates of diluvialism ever since.
1961 saw the publication of John Whitcomb and Henry Morris's book "The Genesis Flood", which is widely perceived to be a landmark in the history of diluvialism (Note 4). As far as Flood models are concerned, they took a position similar to Price on the Geological Column, concluding that it is artificial and misleading. However, they recognised that as far as any local area was concerned, patterns in the fossils were present and needed explaining. They utilised Clark's eco-zone approach (plus two other concepts known as differential mobility and hydrological sorting) to explain these patterns. Whitcomb and Morris also followed Clark, rather than Price, in advocating a post-Flood glacial phase.
Although diluvialism received a tremendous impetus from the publication of "The Genesis Flood", the basic differences between Price and Clark concerning the Geological Column were not satisfactorily resolved. Some diluvialists have continued the attack on the Geological Column concept by alleging illogical reasoning, unwarranted correlations and contrived explanations of how "old" rocks are found over "young" rocks. Other diluvialists agreed with the conclusion emerging from the middle of the 19th Century: the Geological Column amounts to a valid summary of field evidences. These people have sought to explain real patterns revealed in the rock record.
As an example of what this means, consider deposits that contain dinosaur bones and others that contain mammal bones. Those who reject the Geological Column suggest that the dinosaurs perished in one locality at a similar time (measured in days) as the mammals perished in another locality. The mistake, in their view, is to correlate the local stratigraphical columns to infer that the fossils were formed at totally different times in unrelated incidents. By contrast, those who accept the Geological Column say that there was an ecosystem dominated by dinosaurs at one time on the Earth, and another mammalian ecosystem being globally abundant at a later time. In other words, a historical narrative linked to physical explanation is sought for the sequential order of the fossiliferous strata, whilst rejecting the millions of years that have been attached to the Column.
Most of the popular literature advocating diluvialism has followed the lead of Whitcomb and Morris. Consequently, it can be confusing to people new to the issues to find some diluvialists advocating concepts which are rejected as "evolutionary" and "uniformitarian" in much popular creationist literature. It is particularly for people who may be struggling with this tension (or who want to know what the debate is about) that this article is written.
Regarding the existence of the Geological Column, there are many expositions, including Watts (1985), Garton (1990), Robinson (1997) and Ritland (1981), Ritland (1982). In addition, in 1996, a small international group of diluvialists participated in a gathering that set out to clarify the debate. A statement on the Geological Column was prepared and subsequently published (Snelling et al., 1997) in Origins and elsewhere.
Regarding fossil successions, Whitcomb and Morris interpreted most, if not all, of the Palaeozoic-to-Tertiary strata as Flood rocks. However, what this has done is to create an acute tension in the minds of those wanting geological interpretation to be guided by Scripture. From a biblical perspective, all air breathers save those in the ark were dead by day 40 (and a strong case can be made that they died on day 1). Then for the rest of the Flood year, there were no air-breathers around to leave tracks that could be fossilised. So, the geological record should show evidence of strata where there are no tracks of air-breathers. The Recolonisation approach identifies this hiatus as the Precambrian and most of the Palaeozoic - since undisputed tracks of air-breathers first appear in the Permian. In strata above this, tracks are relatively common: dinosaurs and reptiles, birds and mammals. This appearance of tracks is interpreted by Recolonisers as a sign that recolonisation was under way - these tracks were made by animals descended from those preserved on the Ark. But the Whitcomb and Morris model has no hiatus to point to. In their book, mammals and birds were envisaged as living almost to the end of the Flood year. As the scriptural constraint has become more widely appreciated by those in the Whitcomb and Morris tradition, the time for air-breathers to survive outside the Ark has been reduced to 150 days - but still no trackway hiatus in the rock record has been identified. This is a fundamental problem for such views: on biblical grounds, the recolonisation was underway by the Permian (Note 5).
It is fair to say that there has been an emerging understanding of the issues by Recolonisers during the past 15 years and this process is ongoing. Scheven's view (1984, 1990, 1993) was that the Precambrian basement rocks represent created rocks, the Palaeozoic strata represent Flood deposits and Mesozoic and Cenozoic rocks are all post-Flood. Later, Robinson (1996) and others came to associate both the Precambrian and Palaeozoic rocks with the Flood year, and (with Scheven) interpreted the Mesozoic and Cenozoic rocks as post-Flood catastrophism contemporary with the recolonisation of the earth by air-breathing and marine animals. More recently still, stimulated by Robinson, views have sharpened so that the deepest rocks in the Precambrian are thought to witness to the 40-day Mabbul, or destruction of the Antediluvian land during the Flood. Then follows the effects of the rest of the Flood year and the post-Flood recovery. Although Noah and the animals disembarked at the end of that year, there is no clear horizon in the geological record that correlates with this time, which leaves those adopting the Recolonisation approach to Earth history free to explore the data and to develop testable hypotheses.
This article could be greatly extended by referring to other papers and authors and to the wider debate within diluvialist circles (Note 6). However, this would go beyond the goals of this article. It is not possible here to explore technical issues, although this is what must be done by participants in the debate. The urgent need is for systematic and detailed field studies supported by careful theoretical and biblical thinking.
Notes
1. For further background reading on the early history
of geology, see Tyler, D.J. The
discovery of geological time on the BCS web site.
2. For more on the Scriptural Geologists of the 18th Century,
see various articles by Terry
Mortenson and his new book The
Great Turning Point.
3. The ecological zonation theory is still widely held
and can be found in numerous books. A recent affirmation is by Elaine
Kennedy on the GRI web site.
4. Testimonials to the impact made by "The Genesis
Flood" are not hard to find on the Web; Brown,
ICR, Thompson,
etc.
5. For further reading on this biblical constraint for
diluvialism, see Garton (1991) and for a focused comment on the British dinosaur
tracks, see Tyler (2003).
6. A bibliography
relevant to recolonisation.
References
Clark, H.W. 1946.The new diluvialism, Science Publications, California.
Garton, M. 1990. Rocks and Scripture: investigating earth's history, Origins,
3(9), 4-9.
Garton, M. 1991. Rocks and Scripture: on the right track? Origins, 4(10),
3-8.
Ritland, R. 1981. Historical development of the current understanding of the
Geologic Column. Part 1. Origins, 8(2):59-76.
Ritland, R. 1982. Historical development of the current understanding of the
Geologic Column. Part 2. Origins, 9(1):28-50.
Robinson, S. 1996. Can Flood Geology explain the Geological Column? CEN
Technical Journal, 10(1), 32-69.
Robinson, S. 1997. The Geological Column. Origins, (23), 14-30.
Scheven, J. 1984. The interpretation of fossils and the principle of actualism.
Biblical Creation, 7(18), 5-19.
Scheven, J. 1990. The geological record of biblical earth history. Origins,
3(8), 8-13.
Scheven, J. 1993. Ammonites, Mussels and Cockles. Origins, (14), 10-17.
Snelling, A.A. et al. 1997, The Geological Record (Statement). Origins,
(22), 28-29.
Tyler, D.J. 2003. Tracking dinosaurs in Britain, Origins, (36), December,
6-9.
Watts, D. 1985. Rock strata and the geological column. Biblical Creation,
7(20), 59-65.
David J. Tyler.
September 2004
This article is revised and updated version of Tyler, D.J. (2000), Patterns in the rock record, Origins, No.27, February, 29-31.
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