Clough Evolution Lesson 16

What About Geological Evidences?  (3) Effects of the Flood

 

Now we move to a summary discussion of a proposed Biblical framework into which to incorporate much of the data that we have been discussing in this series, the concept of a global flood.  What are the facts that we can use to build up a model of history?  I suggest the following facts: first, that there’s been a recent structuring of the heaven’s and the earth’s surface, according to Genesis 1, and by “recent” I mean within the time span as, oh, say 4,000 BC to 20,000 BC, somewhere in that time bracket I would see a structuring of the entire universe.  Of course this sounds very radical because you’re so used to seeing figures in the millions but I don’t see any reasons why those figures are true.  Recent structuring of the heavens and the earth’s surface would be one fact that we have to account for or build our model on.

 

The second fact, a curse which involved the beginning of animal and plant death, Genesis 3 coupled and compared with Romans 5; Romans 8, 1 Corinthians 15 and Revelation 22.  Here, as we’ve discussed, the curse is the beginning of animal and human death, and thus all fossils post-date Genesis 3.  As to the idea of death in a gap between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2, while I hold to the time space between these verses as I have shown above, I do not use these verses as a garbage can to dump all geological problems.  I don’t think it can be for the simple reason that there’s no evidence of a discontinuity on the surface of the earth to support this idea.

 

Third, the antediluvian earth had certain very definite characteristics according to 2 Peter 3:5.  I use 2 Peter 3:5 to refer to the fact that there was an antediluvian earth.  I would suggest the four following features of the earth in the antediluvian period. 

 

First, I would suggest that water was oozing up through the soil according to Genesis 2:6.  I think the aid there in Genesis 2:6 refers to a primeval origin of water from below the earth, whether it flowed out, it oozed up through bubbling artesian wells or whether it welled up in great channels of water I do not know, there’s evidence in Semitic literature to both ways, but at least we can say that the water oozed up from below. 

 

A second characteristic of the antediluvian earth was that plant life was presumably abundant and nutritious, since one, man could be entirely sustained by it and men lived long time spans, and I would suggest these two factors, plus the fact that evidently most of the animal kingdom survived on plants, I would suggest that this was characteristic, a plant life very abundant and nutritious. 

 

Third characteristic of the antediluvian earth was that animals were not necessarily afraid of man. 

 

Fourth, man was cultured in the antediluvian period; according to Genesis 4 culture included the working of brass and iron; most people think of the Iron Age as following the Stone Age.  I don’t think so, I think what happened was that after the flood man lost access to iron and it took him a while to recover the use of iron.  Also man, during this period was long-lived, average was about 930 years, and if you constructed the graph earlier in the series have the graphical evidence for this.  Apparently this was a very violent era, men were very violent and there could have been giants in the land, according to Genesis 6.  Extra-Biblical sources plus Genesis 6 suggest that angels freely intercoursed with man, taught them the arts and so on. 

Now the fourth fact on which we want to build a flood model is that the global flood was accompanied by once and for all seismic and meteorological disturbances and what I mean by once and for all, I mean disturbances that were unique, it wasn’t just a heavy rain and it wasn’t just a mild earthquake, these were events never to be repeated again in history except in a similar form with the Second Advent of Jesus Christ. 

 

Then the fifth fact upon which I would base or picture the history of the world is the postdiluvian earth, according to 2 Peter 3:7, and here the postdiluvian earth I would say was characterized by four features:  One, a regularity of seasons, though you may have a diminution and variation in intensity of the seasons, you do not have any suspension of the seasons.  This, by the way, is taken from Genesis 9.  Secondly, you have stable meteorological phenomenon; you have the concept of rainbows, for example, and rain, which are not suggested to have existed in the antediluvian earth.  You have plant and animal life disrupted.  In the postdiluvian earth you have the plant and animal life in an abnormal state; you have it, for example, of much inferior quality and quantity than the antediluvian.  I think today we live in a very impoverished world compared to the world of our antediluvian ancestors.  And fourthly I would say that there’s going to be no global judgment in our age except the final global judgment by fire for the return of our Lord Jesus Christ. 

 

Now the last feature which I feel the flood model must be built upon is something that happened in Genesis 10:25 and I go along with the suggestion, though I am open to alternate interpretations here, the suggestion held by Professor Melvin Cook and suggested by others in the Creation Research Society that Genesis 10:25 refers to a splitting of the continents as wells a rupture of the culture and language of the world, that you have an actual continental…and Cook’s book, Prehistory and Earth Models hypothesizes it was at this time when God broke apart Europe and North America and you have the continental drift. 

 

Now these six facts I feel can be used to build a flood model.  There are three basic requirements.  I have given seven basic facts; now to me an adequate model of the ancient history of the earth must solve at least three crucial problems.  First, it must explain existing rock formations; it must explain where the material came from and it must explain this formed into the present situation.

 

Secondly, it must explain fossil evidence, it must explain why there is a general progression and the fossils are intermingled.  Why, for example, you don’t have all sorts of fossil forms inter­mingled all over the place but you do have an assortment, you do have it more or less categorized by deposition.  This has to be explained, and if we’re to be honest…remember, as Bible-believing Christians we are not to put our brains in the closet; we are to be hardheaded and to think through things.  We’re not to build false theories, so we have to, in all honesty, be able to explain these things.  We have to explain the fossil evidence; it’s true the out of place fossils give the evolution­ary geologists a hard time but we have to explain, how then are the facts that the fossils are sorted as they are in the rock formation. 

 

And I think the third great problem that we have is that we must explain the chronometry, we must give, for example, reasons why carbon 14, argon 40 and potassium and rubidium, strontium, methods as well as the uranium lead methods give ages which are compatible with the evolutionary framework. 

 

 

With this introduction we turn to the actual flood model which I am proposing here.  And by the way, this is not original with myself; it’s a proposal basically of the Genesis flood as modified by later writers in the Creation Research Society and reflects some of my own suggestions in the area. 

 

So now I would like to go into a proposed model for ancient history.  First, I would say that the antediluvian surface was generally different than today.  This would include, this different antediluvian surface, a richness of soil from original creation and not the decay or organic matter.  You see, at the point of creation, the Garden of Eden, the soil had to be fertile and yet the fertility of the soil did not obtain from decayed matter, since there was no decayed matter to provide for the fertility at that time.  And thus the prevailing fertility of the soil was largely from the original creation richness and only secondarily, I suggest, from decaying humus. 

 

Secondly, I would suggest the soil was tremendously saturated and probably very porous due to the upwelling of water from below.  I would also suggest the possibility of a vapor canopy, based on the lack of rain and possible on the basis of Genesis 1:6.  So therefore I would say little or reduced cosmic ray production of the isotope gases, such as argon 36 and C14O2 or C14 as carbon dioxide.  I would also suggest very luxuriant plant growth.  And by the way, as an objection some people say well, you must have had a carnivorous animal regime because otherwise animal population would have overrun the antediluvian world, or at least overrun the Garden of Eden and so God could not have designed an animal kingdom without natural predators, namely the carnivorous animals feeding on other animals.  And yet interestingly enough in June 1959 Creation Research Society quarterly this question is taken up in the book review by E. Norbert Smith, a biology major at Southwestern State College at Weatherford, Oklahoma, and Mr. Smith, in his analysis of this book by V. C. Wynne-Edwards, a British biologist, is entitled Animal Dispersion in Relation to Social Behavior, and the point was that animals are able to limit their own population without the tooth and fang mechanism of Neo-Darwinianism. 

 

Mr. Smith writes in his review, “Wynne-Edwards has shown in this book that more often than not animals can and do limit their own population by many diverse mechanisms, thereby adding scientific respectability to the interpretation of a perfect creation without predation.  Second, and of considerably more importance the possibility that animals automatically gain, can and do control their own numbers greatly weakens the second of the three legs that support Darwinian evolution, that is, excessive fecundancy, tooth and fang competition for survival and survival of the fittest.  This is exactly for this reason, according to Dr. Wynne-Edwards during personal conversation with him, that his theory has met with some difficulty in England and the United States.  In Germany and Russia where, he said, less narrow stereotype evolutionary preconceptions exist the theory has received wider acceptance.  Although published only seven years ago approximately 10,000 copies of this book have been sold.”  And he notes in his conclusion to this book review that “this theory apparently would support the possibility of a perfect creation without predation and if the intensity of competition for survival is reduced greatly this will deliver a painful, if not fatal, blow to the entire natural selection principle without which Neo-Darwinian evolution has no mechanism.”

 

So although this doesn’t offer a final solution, it just shows you that if the Bible-believing Christian is patient enough and is observant enough and is careful enough in his study that he is bound to come up, sooner or later, with answers to the difficult and knotty problems presented to us in the Word of God, and yet these problems, difficult though they are, are not of the unsolvable type of problem that would be presented by a false theory such as evolution. 

 

This would by my characterization of the antediluvian surface: a luxuriant plant life, little impact of the radiogenic gases such as argon 40, such as CO2 with carbon 14 as the carbon atom.  I would see a very deep thick layer of soil from original creation; I would see this soil as very porous, very moist. 

 

Now the second step in the flood model.  I would say that sometime between 2500 BC and 7,000 BC the flood catastrophe occurred.  The following five features would characterize this flood catastrophe:

 

One, the emergence of a vast volume of water from below the earth’s surface, totally pulverizing the saturated surface of the earth.  Thus I would see that this would be the mechanism, this would be the kind of mechanism that I would look to generate the sediments necessary for the formation of the sedimentary rock; I do not see a strong rocky surface in the antediluvian period that was smashed apart; I’d rather see a soil type already pulverized surface that is simply loosened up by the flood waters.

 

Secondly, I would see the emergence of water gradual over a forty day period, only partly supplied by rains from above, mostly supplied from water erupting from below, according to Genesis 7-8 and also discussed in Morris and Whitcomb’s book, The Genesis Flood.  I would see the emergence of gradual over a 40 day period; tidal forces of the moon would have produced twice each day tides across the glove, first in the lowlands and then in the higher areas.  Some people like to see tides in the fact that in Genesis it says and the waters went to and fro going and coming.  I have shown in my thesis that this is an untenable interpretation of Genesis; rather what it is saying is simply the Hebrew idiom for a continually decreasing flow of water. 

 

But neverthe­less since the moon existed, according to Genesis 1, before the flood and during the flood, one obviously would have had tidal phenomena and therefore tidal phenomena plus violent upheavals would have contributed enough turbulence that all your going and coming would have been supplied that way, you don’t need to depend upon the verse in Genesis about the waters coming and going.  I would say that after each tide, or after each sloshing around the material hardened enough to remain for the next tidal distribution so that you have the water first depositing sediments and then the water comes crashing in much like an ocean wave, and lays down the thick sediment, and then the water stagnates for many, many hours and the fine sediments fall out and I would say that this solves one of the problems that geology has had according to Dr. Burdick of grade embedding where you have coarse particles and then they are overlaid with fine particles. 

 

Burdick in his article, Streamlining Stratigraphy in the May, 1964 first edition of the Creation Research Society quarterly, page 42, cited a quotation from Rogers and Dunbar, speaking of great embedding where have coarse conglomerate on the bottom with finer material graded upward, “a reasonable explanation of graded bedding, say Rogers and Dunbar, in terms of the standard process of stream or shallow water deposition has proved difficult.  The fact seems to demand that material be dumped suddenly, yet fairly evenly over large area and then allowed to settle quietly in accordance with size, coarser before finer, and that the dumping be endlessly repeated, though separated by intervals of complete quiet.”  And then Burdick discusses this: “This does not sound much like uniformity where a river continues its ceaseless flow, gradually building its delta further and further out into the sea, nor does it sound like the constant pounding of the breakers against the shore building literal zone deposits.  We are reminded, however, of the statement in Genesis 8:1-3,” and this is the one I mentioned before, “how the Creator dried up the Creator dried up the flood waters by strong winds that drove the waters by going and returning, a tidal wave in one direction and then reverse and a wave in the other direction,” I would agree with Burdick that this happened but I would disagree that it can be said on the basis of Genesis 8:1-3. 

 

“Thus we get the sudden dumping followed by a period of quiet to account for the great embed­ding.  Keeping this pictonic modus operandi in mind, let us consider briefly another common phenomenon of stratigraphy interbedding, otherwise known as cyclic or repetitive stratification.  Sometimes a rock exposure will show a white limestone band followed by a darker band of sandstone or shale, then another band of limestone until the entire exposure will resemble the American flag.  Such exposures occur in Topanga Canyon near Santa Monica California, where layers of red conglomerate alternate with layers of white limestone.  Geologists who have made observations along New Alcan highway from Canada to Alaska have noted as many as 150 such alternations of repetitions of similar strata.  In fact, these types of formations are so common the world over as to elicit no special wonderment, especially for those versed in flood geology.  It would be difficult, indeed, to explain these features on the basis of uniformitarian geology by river delta action, flood plain, or wave action at the seashore, but Genesis 8:1-3, mentioned above, would seem to offer a far more logical explanation of the mechanics involved.  Two of the most notable exceptions of repetition of similar strata occur in the highlands of Scotland and in the Alps.  At least these regions have attracted more publicity on account of long drawn-out geological controversy centering in these two regions.  Not only have there been repetitions of the strata judged from a lithical point of view but the fossils also have been repeated and this violates a cardinal principle of stratigraphy.  Five repetitions have been recorded in Scotland, six in the Alps.”

 

Of course this is one of the many phenomenon that occur in geology and I think that if one were to exercise some creative ingenuity as well careful scientific study that this cyclothem  phenomena or this graded bedding and this repetitive deposition phenomena might be explained in terms of a flood far better than under prevailing concepts where you have to have the land be submerged, and then have one layer develop and then the land has to emerge and then you have to have erosion and then you have to have it submerge and so on.  Rather than all that jazz you can have it just… the land staying still and having the water periodically cover it. 

 

So I would see then the sequence of these tides over the forty day period of gradual increasing, I would see the simultaneous eruptions of lava and volcanoes and a of other phenomenon, I would see also the sequence in the fossils as due to the mechanism suggested years ago in his book, The New Diluvianism by Harold Clark, the Botanist.  Clark suggested that if you take the ordering of the fossils in the rock record it suggests actually the ecological zones of these animals.  For example, the animals that are buried in the lower rocks are those animals that would have been trapped in the earliest days of the flood.  The animals that survived to the very last days of the flood would have been those animals most highly mobile and most able to get out of the way of the flood waters, those that is, who would flee to the higher ground and thus escape.  And so therefore Clark, in his book, The New Diluvianism as a biologist has a very convincing chart of how he sees this mechanism and how he seems to correlate it with his biological knowledge of the animal kingdom.  And thus I would try in this way to explain the sequence of strata, the polystrata fossils that we have mentioned and the fossil sequence.

 

The third step in the third model would involve the postdiluvian world.  I would see as the waters drain off the continental areas, perhaps as the continental areas themselves rise, great canyons form, such as the Grand Canyon and others from the tremendous outflow, the wash-over as the continents rise and the seas form, as the water just tears out through the land and tears out these canyons through erosion very rapidly.  I would see gradually plants growing back and in this connection…we’ll get into the troubles with the plants later, suffice it to say I would see these plants growing back after the flood.  I would see animals spreading out from the Turkish area where the site of the ark, where I believe the ark grounded.  I would see mankind as settling in the Tigris-Euphrates river valley, the Mesopotamian valley. 

 

The fourth stage in the flood model I would see as the division of the land or the division of the continent.  Here I would see another great catastrophe, hitting centuries later, and the western continents possibly and I’m not convinced of this but possibly breaking off from the European and African land masses as suggested by Professor Melvin Cook of the University of Utah in his book Prehistory and Earth Models.  Cook suggests that one of the physical mechanisms behind the continental cleavage was due to the fact that after the flood you had the formation of ice as a reaction device to the climatic transition from the antediluvian world to the postdiluvian world.  In other words, the new kind of atmosphere after the flood gave rise to the Ice Age.  And that the Ice Age actually put so much weight and stress on the underlying rock that it set up forces and strains which were relieved by the expansion of the continents.  Now this is just Dr. Cook’s theory and I’m just prepared at this point to suggest it as a possibility.

 

I would also see the western mountains, the mountains in the western hemisphere, such as the Andes, and parts of the Rockies rising at this time.  I’m reminded at this point of an evidence pointed out by Velikovsky in his book, Earth in Upheaval, which shows a city, I forgot the name of the city and exactly where it was, but it showed an ancient city that had evidently been built at low level, because of the type of crops grown, and yet this city had been wafted aloft up to 14,000 feet and abandoned and Velikovsky used that in his book to show that the mountains rose after man had…after man had settled there, and he also made similar remarks about the Himalayas.  So we could conceivable have a period of strong mountain building going on, according to Genesis 10:25.  I would see the Ice Age simultaneously with the division of the land of Genesis 10:25 or preceding it.  I would see the people from the western hemisphere now marooned.  I’d also see, perhaps this as the source of the rumors about the lost continent of Atlantis, that disappeared west of Gibraltar; perhaps this is the origin of that rumor. 

 

The fifth element in the catastrophic flood model I would suggest is another catastrophe; we’ve had the flood catastrophe, the catastrophe of Genesis 10:25, the catastrophe of Exodus, and I base this mostly on the…[tape turns]…organic matter necessary for fertility, in other words, there must have been a natural creative fertility, and secondly, the luxuriant plant growth was much greater than it is today and therefore a much more fertile soil was necessary.  And I would say that it was this quantitative and qualitative difference that quickly produced the material for the rocks during the forty day onslaught of the flood, and that the surging tides during the next 150 days, and during those 40 days too, by the way, for a timetable of the flood, see The Genesis Flood, the first couple chapters of that book.  The surging tides laid out the material in layers which hardened like concrete.  Now the evidence that this can happen fast is cement; how long does it take cement to dry?  Sometimes you even have to keep it wet so it won’t dry too fast. 

 

Furthermore, there’s another interesting thing reported in the December 1968 or the March 1969 issue of the Creation Research Society quarterly in which it was discovered that a company in Preston, Ontario made something called Angelstone, and it looks like sandstone, feels like sandstone, has many of the characteristics of sandstone, and yet it’s made artificially from sand, chemicals plus heat plus pressure, and they can make it within a day or two, as I understand from the article, an artificial sandstone that’s even stronger than concrete because it’s wholly bonded material.  And thus we could say that perhaps much of the rock was formed from, first of all chemical imbalances in the water, in the surging water causing much calcium and carbonate to precipitate out of solution; we had heat available from the tidal friction plus volcanic activity.

 

By the way, extra Biblical sources relate the fact that water in the flood must have been boiling, was boiling, scalded the feet of the people and so on, how much truth there is to this we don’t know.  And I would say this explains then, would be the basis of our study to try and explain the generation of sediments for these rocks, and I would say this also explains the out of place layers, explains meandering canyons which traditional geology does not. 

 

Now the source material, people could still say this is a problem.  Even so, they say, still you’ve got to have great quantities of source material.  I think there’s two other problems here that you have to keep in mind.  First, the problem of source material is a problem also to the uniformitarian evolutionary geologist.  For example, in Colorado, Hal Clark and Creation Research Society quarterly of July, 1966, showed there’s a vast layer of rock strata called [not familiar with word; sounds like: shine a romp] consisting of a pebble conglomerate made up of pebbles worn smooth by water and very thin, but very extensive.  And no one can explain where this layer, that extends for hundreds of miles, ever came from.  The underlying rocks show no erosion and therefore this thin layer of rocks must have been brought in and laid down by a vast sweep of water.  Clark notes the sediments came into the region from the west or southwest but the whole thing is red from iron pigments.  Where to the west did there exist iron pigments?  And it is only 100 to 400 feet thick, with no signs of erosion.  So you see here’s a problem, and this is a particular type of geological problem that I think we have a better explanation for than uniformitarian evolutionary geology because here, as Clark points out, there’s no sign of erosion on the underlying rock layers and therefore, with no sign of erosion, where do you get the material for the next layer?  You can criticize the flood geologists but where does the evolutionary uniformitarian geologist get his rock from.  And as Clark points out in this particular case it’s a mystery where all this stuff comes.

 

On page 16 of the July, 1966 issue he says, (quote) “After all the evidence has been considered,” and he’s considering the southwestern United States, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada and Southern Utah, “After all the evidence has been considered,” Clark says, “several obvious conclusions seem to be justified.  One, that the sediments have been brought in from great distances, not from local sources.  And two, that they were brought in by great sweeps of water for no ordinary river could spread them out as they were.  And three, that they were laid down one after the other in rapid succession with no long periods of erosion between.”  And so I would say that these represent some of the problems that a person who would believe the evolutionary uniformitarian hypothesis would have to face, and we can face it, and I feel with a better explanation. 

 

I’ve already over thrusts.  See, we can explain over thrusts as simply successive depositions of sediment from different regions.  And therefore we don’t have to posit that there’s a problem with older rock overlying younger rock since it’s not older rock underlying younger rock, it is actually younger rock overlying older rock.  And you have the rock just successively deposited, one on top of the other, and each deposit coming from a different area, brought in by successive sweeps of water as the flood increased in depth.

 

Now the second problem that flood geology has to face is fossil formations.  How do we explain the obvious general progression of fossils?  There are basically two explanations; one, ecology, as I mentioned earlier, namely that hypothesis of Dr. Harold Clark and he has another book, I haven’t read it yet but I believe he probably has it in detail in this book called Fossils, Flood and Fire, a book available through the Bible Science Association.  So ecology would simply say that the first animals to get trapped were those inhabiting low lying areas and marshes or those unable to move out of the way, and these animals became trapped, and then the animals that showed more (quote) “evolutionary development” (end quote) are not animals of higher evolution at all but simply animals that were able to move out of the flood waters faster.  And then secondly, in an article in the Creation Research Society quarterly of December, 1967, Professor Henry Morris in an excellent article entitled Sedimentation and the Fossil Record, pages 89-99, notes that the most important fossils used to date are actually tiny marine organisms called foraminifera and these organisms that are used to date actually if you mix them up in a jar, lo and behold it turns out they sort out, in the jar they drop out of mixture in the water in exactly the evolutionary order.  They actually sort and so therefore Morris suggests that some of the fossils may be found in successive orders of rocks simply because they sorted out of the suspension this way. 

 

So in connection with the fossil forms I would have four footnotes.  One, orthodox geology does not exactly know how fossils are formed anyhow and cannot explain in a real straightforward way the phenomena of fossil graveyards.  Granted, orthodox geology can treat 80% of the fossils that are in a succession but they have a hard time working with fossil graveyards, animals brought from various climbs so fast that they couldn’t rot and yet must have been brought for hundreds of miles and washed together in one great graveyard.  We can also explain polystrata fossils or trees growing up through many strata.  We can explain ephemeral markings such as bird tracks and rain drops.  We can explain preservation of soft spots.  So it seems to me that the flood model has potentially a greater power to explain the fossil record than orthodox geology.

 

Now the third major problem of the flood would be the problem of chronometry, the idea of dating.  We’ve already discussed radiogenic and radiocarbon dating as systems which are dependent upon assumptions that you can’t make if you’re a Bible-believing Christian and believe that there was such a thing as a global flood.  So therefore, these systems would have to be re­analyzed, manipulating the mathematical factors involved in accordance with our picture of the flood and then seeing how the data would sort out inside a flood type of framework. 

 

But here I would rather like to deal with the psychological problem of chronometry, namely the fact that people feel a psychological need for long time spans, when they look up and see these great cliffs of rock, great depths of rock, and I think here man may be a victim of a psychological hallucination.  And by this what I mean is that if you sit down and draw a circle on a piece of paper, letting the circle be a cross-section of the globe, the planet earth, and then you were to draw the highest mountain on that surface, take an ordinary drinking glass and invert it over the paper and draw a circle, and then try on the surface of that circle to draw a line that would be as tall as the highest mountain on the earth to scale, and you hardly could draw one because the lead on your pencil is probably thicker than the highest mountain on earth.  And so you see then immediately when you think in terms of global forces, forces of the magnitude of our globe, no matter how thick the rock layers it’s pretty trivial.  It’s like the thin crust of an egg.  And so when looked at from the global point of view then one is psychologically brought to an awareness that if the forces are large enough, then you don’t have the great psychological gnawing feeling on the inside, well good night, what force could have possibly caused this great, great canyon, or this great, great cliff.  If you would consider a force that is able to affect the entire globe such a great, great cliff, or a great, great canyon is comparatively trivial. 

 

To show you a modern day example of a man who was brought himself to an awareness of this psychological dimension of the need for great long time spans I refer you to a book called Surtsey, by Sigurdur Porarinsson, the book was printed in 1964 and would have to be ordered through a book store that can order it directly from Iceland where it was printed.  The company that printed it, if I can read Icelandic, is Almenna bokafelagio, and there’s a quote mark over o and e and actually the last letter is a “d” with a cross over it, and this is Icelandic and you’ll just have to get a book dealer that knows how to order from Iceland but it’s an excellent book, it’s written in Icelandic but it has a section, an English translation of it.  And what is Surtsey?  Well, Surtsey was an island that grew up in the North Atlantic over a series of months; it has a series of photographs, excellent color illustrations in the book, and it started out in November, 1963 and the island finished developing in August 1964; it developed from a volcano in the mid-Atlantic rift just south of Iceland and it just appeared out of the ocean, and you can see by the dates that this island formed very rapidly, from November 1963 to August 1964, so it wasn’t even a year before this island was formed, settled and cooled and animals and plants came ashore.

 

I’m going to read a quotation from this book because of its tremendous significance.  The man who writes this is a trained geologist and as he has gone ashore on this island to explore it he’s been amazed, as you will be if you look at the color plates, it’s absolutely amazing to see how rapidly this island grows.  And he is absolutely amazed at this and on pages 52-53 of his book he says, (quote): “It is hard to believe that this is an island whose age is still measured in months, not years.  An Icelander, who has studied geology and geomorphology at foreign universities, is later taught by experience in his own homeland that the timescale he has been trained to attach to geological developments is misleading when assessments are made of the forces, that elsewhere may take thousands of years may be accomplished here in one century.  All the same, he’s more amazed whenever he comes to Surtsey because the same development may take here a few weeks or even a few days.”  You see, he’s amazed, that here before their eyes almost psychologically unacceptable and yet here it is, the brute fact, as this island just forms out of the sea; in two weeks sea gulls were already inhabiting the island; within five months various birds had come to rest; many kinds of seeds had already been found, evidently swept onto the island by the air and within seven months seals were making their homeland on the island. 

 

Now I would like to make one further suggestion and this is a special problem that was reported as a result of a series of experiments done by Dr. George Howe the Creation Research Society and this was reported in the quarterly of December, 1968, and Dr. Howe had an article, Seed Germination, Sea Water and Plant Survival.  Many people have criticized the flood and the fact that if you had water covering the earth for such a long time, wouldn’t it destroy the seeds.  How could you have the plant kingdom survive; granted, the animals survived aboard the flood aboard the ark, but Noah didn’t take plants aboard.  How, then, did the plant kingdom survive?  He has two answers; first some plants that require high oxygen could not have survived a total flood during the days of Noah and to explain the survival of plants requiring high oxygen he would explain it as the fact that first the plants survived by embedding their seeds onto floating debris on the water surface of the flood and this has actually been known to occur many times in history and therefore this does not represent a novel or a last minute ad hoc solution to the problem, that a lot of plant seeds would not have been buried by the water but would have been carried on the water surface by debris floating on the flood waters.  Also the type of plants requiring high oxygen contents could have been stored as seeds or plants aboard the ark.  For example, it is entirely conceivable that Noah would have taken crop plants aboard the ark so that he would have the seeds for planting his vineyard which he got drunk in the later part of Genesis 9-10.  So it is conceivable that many of the crop plants, the domesticated plants that man would plant were taken aboard the ark and survived that way.  And that the others became survivors through attaching themselves to debris floating on the surface of the flood.

 

However, many, many types of seed could have survived the water and to do this Professor Howe did an experiment in which he submerged seeds, and I’ll just read the abstract for his paper and read some of his conclusions.  This is found on page 105, December 1968, Creation Research Society quarterly.  Dr. Howe is chairman of the division of national science, Los Angeles Baptist College, Newhall, California, 91321

“Seeds from the fruits of five different species and families of flowering plants were tested for germination after prolonged periods of soaking in sea water, fresh water, and mixed water baths.  Seeds from three out of these five species germinated and grew after 140 days of soaking in each of the solutions mentioned.

The effect of the Genesis Flood upon seed plant life in general is discussed.  Several means of plant survival both inside and outside the ark are evaluated.  On the basis of present experiments and those of Charles Darwin, it is concluded that seeds from many plants may have resisted the direct contact of flood waters and germinated vigorously after the waters subsided from the surface of the earth.  Several unanswered questions and areas for further study are enumerated.”  And he quotes from Darwin’s hypothesis that many of the seeds could have stored…may of the trees floating in the ocean contained seeds that would germinate.  Darwin reported this.  Darwin said, and here Howe is quoting Darwin, he’s quoting Origin of Species, page 349, and Darwin said this: “‘I find that when irregularly shaped stones are imbedded in the roots of trees, small particles of earth are frequently enclosed in their intra species and behind them, so perfectly that not a particle could be washed away during the longest transport.  Only one small portion of earth, thus completely enclosed by the roots of an oak about 50 years old, 3 [sounds like: dia dic tote tile ah donis] plants germinated.  I am certain of the accuracy of this observation.’  This mechanism” Dr. Howe says, “in itself may have provided for survival of seeds from many plants during the flood.  Carcasses of animals strewn upon the surface after the flood may have contained seeds which eventually germinated.”  And then he says, “Finally, the results of this study indicate that seeds of certain plants will grow after soaking for as long as 140 days in various water baths.  It may be argued that the flood waters were almost as salty as our ocean waters of today or it may be possible that they had a far lower saline content.  In either case, the data of my study demonstrated that 3 out of 5 species tested germinated after long soaking periods of sea, mixed or tap water.”’

 

So there you have a man, again a Bible-believing Christian, a doctor, a PhD trained in his field, who has had the honesty and integrity to take the Word of God seriously and to conduct some scientific experiments to test, and sure enough, if you test it lo and behold it turns out that the seeds do have the ability to survive in even salt water for as long a period as the Bible requires. 

 

Now this represents the state of the art as of spring or summer of 1969 and this, of course, will be outmoded very quickly because many scientists now, Masters of Science or PhD degrees are doing research, largely on their own because very little funds are available, but nevertheless they are patiently doing research quietly by themselves and are reporting it in the quarterlies of the Creation Research Society.  Now I strongly recommend those of you with scientific backgrounds, it costs $10.00 per year, $7.00 if you wish to join the society, $10.00 a year otherwise.  The creed of the society goes as follows: “Our society of research scientists, representing various fields of successful scientific accomplishment, is committed to full belief in the Biblical record of creation and early history and thus to a concept of dynamic special creation as opposed to evolution, both of the universe and the earth with its complexity of living forms.  We propose to reevaluate science from this viewpoint.  Beginning in 1964 we are publishing an annual yearbook of articles by various members of the society and thereafter a quarterly review of scientific literature.  Our eventual goal is the realignment of science based on theistic creation concepts and the publication of textbooks for high school and college use.” 

 

They believe: 1. The Bible is the written Word of God, and because it is inspired throughout, all its assertions are historically and scientifically true in the original autographs.  To the student of nature this means that the account of origins in Genesis is a factual presentation of simple historical truths.  2. All basic types of living things, including man, were made by direct creative acts of God during the Creation Week described in Genesis.  Whatever biological changes have occurred since Creation Week have accomplished only changes within the original created kinds.

3. The great flood described in Genesis, commonly referred to as the Noachian Flood, was an historic event worldwide in its extent and effect.  4. We are an organization of Christian men and women of science who accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior.  The account of the special creation of Adam and Eve as one man and one woman and their subsequent fall into sin is the basis for our belief in the necessity of a Savior for all mankind.  Therefore, salvation can come only through accepting Jesus Christ as our Savior. 

 

I would also mention the Bible Science Association, Box 1016, Caldwell, Idaho, 83605.  You can get books through this organization; this is not a research society, the newsletter comes out once a month on the 15th of the month, except for July and August.