Flood geology

In early 19th-century Britain, "diluvialism" attributed landforms and surface features (such as beds of gravel and erratic boulders) to the destructive effects of this supposed global deluge, but by 1830 geologists increasingly found that the evidence supported only relatively local floods.

His fundamental principles of stratigraphy published in 1669 established that rock strata formed horizontally and were later broken and tilted, though he assumed these processes would occur within 6,000 years including a worldwide flood.

[18][19] In 1695, John Woodward's An Essay Toward a Natural History of the Earth viewed the Genesis flood as dissolving rocks and soil into a thick slurry that caught up all living things, which, when the waters settled, formed strata according to the relative density of these materials, including fossils of the organisms.

[21] Lehman's classification was developed by Abraham Gottlob Werner who thought that rock strata had been deposited from a primeval global ocean rather than by Noah's flood, a doctrine called Neptunism.

[5] In his 1812 Discours préliminaire to his Recherches sur les ossemens fossiles de quadrupeds put forward a synthesis of this research into the long prehistoric period, and a historical approach to the most recent catastrophe.

Cuvier only discussed the Genesis flood in general terms, as the most recent example of "an event of an [sic] universal catastrophe, occasioned by an irruption of the waters" not set "much further back than five or six thousand years ago".

[27] His speech, published as Vindiciae Geologicae; or, The Connexion of Geology with Religion Explained, equated the last of a long series of catastrophes with the Genesis flood, and said that "the grand fact of an universal deluge at no very remote period is proved on grounds so decisive and incontrovertible, that, had we never heard of such an event from Scripture, or any other, authority, Geology of itself must have called in the assistance of some such catastrophe, to explain the phenomena of diluvian action which are universally presented to us, and which are unintelligible without recourse to a deluge exerting its ravages at a period not more ancient than that announced in the Book of Genesis."

[5] Buckland's views were supported by other Church of England clergymen naturalists: his Oxford colleague Charles Daubeny proposed in 1820 that the volcanoes of the Auvergne showed a sequence of lava flows from before and after the flood had cut valleys through the region.

At this time, most of what Sedgwick called "The English school of geologists" distinguished superficial deposits which were "diluvial", showing "great irregular masses of sand, loam, and coarse gravel, containing through its mass rounded blocks sometimes of enormous magnitude" and supposedly caused by "some great irregular inundation", from "alluvial" deposits of "comminuted gravel, silt, loam, and other materials" attributed to lesser events, the "propelling force" of rivers, or "successive partial inundations".

He said that "we must charge to moving waters the undulating appearance of stratified sand and gravel, often observed in many places, and very conspicuously in the plain of New Haven, and in other regions of Connecticut and New England", while both "bowlder stones" and sandy deserts across the world could be attributed to "diluvial agency".

[5] While Cuvier had reconciled geology with a loose reading of the biblical text, Fleming argued that such a union was "indiscreet" and turned to a more literal view of Genesis:[31] But if the supposed impetuous torrent excavated valleys, and transported masses of rocks to a distance from their original repositories, then must the soil have been swept from off the earth to the destruction of the vegetable tribes.

Lyell, formerly a pupil of Buckland, put strong arguments against diluvialism in the first volume of his Principles of Geology published in 1830, though suggesting the possibility of a deluge affecting a region such as the low-lying area around the Caspian Sea.

At the society a year later, when retiring from the presidency, Sedgwick described his former belief that "vast masses of diluvial gravel" had been scattered worldwide in "one violent and transitory period" as "a most unwarranted conclusion", and therefore thought "it right, as one of my last acts before I quit this Chair, thus publicly to read my recantation."

It has been justly argued, against the attempt to identity these two great historical and natural phenomena, that, as the rise and fall of the waters of the Mosaic deluge are described to have been gradual and of short duration, they would have produced comparatively little change on the surface of the country they overflowed.

In 1837 George Fairholme expressed disappointment about disappearing belief in the deluge, and about Sedgwick and Buckland recanting diluvialism while putting forward his own New and Conclusive Physical Demonstrations which ignored geological findings to claim that strata had been deposited in a quick continuous process while still moist.

Her visions of the flood and its aftermath, published in 1864, described a catastrophic deluge which reshaped the entire surface of the Earth, followed by a powerful wind which piled up new high mountains, burying the bodies of men and beasts.

He agreed with White on the origins of coal and oil and conjectured that mountain ranges (including the Alps and Himalayas) formed from layers deposited by the flood which had then been "folded and elevated to their present height by the great lateral pressure that accompanied its subsidence".

[47][48] Price increasingly gained attention outside Adventist groups, and in the creation–evolution controversy other leading Christian fundamentalists praised his opposition to evolution – though none of them followed his young Earth arguments, retaining their belief in the gap or in the day-age interpretation of Genesis.

The most extreme dispute began in late 1938 after Harold W. Clark observed deep drilling in oil fields and had discussions with practical geologists which dispelled the belief that the fossil sequence was random, convincing him that the evidence of thrust faults was "almost incontrovertible".

[57] Morris had joined the ASA in 1949, and in the summer of 1953 he made a presentation on "The Biblical Evidence for a Recent Creation and Universal Deluge" at their annual conference, held at Grace Theological Seminary.

[58] In 1955, the ASA held a joint meeting with the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS) at the same campus, where theologian Bernard Ramm's The Christian View of Science and Scripture (1954) caused considerable discussion.

He systematically asked evangelical professors of apologetics, archaeology and the Old Testament about creation and the flood and in October told Morris that Ramm's book had been sufficient incentive for him to devote his dissertation to the topic.

Moody Publishers responded positively and agreed with him that chapters on scientific aspects should be carefully checked or written by someone with a PhD in science, but Whitcomb's attempts to find someone with a doctorate in geology were unsuccessful.

He proposed that a vapor canopy, before providing water for the flood, created a mild, even climate and shielded the Earth from cosmic rays – so radiocarbon dating of antediluvian samples would not work.

In 1966 Max Rafferty as California State Superintendent of Public Instruction suggested that they demand equal time for creation, as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 allowed teachers to mention religion as long as they did not promote specific doctrines.

[76] As a result, creation science also challenges the commonly accepted geologic and astrophysical theories for the age and origins of the Earth and Universe, which creationists acknowledge are irreconcilable to the account in the Book of Genesis.

Whitcomb and Morris proposed three possible factors: Some creationists believe that oil and coal deposits formed rapidly in sedimentary layers as volcanoes or flood waters flattened forests and buried the debris.

[90] Anthropologist Patrick Nunn rejects this view and highlights the fact that much of the human population lives near water sources such as rivers and coasts, where unusually severe floods can be expected to occur occasionally and will be recorded in local mythology.

Geologists divide Earth's history into eons, eras, periods, epochs, and faunal stages characterized by well-defined breaks in the fossil record (see Geologic time scale).

The cyclical pattern of carbonate hardgrounds, calcitic and aragonitic ooids, and calcite-shelled fauna has apparently been controlled by seafloor spreading rates and the flushing of seawater through hydrothermal vents which changes its Mg/Ca ratio.