Introduction

In the early days of modern geology, loose piles of debris - sand and gravel - and scratched and polished rocks observed over much of northern Europe, were ascribed to the Genesis Flood. But when Louis Agassiz (1807-1873), a young Swiss scientist, showed that these phenomena were practically identical with those found in the Alps, where they could be plainly seen to have been produced by glaciers, the scientific world changed its viewpoint and accepted the idea that glacial action had at an earlier time been widespread, involving vast areas of Europe below the mountains.

In the middle of the 19th century Agassiz visited America and in the travels over New England and New York saw the same glacial evidence as in Europe. The result was that American geologists began to teach that a vast ice sheet had once covered much of northeastern America as well as northern Europe.

To the believer in the Flood record of Genesis and the short chronology of the Bible, the glacial theory presents a difficult problem, The glacialists have assigned a million years to the glacial period. Obviously their theory cannot harmonize with the literal rendering of Genesis.

Who is right?

And what facts do we have on which to base a decision on this problem?

Before attempting to reach any conclusion, let us investigate the evidence.

A few of the outstanding facts should be stated in order that our conclusions may be valid.

It has been my privilege to observe glaciation in Yosemite and Rainier National Parks. Here may be seen rocks that have been rounded, polished, and scratched as the ice streams moving down the valley have done their work, using sand as the scouring agent. Great piles of debris, varying from fine sand to huge boulders, have been deposited along the sides of the ice flow or left at its lower margin as it melted. The nature of the deposits is so different from water deposits that no one who has studied them carefully could have any difficulty in recognizing the differences. For one,

1. water sorts the sand and gravel and spreads the various masses out over wide areas.
   
2. Ice drops unsorted masses in piles, except where water melted from the ice front washes the debris out into what are known as outwash plains. Also
   
3. a mass of broken rock will be smoothed by water in such a way as to leave the major irregularities still existing, whereas
   
4. ice acts like a gigantic flexible plane, imparting a characteristic contour that is quite different from that made by water.
   
5. Glaciers also polish the rock floor over which they move, often making the surface as smooth as that produced by a stonecutter, and sometimes leaving long scratches in the polish where stones have acted as chisels as they have been pushed over the rock surface by the moving ice.

Travelling Canada West to East Into the USA

Recently it was my (Harold Clark, 1920-2010) privilege to visit the Columbia Ice Field a few miles north of Banff, Alberta. Here the glacial evidences may be traced down the valleys clear to the front of the mountains and for several miles out into the plains.

In Yosemite, while the glaciers are now very small, and lie at about 12,000 feet elevation, their former paths can be traced down to the 4,000 foot level. The same is true in the Alps.

As one travels the Trans-Canada Highway eastward from the mountains, all across the continent he encounters phenomena of striking similarity to those seen in the Rockies. Across the prairie provinces, the rolling hills are composed largely of sand and gravel exactly like those deposited by the ice in the valleys and foothills of the mountains.

When Ontario is entered, an interesting situation is encountered. All across the province and much of Quebec, the country has been swept bare of sedimentary rock . The underlying rocks known to geologists as the `Basement Complex,' and consisting of granite, schist, and related crystalline rocks, have been contoured and polished, obviously by ice, for the evidence is exactly like that left by the great mountain glaciers of the past. In between the higher outcrops of rock, the debris - sand, gravel, and boulders - fills the lee side of the hills or extends in vast mounds or ridges for many miles.

This sort of evidence may be followed across Canada to the Atlantic and down into New England and New York and the Middle States as far as the Ohio and Missouri Rivers. The conclusion therefore seems inevitable that there has been a great ice sheet covering a vast extent of territory in Canada and the northern and northeastern United States.

Millions of Years or a Short Genesis Flood?

Now, if we accept the Genesis record of creation about 6,000 years ago and the Flood about 4,000 years ago, how can we harmonize this with the apparent evidence for extensive glaciation?

At this juncture let us pause to recognize a vital principle in interpretation. This is the principle of

For example, geologists interpret all action in terms of long ages of uniform natural processes. This viewpoint, commonly referred to as uniformitarianism, is directly opposed to that of believers in the literal Genesis record, known as catastrophism. A person orients the facts to his own `frame of reference', and the conclusions drawn from the same array of technical data are widely different. (Overall it is true that time cannot be seen.)

Now let us study for a bit to see what conditions would prevail on the earth after a universal deluge such as is portrayed in the Bible. Then we may be able to understand the place that the glacial phenomena may have in such a scheme of interpretation.

One fifth of the present land surface of the earth is in interior basins - regions having no outlet to the sea. Among these are

1. extensive areas in Nevada and Utah, and
   
2. in the Sahara, and
   
3. in the Dead Sea region.

At the close of the Flood these basins would have been full of water. In addition, many smaller areas would have been filled which have since cut down their barriers and been drained.

The result of this condition would be a considerable difference in the climate of much of the earth from what it is at present. Many regions now desert or semi-desert would have been more or less humid. Rainfall and snowfall would have been much greater than now. Without doubt many parts of the earth would have experienced cooler and moister climates than they do now.

From Alaska to Cape Horn, in the West Indies, and in the southwest Pacific, there is now volcanic activity, and there is evidence that it was it was much more extensive and vigorous in the past. The geologist who assumes that all this activity was spread out over millions of years may see no significance to this fact, but if one views this action in terms of the short period since the Flood, it becomes tremendously important. The amount of volcanic dust thrown into the atmosphere by these widely scattered volcanoes would have a very definite relation to the so-called `glacial period,' if we were to try to fit it into the years following the Flood. To understand how this is, we must explain a simple phenomenon with which we are all familiar.

A Simple Phenomenon

When sunlight comes through a greenhouse window, the light striking objects within is transformed into heat rays. These heat rays cannot pass out through the glass nearly so fast as the light comes in. As a result the greenhouse is heated. The same result is seen in a closed car.

When volcanic dust is thrown into the air, being extremely fine, it remains in suspension for a long time. When Krakatoa exploded in Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra in 1883, the dust went all around the world and remained in suspension for two years, causing worldwide brilliant sunsets. A somewhat similar result was observed in 1912 when Katmai, in Alaska, erupted. Another was produced by the eruption of the volcano in Bali in 1963.

Suppose now, that not one or two, but hundreds of volcanoes were in eruption at once. A tremendous amount of dust would be thrown into the atmosphere. This pall of dust has what is called the `reverse greenhouse effect.' Sunlight is shut out to a certain degree, and thus the surface of the earth does not receive its normal amount of heat. More than this, when the light striking the earth becomes transformed into heat, this heat would escape through the dust layer thirty times as fast as the light come through. And so the earth would be chilled and its average temperature lowered many degrees. (Right now, late March 2012, we may have strange weather in California because of ash from Mt. Etna in Sicily, which exploded earlier this month; depending on air currents.).

Now if we put together the increased humidity due to conditions prevailing after the Flood and the cooling of the earth as the result of volcanic activity, we would have ideal conditions for a great increase in the amount of snowfall, along with such cool summers that the annual melting would not keep up with the snowfall. The large amount of snow would pack to form ice, and thus would be formed the great ice sheet that is commonly spoken of as the continental `glacier.'

How much of the earth's surface would be affected would depend, of course, on the balance between the amount of precipitation and the rate of melting. Somewhere a southern boundary would be established where this ultimate balance would be reached. This seems to have been a line drawn roughly from Long Island, New York, westward to the Ohio and Missouri Rivers and through Wyoming and Montana to the Rockies. In Europe the British Isles and Scandinavia seem to have been covered, with only the cental part of Western Europe open, between the northern ice mass and the Alpine glaciers.

Some advocates of the Flood theory have supposed that changes then taking place caused the earth to cool very suddenly. But careful studies of the problem make that interpretation untenable. Obviously the warm waters prevailing over the earth at the close of the Flood would have needed time to cool off before extensive glaciation could occur. We now believe that there must have been several hundred years between the Flood and the development of ice sheets.

As we examine all the facts, it becomes apparent that if we look at them in the `frame of reference' of catastrophism rather than uniformitarianism, we could quite readily explain the glacial `period' as a concomitant of the Flood theory of geology.

The long time assigned to glaciation by uniformitarian geologists and a number of related details in the popular theory, may not necessarily be considered valid if it is recognized that there is an alternate interpretation.

The reader must not expect this brief treatise to answer all the technical problems that migh appear. But it may be sufficient at present to show that the Genesis record of the Flood may be correlated with the glacial phenomena with more validity than has commonly been recognized. [The End]

After decades of speculation about evolution, is the Bible view of Origins Coming Back Into Favor? How acceptance of the False Theory of "uniformity" caused a "Great Divide" and led science astray.

When the Swiss scientist Louis Agassiz convinced the world in the middle of the last century that the loose sediments scattered over northern Europe and northeastern America were produced by ice sheets, he was thought to have completely eliminated the Genesis Flood from scientific theory. For this reason some diluvialists have excoriated Agassiz and all that he stood for. This judgment, however, is unjustified, for in recent years it has been possible to correlate glacial phenomena with the Flood theory of geology. In the above article I pointed out how this can be done.

Why, then, does the scientific world not return to the Flood theory? The answer is found in certain views that were developed before the time of Agassiz.

Men have been interested in the fossils for many centuries, but about in 1500 A.D. intense interest developed in fossil shells found in the high mountains. Arguments flew back and forth between those who believed that fossils were actually remnants of ancient life and those who thought they were only mechanical features that resembled living creatures but had never actually been alive. Some said that they grew from seeds blown inland from the ocean. Others declared that God placed them in the rocks to test man's faith; still other said that the devil put them there to deceive men.

Gradually the theory prevailed that fossils were `organized,' that is, were the remains of organic creatures. And so, when William Smith (1769-1839), soon after the beginning of the 19th century published his conclusions drawn from his memorable collection of `organic fossils,' the world had pretty well accepted the idea that fossils really had once been alive.

The controversy still raged as to how long life had existed upon the earth. For about 300 years it had been popularly believed that Ussher's chronology, to be found in the margin of many Bibles, was correct. According to this chronology, creation occurred in 4004 B.C., and the Flood in 2348 B.C.

Some scientists did not accept Ussher's Biblical chronology, but proposed other explanations for the past history of the earth.

Foremost among the advocates of a long chronology was Comte de Buffon (1707-1788). According to him, the earth had gone through several epochs of natural development. In this way he accounted for the rock strata, assuming that different rocks were laid down in different epochs. For many years following his work, theologians used his scientific views as a background of the day-age theory, that each day of creation represented an age or epoch in earth history. This view was quite popular until a thorough going evolutionary geology replaced it in the middle of the 19th century.

Another theory that held the attention of the world for many years in the early 19th century was catastrophism as proposed by Georges Cuvier (1769-1832). He was the famous French anatomist and geologist who dominated scientific thought for over half a century. Observing that in the rocks of the Paris Basin a number of marine and terrestrial sediments alternated, he taught that the earth had passed through a series of catastrophes.

Many scientists accepted Cuvier's theory because they thought that in it they had found an explanation for the supposed succession of life from lower to higher forms throughout past time. Each period was supposed to have had its characteristic type of life which was recorded in the rocks when they were produced by a catastrophe. Following each event of this kind, a new and more advanced type of life would appear and thrive for a time, only to be destroyed by another catastrophe. Like Buffon's theory, Cuvier's catastrophism gave way to the rising theory of long ages of gradual evolutionary development.

Incidentally, in passing let me say emphatically that those who today argue for catastrophic action in the past do not in any way hold to Cuvier's theory of successive catastrophes. They argue for one overwhelming world catastrophe, and only one.

The man whose views laid the foundation for modern geological theory was a Scotchman named James Hutton (1726-1797). He obtained a medical education in Europe, but devoted his life largely to the improvement of agriculture in Scotland. It was only natural that his studies should lead him to become interested in the rocks.

In 1785 Hutton presented to the Royal Society of Edinburgh along, highly technical paper on a new Theory of the Earth. The main thesis of this paper was the ancient Greek philosophy of long ages of natural development. Hutton declared that there had never been a beginning and there never would be an end to earth history. This view has become known as uniformitarianism, in contrast with catastrophism.

The world paid little attention to Hutton, possibly because the language of his paper was somewhat obscure and hard to comprehend. But in 1802 John Playfair (1748-1819) published a paper explaining the uniformitarian theory in simple language. From that time on it began to grow in popularity. Then one of England's most brilliant scientists, Charles Lyell (1797-1875), made extensive geological studies and in 1830 published the first textbook on the subject, `Principles of Geology'. In this text all geological processes were interpreted according to the Huttonian theory of uniformity. With its use in colleges, where it was popular for over 50 years, the uniformitarian theory of geology finally became established.

About the time that Hutton was developing his theory, another significant discovery was made. William Smith (1769-1839), a British surveyor and canal engineer, observed that certain rock formations always contained certain types of fossils. He made a collection of these, which later became part of the British Museum collection. In 1815 he drew the first geological map of England, in which were shown all the outcroppings of strata. Smith did not, however, attach any time values to the rocks.

In the 1830's Adam Sedgwick (1785-1873), of Cambridge University, and Roderick Murchison (1792-1871), of the Geological Survey, undertook to apply Smith's theory of identification of the rocks by means of their constant fossils. Gong into the rugged countryside of Wales and western England, they classified the rocks below the coal measures. Thus was born the science of stratigraphic geology.

Soon after this, James Hall (1811-1898) and his associates made similar studies in New York. Upon the New York System thus established, all American rocks have been classified. From the 1840's, with textbooks teaching the uniformitarian theory, and Agassiz' glacial theory being accepted, diluvialism went into eclipse and uniformitarian geology took over.

But is this now-popular interpretation necessarily correct?

A the summit of the pass in the Canadian Rockies west of Banff, Alberta, a little brook comes splashing down the hillside. At one point it divides, part of it going west, part east. The part that goes west joins the Columbia River and eventually reaches the Pacific Ocean, where currents carry it away to tropical southern seas. The part that goes east joins the Bow River, then the Saskatchewan, eventually reaching Hudson Bay and the cold North Atlantic.

Apparently it would seem a very small matter which way two drops of water might turn at the summit of the Rockies, but in the end they reach destinations a continent apart.

Where does the `great divide' come in the history of modern geology?

1. Not in the evidence given by Agassiz in favor of a glacial period, for modern deluvialists can accept this theory and yet hold the Flood theory.
   
2. Not in the stratigraphic system set up by the work of Smith, Sedgwick, Murchison, and Hall, for modern diluvialists recognize the validity of the stratigraphic sequence and correlate it with their Flood geology. - Where then, did the divergence come between `ages' geology and `Flood' geology?
   
3. It came with the acceptance of Hutton's theory of uniformity as popularized by Playfair and Lyell.

The theory of epochs as propounded by Buffon failed to meet the test of scientific investigation. Cuvier's catastrophism was too narrow in its application to fit world conditions. And since these two theories were the only correct alternatives to Hutton's theory, the world naturally accepted his views.

The result has been that for considerably over a century the data that extensive geological research has brought to light over the world has been oriented with the theory of long ages of uniform geological action. Geological theory is now far away, yes, a world apart, from what it might have been had a truly scientific diluvialism been established.

Is it possible to align geological data with the short chronology of Genesis and a literal acceptance of the record of a universal flood?

There are a few scholars who believe that it is possible, and they are working to develop a truly scientific system of Flood geology. It is their aim to show that the acceptance of the uniformitarian hypothesis by scholars 150 years ago has since been determined the whole course of geological interpretation, and has taken it, as it were, into the frigid North instead of the warm waters of the Pacific. Had uniformity been rejected as a hypothesis which is unproved and unprovable, and had geological data been interpreted in terms of the Genesis record, we might have had a valid Flood geology today that would have been recognized as scientifically sound.

If scientists would go back to the `great divide' and start over again, taking the opposite turn to that which was taken at the beginning of the 19th century, they might be surprised at the results of their study. (Is it complacency, weariness, which holds many back?) And to those fundamentalist Christians, of whatever faith they may be, who still cling to a belief in the Genesis record of creation and the Flood, it can be a source of satisfaction to realize that there may be, after all, much more scientific validity to the Bible story than has been generally recognized. It is high time that careful attention be given to the flow of scientific thought on the other side of the divide. {End of Article; ST Sept, Oct 1964]