Review of Andrew Snelling’s two-volume Earth’s Catastrophic Past

Earth's Catastrophic Past 

It would not be hyperbole to say that these 1100 pages are Snelling’s magnum opus. Extensively documented, irenic in tone, accessing the works and research of both conventional scientists as well as creation scientists, Snelling makes a solid case that the Genesis record of both Creation and Flood is well supported by painstaking science and empirical data.


In the Introduction, Snelling spells out why it is important to take Genesis seriously. In Section 1, he reviews the biblical record pertaining to Creation and the Flood from both the Old Testament as well as the New. This review enables the reader to understand exactly what Snelling is arguing for, as well as what he is NOT arguing for.

Section 2 considers the opposing arguments that arise outside of geology from other academic disciplines. Noah’s ark and the events surrounding it comprise Section 3. Snelling offers ideas on how the gathering, care, and Post-Flood distribution of species might have been accomplished. A suggested framework for a biblically committed geology occupies Section 4. Volume 1 concludes with Section 5, a look at the modern, conventional geologic synthesis. The Geologic Column and the rock types included in it are discussed extensively, as well as an examination of Plate Tectonics.

Section 6 leads off Volume 2 by an honest examination of the geological implications of both the Creation and Flood models. Such catastrophic events could not help but leave their finger prints on the geologic record, and Snelling shows that those finger prints do in fact exist in the geologic record. Section 7 proposes a biblical geologic model of earth history.

Section 8 considers specific problems in radioactive dating methods. Section 9 exposes contradictions in conventional geology’s treatment of comets, fluctuations in the earth’s magnetic field, sea salts and sediments, volcanic activity and the presence of helium, radiohalos, and population statistics.

Finally, Snelling concludes his magisterial work by examining geologic formations that, on the surface, seem to imply slow deposition over long time periods (i.e. conventional geological interpretations). Using actual observations and experiments Snelling shows that the supposed problems for a biblical understanding of Creation and the Flood are not as intractable as they might first appear.

Earth’s Catastrophic Past is a work of science, not primarily an exposition of Scripture, although it honors and argues for the literal biblical perspective on Creation and the Flood. Snelling documents all his assertions, statistics, facts, and experimental outcomes, whether quoting a conventional geologist or the work done by geologists committed to a biblical paradigm. The two volumes are somewhat accessible for the layman. I say somewhat, because back in the 70’s I got halfway through a degree program in geology at Colorado State before switching schools and majors, but reading Snelling’s work was stretching for me from a scientific standpoint.

In conclusion, Snelling has made a case that requires an answer. He has challenged conventional geological interpretations of earth’s history, exposing theories and conclusions that are not only not supported by the data, but blatantly contradicted by both observation and experiment. Snelling has shown that empirical observations from multiple disciplines not only make room for a biblical view of Creation and the Flood, but beyond that, are best explained by the biblical view. 

Five stars, highly recommended.

Book review of Theistic Evolution: A Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Critique

Full disclosure first: I am committed to young-earth creationism, because I believe that is the best understanding of the biblical record. 

Theistic Evolution does not promote such a position. It is, rather, a tour-de-force of the best arguments of the Intelligent Design (ID) movement. The ID movement leaves aside the question of the age of the earth and instead directly attacks the main vehicle of evolution: random change over time coupled to natural selection of the fittest. ID argues that the panoply of created things clearly displays the marks of design, and therefore the existence of a Designer. This is set in opposition to the notion of theistic evolution, in which it is argued that, yes, God is there, but his act of creation was limited to producing the initial cosmic conditions and the inherent properties of nature. From that point forward, God steps out of the picture and allows what he has created to coalesce randomly over time, eventually producing the world as we see it today. One of the arguments of many proponents of theistic evolution is that, other than the initial creation, any further act of God must be undetectable.

The authors of the essays in Theistic Evolution have compiled a compelling case, both negatively against the possibility of evolution and positively for the contention that the cosmos and all that is in it displays purpose and intention, and therefore is evidence of a Designer.

The book is composed of three major sections. The first section deals with the scientific critique of theistic evolution (and therefore evolution itself, since theistic evolution is built on it). Nine chapters virtually destroy the case for evolution, drawing from chemistry, information theory, DNA, and embryology. Seven more chapters attack the idea of universal common descent (the “amoeba to man” idea). The final chapter of the first section details how scientists are pressured to conform to prevailing theories.

Section two confronts theistic evolution from a philosophical standpoint. In nine chapters, the various authors address themselves to the philosophy of science, the inadequacies of methodological naturalism, the problem of evil, the origin of the moral conscience and more.

The last section, five chapters, addresses the failure of theistic evolution to deal with the biblical and theological data. For someone committed to Scripture, this is the best part of the book. The authors of the essays demonstrate that theistic evolution undermines twelve creation events and multiple important biblical doctrines, and does not comport with the clear statements of either the Old or New Testaments. Theistic evolution is held up against the historic positions of theologians over the last 2000 years and found wanting.

Do not expect the book to argue for young-earth creationism, because it does not. It appears that the authors of the essays (at least the majority) are more comfortable with an old-earth position (but one that clearly involves belief in an actual, historical Adam and Eve supernaturally created as the very first humans, and who fell into sin, becoming responsible for the advent of death). But young-earth creationists should not reject this book. It is a strong polemic against any form of evolution, and the arguments of the authors are, almost in their entirety, arguments that young-earth creationists will find equally useful.

Five stars, highly recommended.

Nye-Ham Debate thoughts

Watched the Nye-Ham debate this evening. I thought it was a good exchange, well worth the time. I don't think this debate could be scored in win-loss terms. Ken Ham did a good job making sure the Gospel was proclaimed, and he did not shrink back in any way from the Bible. He did a good job of representing the truth.

I think Nye did a good job of representing his position. Apart from the Spirit of God the Word is foolishness to him. That was clearly seen, but I thought (with a few exceptions) that he did a good job of avoiding some of the more outrageous slanders that folks like Sam Harris sling around.

I would have liked to see Ken Ham do a better job with the point of historical science. At times he was almost contradictory. On the one hand, he asserted that because we were not there in the past we don't know what the rates of processes were. On the other hand he asserted that God is a God of order, and because of that fact we can do science and know that we will obtain the same results yesterday, today and tomorrow. I felt his explanation of this was a little clumsy and a little lacking.

The best model I can think of is that of a discontinuous function in mathematics. In some discontinuous functions as you approach the boundaries the value of the function gets out of hand. An example might be y=1/x. As x approaches zero the function value approaches infinity.

Here's the point. With some possible exceptions, "historical science" works precisely like "experimental science" - except as you approach the boundary of Creation. The Law of the Conservation of matter and energy doesn't work at the moment of Creation, for example. But it works immediately following Creation.

Ken Ham made it sound like if an event occurred in the past, the present processes can't tell us anything about it. That simply is not true. What is true is this: science can not tell us about origins because it was the supernatural power of God that originated all things. The origin of Creation is the "boundary" of the function, to use my illustration above. The other problem extrapolating origins is that God created with the appearance of age. For example, to assume the presence of no radiometric daughter products is unwarranted.

Anyway - this was my only beef with Ham's performance tonight. Though I am sure he did not intend this, he made it sound as though we can not extrapolate processes reliably backwards into history. We can - so long as we do not approach the "boundaries," and as long as we acknowledge that we do not necessarily know the starting conditions.

Otherwise, he did an outstanding job.

Fielding Age-of-the-Earth Questions Evangelistically - By Mark Thompson

What follows is a guest-post from Mark Thompson. I really enjoyed it and I trust you will as well.

Fielding Age-of-the-Earth Questions Evangelistically

Anyone who has gone through the public education system or listened to the national media cover what might be called “origins science” has been inundated with the idea that the earth is billions of years old.  Individuals whom the Spirit is leading to consider the claims of Christianity may have legitimate questions stemming from the assertions of evolution.  In answering their questions, we must always emphasize that when the scientific facts are seen in their proper light they will always agree with the Bible because the Bible is the ultimate source of truth.  Scientific evidences cannot be used to “prove” the Bible to an unbeliever because evidences may well change over time and, more importantly, fallen men consistently interpret evidences in light of their presuppositions (unproven starting assumptions, such as naturalism).

This said, I do believe it is appropriate and indeed glorifying to God to show how creation testifies to His infinite wisdom and might (Rom.1:18-22).  But the goal of our Christian witness always needs to be a respectful but authoritative presentation of the gospel (1 Cor.2:1-5).  Do not give up the bedrock of God’s Word to stand on the shifting sands of popular scientific opinion.  The following was my response to an age-of-the-earth question from a friend with whom I have already shared the gospel.  As disciples of Christ, we need to consistently elevate the authority of His Word in interpreting all of life and reality.

   

Mark, how many years ago did Adam & Eve arrive on earth?
3-4-5-6-7 Thousand years ago?

Hey my friend!

It’s good to hear from you!  Have you seen the planetary tango in the west?  Friday night I was able to put all three into a 5 degree binocular field of view.  It was a stunning sight!

Life has been a little crazy recently with our youngest graduating from High School (though he took his last two years at Edison Community College) and preparing for his open house this last Sunday.  There is nothing like having a whole lot of people over to motivate you to get those neglected projects completed!

As to the date of the first couple, I agree with many conservative Bible scholars who place their creation and that of the earth and cosmos a little over 6,000 years ago based on what is called a “strict” reading of the Bible’s genealogies and a normal reading of Genesis 1 and 2.  Some conservative scholars would allow for the possibility of missing generations in the genealogies (the term “father” could possibly mean “ancestor”, such as in our referencing “the founding fathers” or “our forefathers”).  They might push the beginning back as far as 10,000 years or so. 

Obviously God was the only one who was there in the beginning and so is the only One who could accurately tell us when that beginning was or what it was like.  As the Lord asked Job, “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?  Tell Me, if you have understanding” (Job 38:4).  I do believe that there is a large volume of scientific evidence that would support the Bible’s chronological framework but I doubt whether you would ever hear it mentioned, let alone be given a fair hearing in secular publications. 

Part of the problem lies in the fact that none of us is unbiased.  We all look at facts with certain assumptions. My assumption is that an infinitely wise Creator, who was able to design such incredibly complicated things as DNA, was able to infallibly communicate truth about human origins and all other areas He deems important for humans to function as He designed us. There are three questions concerning any “clocks” that we might look to in nature that are particularly important: 1) what were the starting conditions, 2) has the rate of change been consistent over time or has there been factors that may have caused that rate to vary and, 3) has there been any “contamination” from outside?  These three assumptions play heavily in interpreting various radiometric clocks, which give dramatically varying ages for rocks. 

Interestingly enough, many geologists are resorting to catastrophes to explain the geological features of the earth and not gradual, uniform change.  This is much more in keeping with what would result from a worldwide flood as detailed in Genesis 6-8.  The theory of geologic uniformitarianism and the denial of the Genesis flood were predicted to be prevalent in the end times by Peter when he penned 2 Peter 3:3-7.

If you are really interested in checking out scientific evidences for a young earth, I would suggest exploring material published or offered for free online by Answers in Genesis or the Creation Research Institute.  I have a good bit of fascinating material by AIG.  Let me briefly mention several of the evidences that they detail in an article from their Answers magazine (see, www.answersmagazine.com/go/10evidences):

1) Very Little Sediment on the Seafloor.  If Sediments have been accumulating on the seafloor for 3 billion years, the seafloor should be choked with sediments many miles deep.  Yet the average thickness globally is less than 1300 feet.  This amount of sediment is easily explained by water draining off the continents towards the end of the Biblical flood but certainly not by evolutionary models.

2) Bent Rock Layers.  In many mountainous areas, rock layers thousands of feet thick have been bent and folded without fracturing.  How could that have possibly happened if layers were laid down separately over hundreds of millions of years and already hardened?  Hardened rock layers, including sedimentary layers, are very brittle (think about hardened cement).  Fossil-bearing layers in places like the Grand Canyon were laid down quickly and folded while still wet and, hence, are not fractured! 

3) Soft Tissue in Fossils.  Bone slices from the fossilized thigh bone of a Tyrannosaurus Rex recently found by Dr. Mary Schweitzer in Montana and reported in Scientific America (Dec. 2010, pp. 62-69) contain blood vessels with red blood cells and nuclei along with specialized lining cells.  The bone marrow contained flexible tissue, proteins and complex molecules.  There is no known way to explain these features from a specimen a supposed 68 million years old, but it has repeatedly been demonstrated by many studies of Egyptian mummies and other humans historically dated to more than 4,000 years old.

4) The Faint Sun Paradox. Evidence supports astronomer’s belief that the sun’s power comes from the fusion of hydrogen into helium.  As the hydrogen fused, it should change the composition of the sun’s core, gradually increasing the sun’s temperature.  If true, this means that the earth was colder in the past.  Indeed, it should have been below freezing 3.5 billion years ago when life supposedly evolved.  Evolutionists acknowledge that there is no evidence of this in the geologic record and even call this the “faint young sun paradox”.  Obviously, this is not a problem if the solar system is only thousands of years old.

5) Rapidly Decaying Magnetic Field.  The earth is surrounded by a magnetic field that protects living things from solar radiation.  Without it, life could not exist.  The magnetic field around the earth has been measured since 1845 and consistently found to be wearing down at a rate that testifies that the earth could not be older than 20,000 years old.  “Reliable, accurate, published geological field data have emphatically confirmed the young-earth model” (Dr. Andrew Snelling). 

6) Helium in Radioactive Rocks.  Radioactive elements in rocks produce a lot of helium as they decay; and this gas quickly escapes into the atmosphere, especially when the rocks are hot.  Yet radioactive rocks in the earth’s crust contain a lot of helium.  The only possible explanation is that the helium hasn’t had enough time to escape.  Rocks mined in New Mexico show an average diffusion age of only 6,000 years (+/- 2,000 yrs.).

7) Carbon-14 in Fossils, Coal, and Diamonds. Carbon-14 (Radiocarbon) is a radioactive form of carbon that scientists use to attempt to date fossils.  Because its decay half-life is a mere 5,730 years none is expected to remain in fossils after only a few hundred thousand years.  Yet carbon-14 has been detected in “ancient” fossils – supposedly up to hundreds of millions of years old- ever since the earliest days of radiocarbon dating.  Diamonds supposedly 1 to 3 billion years old yield carbon-14 ages of only 55,000 years.  (This assumes that the earth’s magnetic field was not stronger in the past, which would have protected the atmosphere from solar radiation and reduced the radiocarbon production.  Hence, the amount of radiocarbon to begin with in every creature was less and their deaths occurred much more recently than reported.) 

8) Short-lived Comets.  (My friend), as you know, comets have little mass and each close encounter with the sun greatly reduces the comet’s size.  Given that the loss rates are well known, it is easy to calculate the absolute maximum age of comets, which is only a few million years (not billions).  Kuiper Belt objects do not correspond to the composition or size of comets and astronomer Carl Sagan said that there was not a shred of evidence for the Oort cloud.  This assessment has not changed since his death in the 80’s.  The Oort cloud was hypothesized without any evidence simply to cover this huge evolutionary problem. 

9) Very Little Sea Salt.  If the world’s oceans have been around for 3 billion years, they should be filled with vastly more salt than they are today.  Every year, the continents, atmosphere, and seafloor add 458 million tons of salt into the oceans but only 122 million tons (27%) is removed.  At this rate, today’s saltiness would be reached in 42 million years just from runoff.  Surely, God created the salty ocean for sea creatures He created on day 5 of Creation, and the Flood quickly added more salt.   

10) DNA in “Ancient” Bacteria.  In 2000 scientists claimed to “resurrect” bacteria discovered in a salt crystal conventionally dated at 250 million years old.  They were shocked to find that the “ancient” bacteria were very similar to modern bacteria.  If the modern bacteria were the result of 250 million years of evolution, the DNA should be very different from the “Lazarus” bacteria based on known mutation rates.  Because DNA normally breaks down quickly even in ideal circumstances, they were at a loss to explain DNA intact after a supposed 250 million years! 

11) The Recession of the Moon.  Currently the moon is moving outward from the earth because of the gravitational tidal force between the earth and moon.  The present rate is 3.82 cm/yr but would have been much greater in the past (the relationship is highly non-linear – gravitational attraction is governed by an inverse square law – if you cut the distance in half the attraction is 4 times as great; if you make the distance 1/3, the attraction is 9 times as much!)  If we extrapolate backward, gravity theory shows the moon in direct contact with the earth about 1.55 billion years ago.  The Roche limit shows that the moon would fragment into Saturn-like rings long before this time as the earth’s gravity force would overcome the moon’s own cohesive force. 

However, evolutionists say that life originated on the earth 3.5 billion years ago.  There are many ways in which the moon’s precise distance, inclination, orbit elongation, mass, etc. make life possible here on earth that would be drastically changed if the moon has been receding for millions or billions of years.  But, if the earth is only about 6,000 years old, the moon would have only been about 755 feet closer.  Clearly this is no problem for the young-earth creation position.

(My friend), I believe that it is much easier to see design and special creation in the universe as well as the human body than it is to see random chance and purposelessness.  Every single paragraph of a 2000 page Biology textbook screams “purpose, design, function” for everything it describes.  There is no purposelessness or randomness to all this intricacy that boggles the human mind.  What is amazing is that the Lord has given us the capacity to “search out His ways” through the disciplines of science which confirm His Word!  As the Psalmist said to the Lord, “I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; marvelous are Your works, and that my soul knows very well” (Ps.139:14).

This same God is who spoke everything into existence out of nothing (Heb.11:3 –this is the same thing that Big-bang cosmologists believe only without an Intelligent Designer), inerrantly communicated His will in written form, sent His Son to take on human flesh to die for the sins of rebellious creatures, and is able to receive a repentant sinner into the presence of His resurrected Son for eternity (Rom.10:9-10).  Apart from this God, nothing makes sense and surely has no meaning. 

Thanks much for your question.  I appreciate and enjoy your inquisitiveness!

Blessings,

Mark