Journal: Grace Journal
Volume: GJ 04:2 (Spring 1963)
Article: Biblical Catastrophism and Geology
Author: Henry M. Morris

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GJ 4:2 (Spr 63) p. 9

Biblical Catastrophism and Geology

Henry M. Morris

Professor of Civil Engineering
Virginia Polytechnic Institute

[This paper was presented at the monthly meeting of the Houston Geological Society, Houston, Texas, on September 10, 1962.]

Theories of catastrophism in geological interpretation are not new. Prior to the time of Sir Charles Lyell, scientists generally believed that most geological formations must be attributed to great physical catastrophes or revolutions. Lyell, however, taught that these phenomena could be explained by the ordinary processes of nature, acting over vast expanses of geological time. This is his “principle of uniformitarianism,” now almost universally accepted as the foundation principle of modern historical geology.

Profoundly influenced by Lyell’s theories, Charles Darwin soon published his theory of evolution by natural selection. The supposed paleontological record of the evolutionary history of life on earth, together with the principle of uniformity, now constitutes the interpretive framework within which all data of historical geology are supposed to be explained. Furthermore, this philosophy of evolutionary uniformitarianism now serves also as the interpretive framework in the social sciences and economics, and even in the study of religion itself. Thus a superstructure of gigantic size has been erected on the Lyellian-Darwinian foundation.

However, catastrophism is not dead. The inadequacies of a thorough-going uniformitarianism have become increasingly obvious in recent years, and such quasi-catastrophist concepts as wandering continents, shifting poles, slipping crusts, meteoritic and cometary collisions, etc., are appearing more and more frequently in geological literature. It is, in fact, generally recognized that even the ordinary fossiliferous deposits of the sedimentary rocks must often have at least a semi-catastrophist basis, since the process of fossilization usually requires rather rapid burial, under conditions seldom encountered in the modern world. Most geological processes of the present seem to be non-catastrophic in nature, but catastrophes of some sort seem necessary to explain many of the earth’s geological formations. Application of Occom’s Razor (the principle that the minimum number of hypotheses for possible explanation of phenomena should be employed) suggests that just one or a few great catastrophes would be more reasonable as an explanation than would be a great number of such events.

Biblical Catastrophism

The above considerations lead to the suggestion that a return to Biblical Catastrophism as the interpretive framework for historical geology is well worth considering at this time. Modern

GJ

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