Together with mankind’s relationship to the environment, the relationship between science and religion is one of the most important—and difficult—problems facing humanity today. Not surprisingly, these problems are linked. Herein I see another modern lesson of the Noah’s Flood story. Perhaps we would be wise to consider Earth itself as a habitable ark careening around the Sun. Maybe the modern relevance of the story lies not so much in whether it literally describes a particular prehistoric flood, but in a timeless lesson about humanity’s moral responsibility to safeguard creation, as did Noah and his crew.
To me, a literal reading of the Creation in Genesis does not do the story justice. Even a casual reading reveals that days one, two, and three set the stage for days four, five, and six. The creation of light on the first day sets the backdrop for the creation of the sun, moon and stars on the fourth day. The separation of the sky from the waters on the second day sets up the creation of birds and creatures of the sea on the fifth day. The segregation of dry land on the third day sets the stage for the creation of plants and terrestrial animals on the sixth day. This recurring cycle of three is a classic poetic device. I don’t think that the Creation story was intended as historical fact. It’s more akin to epic poetry written to convey the divine origin of our wondrous world and everything in it, however they came about. Genesis 1 remains powerful and relevant today if read as a symbolic polemic intended for early monotheists rather than as a Bronze Age scientific treatise.
One challenge of interpreting Genesis literally lies in its brevity. The Creation is described in the fifty-six verses of Genesis 1–2. Noah’s Flood is covered in the sixty-eight verses of Genesis 6–8. In other words, about all there is in the Bible to explain the 4.5 billion years of earth history is about the same number of sentences on a typical front page of the New York Times. One can hardly expect a detailed accounting given that this represents just a couple of dozen sentences per billion years, and that most of these sentences deal with the life and times of Adam, Noah, and company.
One might think that brevity equates with clarity in a simple literal reading of Genesis. But God created light on the first day and didn’t make the Sun until the fourth day. So where did the light and the night come from, and how was the length of the first three days defined? Fish were not even created at all in a literal reading of Genesis, for they are not mentioned. Neither are bacteria, viruses, and insects—or dinosaurs. Does this mean that they evolved after the initial Creation, or that Genesis is not a comprehensive world history? Such questions and the potential for alternative interpretations gave rise to a long history of commentary on how to interpret Genesis, and how to interpret the story of Noah’s Flood in particular.
Perhaps the challenge of interpreting another famous document—the United States Constitution—can help illuminate the problem of trying to understand the Bible. Consider how little liberals and conservatives agree on the meaning of the Constitution, a document only a few thousand words long, written in English not that long ago, whose signed original is on display under glass for all to see. Compare that with the Bible, which was pieced together from partial versions of a work three-quarters of a million words long, handed down between cultures, and translated several times over from a language lacking vowels and spaces between words. Is it any surprise that people today don’t agree on exactly what the Bible means?
Like most geologists, I had come to see Noah’s Flood as a fairy tale—an ancient attempt to explain the mystery of how marine fossils ended up in rocks high in the mountains. Now I’ve come to see the story of Noah’s Flood like so many other flood stories—as rooted in truth. But was it the flooding of the Black Sea, or a great Mesopotamian flood that ravaged the ancestral homeland of Semitic peoples? Who knows? I doubt the historic truth about Noah’s Flood will ever be known with certainty. And I don’t think it really matters. The discoveries of science have revealed the world and our universe to be far more spectacular than could have been imagined by Mesopotamian minds. To still see the world through their eyes is to minimize the wonder of creation.
Our interpretation of the world around us fundamentally shapes our outlook. We will only look for evidence that confirms our beliefs if we have already decided how and what to think about something. But if we keep our minds open, we may be surprised at what we discover. And how we choose to view the world seems to increasingly frame contemporary issues of tremendous societal importance, from climate change to the way we teach science in public schools. At stake is how we interpret nature, and what, if anything, we can learn from the world around us.
Geologists make sense of ancient events by piecing together stories archived in stone and inscribed on the land; we attempt to forge coherent theories that stand up to evidence. Most attempts fail. But that’s central to an ongoing process of pushing old theories until they break in order to improve upon them. Yet, we’ve seen how the scientific establishment can be inherently resistant to change, favoring familiar theories over new or uncomfortable ideas. What distinguishes science from religion is that in science even cherished ideas must stand up to the test of new evidence.
By design, science excludes miracles because there is no way to test them through rational analysis. Science cannot address supernatural or divine action any more than Seattle residents can will away gray skies. Creationists and advocates of intelligent design seize upon this fundamental limitation of the scientific method to allege that science denies the existence of God. But science can no more prove God does not exist than it can prove He (or She) does exist. And no matter how much we learn about the material characteristics, properties, and history of the universe, such knowledge will not explain why the universe exists or how it came to have the properties it does. This will always be a matter of speculation—or faith.
However, we cannot simply compartmentalize science and religion into tidy, noncompeting domains because some scientific discoveries are not compatible with particular religious beliefs. Few religious ideas can be tested, but some are refutable. Science has demonstrated that once-conventional beliefs concerning the physical world are wrong—like the ideas that we live at the center of the universe on a six-thousand-year-old planet shaped by Noah’s Flood. I believe faith and science can peacefully coexist, so long as we don’t founder on or cling to the rocky shore of either. What this requires is open-minded thinking guided by humanity’s greatest asset—the gift of reason.
Naturally, there is bound to be some friction between science and religion because they offer very different ways to assess truth. The long history of interaction between geology and Christianity includes times when they reinforced one another and times when they clashed. The story of Noah’s Flood shows how the different beliefs of various branches of Christianity are shaped by which parts of the Bible their devotees read literally and which they interpret allegorically. Over time, Christian thought has sorted itself out along a continuum of belief. The modern view of inherent conflict is championed most vociferously by those who keep the conflict going—creationists and militant atheists who share little else than the belief that faith in God and science are incompatible. Most people, however, hold beliefs somewhere between these two extremes.
In reality, there is a wide spectrum of possible beliefs about the relationship of God to the material world. At one end is belief in an engaged, helpful personal God who rides shotgun on everyday activities and can intervene at anytime to favor the outcome of specific events, like a coin toss or a football game. Others believe in a more strategic God that intervenes only occasionally to shape the course of history or important events, like elections or wars. Farther along the continuum of belief is a more distant God responsible for creating the universe and the laws governing the world. At this end of the philosophical spectrum are the beliefs that God directed and planned the course of events in advance, and the view that the universe is a glorious but random experiment. Still others ascribe no role in the universe for a God at all.
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ile religion cannot adequately address scientific questions, accepting scientific truths need not mean abandoning morality, purpose, and meaning in life. And just because science can neither prove nor disprove the existence of God does not mean that it says religious faith is an illusion. Thoughtful discussions of the relationship between science and religion are impossible when fundamentalists disguise religious arguments as science and scientists dismiss religion as childish superstition. In reality, faith and reason need not be enemies if one views ignorance as the enemy of both. Should humans be afraid of an enigmatic universe whose mysteries elude us? Or should we struggle to decipher the mysteries of our world and how it works, whether for simple intellectual joy and challenge, to reap practical benefits, or to gain insight into the mind of God—whatever one imagines that to be.
Geologists have uncovered a grand story of the coming and going of life and the making and remaking of whole worlds as continents wandered the globe over billions of years. We are still unraveling the secrets behind the great extinction events of the past and learning to understand the causes of ancient climate changes that ushered in times hotter than today and periods when the whole planet froze over. Even now, as we send robots off to explore the geology of Mars, our nearest celestial neighbor, we are discovering new planets circling distant stars. We will likely soon confront the discovery of other inhabitable planets in a universe far grander than ever imagined in our intellectual infancy.
The scientific story of the origin and evolution of life, the vast sweep of geologic time, and the complexity of the processes that shaped the world we know today inspire more awe and wonder than the series of one-off miracles from Genesis that I read about in Sunday school. Miracles do not fuel curiosity or innovation. If we embrace the claim that Earth is a few thousand years old, we must also throw out the most basic findings of geology, physics, chemistry, and biology. The concept of geologic time, on the other hand, opens up an entirely new creation story, along with the idea that the world is unfinished and creation is ongoing. And a complex, evolving world is one we would be well advised to do our best to understand. Personally, I find a world that invites exploration and learning more inspiring than a world where all is known.
While science has much to offer us, from vaccines to space travel, religion can help humanity frame essential social, moral, and ethical decisions, such as those arising from the development and uses of science and technology. Of course, history is also replete with examples of religion being used to subjugate, control, and persecute. Ethics and morality do not require a religious basis any more than vociferous professions of religious belief guarantee ethical or moral behavior. Faith and reason offer different lenses through which people seek to understand the world and our place in it.
I find that the wonder in reading rocks and topography, and in understanding the vast scope of geologic time, rivals that of religious belief. In either one can find a taste of the infinite and of things far grander than ourselves. Yet no honest search for truth can deny geological discoveries—not when Earth’s marvelous story is laid out for all to see in the very fabric of our world. We may argue endlessly about how to interpret the Bible, but the rocks don’t lie. They tell it like it was.
Notes
1. Buddha’s Dam
1. Atoms of the same element have the same number of protons, but different isotopes of an element have different numbers of neutrons. For example, atoms of carbon-12 have six protons and six neutrons, whereas atoms of carbon-14 have six protons and eight neutrons. Different isotopes of an element therefore have different atomic mass, which allows their relative abundance to be measured in a mass spectrometer.
2. Polls reporting the widespread acceptance of creationist ideas among the American public include: a 2001 National Science Foundation survey of science literacy that found more than half of American adults did not know that dinosaurs went extinct before people walked the earth; a 2004 ABC News Poll that reported more than half of Americans believed that the biblical account of the creation was “literally true,” and that Noah’s Flood was a global flood; and a 2005 Gallup Poll (August 5-7, 2005) that reported more than half of Americans believed that “creationism” was definitely or probably true.
2. A Grand Canyon
1. When the presidents of the Geological Society of America and the American Geophysical Union urged the Park Service to stop selling the book, political appointees in Washington overruled the park superintendent’s decision to pull it from the shelves. Instead, the book moved to its own specially created inspirational reading section. In defending the continuing sale of the book, Park Service spokesperson Elaine Sevy was quoted by National Center for Science Education deputy director Glenn Branch as saying, “Now that the book has become quite popular, we don’t want to remove it” (Branch, 2004).
2. Igneous rocks form by cooling from hot magma, whether below ground (intrusive rocks) or when erupted out of a volcano (extrusive rocks). Metamorphic rocks form when preexisting rocks get heated enough under enough pressure that their minerals are transformed (metamorphosed) into new minerals and deform, sometimes to the point where they flow like taffy and produce wild swirling patterns cast in stone.
3. Bones in the Mountains
1. There is some controversy about the height and name of the mountain. While new technology has allowed more accurate measurements, the mountain also has been rising since it was first surveyed. In May 1999, the former official height of Mt. Everest of 29,029 feet was revised upward to 29,035 feet based on a multireceiver global positioning system (GPS) survey. The name of the mountain is a bit more complicated because several cultures have a claim on it. In 1865, the Royal Geographical Society named the peak after the British surveyor general of India, Sir George Everest, who first recorded a surveyed height and location of the mountain. He called it peak XV, peak fifteen, because at the time local names were not known to the British due to the area’s being off-limits to foreigners. The far older Tibetan name for the mountain is Chomolungma, which I’ve seen variously translated as Saint Mother, Holy Mother, Goddess Mother of Mountains, or Mother Goddess of the Earth. Its Nepali name is Sagarmatha, literally sky head or Goddess of the Sky. The most recent, Chinese name is Mount Qomolangma, a transliteration of the traditional Tibetan name.
2. Origen, 1966, 288.
3. Augustine, 1982, 47-48.
4. White, 1910, 8.
5. Luther, 1960, vol. 2, 65.
6. Ibid., vol. 2, 93.
7. White, 1910, 126.
8. Drake, 1957, 181.
9. Ibid., 186.
10. White, 1910, 137.
4. World in Ruins
1. Cutler, 2003, 59.
2. Burnet, 1684, 140.
3. Ibid., 18.
4. Ibid., a2.
5. Nicholson, 1997, 235.
6. Davies, 1969, 73.
7. Burnet, 1684, a.
8. Woodward, 1723, 105.
9. Ibid., 105-6.
10. Cutler, 2003, 178.
11. Cohn, 1996, 135.
12. Keill, 1698, 26.
13. Ibid., 58.
14. Ibid., 151.
5. A Mammoth Problem
1. Cohn, 1996, 88.
2. Levin, 1988, 762, 764.
3. Mammoths roamed both northern Asia and North America, while the somewhat smaller mastodons that grew up to just ten feet in height only lived in North America. Fossils of the two species can be distinguished based on their distinctively different teeth. Grassland-dwelling mammoths had molars characterized by long ridges that could cut through grass like scissors, whereas the woodland-dwelling mastodons had multipointed molars designed to crush leaves, twigs, and bark.
4. Cuvier, 1978, 15.
5. Ibid., 16.
6. The Test of Time
1. White, 1910, 215.
2. Playfair, 1805, 73.
3. Hutton, 1788, 304.
4. Kirwan, 1799, 105.
5. Playfair, 1802, 351, 401.
6. Ibid., 471, 472-473
.
7. Catastrophic Revelations
1. Klaver, 1997, 19.
2. Cuvier, 1978, 171.
3. Buckland, 1820, 23-24.
4. Ibid., 20.
5. Ibid., 146.
6. Sedgwick, 1825, 35.
7. Buckland, 1837, vol. 1, 22.
8. Ibid., 18.
9. Ibid., 35.
10. Klaver, 1997, 19.
11. Ibid., 25.
12. Lyell, 1833, 6.
13. Ibid., 270.
14. Wilson, 1972, 310.
15. Klaver, 1997, 49.
16. Ibid., 113.
17. Sedgwick, 1834, 313.
8. Fragmented Stories
1. Smith, 1876, 4.
2. Genesis 1:21; translated as “whales” in the King James Bible.
9. Recycled Tales
1. Allen, 1963, 43.
2. Paine, 1824, 90.
3. The King James Bible mentions unicorns nine times based on the translation of the Hebrew word re’em, which was translated as monoceros (one horn) in the Greek Bible and then as unicornis in the Latin Bible (Numbers 23:22, 24:8; Deuteronomy 33:17; Job 39:9, 39:10; Psalms 22:21, 29:6, 92:10; Isaiah 34:7). While re’em is now translated as “wild ox” in most other English versions of the Bible, it remains unclear whether the original description of an untamable animal with great strength was meant to refer to a rhinoceros or an auroch, the now extinct wild ancestor of the modern cow that in antiquity was generally depicted in profile as having a single horn.
4. Zimmern, 1901, 60.
The Rocks Don't Lie: A Geologist Investigates Noah's Flood Page 25