Below is the online edition of In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood,
by Dr. Walt Brown. Copyright © Center for Scientific Creation. All rights reserved.
Click here to order the hardbound 8th edition (2008) and other materials.
Part II:
Fountains of the Great Deep
Had the events of the global flood been understood when Darwin proposed organic evolution in 1859, evolution and its many adverse social, scientific, and educational consequences probably would not have arisen. Here’s why.
If a culture ignored, for any reason, a past event as cataclysmic as a global flood, major misunderstandings or errors would creep into science and society. One of the first would be the explanation for fossils. Typically, Fossil A lies below Fossil B, which lies below Fossil C, etc. If flood explanations were weak, unbelievable, or censored, then evolution would provide an answer: Organism A evolved into B, which much later evolved into C. Fossil layers would represent vast amounts of time. Other geologic features could then easily fit into that time frame. With so much time available, possible explanations multiply—explanations not easily tested in less than a million years. Billions of people, most of whom were not scientifically sophisticated, would hear and be taught these million-and-billion-year explanations for much of their lives. Belief in those unimaginable time spans would become the cultural norm. A century after Darwin, evolutionary explanations would be given for the universe, chemical elements, heavenly bodies, earth, and life. Part I of this book shows that those ideas are false.
Part II will show, in ways an interested layman can understand, the flaws in those geologic explanations and that a global flood, with vast and unique consequences, did occur. For example, coal, oil, and methane did not form over hundreds of millions of years; they formed in months. Fossils and layered strata did not form over a billion years; they formed in months. The Grand Canyon did not form in millions of years; it formed in weeks. Major mountain ranges did not form over hundreds of millions of years, but in less than an hour! Radioisotopes didn’t form over a billion years and then decay over billions of years; both were mostly completed in hours! These statements are shocking, until we carefully examine the evidence in Part II.
You will be hard-pressed to find anyone willing to debate these matters with someone who understands the flood. [See pages 588–589.] However, if you are the first to find someone with an earned doctoral degree in basic or applied science to rebut these statements and the conclusion of Part I (that evolution is bankrupt) and that person completes a written, publishable debate with me—then a $10,000 finders fee will be yours. [See page 588 for details.]
Ironically, some leading creationists who believe in a global flood have contributed to its frequent rejection by advocating unsound mechanisms for the flood. They have failed to answer people’s most basic questions, such as: “Where did so much water come from, and where did it go?”
One such explanation is the canopy theory. (Pages 536–544 examine its many problems.) Others who know of these problems have proposed an equally weak explanation called catastrophic plate tectonics. Basically, it is a flawed plate tectonic theory speeded up a millionfold by conveniently assuming miracles and unworkable mechanisms. Page 515 gives one reason the plate tectonic theory has been falsified.
Past failure to answer honest flood questions opened the door to evolution and old-earth beliefs. Answering those questions will begin to (1) reestablish the flood as earth’s defining geological event, and (2) reverse serious errors that have crept into science and society. Don’t be surprised at how catastrophic the flood was. Just follow the evidence.