How Long Ago Was The Great Flood
Baronial 14, 2012
New volume explores Noah'southward Flood; says Bible and science can get along
"I doubt the historic truth most Noah's Flood will ever be known with certainty. And I don't retrieve it really matters. The discoveries of science have revealed the world and our universe to be far more spectacular than could take been imagined by Mesopotamian minds. To still see the world through their eyes is to minimize the wonder of cosmos."
- David Montgomery, "The Rocks Don't Lie"
David Montgomery is a geomorphologist, a geologist who studies changes to topography over fourth dimension and how geological processes shape landscapes. He has seen firsthand testify of how the forces that have shaped Earth run counter to some meaning religious beliefs.
But the idea that scientific reason and religious faith are somehow at odds with each other "is, in my view, a fake dichotomy," said the University of Washington professor of Earth and space sciences.
In a new book, "The Rocks Don't Lie: A Geologist Investigates Noah's Flood" (Aug. 27, 2012, Westward.Due west. Norton), Montgomery explores the long history of religious thinking – particularly among Christians – on matters of geological discovery, from the writings of St. Augustine ane,700 years ago to the ascent in the mid-20th century of the most contempo rendering of creationism.
"The purpose is non to tweak people of faith but to remind everyone about the long history in the faith community of respecting what nosotros tin can learn from observing the earth," he said.
The encompass of "The Rocks Don't Lie: A Geologist Investigates Noah'southward Alluvion" features a photograph of Siccar Point, near Edinburgh, Scotland, the birthplace of the concept of geologic time.
Many of the earliest geologists were clergy, he said. Nicolas Steno, considered the founder of modernistic geology, was a 17th century Roman Catholic priest who has achieved three of the iv steps to being declared a saint in the church.
Though at that place are notable conflicts betwixt religion and science – the famous example of Galileo Galilei, for example – there besides is a church building tradition of working to reconcile biblical stories with known scientific fact, Montgomery said.
"What nosotros hear today as the 'Christian' positions are actually simply one slice of a really rich pie," he said.
For nigh 2 centuries there has been overwhelming geological show that a global flood, as depicted in the story of Noah in the biblical book of Genesis, could non take happened. Not simply is at that place not plenty water in the Earth system to business relationship for water levels in a higher place the highest mountaintop, merely uniformly ascent levels would not allow the water to have the erosive capabilities attributed to Noah's Flood, Montgomery said.
Some rock formations millions of years erstwhile show no evidence of such large-scale water erosion. Montgomery is convinced whatsoever such flood must have been, at best, a regional event, perhaps a catastrophic deluge in Mesopotamia. There are, in fact, Mesopotamian stories with details very similar, but predating, the biblical story of Noah's Flood.
"If your globe is pocket-size enough, all floods are global," he said.
David Montgomery
Mayhap the greatest influence in prompting him to write "The Rocks Don't Prevarication" was a 2002 expedition to the Tsangpo River on the Tibetan Plateau. In the fertile river valley he found bear witness in sediment layers that a neat lake had formed in the valley many centuries ago, non once simply numerous times. Downstream he found evidence that a glacier on several occasions advanced far plenty to cake the river, creating the huge lake.
Only ice makes an unstable dam, and over time the ice thinned and finally requite way, unleashing a tremendous torrent of water down the deepest gorge in the world. Information technology was but after piecing the story together from geological show that Montgomery learned that local oral traditions told of exactly this kind of corking alluvion.
"To learn that the locals knew about information technology and talked nigh it for the last m years really jolted my thinking. Hither was evidence that a folk tale might be reality based," he said.
He has seen evidence of huge regional floods in the scablands of Eastern Washington, carved by torrents when glacial Lake Missoula breached its ice dam in Montana and raced across the mural, and he found Native American stories that seem to tell of this catastrophic flood.
Other overflowing stories dating back to the early inhabitants of the Pacific Northwest and from various islands in the Pacific Ocean, for instance, probable tell of inundation by tsunamis after big earthquakes.
But he noted that in some regions of the world – in Africa, for case – at that place are no flood stories in the oral traditions because at that place the annual floods help sustain life rather than bring destruction.
Floods are not e'er responsible for major geological features. Hiking a trail from the floor of the Thou Canyon to its rim, Montgomery saw unmistakable evidence of the canyon being carved over millions of years by the flow of the Colorado River, non by a global flood several k years ago equally some people withal believe.
He describes that hike in detail in "The Rocks Don't Lie." He as well explores changes in the understanding of where fossils came from, how geologists read Earth history in layers of rock, and the writings of geologists and religious authorities through the centuries.
Montgomery hopes the book might increment science literacy. He noted that a 2001 National Science Foundation survey found that more than half of American adults didn't realize that dinosaurs were extinct long before humans came forth.
But he also would like to coax readers to make sense of the world through both what they believe and through what they can run across for themselves, and to keep an open mind to new ideas.
"If you think y'all know everything, yous'll never learn anything," he said.
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For more data, contact Montgomery at 206-685-2560 or dave@ess.washington.edu.
Tag(s): books • geology
Source: https://www.washington.edu/news/2012/08/14/new-book-explores-noahs-flood-says-bible-and-science-can-get-along/
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