>Renewed greeting, Jim.
>
>Your statement above regarding a "uniformitarian position" may be true of
>Glen, but it is not true as a general statement. The Rev. William
>Buckland, Professor of Geology at Oxford in the early 19th century is the
>most famous geologist attempting to support Noah's Flood as a geological
>event. This was most completely stated in Reliquiae Diluvianae (Relics of
>the Flood) in 1822. He later abandoned a global flood as his offered
>evidence was found to have better explanations. The Rev. Adam Sedgwick,
>Professor of Geology at the same time at Cambridge, recanted support for a
>global flood in his Presidential Address to the Geological Society of
>London in 1830. Both of these men were creationists and explicit opponents
>of uniformitarianism. In the Address by Sedgwick noted above, Sedgwick
>praised the general quality of Lyell's just-printed Principles of Geology
>except for its uniformitarianism, which he specifically denounced. A
>general rejection of a global flood can be found in the geological
>literature of the 1830's onward. Although Lyell's book was also published
>at this time, all the leading catastrophist geologists had abandoned
>support for the Flood, while also rejecting Lyell's uniformitarianism.
I want to point out once again that I did not start out as a
"uniformitarianist" and I still believe in miracles and contrary to Jim's
sophistry, I do not reject miracles. Jesus rose from the dead and that IS a
miracle which is the basis for my salvation. Any one who believes that Jesus
rose from the dead can not rule miracles out of the univers. Jim knows that
and I find his sophistry on this subject less than admirable. (Sorry Jim,
but that is the way I feel and I probably need to take a break for a while)
I started as a full-fledged young-earth creationist who firmly believed in a
one-year, global flood in which all land life on earth except for those on
the ark, was extinguished. I held this view for the first 18 years of my
professional career. I wrote 20+ articles for the Creation REsearch Society
Quarterly, Ghost wrote the evolution section for Josh McDowell's Reasons
Skeptics Should Consider Christianity, and gave the very first paper at the
first International Conference on Creationism. I was a dedicated
young-earther and global flood advocate.
But like Buckland and Sedgewick, I could not successfully solve the problems
geological observation presents to the global flood. I was always having to
say, "I can't explain that within my view". I finally figured that
something terrible had to be wrong with the way we Christians were
approaching the Scripture and/or the flood. And I seriously doubted for a
while that the Bible was true because none of the data I worked with
supported my view of earth history. That is what young-earth creationism
eventually does to many scientists (see the Steve Robertson paper on my Web
page for another take on this.)
What saddens and frustrates me is that well meaning people who have no
geological knowledge or experience, have never been on a geologic field trip
to actually make scientific measurements on the rocks, reject what I and
other geologists say simply because it violates the young earth/global flood
perspective. (Art is one of the very few global flood advocates that does
not deny the problems). Jim, a lawyer, has not studied geology and has no
conception of the vast amount of geologic data which contradicts the global
flood hypothesis (little this data is altered by philosophical bias. One
can estimate 13 million varves in the Green River fm regardless of whether
one is a YEC or an OEC. One can observe thousands of different layers in the
geologic column with footprints on them with some of the footprints pressing
plants into the mud and squashing clams which were living in the mud. One
can see salt with pollen grains and micrometeorites in the middle of the
geologic column. How can a flood deposit salt?) While someone like Jim may
say they are able to evaluate the data, one must first know the data IN
DETAIL. Superficial answers won't work if one wants to be honest with the
observational data.
Christians have a choice. We can opt for a view like mine which has a flood
which fits the Biblical description, or we can continue to opt for a global
flood which has found very little scientific support in the past 150 years.
Our choice is simple. Do we want the flood described in the Bible to be a
true historical event or do we want it to be a myth. If we want to make
the flood a fairy tale, all we have to do is continue the path we have
chosen, defending the indefensible. I continue to cry for those, like me,
who will be taught YEC and then go on to have a severe crisis of faith which
often leads to leaving the faith. Why do we do this to our children?
glenn
Adam, Apes, and Anthropology: Finding the Soul of Fossil Man
and
Foundation, Fall and Flood
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm