The Rocks Don't Lie A Geologist Investigates Noah's Flood

by Montgomery, David R.

• ISBN13: 9780393082395
• ISBN10: 0393082393
• Edition: 00
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-08-27
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Summary

In Tibet, geologist David R.Montgomery heard a local story about a great flood that bore a strikingsimilarity to Noah's Flood. Intrigued, Montgomery began investigating theworld's flood stories and-drawing from historic works by theologians, naturalphilosophers, and scientists-discovered the counterintuitive role Noah's Floodplayed in the development of both geology and creationism. Steno, thegrandfather of geology, even invoked the Flood in laying geology's foundingprinciples based on his observations of northern Italian landscapes. Centurieslater, the founders of modern creationism based their irrational view of aglobal flood on a perceptive critique of geology. With an explorer's eye and arefreshing approach to both faith and science, Montgomery takes readers on ajourney across landscapes and cultures. In the process we discover the illusivenature of truth, whether viewed through the lens of science or religion, andhow it changed through history and continues changing, even today.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. xi
Buddha's Dam	p. l
Discovering evidence for an immense Tibetan flood shows the author that folktales can have an element of truth.
A Grand Canyon	p. 15
A hike out of the deepest hole in North America reveals Earth's antiquity and fundamental problems with the creationist view of earth history.
Bones in the Mountains	p. 31
Early Christians see evidence for Noah's Flood in fossils and rocks.
World in Ruins	p. 53
Seventeenth-century savants lay the foundation for modern geology through imaginative theories of how God triggered the Flood.
A Mammoth Problem	p. 79
Recognition of fossils as the bones of extinct animals invalidates grand Flood theories.
The Test of Time	p. 93
An eighteenth-century Scottish farmer discovers geologic time and Christians reinterpret Genesis to accommodate an ancient world.
Catastrophic Revelations	p. 115
Nineteenth-century geologists refute the idea of a global flood as the most recent of a series of world-shattering catastrophes.
Fragmented Stories	p. 143
An introverted Englishman zealously reassembles cuneiform puzzles, proving that the biblical flood story is a Babylonian hand-me-down.
Recycled Tales	p. 161
Scholars uncover the evolution of the Bible as anthropologists probe the roots of flood stories around the world.
Dinosaurs in Paradise	p. 179
A trip to the Creation Museum sheds light on the twentieth-century resurrection of creationism.
The Heretic's Flood	p. 201
A geologist rediscovers grand catastrophes and creationists refuse to believe geologists have discovered Noah's Flood.
Phantom Deluge	p. 225
Modern creationists recycle seventeenth-century ideas to explain geological problems and miss the plate tectonics revolution.
The Nature of Faith	p. 247
The greatest story never told-the way we read earth history shapes how we see the world.
Notes	p. 259
Sources	p. 265
Acknowledgments	p. 277
Index	p. 281
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