“Flood geology” has been dead ever since leading Christians scholars in geology at Cambridge and Oxford rejected it, and that was before Darwnʼs Origins was ever published. By the 1850s, Christian men of science agreed the earth was extremely old.
For some of their reasons, see, “Reasons Why ‘Flood Geology’ Was Abandoned in the Mid-1800s by Christian Men of Science”.
Such men included:
Reverend William Buckland (head of geology at Oxford)
Reverend Adam Sedgwick (head of geology at Cambridge)
Reverend Edward Hitchcock (who taught natural theology and geology at Amherst College, Massachusetts)
John Pye Smith (head of Homerton Divinity College)
Hugh Miller (self taught geologist, and editor of the Free Church of Scotlandʼs newspaper) and,
Sir John William Dawson (geologist and paleontologist, a Presbyterian brought up by conservative Christian parents, who also became the only person ever to serve as president of three of the most prestigious geological organizations of Britain and America).
All of these giants of the geological sciences rejected the “Genesis Flood” as an explanation of the geologic record — except for possibly the topmost superficial sediments, though Adam Sedgewick and Buckland later abandoned even that hypothesis.
Neither were their conclusions based on a subconscious desire to support “evolution,” since none of the above evangelical Christians were evolutionists, none became evolutionists, and the earliest works of each of them were composed before Darwinʼs Origin of Species was published.
The “Flood geology” of Henry Morris (founder of the Institute for Creation Research), was a revival in the 1960s that even failed to convince the American Scientific Affiliation — a longstanding group of Evangelical Christians and scientists whom Morris fled to form his own little group of strictly young-earth creationists, the Institute for Creation Research. Henry Morrisʼ book that sparked the “Flood geology” revival, The Genesis Flood, is filled with so many errors that it appears to be more a work of “Satan” than of God, since it lies about so many things, from the Paluxy manprints (that ICR and Answers in Genesis have since backed away from); to the “human skull found in coal” (the “Frieberg Skull” that two articles in the Creation Research Society Quarterly later debunked contradictions.darwin.ws/skull.html; to the “Lewis Mountain Overthrust,” the worldʼs largest overthrust and reversed layer formation in geology that Morris said would turn the world of modern geology upside down (but later, two ICR scientists, Steve Austin and Kurt Wise, admitted that the evidence that the “Lewis Mountain Overthrust” was a genuine overthrust was reliable, so they have ceased using the worldʼs largest overthrust as evidence of a topsy turvy geological record). In fact, Answers in Genesis has backed away from nearly all claims that “pre-Flood” human bones or artifacts of “pre-Flood” civilizations have been found, and suggested that no such evidence may ever be found. Answers in Genesis has even produced an article at their website concerning “Arguments that Young-Earth that creationists should NOT use
Makes one realize how many Young-earth arguments over the years have added up to cases of embarrassment for creationists far greater than “Piltdown man” and “Nebraska man” were to evolutionists.
The evidence for an OLD earth presently includes:
Individually dated tree-rings in two or three separate tree-ring series, stretch back 12,000 years. (Even Young-earthers like Aardsma, formerly with the Institute for Creation Research, have admitted that the evidence from individually dated tree-rings in two totally separate tree-ring series on two different continents, demonstrates the reliability of C-14-dating stretching back 12,000 years in time).
Individually (C-14)dated varves in a lake in Japan, stretch back 40,000+ layers. (Green River varves have not been individually C-14 dated, but that would be an interesting experiment to perform since there are over 2 million layers per ancient fossil lake in that region, and all toll, when you count the layers of all the fossilized lakes in that region, noting the lowest and highest layers in each lake and how the time overlaps in each lake, there are over 6 million layers.)
Deep ice cores feature 100,000 layers of ice — each layer having its own distinctive isotopic signature (and other types of layer-distinctive signatures as well), stretching back over 100,000+ layers.
Evidence of extremely slow sea-floor spreading over a 100,000,000 years. New sea floor is seen forming today from molten rock that emerges from a ridge that runs right down the middle of the Atlantic ocean. On each side of that mid-Atlantic ridge, new molten rock continues to emerge, then it cools and hardens, and the date of cooling (as well as the direction and strength of the earthʼs magnetic field at the time it cooled) is sealed inside the rock in the iron crystals that harden there. Then the next strip of molten rock emerges from the mid-Atlantic ridge, cools, and hardens, as the continents on either side of the Atlantic ocean continue to drift slowly apart from each other. Thus are formed distinctive strips of sea-floor rock that run all the way from the middle of the Atlantic ocean (where the youngest radiometrically strips are) to the shoreline (where the oldest radiometrically dated strips are found). Such strips of rock along both sides of the mid-Atlantic ridge reflect over a hundred million years of sea floor spreading that occurred as the continents of North and South American slowly drifted away from Europe and Africa.
Moreover, the radiometric dates that stretch from the middle of the Atlantic to the shoreline, agree with independent measurements (both land based and satellite based) of the present rate of movement of North and South America away from Europe and Africa. In both cases, the expected time it would take for the continents to move apart at their known present rates of speed are the same.
Even Young Eartherʼs agree that if you try, as they have, to explain the evidence for extremely slow sea-floor spreading simply by speeding up the process and imagining that the continents zipped into their present positions in a mere “year,” that hypothesis would require a MIRACLE to cool the molten rocks down instantly and in distinctive stages — because if the continents “zipped” along, then the rocks and their radioactive isotopes would have run together like soft butter spread on microwaved bread, neither would the sea floor rocks exhibit the crystallization patterns that rocks exhibit that have cooled under conditions of much lower temperatures and pressures, which is what the sea floor rocks presently exhibit. Moreover, after the continents had ceased “zipping” along but slowed to their present extremely slow speeds, what odds would there be of achieving the same MATCH between the known range of radiometric dates of sea-floor rocks from the middle of the Atlantic to the shoreline, AND the present speed of the continentʼs moving apart from one another today? What a coincidence! The strictly scientific odds look far better that the “continental zip” hypothesis is wrong, and the continents took over a hundred million years to separate, and at the same rate they are presently separating.
The evidence of an old-earth is enormous and defies the “odds.” There are thousands of individually dated tree rings — tens of thousands of individually dated lake varves — a hundred thousand distinctive layers of ice — and, sea-floor rocks formed in succession and having hardened over successive periods stretching back over a hundred million years.
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