Lesson Five: The Bible & Geology (Part 1)

1. Please pick up a handout from the table in the back of the auditorium for class this morning. Lesson Five: The Bible & Geology (Part 1) From Wayne Jackson’s book

2. The Bible & Geology • Introduction • A study of the history of the earth, its composition, the forces that have worked upon it and the remains of ancient plants and animals • Many claim that geology provides the “proof positive” that organic evolution has occurred. • Let’s allow the evidence to speak for itself.

3. The Bible & Geology • Earth’s History: Two Views • Uniformitarianism – the evolutionary concept • Notion that the earth’s features are the result of gradualchanges over a very long period of time (billions of years) • Major contradiction in evolutionary scheme • In advocating their view of geology, evolutionists claim operations of universe have always been uniform • In advocating their view of biology, evolutionists allege that earth’s conditions were different in the past (trying to explain the “spontaneous” origin of life) • Catastrophism – the Biblical viewpoint

4. The Bible & Geology • Earth’s History: Two Views • Catastrophism – the Biblical viewpoint • The planet’s surface has been subject to violent changes in the past (on a worldwide scale). • From a Biblical vantage point, the most significant of these would be the global Flood of Noah’s day. • Which of these ideas best conforms to the actual facts of geology?

5. The Bible & Geology • An Introduction to the Geologic Time Table • Evolutionists contend earth is 4½ - 5 billion yrs old • They allege that for the past 2 billion years, life has evolved gradually from the simple to the increasingly complex • Common feature in many geology & biology textbooks is the Geologic Time Table • It proposes to show, in chart form, about 12 different geologic “ages,” representing various life forms, as observed in the fossil record • It supposedly shows the development of living organisms, in ascending order, from the simple (in the ancient past) to the more complex (in the present).

7. The Bible & Geology • The Geologic Time Table • Strata of the column are arranged according to the types of fossils found in them • The fossils, which are allegedly cataloged in ascending strata, are called index fossils. • Index fossils are certain types of fossils that mark, or index, each stratum layer, due to the fact that it is prominent in the layer and rarely found in other strata • The Geologic Time Table supposedly furnishes the real proof for the doctrine of evolution

8. The Bible & Geology • The Geologic Time Table • Evolutionists have arranged the strata of the Geologic Time Table based upon the subjective assumption that organisms have evolved from the simple to the complex. • “The only chronometric scale applicable in geologic history for the stratigraphic classification of rocks and for dating geologic events exactly is furnished by the fossils. Owing to the irreversibility of evolution, they offer an unambiguous time scale for relative age determination and for world-wide correlations of rocks.” – Paleontologist, O.H. Schindewolf

9. The Bible & Geology • The Geologic Time Table • The actual truth is that the geologic time table is nothing more than a graphic conglomeration of assumptions, wistfully conceived and arbitrarily thrown together, in an attempt to prove the unprovable hypothesis of organic evolution.

10. The Bible & Geology • A Parallel Illustration • There is just as much evidence for the Geologic Time Table as for this example

11. The Bible & Geology • The Testimony of Scripture • The earth and all its living inhabitants did not develop over vast eons of time; rather, they were created in six literal days (Gen. 1; cf. Ex. 20:11). • The earth was created “to be inhabited” (Isa. 45:18). • Not to remain a desert without inhabitants • In existence several billion years before any inhabitants? • Man was intended to subdue & exercise dominion over the earth & its creature—to rule over and subject unto himself the creation (Gen. 1:26-31). • Billions of animals become extinct b/f man ever existed? • After man’s arrival, God said, “It was very good.”

12. The Bible & Geology • The Testimony of Scripture • In order to argue that man’s history on the earth is but a tiny fraction of the earth’s entire history, evolutionists must find eons of time. • “Given so much time, the ‘impossible’ becomes possible, the possible probable, the probable virtually certain. One has only to wait: time itself performs the miracles.” – George Wald, The Origin of Life • Little wonder that the estimated age of the earth has doubled approximately every 20 years over the past century.

13. The Bible & Geology • The Testimony of Scripture • Jesus, who was an active agent in the creation (John 1:1-3; Col. 1:16), declared that male and female (Adam & Eve) existed “from the beginning of the creation” (Mark 10:6; cf. Matt. 19:4). • Romans 1:20 states, “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse.” • The power & deity of the Creator have been perceived & observed (obviously by mankind) since the creation of the world. No possible gap of billions of years before man!

14. The Bible & Geology • Examining the Time Table • TRUTH TO REMEMBER: The geologic time table exists nowhere on earth except on the paper of science textbooks! • It is contrived construction based upon the presumption that evolution has occurred.

15. The Bible & Geology • Examining the Time Table • In their own words: • “It should be understood that it is not possible to proceed directly downward through the whole succession of bedded rocks…

16. The Bible & Geology • Examining the Time Table • In their own words: • “…The full series of strata is made out only by putting together this data gathered throughout all lands; and even when this is done, an absolutely complete series cannot yet be made out, or at least has not been.” – Thomas Chamberlin, Journal of Geology

17. The Bible & Geology • Examining the Time Table • In their own words: • Evolutionist A.M. Winchester admitted that the gaps in the geologic record are significant: “The record is by no means complete—there are great gaps covering millions of years in which absolutely no records have been found.”

18. The Bible & Geology • Examining the Time Table • In their own words: • “No more than one percent or so of the history of the earth is decipherable. But that one percent is dispersed through a series of events, or episodes, extending back through geologic time. By imaginative manipulation of the evolving data we can reconstruct a magnificent and awesome history of the earth and its life…such diverse, evolving life.” – A.E.J. Engel

19. The Bible & Geology • Missing Strata • The Grand Canyon is their champion for geologic column, claiming it represents one billion years of life history • However, there are huge chucks of their “textbook” time table missing from the Canyon record • The top five periods (representing more than 200 million years) are missing! • Three periods of the Paleozoic era (representing 145 million years) are absent!

20. The Bible & Geology • Missing Strata • Interesting admission by the Canadian government almost a century ago (from just east of the Rockies): • “East of the main divide the lower Carboniferous is overlaid in places by beds of lower Cretaceous age, and here again, although the two formations differ so widely in respect to age, one overlies the other without any perceptible break,

21. The Bible & Geology • Missing Strata • Interesting admission in Canada: • “…and the separation of the one from the other is rendered more difficult by the fact that the upper beds of the Carboniferous are lithologically almost precisely like those of the Cretaceous. Were it not for the fossil evidence, one would naturally suppose that a single formation was being dealt with.”

22. The Bible & Geology • Missing Strata • Interesting admission in Canada: • There is more than 100 million years missing • Yet, the physical evidence indicates laid down in the same approximate time era • The sole criterion for viewing them as widely separated is the fossil remains • The fossil evidence is interpreted strictly in terms of that legendary evolutionary development.

23. The Bible & Geology • Finding Strata Flip-Flopped • Some of the strata of the geologic column are found out of sequence • Numerous instances where stratum from supposedly very ancient period will be found sitting directly on top of stratum which is allegedly much younger • And this with every indication that the various layers were laid down in precisely the order in which they are found • Evolutionists still hold the fossil sequence is always the guide

24. The Bible & Geology • Finding Strata Flip-Flopped • Example: near Yellowstone Park • Area of Paleozoic strata on top of Eocene beds (epoch of Tertiary Period) • Top layer alleged to be 250 million years older than base

25. The Bible & Geology • Finding Strata Flip-Flopped • Example: Montana & Glacier Park • Pre-Cambrian stratum on top of Cretaceous stratum • Top layer alleged to be 400-500 million years older than base • The geologists/evolutionists contend the upper Pre-Cambrian region (350 miles wide x 6 miles deep) was thrust over the Cretaceous from a distance of 35-40 miles away. No evidence!

26. The Bible & Geology • Finding Strata Flip-Flopped • Example: Mythen Peak, Swiss Alps • The strata were woefully mixed up – 200 million years flip-flopped ?

27. The Bible & Geology • Finding Strata Flip-Flopped • Example: Mythen Peak, Swiss Alps • The strata were woefully mixed up – 200 million years flip-flopped • Evolutionists attempted to explain these contradictions by suggesting the Mythen Peak was pushed all the way from Africa to Europe – “The Mythen represents an outlier of Africa resting on Europe.” – Evolutionist Leon W. Collet of Univ. of Geneva

28. The Bible & Geology • Evaluation of the Geologic Time Table • “The actual percentage of areas showing this progressive order from the simple to the complex is surprisingly small. Indeed formations with very complex forms of life are often found resting directly on the basic granites. Furthermore, I have in my own files a list of over 500 cases that attest to a reverse order, that is, simple forms of life resting on top of more advanced types.” – Dr. Walter Lammerts

29. The Bible & Geology • Evaluation of the Geologic Time Table • In discussing these mixed up strata, Sir Archibald Geikie, Director General of the British Geological Survey, said: • “Had these sections been planned for the purposes of deception, they could not have been more skillfully devised…and no one coming first to this ground would suspect that what appears to be a normalstratigraphical sequence is not really so. When a geologist finds things in this condition, he may be excused if he begins to wonder whether he himself is not really standing on his head.”