We discover in David Montgomery’s book, an argument on secular scientific reasoning being compatible with religion, in his view there is no “false dichotomy” as long as a certain interpretation of the data prevails.
In science daily he reveals pretty much the same arguments against the flood that have been used by others who were skeptics…
“For nearly two centuries there has been overwhelming geological evidence that a global flood, as depicted in the story of Noah in the biblical book of Genesis, could not have happened. Not only is there not enough water in the Earth system to account for water levels above the highest mountaintop, but uniformly rising levels would not allow the water to have the erosive capabilities attributed to Noah’s Flood, Montgomery said.
Some rock formations millions of years old show no evidence of such large-scale water erosion. Montgomery is convinced any such flood must have been, at best, a regional event, perhaps a catastrophic deluge in Mesopotamia. There are, in fact, Mesopotamian stories with details very similar, but predating, the biblical story of Noah’s Flood.
“If your world is small enough, all floods are global,” he said.
Firstly, what evidence did David Montgomery interpretation of the data comes up with that demonstrate the millions of years age in the rocks? His answer is this, “I believe in millions of years, therefore when I look at the rocks, I see millions of years.” This is not hard evidence based on observations that he is making his argument against the global flood but rather uses circular reasoning.
What about the large fragments of sedimentary rock which include strata that are broken from a parent rock? Since the global flood happened, couldn’t the existence of folded strata show that hardening had begun underwater and if so, is there sufficient evidence to conclude that 100% hardening can be achieved underwater or is some sort of drying out process required?
Good question! How many of you are familiar with man-made cement? Water is an important ingredient which triggers the reaction in the mixture of dry cement and sand so that the cementing process not only relies on water, but can take place underwater! Many natural cements are similar in that they can achieve sufficient hardening under water without needing to dry out.
Even when the waters of the flood was still rising, the drying process was well underway, as a result of two causes, one normal global tidal rises and falls. And the second involves giant tsunamis generated by the many destructive earthquakes that were repeatedly occurring during the Flood due to catastrophic earth movements.
No human being living today or in the recent past has ever observed what happened during those earlier years in earth’s history, therefore no nobody knows for sure what all went on during that time which we will get into in more dept shortly. We also discover in David Montgomery’s book, a claim about being “open” which is generally always used as an attempt to sway people of faith to a worldly viewpoint. Back when I was in college, my professor taught this very idea of being “open” in order to try to mold my values into his. And those who rejected his values were considered, “narrow.”
But let’s posed this to him. Has David Montgomery read papers by creationists who are geologists or even talked to them with an “open mind” as they want people of faith to do with their conclusions on the data? Did he ever consider thinking outside the box?
One doesn’t think so, in fact he just goes along with popular fallacies among secularists by lumping Tibetan locals in the same camp with Bible scholars as “people of faith.” If he had done his homework, this is what he would have discovered…
According to accounts of the global Flood, there were extensive ruptures of the earth’s crust, rapid plate movements, and a reworking of the continents from low relief to high mountains and deep ocean basins. These clearly would have caused catastrophic deposition and erosion, rather than a placid sea rising over post-Flood mountains as described in Montgomery’s book.
And the memories of locals were true accounts of the global flood rather than local floods in their area as he suggests. Also, the memories which were taken during the time of the tower of babel by other groups eventually got distorted over the years while retaining some truth that eventually found its way to Mesopotamia.
The thing is this, it’s not who doesn’t have faith in coming to these conclusions, it’s whose faith is better interpreting the data that suits reality better! If you believe in millions of years as Montgomery stated, you are going to discover a billion of missing years between the bedrock granite and the Tapeats Sandstone or 100 million missing years in the Muav and Temple Butte limestones.
What Montgomery failed to observe, were the fault lines passing through the whole canyon from bottom to top, then one sees twists and folds of strata (strata supposedly separated by millions of years) showing soft-sediment deformation as a unit, along with evidence of high-velocity current flows in the Tapeats sandstone, also the pancake-flat strata over thousands of square miles arguing against long ages, the billions of nautiloids buried in a single layer of Redwall limestone, the evidence of sheet erosion over the continent, the rapid downcutting of the canyon, and so on!
His book and world view seems to be a bit outdated as well because many secular geologists no longer believe the Colorado River carved the canyon, but instead use catastrophic flooding in their theories. What evidence does Montgomery really have when he couldn’t observe it first hand that says a global flood couldn’t have carve out the Grand Canyon?
David Montgromery should stop his bandwagon jumping with using the assumption that a secular world view uses no faith while people of the Bible do. It’s a matter of which faith uses solid reasoning based on observations. Biblical geology does use solid reasoning from what is being observed along with a recorded account of it happening, but secular geology has no such account but rather goes by blind faith and bias which is created by their peers for them to believe.