Our Beautiful Wrecked World

Well, something escalated quickly. My prospector friend Stormie Waters stopped by my place, then we went into town for supplies. After loading up her buckboard, we went to lunch. Al Buehterawl and Lotta Lyez from the Darwin ranch joined us.

Our jawing turned to the beauty of the canyons, buttes, arches, rock layers, and so on. I agreed and added that this planet is wrecked, and that nobody can imagine its splendor before the Genesis Flood. Lotta Lyez was incensed, and Al Buehterawl took a deep breath and railed against the Flood.

Victoria Falls gorge and bridge, Wikimedia Commons / JackyR (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Al and Lotta went on to make the ridiculous boilerplate remark from anti-creationists that there is no evidence for the Flood. I pointed out that if secularists would remove their uniformitarian slow 'n' gradual processes spectacles, they might be able to honestly examine the evidence and see that yes, there is a passel of evidence for the Flood.

Lotta turned a shade of purple and Al gasped, then they lit a shuck out of there. Atheists and anti-creationists despise the Flood, mainly because it shows God's judgment against unrighteousness, and also because creation science Flood geology better explains what is observed than do secular models.

God likes beauty. It is probably an extension of his nature, since we were created in his image and we like it. (Beauty in its many forms is a gift to us.) As indicated before, I believe that the splendor of what we see in geological features pales in consideration of what the world was like before.

In Anton Checkhov’s play The Cherry Orchard, a character describes the earth as “so wide, so beautiful, so full of wonderful places.” And it’s true—from majestic mountains to breathtaking canyons, the world is full of beauty.

But, while beautiful, most of today’s geological wonders weren’t part of the “very good” creation God originally made. To gaze at these picturesque places is to peer back in time at the catastrophic processes that reshaped our planet only a few thousand years ago. In the wake of the flood, continents rose and valleys fell. As the climate changed, a brief ice age produced massive glaciers that left their mark around the world.

To read the rest and learn about some examples (or listen to the audio version by my favorite reader), click on "Beauty in Broken Places."