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The Evolution of Creationism IT’S TIME!—RENEW YOUR MEMBERSHIP & SAVE 15% NOVEMBER 2012 | VOL. 22, NO. 11 A PUBLICATION OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA® The evolution of creationism Inside: Call for Proposals: 2013 GSA Annual Meeting & Exposition, p. 14 Preliminary Announcement and Call for Papers: 2013 GSA North-Central Section Meeting, p. 18 2012 GeoCorpsTM America Participants, p. 20 VOLUME 22, NUMBER 11 | NOVEMBER 2012 SCIENCE ARTICLE GSA TODAY (ISSN 1052-5173 USPS 0456-530) prints news and information for more than 25,000 GSA member read- ers and subscribing libraries, with 11 monthly issues (April/ May is a combined issue). GSA TODAY is published by The Geological Society of America® Inc. (GSA) with offices at 3300 Penrose Place, Boulder, Colorado, USA, and a mail- ing address of P.O. Box 9140, Boulder, CO 80301-9140, USA. GSA provides this and other forums for the presentation of diverse opinions and positions by scientists worldwide, regardless of race, citizenship, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or political viewpoint. Opinions presented in this 4 The evolution of creationism publication do not reflect official positions of the Society. David R. Montgomery © 2012 The Geological Society of America Inc. All rights reserved. Copyright not claimed on content prepared Cover: Noah’s Ark as the floodwaters recede as wholly by U.S. government employees within the scope of depicted in plate LXII to illustrate Genesis 8:8–9 in their employment. Individual scientists are hereby granted Johann Scheuchzer’s Physica Sacra (Sacred Physics, permission, without fees or request to GSA, to use a single figure, table, and/or brief paragraph of text in subsequent 1731). See related article, p. 4–9. work and to make/print unlimited copies of items in GSA TODAY for noncommercial use in classrooms to further education and science. In addition, an author has the right to use his or her article or a portion of the article in a thesis or dissertation without requesting permission from GSA, provided the bibliographic citation and the GSA copyright credit line are given on the appropriate pages. For any other use, contact [email protected]. Subscriptions: GSA members: Contact GSA Sales & Service, +1-888-443-4472; +1-303-357-1000 option 3; gsaservice@ 10 2012–2013 Richard H. Jahns Distinguished Lecturer geosociety.org for information and/or to place a claim for non- receipt or damaged copies. Nonmembers and institutions: GSA TODAY is free with a paid subscription to GSA Bulletin, 10 GSA International Distinguished Lecture Tour Geology, Lithosphere, and Geosphere (all four journals); otherwise US$75/yr; to subscribe, or for claims for non-receipt 11 2012–2013 Birdsall-Dreiss Distinguished Lecturer and damaged copies, contact [email protected]. Claims are honored for one year; please allow sufficient delivery time for overseas copies. Periodicals postage 12 GSA Awards & Grants Deadlines paid at Boulder, Colorado, USA, and at additional mailing offices. Postmaster: Send address changes to GSA Sales & Service, P.O. Box 9140, Boulder, CO 80301-9140. 14 Call for Proposals: 2013 GSA Annual Meeting & Exposition GSA TODAY STAFF 15 GSA Divisions Executive Director and Publisher: John W. Hess Science Editors: Bernie Housen, Western Washington 18 Preliminary Announcement and Call for Papers: 2013 GSA North-Central Univ. Geology Dept. (ES 425) and Advanced Materials Science and Engineering Center (AMSEC), 516 High Section Meeting Street, Bellingham, WA 98225-9080, USA, bernieh@wwu .edu; R. Damian Nance, Ohio University Dept. of Geological 20 Thank You 2012 GeoCorpsTM America Participants, Sciences, 316 Clippinger Laboratories, Athens, OH 45701, USA, [email protected] Partners, and Donors! Managing Editor: K.E.A. “Kea” Giles, [email protected], [email protected] 24 GSA Foundation Update Graphics Production: Margo McGrew 25 2013 GSA Section Meeting Calendar Advertising (classifieds & display): Ann Crawford, +1-800-472-1988 ext. 1053; +1-303-357-1053; Fax: +1-303- 357-1070; [email protected]; acrawford@ 25 Call for Applications: 2013–2014 GSA-USGS geosociety.org Congressional Science Fellowship GSA Online: www.geosociety.org GSA TODAY: www.geosociety.org/gsatoday/ 26 Penrose Conference Preview Printed in the USA using pure soy inks. 27 Section Meeting Mentor Programs 29 Classified Advertising The evolution of creationism David R. Montgomery, Quaternary Research Center and Dept. of (354–413), Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), and John Calvin (1509– Earth and Space Sciences, Box 351310, University of Washington, 1564) all endorsed reason as the way to learn about the world. Seattle, Washington 98195-1310, USA, [email protected] Augustine was among the first to caution against advocating for biblical interpretations that conflicted with what one could I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed observe for oneself. Centuries later, Aquinas praised the pursuit of us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended us to forego their knowledge and insight gained from experience reading God’s use. —Galileo Galilei other book—nature. Writing at the time of the Reformation, Calvin, too, considered ABSTRACT the revelations of both nature and the Bible as fundamental truths. In his Institutes of the Christian Religion (1559), Calvin For centuries, natural philosophers, their scientific successors, explicitly embraced the idea of respecting natural truths revealed and theologians alike sought to explain the physical and natural through the study of nature: “If we regard the Spirit of God as the world. The now common cultural narrative of perpetual conflict sole fountain of truth, we shall neither reject the truth itself, nor between science and religion simplifies the arguments and despise it wherever it shall appear, unless we wish to dishonor the struggles of the past and overlooks cross-pollination between Spirit of God” (McNeill, ed., 1960, p. 273–274). those who embraced faith and reason as the keys to understanding Calvin believed in keeping an open mind when it came to earth history. When geologists unequivocally dismissed the idea evaluating what we can learn about the natural world from of a global flood and recognized Earth’s antiquity, many observation and experience. In his view, closing one’s eyes to the conservative theologians acknowledged that there was more to the way the world works was to close one’s eyes to God. past than literally spelled out in Genesis, the opening chapter of Augustine, Aquinas, and Calvin all believed that Noah’s Flood the Bible. But some Christians—those we now call creationists— was a global flood. They interpreted fossil seashells found in rocks rejected this perspective and chose to see geology as a threat to as compelling proof—how else could the bones of marine their faith. In so doing, they abandoned faith in reason and cast creatures have ended up entombed in rocks high in the off a long-standing theological tradition that rocks don’t lie. mountains? Biblical interpretations accommodated new discoveries as INTRODUCTION knowledge of the natural world grew, because theologians adhered The story of historical views on Noah’s Flood shows how there to the principle that God’s works in the natural world could not is far more to the story of the relationship between science and conflict with His Word in the Bible. Generation after generation religion than the simple portrayal of a long-running feud of natural philosophers slowly uncovered facts inconsistent with a (Gillespie, 1951; Glacken, 1967; Davies, 1969; Rudwick, 2005; global flood, making it increasingly implausible to understand Montgomery, 2012). By the end of the nineteenth century, earth history in ways consistent with traditional literal conservative Christians generally accepted that there was no interpretations of the Bible. geological support for reading Noah’s Flood as a globe-wrecking deluge and that natural revelations established by science should FINDING TIME guide biblical interpretation. Even the original fundamentalists In 1669, when Steno, the venerated grandfather of geology, laid accepted geologic evidence that contradicted the view of a six-day down his principles for reading the rock record, he interpreted his creation followed by Noah’s Flood as all there was to earth history observations of the Tuscan landscape as recording six stages, one (Numbers, 1993). But the forerunners of modern creationists of which corresponded to Noah’s Flood (Fig. 1). Steno’s insights chose to defend their preferred literal reading of scripture no framed how to read earth history directly from the rocks. In matter what the rocks revealed. Dismissing the findings of arguing that the Flood laid down strata that subsequently geologists, they rejected reason in the name of faith. In this sense, collapsed to form today’s topography, Steno indirectly introduced modern creationism evolved in response to geological discoveries. the idea of tectonic controls on landforms, a foundational concept The following brief review traces aspects of this story to illustrate of modern geomorphology. how geological debates evolved into theological schisms anchored Steno’s little book, with its simple diagrams, formalized how to by creationist views with no scientific currency. read earth history using the basic principles of geometry. The key wasn’t the underlying mathematical symmetry astronomers found FAITH IN NATURE in the heavens; it was simple rules based on what one could see for For the first millennium of Christianity, major theologians oneself. Before Steno, only a curious few read beyond the cover of Y | N embraced knowledge of the natural world in order to defend nature’s great book to ponder the relationship between rocks and A against pagan challenges to biblical authority. Saint Augustine the lay of the land. GSA TOD OVEMBER 2012 GSA Today, v. 22, no. 11, doi: 10.1130/GSATG158A.1. 4 A century later, geologic history began to challenge theological tradition after discoveries like James Hutton’s unconformity, separating two distinct sandstones, at Siccar Point (Fig. 2) demonstrated that Earth’s history was too complicated to be accounted for by a single flood, no matter how big.
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