TCQ Week 7: Geology and the Bible

Our study has taken us to some exciting and interesting places. We’ve learned that:

1. Learning about science helps us learn more about God.
2. Science and faith are not enemies—history shows that science started from a belief in God.
3. The difference between scientists who believe in the Bible and those who don’t often comes down to what assumptions they accept as true.
4. When we look at the world through the lens of biblical history, we can understand the same data as mainstream scientists.

This is especially clear in the field of geology. For over 300 years, geologists have tried to “free science from Moses,” as Charles Lyell put it. We have seen that the idea of “uniformitarianism” is at the heart of most opposition against God’s Word in all fields of science. This belief started in geology.

So the questions remain:

1. Why did the belief in “deep time” (billions of years of Earth history) arise, and is there any evidence that it’s true?
2. How should we understand this information as students of the Bible and creation?
3. How can geology bring God glory when it has been used against him for so long?

We’ll answer these questions and more in this lesson. Here we go!

What About Billions of Years?

The history of geological thought is long, complicated, and unknown to most people. To make it simpler, we’ll put thinkers from about the 1600s to now into three main groups:

Uniformitarianists, Catastrophists, and the “Scriptural Geologists”

After the modern scientific revolution began, people became more interested in using new scientific methods to understand the history of life on Earth. Writers and thinkers started to explore how life developed, and since fossils found in rock layers were important, they needed to understand what was happening to the Earth.

In “The Great Turning Point,” Terry Mortenson writes:

In Zoological Philosophy (1809) Jean Lamarck attempted to explain the similarities and differences between living and fossil creatures by four laws of gradual evolutionary transformation commonly summarized as the inheritance of acquired characteristics. He believed in spontaneous generation, rejected the notion of extinctions, and became a fierce opponent of the catastrophist Georges Cuvier. So by the latter part of the 18th century, a number of factors were preparing the ground for the geological revolution of the coming century.

And then it happened. Mortenson writes:

The years 1790–1820 have been called the “heroic age” of geology. During this time, geology truly became established as a separate field of scientific study. More extensive geological observations began to be made, new methods were developed for systematically arranging the rock formations, and the Geological Society of London, the first society fully devoted to geology, was born.

Around this time, a debate began called the Neptunist-Vulcanist debate. It sounds cooler than it is. It’s about whether water or volcanic activity mainly created the rock layers.

The main supporter of the Vulcanist theory was James Hutton. Mortenson says:

Characteristic of Hutton’s view was its uniformitarianism: everything in the rock record must and can be explained by present day processes of erosion, sedimentation, volcanoes, and earthquakes. Earth history was cyclical — a long process of denudation of the continents into the seas and the gradual raising of the sea floors (by the internal heat of the earth) to make new continents, which in turn would be eroded to the sea only to rise again later. This obviously expanded the age of the earth almost limitlessly. In fact, Hutton denied that geology should be concerned with origins. He asserted instead that he saw “no vestige of a beginning or prospect of an end” in the geological record. His view was a clear denial of any global catastrophe, such as Noah’s flood, which was for him a geological non-event.

Unfortunately, neither the Neptunists nor the Vulcanists paid enough attention to fossils. After their debates, a new group of geologists called Catastrophists emerged.

Catastrophists had a few common beliefs:

They believed in God. Most of them believed in God and the Bible. But they didn’t worry about making their ideas match the Bible exactly. They thought life on Earth came from supernatural events.

They cared about fossils and life. They believed studying fossils and geological activity together was important. They noticed big differences in the types of fossils in different rock layers and thought this showed something different from what uniformitarians believed.

They believed in catastrophes and special creation. They thought Earth’s history was marked by fast, unpredictable, and even supernatural events, not slow, gradual changes. They saw the rock record as showing periods of big changes followed by new creation.

Many people thought catastrophism was a problem because it seemed like theology was influencing science. But then, Charles Lyell’s work dealt a major blow to catastrophism.

From 1830 to 1833, Lyell published “Principles of Geology,” reviving Hutton’s ideas. He argued for a strict uniformitarianism, insisting that only current processes at current rates should be used to interpret the past. This theory further reduced the significance of Noah’s flood and expanded Earth’s history even more. In fact, as Mortenson writes, “Lyell saw himself as ‘the spiritual saviour of geology, freeing the science from the old dispensation of Moses.’”

However, during this time, a group of scientists and clergymen opposed both uniformitarians and catastrophists. They became known as scriptural geologists, Mosaic geologists, or biblical literalists.

These scriptural geologists believed that Moses wrote Genesis 1–11 under divine inspiration and that these chapters should be taken literally as a reliable, historical account. They thought the Noachian flood was a unique global catastrophe that produced much of the fossil-bearing rock formations and that Earth was about 6,000 years old. They opposed both the uniformitarian theory of James Hutton and Charles Lyell and the catastrophist theory of Georges Cuvier and others, and any biblical interpretations that accompanied those theories.

Unfortunately, we know who “won” the debate in the scientific community.

Over time, uniformitarianism became the dominant belief in mainstream science. Scientists adopted this perspective because it provided a consistent and observable framework for understanding geological formations. The gradual, consistent processes described by uniformitarianism allowed for predictable and testable hypotheses, which fit well with the scientific method.

As researchers collected more data from rock layers, fossils, and geological formations, they found that uniformitarian principles could explain these findings without invoking supernatural events. The consistency of these explanations across different types of evidence reinforced the idea that the same processes we see today have been shaping the Earth for millions of years.

Today, uniformitarianism underpins many scientific disciplines. In geology, it is used to explain the formation of rock layers and fossil records. In biology, people believe it supports the theory of evolution, suggesting that small, gradual changes over time lead to the diversity of life we see today. In astronomy, it helps scientists hypothesize about the formation and development of celestial bodies through processes like star formation and planetary accretion. This principle provides a framework across various fields, allowing scientists to interpret the natural world through observable and measurable phenomena.

Is There Proof? Radiometric Dating Explained.

Radiometric dating was developed in the early 1900s as scientists looked for better ways to measure geological time. This technique relies on the decay of radioactive elements within rocks. The most common methods include uranium-lead dating, potassium-argon dating, and carbon-14 dating. Each method measures the amount of radioactive parent elements and their decay products, called daughter elements.

Here’s how radiometric dating works: Radioactive elements decay at a constant rate, known as a half-life, which is the time it takes for half of the original radioactive atoms to decay. By measuring the ratio of parent to daughter elements and knowing the half-life, scientists can calculate the age of the rock. For example, in uranium-lead dating, uranium-238 decays to lead-206 with a half-life of about 4.5 billion years. If a rock contains equal amounts of uranium-238 and lead-206, it is inferred to be about 4.5 billion years old.

For radiometric dating to be accurate, several assumptions must be true:

1. No Contamination: The sample must stay unchanged since it was formed, meaning no parent or daughter elements were added or removed by things like erosion or water.
2. Constant Decay Rate: The rate at which radioactive elements decay must have stayed the same over time.
3. Known Initial Conditions: Scientists must know the original ratio of parent to daughter elements. This includes assuming there were no daughter elements present at the start or being able to account for any that were.

While these assumptions are generally accepted in mainstream science, they are not without controversy. For example, if the initial conditions were different than assumed or if contamination happened, the calculated ages could be wrong. Also, if decay rates have changed in the past, the method’s accuracy would be compromised. These issues highlight the reliance on uniformitarianism, which assumes a natural and constant history of the earth.

But… what has history on the earth truly been like? For that, we must turn to the book of Genesis.

Geology and the Flood

Far from the cutesy nursery wall-hangings depicting a short, stubby ark with oversized animals floating along in a blissful sea, Noah’s flood was a huge disaster that affected all life on earth. The flood takes up only two chapters in Scripture, but many of us don’t realize how important it is.

For me, I didn’t understand its importance until about ten years ago when I got interested in apologetics.

“Apologetics” is defending the Christian faith. Soon, you find out that atheists often challenge the faith using science. One of their main targets is the flood. How we view all of geology and the history of life depends on whether or not the flood happened.

Did the Flood Really Happen?

For thousands of years, most people believed that the Bible teaches a global flood. But now, many Christians believe the earth is old, and they try to fit this with Scripture. Science says you can’t have both a global flood like the one in the Bible and a very old earth. The billions of dead things found all over the earth must be from either one or the other. There isn’t enough time in the fossil record for both.

Here’s why we believe the flood was global:

The Clarity of Scripture

Most Christians believe in the clarity of Scripture, which means that while not everything in Scripture will be clear, most things will be, especially those necessary for faith and practice. I like to ask those who believe in a local flood, “How would the text be written any clearer or differently if the flood was global?” I’ve never received a satisfactory answer. The text seems to be written exactly as it should be if God wanted to convey the idea of a global flood, not one local to a particular region of the earth.

Other details in the Bible, like the Garden of Eden, suggest a global flood. It describes a mountainous garden with four rivers, but we don’t see a place like that today, suggesting it was restructured by the flood.

The Description of the Event

The way the event is described only makes sense if a global flood is true. This is clear in Genesis 7:17-23:

And the waters prevailed, and were increased greatly upon the earth; and the ark went upon the face of the waters. And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered. Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered. And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man: All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died. And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark. (Emphasis mine.)

It’s hard to imagine what that language means if it’s not describing total coverage of the entire planet. Furthermore, Noah was given the same instructions as Adam to “be fruitful and multiply.” This suggests a “re-creation” of the entire earth and that Noah is the “new Adam,” just as Christ later becomes the “new Adam” when he made a way for the re-creation of our hearts through salvation.

Oddities if the Flood Wasn’t Global

One reason to believe something is true is by seeing how well it explains the facts. There’s an old saying in medicine, “If you hear hoofbeats, think horse, not zebra.” This means the simplest idea that explains the most facts is usually correct.

For example, why did God have Noah build a boat to survive the flood? Couldn’t they have just gone to a different place? Why were birds, who could fly anywhere, taken on the boat? If the flood was meant to restart creation, why only destroy one area?

Each of these questions needs a different explanation if you don’t believe in a global flood. But a global flood answers all these questions at once.

Realistic Ideas in the Flood

In the late 90s, Dr. John Woodmorappe did an “Ark Feasibility Study.” This study concluded that based on the given dimensions and instructions, the Ark could have been built with their technology, would have been seaworthy, and could have housed all the necessary animals.

There are over 300 flood myths around the world, many with a similar story to the one in the Bible. Most of these stories include unrealistic details, suggesting they are cultural tales, while the biblical account is realistic. It’s likely these myths are other cultural retellings of the true account described in the Bible.

Consistent New Testament Teaching

The global flood is necessary to explain important details in Biblical theology and statements in the New Testament. The flood is a judgment on sin (Genesis 6:1-4). Romans 5:12 says sin came into the world because of Adam’s transgression against God.

In the fossil record, we see billions of dead things showing carnivory, suffering, disease, cancer, and thorns. These things did not exist before Adam’s fall. Therefore, these organisms must have been buried during the flood, or else they would have existed before Adam. Without a global flood, we can’t make sense of sin in the history of life on earth.

Jesus compares the flood of Noah’s day with his return, a global event, in Matthew 24:37-39:

But as the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.

And in 2 Peter 3:3-7, the flood is between the creation of the earth and the final judgment, both global events. If the flood is local, these statements don’t make sense, and the very things that the Bible says were introduced as a result of Adam’s sin were buried before Adam was alive. This simply does not work. The flood must be global.

What Was the Flood Like?

The flood began with 40 days and nights of violent, torrential rain, hot jet-streams shooting up from the bottom of the oceans, massive volcanic activity, and very likely even meteoric impacts from the heavens. The waters continued to rise and prevail on the earth for 150 days.

After that, they started to recede, and in a little over a year’s time total, they were able to come off of the ark.

Catastrophic plate tectonics is a model suggested by some geologists and creation scientists to explain the big changes that happened during the biblical flood. According to this model, the flood was not just about rising water levels but also involved major geological events.

^[1]3D Earth Picture

1. Start of the Flood: The “fountains of the great deep” bursting forth (Genesis 7:11) is seen as the beginning of catastrophic plate tectonics. This would have caused massive underwater volcanic activity, releasing hot water and magma from under the Earth’s crust.
2. Rapid Plate Movements: Normally, the Earth’s tectonic plates move a few centimeters per year. During the flood, these plates would have moved several meters per second. The heat from the mantle could have driven this rapid movement, causing the plates to break apart and subduct quickly.
3. New Ocean Crust Formation: As the plates moved, new oceanic crust would have formed rapidly at mid-ocean ridges. This new crust would have pushed ocean water up, adding to the rising floodwaters.
4. Volcanic Eruptions and Tsunamis: The intense volcanic activity would have produced ash clouds and tsunamis, spreading sediments worldwide.
5. Meteoric Impacts: Some suggest that meteor impacts during the flood could have worsened the catastrophic events, adding more heat and disruption to the Earth’s surface.
6. Mountain Formation and Continental Shifts: As the tectonic plates collided and subducted, they would have quickly formed mountain ranges and shifted continents. This rapid mountain-building explains marine fossils found at high elevations.
7. Receding Floodwaters: As the rapid plate movements slowed, new ocean basins would have deepened, allowing the floodwaters to recede. The Earth’s crust would have stabilized, draining water from the continents into these basins.
8. Post-Flood Environment: After the flood, the Earth’s surface would have been greatly changed. The climate might have been affected by volcanic aerosols, possibly leading to an ice age. The sediment layers left by the floodwaters would have a mix of marine and land fossils, showing the massive reshaping of the Earth’s surface.

^[2]CPT Video

Catastrophic plate tectonics offers a way to understand the geological and hydrological changes described in the biblical flood. This model suggests that the flood involved rapid and massive movements of the Earth’s crust, resulting in significant volcanic activity, the formation of new ocean basins, and the reshaping of continents and mountains. It helps to explain the widespread sedimentary layers, fossil distribution, and geological features we see today.

What’s great about this is, plate tectonics is well understood by mainstream science. Our version simply introduces a rapid element that helps explain even more than the slow, gradual version does.

This model is not without problems and unanswered questions. For example, the amount of heat that would have been generated to accelerate radioactive decay could have boiled the earth’s oceans and potentially destroyed the planet. Somehow God seems to have both destroyed and preserved the earth, but we’re not sure how.

We also have some dinosaur eggs and funny-looking formations called stromatolites that are in places where they really shouldn’t be if our understanding of the flood is correct, so those still need explaining.

How does the Flood Affect History?

The flood is actually a turning point for human history.

If the earth is old, then a global flood never happened. The introduction of sin and death into the world did not happen as described in the Bible. And there are serious questions as to the legitimacy of Jesus’ saving work.

If the flood did happen, however, then the biblical accounting of sin and Jesus’ work on the cross are in tact. But the flood is also important for how we understand fossils and rocks in the earth, and radiometric dating methods.

Fossils

Most of the time when you hear about a well-preserved fossils, water is involved. This is no mistake. Contrary to the notion that most of the time fossils are found in rock layers that have formed very gradually, many fossils we find come from areas that we know must have formed from rapid sedimentation.

For as vast as the history of life on earth is, if deep time and evolution are true, we are actually missing an enormous percentage of the fossil record. In fact, experts estimate that we’re missing about 50 BILLION (with a B!) species that existed in the past that don’t exist in the present. This is because, in the fossil record we have, for every one layer we find, there are potentially 100-300 layers missing that have eroded away. (In other words, there are nowhere near enough organisms to account for the amount of time they suggest has occurred).

Rocks

Within the rock record, there are difficult-to-explain features if the earth is old, but these are much easier to explain if the earth is young.

In geology, megasequences are large layers of sedimentary rock that cover continents and show significant geological events. When seen through the biblical flood, these megasequences provide strong evidence for a global, catastrophic event.

^[3]Megasequence Video

The Sauk Megasequence is the earliest known megasequence. It has widespread shallow marine deposits that extend over much of North America. This large coverage suggests a major flooding of the continent, fitting with the early stages of a global flood.

Following the Sauk is the Tippecanoe Megasequence, which also covers a large part of North America. This sequence contains extensive marine deposits, indicating another significant sea over the land. The uniformity and size of these deposits support the idea of a massive, continent-wide flood.

Next is the Kaskaskia Megasequence, known for its thick marine limestone and shale layers. These deposits further show major sea level rises, matching the floodwaters described in the Bible. The presence of marine environments far inland points to a dramatic and rapid flooding event.

The Absaroka Megasequence is characterized by alternating marine and non-marine deposits, reflecting changes in sea levels. This pattern suggests periods of rising and receding waters, similar to the phases of the flood in Genesis. The changing environments in these layers indicate a long period of catastrophic activity.

The Zuni Megasequence contains extensive marine deposits, including evidence of deep-water environments. This sequence also covers large areas of North America, suggesting that the floodwaters covered significant parts of the continent. The depth and extent of these deposits point to a global-scale flood.

The most recent is the Tejas Megasequence, showing widespread marine deposits that cover significant parts of the continents, not just North America but globally. The presence of marine fossils and sediments across these vast areas underscores the global nature of the event, consistent with the receding and stabilization phases of the biblical flood.

These megasequences collectively provide strong evidence for a global flood. Their widespread extent across continents, the uniformity of sediment types, and the mixed fossil content all suggest rapid deposition by a massive, single event. The story of these geological formations matches closely with the account of the flood in the Bible, offering a clear record of this catastrophic event.

Dating

If we had to name a villain in the story of science vs the Bible, Uniformitarianism would be the big baddie, followed by his trusted sidekick, Radiometric Dating, both of which we touched on earlier. Uniformitarianism is the philosophical belief system, and Radiometric Dating is the supposed evidence that corroborates it. But what if neither are correct?

Because we believe the Bible, we know that earth is fundamentally scarred by at least a one-year long period of intense, global upheaval and catastrophe. That belief alone combined with other evidence we’ve mentioned throughout this series should be enough to dethrone the belief of uniformitarianism.

And although we’ve seen that Radiometric Dating has hidden assumptions it must account for, it’s still regarded as fundamentally sound by mainstream scientists. Are there observable reasons to doubt that it works, aside from questioning its assumptions? There are at least two.

Blind Experimental Evidence

Creationist field workers have taken rock samples and sent them to mainstream laboratories to be dated. The labs were not told where the samples came from, only that they were samples that needed to be dated.

Not only were the ages wildly inconsistent, but many of the formations were known recent formations yet dated via the best methods to be hundreds of thousands, and sometimes millions of, years old.

It seems as though if we don’t know the age of the rock, it’s “for sure” millions of years old, but if we do know the rock was young, it was just an anomaly.

Lots of Time, Little Time

Some rocks, believed to have formed during the flood, contain fossils and radioactive decay evidence suggesting they are millions of years old. Yet, these same rocks also show signs of being young, such as polonium halos. These halos, made by the quick decay of polonium-218, show that water moved through the rock, carrying polonium and creating halos in less than two years—much shorter than millions of years.

This evidence suggests that during the flood, radioactive decay rates were much higher than they are today. This fast decay would explain the large amount of decay seen in rocks formed during the flood, even though the flood happened only 4,500 years ago. So, while radiometric dating seems to show an old earth, the data can also be seen as evidence of a young earth with God’s intervention, matching the biblical account of creation and the flood.

How Geology Reveals the Glory and Plan of God

Geology is one of the more direct and interesting fields of science where we can see God’s glory and plan on display.

In creation, we see how he arranged the earth. At first, all the dry land was a single landmass, and there was one ocean. During the flood, that land broke apart and formed the continents we know today. God’s plan for the earth’s growth and his plan for judging sin had direct geological effects. Many believe that geological turmoil after the introduction of sin may have started the flood.

We also noted a connection between creation, the flood, and the final judgment mentioned in 2 Peter 3:7: “The heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.”

At the end of days, there will be a New Heaven and New Earth. The New Earth will have geology. Will it be like this earth’s geology? Something entirely new? We don’t know. But it will bring God glory, be free of sin, and be what he planned all along.

Though many have tried to separate science from God and the Bible, I keep finding that science relies on the glory and plan of God.