Geology, Floods, and Fear of the Bible

There's an area up state of Washington way that's unaffectionately known as the Channeled Scablands. Kind of dismal area, really. The Scablands and several other areas were carved out in the great Lake Missoula Flood. J Harlan Bretz is the fellow who came up with the name for the area, and proposed that the Scablands were made by a catastrophic flood. (Secular geologists didn't cotton to referring to a flood, that's too Bible-ish, I reckon.) He received a great deal of ridicule for having the audacity for making such a suggestion.

Dry Falls image credit: NASA / Goddard / Harrison Smith
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Bretz was attacked since the 1920s because of a uniformitarian anti-biblical bias against catastrophism (even though this flood happened after the Genesis Flood), but new research has vindicated him. There is also speculation that fast-moving water is more powerful than previously thought, and may give insights into other geological features right here and up yonder on Mars. Secular research seems to be inadvertently supporting biblical catastrophism.

Geologists resisted evidence for catastrophic flooding because they wanted to distance themselves from Genesis.

We’ve recounted the story of J Harlan Bretz several times over the years. His unconventional hypothesis about the origin of the Channeled Scablands in eastern Washington by catastrophic floods was resisted by the consensus of geological opinion. Now, two geologists propose that the massive canyons there and on Mars did not take as much water as previously believed. The write-ups of their findings reinforce what we’ve stated about anti-Biblical bias against catastrophism. Perron and Vinditti write in Nature,

To read what they wrote (and the rest of the article), click on "Anti-Biblical Bias Shaped Geological Opinion". When I comes to my next vacation, I don't think I'll pick the Scablands.