continuing..
The principle of superposition is uncomplicated and apparently so logical that for a long time most geologists never thought to put it in doubt. Steno, like geologists who succeeded him, considered that particles of sediment in rivers, lakes or seas deposited at the bottom of the water and formed a layer. Once that layer had hardened sufficiently, a further layer deposited on top. This process, it was assumed, would continue all the time there was water and sediment. After all, the water could dry up, and sediment sources cease preventing further layers from forming. Steno, looking at the massive geological formations around the earth came to the conclusion that, provided there was no physical obstruction to stop a layer or strata forming, the layer would girdle the earth.
By looking at the particles of sediment in any particular sequence of layers, he deduced that similar sedimentary particles would be depositing at the same time all along the layer. He concluded from this that any point in the same layer would have the same age, and it was this reasoning which led to his principle of continuity of the layer.
During the late nineteenth century, speculation amongst paleontologists regarding the time necessary for large changes in species to take place led to a demand for a dating method. A geological time-scale was formulated on two basic assumptions. The first was that the rate of sedimentary deposit was, on average, uniform over time. The second was that the time needed for a single-celled organism to evolve into a complex multi-celled biological unit, such as a human being, would take many millions of years. Using the rate of sedimentation at the time the scale was constructed, which is the same rate today, 150 years later, and applying the principles of stratification, mentioned earlier, to all the earth’s sedimentary rocks, they realised that there would not be enough time for macro-evolution. So a time-scale had to be devised so that the sequences of strata corresponded with the biological evolution proposed by the paleontologists. Those strata that were empty of fossils would be considered as having deposited first and would therefore be oldest. Those containing simple invertebrate fossils would feature next on the scale, and those with vertebrate fossils would follow. Marine fossils would precede terrestrial fossils on the evolutionary scale thus providing a continuum of primitive life through to homo sapiens. Where the strata provided insufficient time for the postulated evolution to take place, it was assumed that the conditions producing strata had stopped, and only started again thousands or millions of years later. A proposed cause for this interruption in stratification was that the ocean under which strata were forming, had retreated or dried up completely.
This scenario would be perfectly feasible if Steno’s principles had not left out one important detail, the effect of moving water upon sedimentary particles. The catastrophic relevance of this omission to the science of stratigraphy (and indirectly to the theology of the Catholic Church) was demonstrated by Guy Berthault’s recent experiments in a laboratory flume with re-circulating water in the Colorado State University. The results were published in 1993 in the journal of the French Geological Society, and more recently in the Russian Academy of sciences journal
Lithological and Mineral Resources (2002 and 2004).
In his experiments Berthault used a pump to create a current in a re-circulating flume and fed particles of sediment into the moving water. These were shown to deposit according to the velocity of the current: above a certain velocity all the particles were transported without any of them being deposited. When the current slowed, the largest particles started to deposit. They formed a layer, whilst the smaller ones continued to be carried by the water. A further reduction in current velocity caused smaller particles to deposit, and so on. This meant that the smaller particles were forming a layer on top of the layer composed of larger ones. It showed that the particles sorted into strata not over time but according to size. There was no chronology between strata. An increase in the velocity of current would cause some of the particles already deposited to be eroded and re-transported by the moving water. So the superposition principle of all the sedimentary particles, irrespective of size, being deposited in a single layer, hardening and then another layer superposing on top, was shown not to occur when there was a water current. It must be recalled that in oceans and seas, where the vast majority of the sedimentary strata were originally formed, there are always water currents. Not taking them into account was thus shown to have led to over three centuries of geological confusion, and to the creation of the science of stratigraphy based upon invalid principles.
It now appears that the entire geologic column was developed on the unfounded superposition principle that layers form in succession, one on top of the other and that by adding together the time taken to form each layer, and leaving gaps for oceans to empty and re-fill, the sedimentary rocks on earth would have taken 500 million years or so to form. The significance of this data used in conjunction with the proof that strata do not deposit in succession becomes apparent when analysing existing sequences of strata. It clears the way for ascertaining the actual time needed for large stratified rock formations to arise. It also shows that the living organisms which became fossils were buried rapidly and provide no data for evolutionary development of life.
Berthault undertook a paleohydraulic analysis of the Tonto Group in the Grand Canyon which is hundreds of miles long and up to 1,700 feet high stretching from the state of Nevada, through Arizona to New Mexico. The study based upon the laboratory experiments showed that it would have taken, not the 13 million years according to the geological time-scale, but less than fifty days to form.
[6] Further field research by other geologists such as Alexander Lalomov in the Crimean Peninsular has resulted in similar findings, which completely invalidate the principles underlying the multi-million year geological time scale.
The most successful propagandist for uniformitarian geology was attorney and amateur geologist Charles Lyell
. Lyell’s evidence consisted entirely of his own observations of rock formations and fossils, particularly molluscs. Being a wealthy man, he was able to travel widely, much more so than his colleagues, and amassed a great collection of fossils from the many geological formations he visited. All this gave the impression that his argument was based on better evidence than others in the field. It was, however, without empirical proof and depended upon subjective interpretation. He was also motivated by his desire to undermine belief in the Bible, and particularly the Genesis Flood not directly but by demonstrating their incompatibility with modern geology.
[7]
In 1830 Lyell published his
Principles of Geology which gave Charles Darwin the rationale for his 1859
Origin of Species. Toward the beginning of his famous voyage on the
H.M.S. Beagle, Darwin used Lyell’s principles to explain the origins of the Santa Cruz River Valley in Argentina. Believing that Lyell’s principles had perfectly explained the gradual formation of the River Valley over millions of years, Darwin went on to develop his grandfather Erasmus Darwin’s theory of biological evolution within Lyell’s geological time scale. (Ironically, even evolutionist geologists now agree that Darwin was wrong—and that the Santa Cruz River Valley was formed by rapid erosion after a period of glaciation!) Despite the fact that Lyell was a lawyer, who studied geology as a hobby, and whose theories had not been tested, his book influenced public opinion to such an extent that within a few years after the publication of Darwin’s
"Origins," Lyell’s explanation of the origin of sedimentary rocks went almost unchallenged.
During the years following the popularisation of Lyell’s work, the geological time scale began to exert a profound influence on the presentation of Catholic doctrine on the first eleven chapters of the Book of Genesis. According to the Church’s constant hermeneutic principle, articulated in the fifth century by St. Augustine, "[Catholics must] carefully observe the rule—not to depart from the literal and obvious sense, except only where reason makes it untenable or necessity permits."
[8]In the light of the new "discoveries" of natural science, did reason "make untenable" the literal historical interpretation of Genesis unanimously adopted by the Fathers of the Church? By the time of the First Vatican Council many theologians were beginning to think so. A study on the council by Fr. J. Vacant, Doctor of Theology and co-editor of the prestigious 44 volume
Dictionaire de Théologie catholique, indicated the extent to which belief in long ages had taken hold within the Church (
Etude Théologique sur les Constitutions du Concile du Vatican – 1895). Amazingly, theologians like Fr Vacant and Fr. M-J Lagrange, the influential founder of the Biblical School of Jerusalem, seemed ready to accommodate Lyell’s assertions by modifying the interpretation of Genesis that had been passed down from the Apostles by the Fathers and Doctors of the Church. Subsequently belief in long ages of earth and human history spread very rapidly.
Leading Catholic Theologians Embrace Lyell’s Long Ages[9]
In 1882, Vigouroux, a Sulpician well known for the polyglot edition of the Bible and who became Secretary of the Biblical Commission in Rome, wrote in his Mosaic Cosmogony According to the Fathers of the Church:
"Geology has established that Creation was not simultaneous" (p.34); and "It was reserved to our time to discover clearly the true meaning of the cosmogonic days" (p.71). And, alluding to saint Gregory the Thaumaturge who taught physics to his disciples before teaching them the Bible: "This principle of our Fathers in the Faith is also ours. If we disagree with them in the details, it is not that the principle changed; it is because science progressed. They accepted what was taught by the learned of those days; we accept what scholars teach today. There is therefore a change in interpretation, only because science changed, and this change is not ascribable to theology but to science itself which, by its proper nature, progresses."
In 1896, Fr Lagrange (who had founded Jerusalem’s Biblical College in 1893) rejected "concordism," considered that the hexameron days and geological periods did not correspond.
The shaping of the Earth went on a long time after the appearance of life; plants and animals developed in parallel. But remains established the fact that the Earth took a considerable time to form. We renounced forever the historic precise duration of six 24 hours days.
[10]
The further influence of Lagrange on Catholic exegesis is indisputable: he devised the three main ways to render the presence of scientific errors in the Bible acceptable. These were set out in five lectures given at the Catholic Institute of Toulouse little more than a century ago, in November 1902, and later published under the title
The Historical Method. We will not dispute Lagrange’s dedication to the Church and the Bible. But we will touch here upon the direct influence of geology on the exegesis of the 20th century through Lagrange’s ideas.
As a schoolboy, Lagrange used to wander with his uncle, a geologist, in the foothills of the Alps, where he lived. Maybe this explains how readily and completely he accepted the long ages, not only for the earth but also for the history of Man. He wrote in the
Biblical Review, which he founded:
Mankind is older than one believed when piously collecting the wrecks of remembrances assumed to be primitive. (…
Humanly speaking, oral transmission from the beginning of the world is supremely unbelievable. (…
To take the Genesis account as historical information … its value is simply nil in informing us about what happened "in the night of times."
So Lagrange invented a new and paradoxical concept: "
Legendary primitive history." The Fall, the Curse, the Flood are neither true history nor simple myth. Genesis gives an account based on a "generating fact" but inevitably distorted and downgraded by the transmission through thousands of generations. Another such concept is that of "
historical appearances." Here Lagrange tried to transpose to history what Leo XIII said in
Providentissimus Deus about astronomy (the Galileo affair!), that the Bible speaks "according to appearances."
From a Thomistic perspective, our senses give a true path to knowledge. But in the Kantian perspective of that time, "appearance" meant the opposite of reality. In 1919, Lagrange abandoned his theory of "historical appearances," but the idea remained that the Bible had to be confined to the sphere of religion, and this was indeed the most secure way to prevent any conflict with science.
The third method proposed by Lagrange to explain supposed natural science errors in the Bible was the theory of "
literary genres." The idea underlying this explanation was that one does not deceive when simply asserting the false, but only when teaching it:
All that the sacred writers teach, God also teaches and this is true. But what do the sacred writers really teach? What they affirm categorically. But—it has been said for a long time—the Bible is not a collection of categorical theses or affirmations. There are such literary genres where nothing is taught concerning the reality of the facts. They only serve as basis for a moral teaching."
[11] [And further:] "It is impossible that God teaches errors. Of course [there are places in] the Bible, where everybody is speaking errors; but it is impossible that an intelligent examination of the Bible compels us to conclude that God taught errors."
[12]
It is obvious that an intelligent use of these three methods is sufficient to get rid of any difficult passage of the Bible. But the authority of the Sacred Writings disappears at the same time, divine inspiration and inerrancy being inseparable!
The Theological Revolution Advances
Although the 1906 and 1909 Pontifical Biblical Commissions produced magisterial interventions in regard to Genesis which upheld the traditional historical and patristic interpretation of the first eleven chapters of the Bible, most Catholic theologians capitulated to the time scale of the new geology.
What were the implications?
First, by trading the 2000 years of history, indicated by the biblical genealogies between the first man Adam and Abraham, for the hundreds of thousands indicated by Lyell (and now millions of years), the six day creation account becomes impossible to believe. The reason is that according to the evolutionary geological time-scale, the animals, whose fossilised remains are found in the rocks existed thousands or millions of years before man. A short period of creation with man created on the sixth day was, therefore, automatically excluded. Second, if all things were not created in six days, as stated by Scripture, or at the beginning of time, as taught by Lateran IV, then both biblical and Church teaching must have been grossly misunderstood for the first eighteen hundred and fifty years of Christian history.
To replace creation over six days by the theory of progressive creation, which postulates instantaneous creation with interventions by God over long periods of time, is a position of compromise that pleases neither God nor man. It uses the paleontological record (shown by experiments in stratification to be valueless as a time indicator) to pinpoint when new species were "instantaneously" produced. As a result it is as contrary to Scripture and the magisterium as is theistic evolution. Moreover, it has no place in a scientific explanation of origins which insists on gradual change leaving no place for instantaneous production.
Other doctrines, perhaps even more important, are jeopardised by distancing the creation of Adam from the rest of biblical history by long periods of time. It is difficult to conceive of the effects of Adam’s sin affecting thousands of generations of human beings without any mention being made of them in divine Scripture, either as factual histories or as elements in the genealogies. Question Adam’s Original Sin and all the associated doctrinal teachings, such as Redemption, Baptism, the Immaculate Conception are affected. Why would these millions of years be left a blank, when the four thousand years since Abraham are full of details about humanity?
Then there is the question of the covenants made between God and his people. A covenant is a promise made by God as Father to his people as sons and daughters. The first covenant was between God and Adam. Subsequent covenants were made with Noah and Abraham. God’s people were always protected by his promises and no period of salvific history would logically be possible without them. If the covenants made over 4000 years were so fully reported in the Scriptures from Genesis 12 onwards, why would there be complete silence regarding the subject in chapters 1-11, particularly if the period in question covered millions of years? Are there any other examples of God being so inconsistent in revealing His truth? Yes, of course there is God’s covenant with Noah after the Flood. However, because the notion of a very old Earth conflicts with a catastrophic flood covering the entire earth, the Genesis "story" is held by geologists and theologians alike to be either a record of a local flood or simply a symbolic myth. They are unmoved by the actual text of the Divine Covenant:
I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth. (Genesis11)
The Road to Restoration
Now the proof is available demonstrating that the theologians were led astray by geological speculation which has been shown to be wrong, what is stopping a rapid return to the traditional doctrine on origins? Inevitably it is a question of indoctrination. From early childhood, our parents and grandparents having been led to believe in inarticulate cave men living tens of thousands, if not millions of years ago, it is almost impossible for their progeny to believe otherwise. Despite the experimental evidence, showing that all those years were dated using a method now invalidated by experiment, the indoctrination into belief in eons of time started too long ago for it to be put in doubt. Obviously it seems too incredible to accept that almost the entire theological and scientific community has been wrong for a century and a half—that they accepted, as virtually Gospel truth, the geological principles now refuted in the laboratory.
Science misled the world and the Church hierarchy, but now science must do its
mea culpa and lead scientists and theologians alike back to before the error took place. Theoretically it can do so without delay. After all, the scientific data is there and, as every scientist knows, observations tested by laboratory experiment are the strongest proof that science can provide. This proof has now been provided and has shown that the principles upon which the geological time-scale was based are not only questionable but wrong. So there is no scientific reason to hesitate. Unfortunately the materialism engendered by belief in limitless time and a natural explanation of origins is not easily given up. If it were, it would mean reverting to moral values which had previously been renounced as constraints upon man’s rights. It would mean science taking second place to the Creator.
By surgically amputating false geological concepts from the Church’s day to day teaching a transformation in people’s theological thinking can also be expected. Of course, scientists will always exist, who prefer flawed theories to those containing the truth which leads to God. At least they will become aware of their dangerous position. At the moment, there is little or no awareness because the faith has been buried by eons of phantom geological time. For many people the burial has resulted in spiritual suffocation. The faith of those who survive is inevitably impaired. At best, the few who take Scripture and the Magisterium at their word easily fall prey to
fideism, believing without the confirmation of their reasoning faculty. They live a dichotomy, accepting both the true theological data, and the contradictory data of false geology. The resultant confusion can only be overcome by the restoration of the traditional doctrine of creation.
It would be difficult to overestimate the significance of this return to a traditional understanding of origins. As natural science administers the
coup de grace to particles-to-people evolution, millions of Christians will arise from the empty cornhusks of naturalism and return to the Father. But it is to be hoped that many will not return unchanged to the Faith of their Fathers. Like the Gadarene demoniac after his exorcism, delighting in their deliverance from the evolutionary demon, they will repent of their lack of faith and rejoice in the rediscovery of their Father’s goodness. No longer will these Christians believe that their Heavenly Father used millions of years of death, suffering, mutations and disease to "create" the various kinds of creatures in the world. No longer will they lay the blame for death and disorder on anyone but themselves. No longer will they doubt that God created a perfect world for them in the beginning and that He wishes to restore that perfection for them through Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. Through these humble and contrite Christians, on fire with repentant love for their Creator, may the Holy Spirit renew the face of the earth!
[1] Julien P. Lan Y, Berthault G. Experiments on stratification of heterogeneous sand mixtures Bull. Soc Geol. France 1993 t.164 N°5 pp 649-660
[2] Video "Experiments in Stratification" (2000) obtainable from the Kolbe Center, 301 S. Main St., Woodstock, VA 22664, Tel: 540-459-8334 E-Mail: howen@shentel.net
[3] Vatican Council I, Dogmatic Constitution concerning the Catholic Faith, Chapter 2 (DS, 1788).
[4] Cf. Robert Bradshaw, Creationism and the Early Church (http://www.robibrad.demon.co.uk/.htm)
[5] The abbreviation Denz refers to Henry Denzinger’s compilation of the authoritative teachings of the Roman Catholic Church on faith and morals. The abbreviation DS refers to a later edition of Denzinger’s work known as Denzinger-Schonmetzer. The quotations attributed to Denzinger alone in the main text of this article are taken from the English translation by Roy J. Deferrari from the thirtieth edition of Henry Denzinger’s Enchiridion Symbolarum (St. Louis: B. Herder, 1957).
[6] Guy Berthault " Sedimentological Interpretation of the Tonto Group Stratigraphy" journal of Russian Academy of Science "Lithology and Mineral Resources", vol.39. No.5, 2004
[7] Himmelfarbe, 1959, p. 320
[8] Pope Leo XIII, Providentissimus Deus.
[9] This section has been adapted from a paper by Dominique Tassot, Ph.D. "The Influence of Geology on the Deviations of Catholic Exegesis" (Proceedings of the First International Catholic Symposium on Creation, Rome, Italy, October 24-25, 2003).
[10] Lagrange, « Hexameron » Revue Biblique 1896, p. 390
[11] Lagrange La Méthode historique (1903), New ed. Paris Cerf, 1966, p. 85
[12] Ibid., p.84.