Earthquakes Helping To Support The Genesis Flood Account?

The following story has come from an article in the online New Scientist, and it is fascinating how from calibrating seismic measurements throughout the earth a picture of the internal structure and makeup of the Earth can be determined. Of particular interest is the conclusion drawn at the end. There is so much water there apparently, that if this pattern is indeed a complete layer throughout and not just under the North American continent, then  mountaintops throughout the Earth would be the only things uncovered if that amount of water was at its surface. But the statement does not deal with the reality that eons ago, those mountaintops that are evident now, may not have been, or most definitelly not been, as high as they are now. Leading to the reality that all mountain tops may have at one time been underwater. Just as it was briefly after the great flood recorded in Genesis.

Massive 'ocean' discovered towards Earth's core
19:00 12 June 2014 by Andy Coghlan


A reservoir of water three times the volume of all the oceans has been discovered deep beneath the Earth's surface. The finding could help explain where Earth's seas came from.

The water is hidden inside a blue rock called ringwoodite that lies 700 kilometres underground in the mantle, the layer of hot rock between Earth's surface and its core.

The huge size of the reservoir throws new light on the origin of Earth's water. Some geologists think water arrived in comets as they struck the planet, but the new discovery supports an alternative idea that the oceans gradually oozed out of the interior of the early Earth.

"It's good evidence the Earth's water came from within," says Steven Jacobsenof Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. The hidden water could also act as a buffer for the oceans on the surface, explaining why they have stayed the same size for millions of years.
Pinging the planet

Jacobsen's team used 2000 seismometers to study the seismic waves generated by more than 500 earthquakes. These waves move throughout Earth's interior, including the core, and can be detected at the surface. "They make the Earth ring like a bell for days afterwards," says Jacobsen.



By measuring the speed of the waves at different depths, the team could figure out which types of rocks the waves were passing through. The water layer revealed itself because the waves slowed down, as it takes them longer to get through soggy rock than dry rock.

Jacobsen worked out in advance what would happen to the waves if water-containing ringwoodite was present. He grew ringwoodite in his lab, and exposed samples of it to massive pressures and temperatures matching those at 700 kilometres down.

Sure enough, they found signs of wet ringwoodite in the transition zone 700 kilometres down, which divides the upper and lower regions of the mantle. At that depth, the pressures and temperatures are just right to squeeze the water out of the ringwoodite. "It's rock with water along the boundaries between the grains, almost as if they're sweating," says Jacobsen.
Damp down there

Jacobsen's finding supports a recent study by Graham Pearson of the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada. Pearson studied a diamond from the transition zone that had been carried to the surface in a volcano, and found that it contained water-bearing ringwoodite, the first strong evidence that there was lots of water in the transition zone (Nature, doi.org/s6h).

"Since our initial report of hydrous ringwoodite, we've found another ringwoodite crystal, also containing water, so the evidence is now very strong," says Pearson.

So far, Jacobsen only has evidence that the watery rock sits beneath the US. He now wants to find out if it wraps around the entire planet.

"We should be grateful for this deep reservoir," says Jacobsen. "If it wasn't there, it would be on the surface of the Earth, and mountain tops would be the only land poking out."

Journal reference: Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.1253358

Michael Gerson: The strange tension between theology and science- Article in the Washington Post

By Michael Gerson Opinion writer April 24


In the late 1920s, astronomer Edwin Hubble established that the light we detect from galaxies is shifted toward the redder colors of the spectrum, indicating that they are moving away from us at enormous speeds. And the farther away galaxies are, the faster they are fleeing. Rewinding that expansion through mathematics — dividing distance by speed — indicates that something extraordinary happened about 14 billion years ago, when the entire universe was small, dense and exceedingly hot.

Scientists such as Alexander Friedmann and Georges Lemaitre had anticipated the big bang — which Lemaitre described as a “Cosmic Egg exploding at the moment of creation.” Others theorized that such an event would have left a detectable residue of hydrogen plasma grown cold over time. In the 1960s, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson duly detected it — finding microwave background radiation in every direction they pointed their telescope. The whole sky glows faintly at a temperature of about 3 degrees above absolute zero. Part of the static between channels on broadcast television is an echo of the big bang.
Michael Gerson is a nationally syndicated columnist who appears twice weekly in The Post.View Archive

These are some of the most regularly confirmed, noncontroversial findings of modern science. Yet a recent poll found that a majority of Americans are“not too” or “not at all” confident that “the universe began 13.8 billion years ago with a big bang.”

Some of this skepticism, surely, reflects the inherent difficulty of imagining unimaginable scales of time and space. And some fault must lie withAmerican scientific education, which routinely transforms the consideration of wonders into a chore and a bore. But the poll also found that confidence in the big bang declines as belief in a Supreme Being increases.

This is not easy to explain. The predominant cosmological picture that predated the big bang — a static universe without beginning or end — would have pleased the ancient Greeks, who preferred their cosmos orderly and eternal. People influenced by the book of Genesis should feel more at home in a universe with a dramatic, cataclysmic beginning. Lemaitre, in fact, was a priest, whom some suspected of sneaking theological assumptions into his science. He didn’t, and carefully (and correctly) insisted that the big bang is consistent with both materialist and religious convictions. But the idea of a universe that began in a flash that flung stars, galaxies and clusters of galaxies across the vast canvas of space is, to put it mildly, compatible with Jewish and Christian belief: “Let there be light.”


So why this theological resistance to scientific assertions that are intuitively consistent with Christian theological views? The polls don’t settle this question, but I can hazard a guess. Many conservative Christians equate modern science with materialism — a view conditioned by early 20th-century debates over evolution and human origins. Science is often viewed as an alternative theology, with a competing creation story. Some religious communities define themselves by resisting this rival faith — and filter evidence to reinforce their identity.

This approach raises two protests. First, it will eventually fail. 

It is a deep weakness for any theology or ideology to be wrong about the scientific nature of the universe. 

The children of believers are presented with a cruel and false choice: In order to accept the scientific method, they must abandon the beliefs of their community. And many will naturally choose science. If theological conservatives define themselves by their skepticism about the (marvelous, breathtaking, compelling) findings of modern science, they will eventually lose — not only in public debates but in the minds of their own children.

Second, this strategy is completely unnecessary. The scientific method is the proper way — actually the only way — to understand the physical universe. There is no philosophical or theological method to study the structure of a star or a starfish. But this does not mean that the knowledge revealed by the physical sciences is the only valid type of human knowledge. There is ethical reasoning. There is also theological belief — involving the possibility that the Creator might suspend the laws of nature in certain circumstances, such as the parting of the Red Sea or the Resurrection.

The problem comes when materialism, claiming the authority of science, denies the possibility of all other types of knowledge — reducing human beings to a bag of chemicals and all their hopes and loves to the firing of neurons.

 Or when religion exceeds its bounds and declares the Earth to be 6,000 years old. In both cases, the besetting sin is the same: the arrogant exclusive claim to know reality.

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Comments On Gerson's Article: 

I hope this article has clearly articulated for you, the reader why it is absolutely vital that the Christian community grow out of this fear and suspicion of science. Science is the love-child of the modern and even post-modern era. And if we are going to further the goals of the Kingdom, we are going to have to point out how wrong it is for those who wear the powerful mantle of scientific authority to use that reputation and influence to further their religious agenda.

Did I say "religious agenda"?

Yes, scientism is the quasi religious view that only science can give you true knowledge, that science has monopolized truth, and this is patently false. Embrace the wonders of science, but reject the philosophy of materialism which is what is colouring the objective nature of science so strongly today.. There is no real contest between science and Christianity, only between materialism, (the view that matter is all that matters) and Christianity. If you are as convinced, as I am, that this is God's world, then how can good science be in contradiction to that reality? How can nature honestly not point to God? So the real issue is, recognizing that some scientists, with an axe to grind do a very thorough job of conflating their philosophical worldview of materialism with their science. That is not the neutrality that people perceive, and is expected from science. It is that claim of absolute materialism which we have to strenuously object to, and tease apart.

It is commonly recognized that in science, one must not take anything for granted, it is imperative that assumptions are explored and minimized, and biases are either eliminated or calculated into the knowledge process. In an address given at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), the Nobel Prize winning physicist Richard P. Feynman gave a talk called "Cargo Cult Science" in which he wanted to distinguish science proper- from pseudoscience.

He used the heading "Cargo Cult Science" as an analogy referencing a religious cult that arose in the South Pacific that peaked in WWII. During the war, air force bases were built on the islands as staging areas for the allied offensive against encroaching Japanese forces. Soon after the jungle was cleared and a runway built, the planes would arrive disgorging tonnes of supplies.The planes would roar in, there was much flag flying, arm waving, frantic workmen unloading, store-men organizing stores and soldiers marching the perimeter for security. The local people observed everything that went on and marveled at the riches that suddenly appeared on their islands. Nothing like it had happened in all their history.  

As a consequence, when the war ceased many months later and the planes disappeared and the rich cargoes associated with them stopped appearing, the indigenous tribes wondered how they could get the rich cargoes to reappear. So they cleared their own runways, they lit torches along the edges, made huts with a figure of a man sitting with things made of sticks on his head to represent headphones and they marched around with wooden sticks to look like parading soldiers with rifles. They even made planes out of bamboo. But their logic was flawed, they imagined by creating what they thought were the same conditions, they believed the same result would occur. They interpreted the appearance of riches to a divine cause.

They had assumed that for the riches to happen again they had to repeat what they had seen initially.

One of the more notable quotes to come from Feynman's address is:

"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool."

He spoke at length of a special, rigorous type of honesty that must be characteristic of a dedicated scientist, and coupled that with a sense of humility- a willingness to let go of a pet theory, an agreement with ones'self to follow the evidence even when it contradicts an implicit or even explicit understanding of reality. Indicating the necessity of this, he employed the phrase- "of having utter scientific integrity". 

It must be emphasized here, that this moral accountability, this stringent requirement, (really raising the bar for integrity) is not unique to the scientific endeavor, but is common to the pursuit of any kind of knowledge. And this necessity for rigorous integrity is not proved by science, nor did it come from any understanding revealed in the course of studying the natural phenomena in any direct sense. But the assumption of impeccable integrity was an integral component of the philosophical views of the early empiricists, and rationalists from whom we derived the scientific method. Who for the most part were religious people, either Christians or Deists who inherited their moral views from Judeo/Christian, Biblical themes, whether directly or by enculturation.

Therefore, this sense of moral accountability was cultivated by those of the enlightenment who were involved in the pursuit of understanding the laws of mind, of right thinking, in order to arrive at true understanding in any of the manifold fields of knowledge. For many, this was an extension of their habitual pursuit of perfecting the study of theology and philosophy, which they then proceeded with in their application to the study of nature. It is no coincidence that the scientific method arose out of the "Enlightenment", (otherwise known as the age of reason) which was also a time known for its application of reason to the metaphysical disciplines.

I cannot help but think that Feynman would have thoroughly enjoyed a conversation with Dr. Stephen Meyer, a philosopher of science who had this to say about the foundations of science:

"If the mind is designed by a benevolent Creator, to know the world that that Creator has also designed, then there's a principle of correspondence between the way the mind works, and the way the world has been designed; such that it can be known. And that's the ultimate guarantee...in epistemology...our ability to know... And so there is a theistic design argument, that underwrites the epistemological enterprise of science itself. Which... is the most fundamental argument for design and the one that I think makes science possible. It was presupposed by all those early founders of modern science."

It was Albert Einstein who said that:

"One may say the eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility."  

Einstein, took the view of the atheist, yet clearly his statement above records his difficulty, the dissonance that is clearly evident, and which is caused by his assumption of the materialist philosophical stance. For Meyer then, the mystery is answered, or at least the mystery has an answer with a rational basis, and more and more evidence that comes by way of science in cosmology and microbiology in particular, has continued to uphold this confidence in a theistic framework that answers the assumption that few seem interested in asking: How is it that we are able to have real knowledge? At least Einstein saw the problem.

I have heard the detractors, and how they object on the basis that Meyer's position is not scientifically arrived at, which is, I think disingenuous, and totally in opposition to the spirit of Feynman's injunction of absolute honesty. Because Darwin himself used the inductive method to arrive at his inferences culminating in the widely accepted theory of evolution. And not only this, but those scientists who censure his views are clearly showing their ignorance of, or dishonesty about the inductive nature of science, particularly where it concerns natural laws, the uniformity of nature, which are fundamental to any scientists views about virtually anything. (See "The Problem Of Induction")

Stephen Hawking is an eminent scientist, who many would regard as Einsteins successor, or perhaps even his superior, in 2011 he declared that "philosophy is dead". He also has plainly declared his atheism. However right he may be about the nature of the Universe in regards to its material aspects, his realm of expertise is limited to the material Universe. To say philosophy is dead is to undermine his own field of science, because the scientific method is a philosophical exercise in reasoning about  material reality. But his, (dare I say it), paradoxically narrow expertise in cosmology does not qualify him to make sweeping statements about all of reality, unless he has presupposed all of reality is exhausted by time, matter and energy. One can see his personal atheistic outlook influences his view in this regard. He uses his authoritative reputation in science, to further his philosophical view that nature is all there is.

I myself was not particularly enamored with the final remark of Gerson's piece, but otherwise agree with it and commend it to you the reader. The scientific method is no less than a form of good philosophy (right thinking) applied to the material realities. Science has a philosophical underpinning. So for Hawking's to say that science is better than philosophy is therefore ridiculous and shows a narrowness not consistent with Feynman's honesty principle. Philosophy, is greater in its scope than science, however, since it has questions that admit realities other than the material realm, or rather, it admits the possibility of other realities. It has both physical and metaphysical questions and so it probes the religious, existential and theological questions. It is not arrogant to claim to know some truth about some reality, which is what science, philosophy and theology all lay claim to achieving (and rightly so). The real arrogance is when science, as the child of philosophy, claims to have such a complete monopoly on truth over its mother, who taught him to specialize in one aspect of reality only, now claims that the other concerns of the parent not only don't exist, but now denies the existence of its own mother or portrays her existence as illegitimate.

The irony should not be lost on us when we consider that Feynman's issue with the Cargo Cult people was that scientists should not make the same mistakes as those indigenous tribes. These people believed that by recreating the necessary effects like the planes etc, they would be sufficient to cause the wealth again, which itself is an effect. But that isn't quite all that they did, but I will come back to that in a moment.

"Anthropologist Kirk Huffman, who spent 17 years in Vanuatu, explains: 'You get cargo cults when the outside world, with all its material wealth, suddenly descends on remote, indigenous tribes.' But the islanders logic is flawed, mistaking a necessary condition for ... a sufficient condition for cargo to appear." (The Resilient Earth)  

Likewise,  Stephen Hawking famously said:“Because there is a law of gravity the universe can and will create itself from nothing.” But as Oxford University Professor of Mathematics, John Lennox points out: gravity is not nothing. The evidence that supports "Big Bang Cosmology" points to everything including gravity came into existence at the big bang so it is incomprehensible that the Universe created itself. Or that the Universe came into existence as a result of something called gravity, that also owes its existence to the big bang, which is viciously circular. It is no different than the people of Vanuatu starting with a plane and expecting treasure to be the result. In each set of circumstances there have been vital elements missed. Stephen Hawking has attempted to get us to believe that gravity, as a necessary cause, contained within itself whatever necessarily caused everything that now exists (The Universe). Both Cargo Cult and Stephen Hawking have made errors over the question of agency. Just as the existence of the jet engine can be attributed to the explanatory power of physical laws, but this does not sufficiently explain it all, but must also be explained in terms of agency. (Stephen Hawking and God) Human agency built it, and human agency therefore needs explaining as well.  The phenomena of all material existence is best explained by the existence of an immaterial personal agency of incredible power knowledge and prescience. The Cargo Cult neglected the human agency in the manifestation of the cargo, and did not replicate the necessary material conditions correctly. At least the indigenous tribes were making more sense when they also were invoking an exterior, divine transcendent cause!

The most honest way of approaching this whole contentious issue is, and I would hope it would appeal also to Feynman's sense of integrity, is to acknowledge that both the materialist and the Christian are coming to the subject of science, (though it is not limited to science), with preconceived beliefs or faith (trust) in their respective presuppositions. The materialist presupposes that all is matter, and the Christian presupposes that God precedes all matter. When this is finally out in the open, and seen for what it is, honest people everywhere may clearly examine the evidence to see which has the best explanatory power.