Geologists long rejected the notion that cataclysmic flood had ever occurred—until one of them found proof of a Noah-like catastrophe in the wildly eroded river valleys of Washington State.

After teaching geology at the University of Washington for a decade, I had become embarrassed that I hadn’t yet seen the deep canyons where tremendous Ice Age floods scoured down into solid rock to sculpt the scablands. So I decided to help lead a field trip for students to see the giant erosion scars on the local landforms.

We drove across the Columbia River and continued eastward, dropping into Moses Coulee, a canyon with vertical walls of layered basalt. We gathered the students on a small rise and asked them how the canyon had formed. They immediately ruled out wind and glaciers. The valley was not U-shaped like a typical glacial valley, and none of us could imagine how wind might gouge a canyon out of hard basalt. But neither were there rivers or streams. After a while I pointed out that we were standing on a pile of gravel. I asked how the rounded granite pebbles came to be there when the closest source of granite lay over the horizon.

Hiking through eastern Washington canyons littered with exotic boulders is a standard field trip for beginning geologists. It takes a while to register what you see. A dry waterfall hundreds of feet high in the middle of the desert. Giant potholes where no river flows today. Granite boulders parked in a basalt canyon. Gradually the contradictions fall into place and a story unfolds. Where did wayward boulders the size of a car or house come from? What was the source of the water that moved them around and carved the falls? Today, even novice geologists can conjure up eastern Washington’s giant floods.

Long before the discovery of the scablands, geologists dismissed the role of catastrophic floods in interpreting European geology. By the end of the 19th century such ideas not only were out of fashion but were geological heresy. When J Harlen Bretz uncovered evidence of giant floods in eastern Washington in the 1920s, it took most of the 20th century for other geologists to believe him. Geologists had so thoroughly vilified the concept of great floods that they could not believe it when somebody actually found evidence of one.

Bretz was a classic field geologist and a controversial figure throughout his career. In 1925 he presented the story of the region’s giant floods, seeing what others at first could not—and then would not—see. He spent his lifetime piecing together the story of how a raging wall of water hundreds of feet high roared across eastern Washington, carving deep channels before cascading down the Columbia River Gorge as a wall of water high enough to turn Oregon’s Willamette Valley into a vast backwater lake.

Bretz found exotic granite boulders perched on basalt cliffs hundreds of feet above the highest recorded river level. In the scablands, a desolate region stripped of soil, he came across dry waterfalls and potholes hundreds of feet above the modern river. Gigantic gravel bars deposited within dry valleys implied deep, fast-flowing water. Streamlined hills rose like islands, extending more than 100 feet above the scoured-out channelways.

He realized the chaotic landscape had been carved by an enormous flood that chewed deep channels through hundreds of feet of solid basalt. The ancient flood deposited an enormous delta around Portland, Oregon, backing up flow into the Willamette Valley. The waters, he eventually realized, could have come from catastrophic drainage of Lake Missoula, an ancient, glacier-dammed lake in western Montana.

Bretz was ridiculed until 1940, when geologist Joe Pardee described giant ripple marks on the bed of Lake Missoula. The 50-foot-high ripples, he said, were formed by fast-flowing currents and not by the sluggish bottom water of a lake. Only sudden failure of the glacial dam could have released the 2,000-foot-deep lake. The catastrophic release of 600 cubic miles of water through a narrow gap would sweep away everything in its path. In 1979, when Bretz was 97 years old, the Geological Society of America awarded him its highest honor, the Penrose Medal.

Recognition of the Missoula flood helped other geologists identify similar landforms in Asia, Europe, Alaska, and the American Midwest, as well as on Mars. There is now compelling evidence for many gigantic ancient floods where glacial ice dams failed time and again: At the end of the last glaciation, some 10,000 years ago, giant ice-dammed lakes in Eurasia and North America repeatedly produced huge floods. In Siberia, rivers spilled over drainage divides and changed their courses. England’s fate as an island was sealed by erosion from glacial floods that carved the English Channel. These were not global deluges as described in the Genesis story of Noah, but were more focused catastrophic floods taking place throughout the world. They likely inspired stories like Noah’s in many cultures, passed down through generations.

Since devastating floods were a fact of life on the margins of the world’s great ice sheets, people in those areas probably witnessed them. Early missionaries in eastern Washington reported stories of a great flood among Yakima and Spokane tribes, who could identify locations where survivors sought refuge. An Ojibwa Indian legend from around Lake Superior tells of a great snow that fell one September at the beginning of time: A bag contained the sun’s heat until a mouse nibbled a hole in it. The warmth spilled over, melting the snow and producing a flood that rose above the tops of the highest pines. Everyone drowned except for an old man who drifted about in his canoe rescuing animals. The native inhabitants of the Willamette Valley told stories of a time the valley filled with water, forcing everyone to flee up a mountain before the waters receded.

Did survivors of such events pass their stories down through the ages? Could the biblical story of Noah, on some level, be real?

The Legend: Local folklore describes a traditional Buddhist pilgrimage that circled a small peak ringed by lake terraces. The pilgrims commemorated how Guru Rimpoche brought Buddhism to Tibet by defeating a powerful lake demon, draining its home to reveal fertile farmland. A local temple, which sits on top of a stack of ancient lake sediments, has a striking mural of Guru Rimpoche above a lake at the gorge entrance. The Temple’s head lama believes the ocean once covered all of Tibet.

The Evidence: During a 2002 expedition, geologist David Montgomery studied how the Tsangpo River once sawed through rock, carving the world’s deepest gorge. His team discovered ancient shorelines and 1,200-year-old wood fragments in lake sediments dating to around the time Rimpoche arrived in Tibet. At the head of the gorge, glacial debris was plastered on both sides of the valley, confirming that a massive tongue of ice once plunged down a nearby 25,000-foot-high peak. Two levels of terraces extending upstream indicated a wall of ice and mud had dammed the river, backing up a lake that filled the valley. Once the lake filled enough to breach the dam, a rush of water roared down the gorge, scouring out everything in its path.

The Legend: A local Native American tribe, the Havasupai, attributes the canyon’s carving to a catastrophic flood down the Colorado River that occurred when the god Ho-ko-ma-ta unleashed a tremendous rainstorm. A more benevolent god, Pu-keh-eh, put his daughter in a hollowed-out log to save her from the monstrous current. After the flood receded, she crawled out and became mother of all humanity.

The Evidence: The rocks exposed in the canyon walls could not have settled during a single flood because they alternate many times in color, grain size, and composition. Although floods did not create the canyon [pdf], evidence suggests they helped shape it. Huge boulders are perched hundreds of feet above the river. Floods capable of stranding boulders so high would have been spectacular. The breaching of cooled lava dams that impounded the river may have launched these catastrophic floods. But these deluges occurred at least 400,000 years ago, long before people made it to the continent. The Native American tale of how the canyon formed is apparently an attempt to make sense of mysterious landforms.

The Legend: In the story of Noah’s Ark, the book of Genesis says Noah lived during a time when all other people on Earth were evil. God became angry and decided to create a giant flood to kill everyone except Noah and his family. God told Noah to build a boat called an ark, big enough for himself, his wife, his sons, their wives, and at least two of every animal. Once the ark was built, God sent a rainstorm that lasted 40 days. The deluge rose higher than the tallest mountain. When the waters receded, Noah’s family and animals left the ark and repopulated the Earth.

The Evidence: After refuting the possibility of a global flood, geologists dismissed suggestions that the story of Noah’s Flood might be rooted in some sort of fact. Then, in 1993, oceanographers Bill Ryan and Walter Pitman of Columbia University used sonar to survey the floor of the Black Sea—and found evidence supporting the story after all. Submerged beneath the surface were ancient streambeds, river-cut canyons, and shorelines. High-resolution seismic reflection profiles showed a former land surface buried in the seafloor sediments. Drill cores from the seafloor contained roots of shrubs covered by marine mud. Ryan and Pitman argued that over 7,000 years ago, the Mediterranean began to rise, breaching rocks along the Istanbul Strait, a waterway that helps form the boundary between Europe and Asia today. The event caused the Mediterranean to spill into the Black Sea, triggering a catastrophic flood.

Were early farmers in the area forced to flee as their world disappeared underwater? Archaeologists found the rising waters coincided with the onset of the initial migration of farming cultures into Europe and the floodplains of Mesopotamia. Wherever they came from, the first farmers arrived in southern Mesopotamia shortly after the filling of the Black Sea. Did they bring the story of a great flood that destroyed their world?

LOL, did you do your cut-copy-paste research from a site like this?

http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/HydroplateOverview7.html

Response:

http://paleo.cc/ce/wbrown.htm

Walter Brown's "Hydroplate" Model

Hydroplate theory diagram from Wal Brown's book

Diagram from W. Brown's website and book (Fig. 56)
showing what he calls the "Rupture Phase of the Flood"

Young-earth creationist Walter Brown, a mechanical engineer and Director of the Center for Scientific Creation in Phoenix, Arizona, has developed a "Flood Model" which he believes accounts for virtually all geologic evidence. His central thesis is that only a few thousand years ago the earth's entire crust was suspended over a large reservoir of pressurized water, which suddenly and violently burst forth, releasing most of the water that caused the Noachian deluge. The model also purports to explain the origin of asteroids, meteorites, and comets in our solar system, suggesting that this massive eruption was sufficient to propel huge chunks of earth into outer space. Brown details his current model in the 8th edition of his book entitled In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood, although he presented early versions of the model during the 1980's (Brown, 1986). He also provides updates and chapter summaries at his "Center for Scientific Creation" website.

Brown's model is rejected by all conventional scientists, since it conflicts with extensive geologic evidence that the earth is over 4.5 billion years old, as well as many specific lines of geologic evidence (Morton, 2003). In view of the latter, even many creationists have rejected or strongly questioned the model. One of its serious problems is the need for the proposed water reservoir to be totally sealed within the crust. This precludes any significant earthquakes, meteorite impacts, or even fissures and cracks in the crust anywhere on entire earth, even though such phenomena are well evidenced throughout the geologic record. As Christopher Sharp (2005) notes, Brown gives no satisfactory explanation as to how so much water is can be trapped below the upper layer of rock, and how that upper layer remained impervious until the flood. As demonstrated by Glenn Morton (a geologist and former creationist), the earth's surface would also have to be almost perfectly smooth--lacking any mountains or even hills-- or the crust would buckle in places and release the waters (Morton, 2003). Yet according to the Bible (Genesis 49:26) there were mountains before the Flood, which Brown accepts and even shows in a diagram (fig. 56) on his website. Another major problem is the immense heat that would be generated during the proposed cataclysmic eruption (Castagnoli, 2009; Morton, 2003; Sharp, 2005). The magnitude of such heat would have literally boiled the oceans and cooked all animals and humans, including the inhabitants of Noah's ark. Appealing to supposed experiments with "supercritical" water, Brown claims the heat would be insignificant, but the calculations of critics with appear to effectively demonstrate that the heat would indeed be more than lethal.

Brown's claim that all of the comets, meteoroids, and asteroids in our solar system originated from earth during the hydroplate explosion has also been shown to be entirely untenable (Sharp, 2005), even considering only currently orbiting comets and asteroids, let alone the millions that have already impacted on moons and planets in our solar system (as indicated by the heavy cratering on such bodies), or the mass of the earth's moon and other moons, which Brown implies were also formed from rock ejected from the earth. Sharp calculated that the energy released in ejecting just the still-existing asteroids is the equivalent to approximately twenty trillion hydrogen bombs. He remarks, "The mind completely boggles how Noah and his family, together with his menagerie of animals and plants could have possibly survived all this in a large wooden boat!" Sharp (2005) further noted, "We can calculate the motions of the asteroids back in time, and find no evidence at all that they originated from the earth, or the vicinity of the earth’s orbit, a few thousand years ago. Indeed, their orbits correspond to them being in existence in many cases for billions of years, as determined from long term stability calculations taking account of the perturbations of the planets..." Brown's astronomical claims are also contradicted by the Baptistina asteroid family, which have similar orbits and evidently were produced by an ancient collision of two large asteroids. By tracing the orbits of the resulting asteroids back in time, augmented with data from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, astrophysicists have calculated that the original collision occurred about 80 million years ago (Rationalwiki, 2012).

Microfossils abundant
in limestone deposits

Ammonite fossil from the White
Cliffs of Dover, England

Brown greatly oversimplifies many aspects of geology. For example, he states: "Earth’s crust is frequently stratified with layered rock (or strata) composed of cemented sediments. These layers are typically parallel, thin, uniform in thickness, vast in area.... " He asks: "What global process sorted and cemented these sediments? Present processes do not. Why are strata so uniform in hardness?" Actually, rock strata are far from uniform in hardness, thickness, or geographic extent. Even in one outcrop they can vary from very soft and friable layers to incredibly hard beds. Strata also very greatly in grain size, type, and distribution, inclination, and many other features, precisely because they were deposited in many different environments and in many different ways, and often altered or deformed long afterward, not deposited during a single global Flood.

Osark track site, Dinosaur Valley State Park, Texas

Sauropod and theropod dinosaur tracks, in Cretaceous
Limestone, Glen Rose, Texas. Many additional layers of
fossiliferous or track-bearing limestone occur above and
below the picture bed. These and many other limestones
were clearly not deposited in the way Brown suggests.
© 2006, Glen J. Kuban

While trying to account for limestones in his hydroplate model, Brown shows a picture of the famous "White Cliffs of Dover" in England--a massive limestone outcrop. He suggests the strata were formed from precipitated calcium during his Flood eruption, and that "a simple, visual examination of limestone grains shows that few are ground-up seashells or corals, as some believe." However, Brown's statements are misleading at best, since no paleontologist claims the Dover Cliffs or most other limestone formations are made of "ground up" macrofossils. What they do maintain, and support with abundant evidence is that most are composed of the accumulated remains of numerous micro-fossils such as foraminifera, coccoliths, and calcareous algae, as microscopic examinations of the rocks readily reveals. The Dover limestones and many others also contain a large number and variety of macrofossils that can be easily seen with the naked eye, including ammonites (extinct squid-like creatures with coiled shells), mollusks, echinoids (urchins), brachiopods, sponges, corals, crinoids, and shark teeth (Shepherd, 2012). Moreover, the fossils in a particular limestone formation are consistently characteristic of a specific geologic period (Cretaceous in the case of the Dover Cliffs)-- with the many of the fossil species significantly different from those that lived in preceding and succeeding periods. This would not be the case if all life forms were living together prior to the Flood as Brown and other YECs assert. Finally, many such limestones include beds with thousands of vertebrate trackways and/or extensive invertebrate burrows (sometimes millions on one surface), and countless mud cracks --indicating relatively calm, low-energy environments that dramatically contradict Brown's violent Flood scenario.

Like most creationist Flood models, Brown's is vague on where the Flood occurs in the geologic column the Flood, but implies many if not most sedimentary layers were produced by it. However, no matter where he places it, major problems arise, since every geologic period from PreCambrian onward exhibits evidence for mulitiple episodes of slow deposition and non-deposition. Besides the many tracks and burrows mentioned above, these also include many other trace fossils such as nests, dens, and hives, which cannot form during a violent flood (Kuban, 2006). Nor does Brown adequately explain the pattern of radiometric dates from rocks throughout the world. All but the stratigraphically highest beds yield dates orders of magnitude older than his model allows, and show a consistent, sloping pattern from stratigraphically lower to higher strata. His proposal that radioactive decay rates may have been significantly higher in the past is lacking in any credible evidence, and is contradicted by rigorous studies (Isaac, 2004). Even if it were true, it would not yield the sloping pattern of dates mentioned above, since in his model most rocks are essentially the same age--only a few thousand years old. A higher decay rate would also exacerbate the heat problem already inherent in Brown's model. As demonstrated by Meert (2002), "Radioactive decay at a rate fast enough to permit a young earth would have produced enough heat to melt the earth."

In other attempts to support young-earthism and discredit mainstream geology, Brown lists a number of supposed astronomic and geologic anomalies, including alleged out-of-place fossils, but every example is either dubious or has been well refuted. Equally problematic is what he does not reveal, including the fact that trillions of fossils have been found in the expected evolutionary order all over the world, a situation entirely at odds with his model. Brown did remove from his website a few unfounded claims (such as those about a "shrinking sun", "missing neutrinos, and a modern "Japanese plesiosaur") in the wake of compelling refutations by others (Van till, 1986; Bahcall, 2004; Kuban, 1997). However, he continues to make many other unfounded assertions and insinuations. For example, he encourages the long-discredited notion that the famous fossil Archaeopteryx, showing both bird and reptile traits, is a forgery--supposedly having had feathers impressions artificially added. This suggestion has been thoroughly debunked by paleontologists, and largely rejected even by other creationists, who accept the reality of the fossil (even though they reject it as a transitional form). Still other examples of baseless claims by Brown are detailed by physicist Gerard Jellison (2009).

Brown's model even appears to conflict with the Bible, despite his young earth views apparently stemming from a narrow reading of Genesis. Besides the problem mentioned earlier concerning pre-Flood mountains, his proposal that the subterranean water erupted due to increasing pressure from "centuries of tidal pumping" implies the Flood was due to a natural, inevitable cause, rather than God's response to humanity's rampant wickedness as indicated in Genesis (6: 5-7).

Brown has issued a challenge to evolutionists to debate him on his hydroplate theory, but has stipulated a number of questionable and one-sided conditions, and repeatedly evaded attempts by mainstream scientists to accept his offer (Foley, 2004; Isaac, 2004; Meert, 2006; Castagnoli, 2009; Jellison, 2009). To my knowledge he has not published his theory in any reputable, peer-reviewed scientific journal, or even the quasi-scientific YEC journals, nor even submitted a manuscript to such publications. He often bemoans evolutionist bias, but according to Answers in Genesis (the most prominent YEC group), when he was invited to submit a manuscript to their Technical Journal, he declined.

References

AIG, 2008, Anonymous article at Answers in Genesis Website, at: http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/wog/white-cliffs-dover

Arthur, Joyce, 1995, A Few Silly Flaws In Walter Brown's Hydroplate Theory. Website article at: http://mypage.direct.ca/w/writer/hydro.html. Note: Brown had made a number of modifications to his theory since Joyce's article, but many of her criticisms are still valid.

Bahcall, John N. 2004. Solving the Mystery of the Missing Neutrinos. Web article at: http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/articles/bahcall/index.html

Brown, Walter T., The Fountains of the Deep, Proceedings of the First International Conference on Creationism (Pittsburgh: Creation Science Fellowship, 1986), p. 23-38.

Brown, Walter T., 2008, In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood, 8th Edition. Website at: http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/index.html

Castagnoli, Geno, 2009, Email communications. Castagnoli described many ways in which Brown repeatedly threw up road blocks and unfair terms to avoid a debate.

Foley, Jim, 2004, More on Walter Brown's debate offer. Talk-Origins arcive article at: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/wbrown2.html.

Isaac, Mark, 2003, Claim CA342 (Index of Creationist Claims). Talk Origins website article at: http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CA/CA342.html

Isaac, Mark, 2004, Claim CF210 (Index of Creationist Claims). Talk Origins website article at: http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CF/CF210.html

Jellison, Gerard, 2009. Wrong and I Can Prove it. Amazon.com review of Walter Brown's book, found at: http://www.amazon.com/Beginning-Compelling-Evidence-Creation-Flood/dp/1878026097

Kuban, Glen, 1997. Sea-monster or Shark? An Analysis of a Supposed Plesiosaur Carcass Netted in 1977. Reports of the National Center for Science Education, May/June 1997, Vol. 17, No. 3, pp. 16-28. Web version at: http://paleo.cc/paluxy/plesios.htm

Kuban, Glen, 2006. Fossil Tracks and Other Trace Fossils Falsify Flood Geology. Web article at: http://paleo.cc/ce/tracefos.htm

Matson, Dave. 2002. How Good are Those Creationist Arguments? Talk Origins archive article at: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/hovind/howgood-yea.html#proof1

Matson, Dave, 1995. Youngearth "proof" #1: The sun is shrinking at 5 feet/hour which limits the earth-sun relationship to less than 5 million years. http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/dave_matson/young-earth/specific_arguments/sun_shrinking.html.

Meert, Joe, 2002. Were Adam And Eve Toast? Web article at: http://gondwanaresearch.com/hp/adam.htm

Meert, Joe, 2006. Walt Brown's Pseudochallenge. Web article at: http://gondwanaresearch.com/hp/walt_brown.htm

Morton, Glenn, 2003, Walter Brown's Hydroplate Model. Website article at: http://home.entouch.net/dmd/hydroplate.htm.

Plotner, Tammy, 2011. "Did Asteroid Baptistina Kill the Dinosaurs? Think other WISE..." Universe Today.

RationalWiki. 2012. Evidence against a recent creation. Website at: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Evidence_against_a_recent_creation

Sharp, Christopher, 2005, Walt Brown's Hydroplate Therory. Website essay at: http://www.csharp.com/hydroplate.html

Sheperd, Roy, 2012. Discovering Fossils: Introducing the Paleontology of Great Britian. Website at: http://www.discoveringfossils.co.uk/dover_kent_fossils.htm

Van Till, Howard. 1986. The Legend of the Shrinking Sun- A Case Study Comparing Professional Science and "Creation Science" in Action. Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith, 38.3:164-174. Web version at: http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/1986/PSCF9-86VanTill.html

The "wiki article" excuse / cop-out used to be valid years ago, but not any more. Reason? Citations.

The points made in the wiki link section bore the following references:

Condon, D.J.; Prave, A.R., Benn, D.I. (1 January 2002). "Neoproterozoic glacial-rainout intervals: Observations and implications". Geology 30 (1): 35–38.Bibcode 2002Geo....30...35C. doi:10.1130/0091-7613(2002)030<0035:NGRIOA>2.0.CO;2. Retrieved 4 May 2007.

R. Rieu; P.A. Allen; M. Plotze; T. Pettke (2007)."Climatic cycles during a Neoproterozoic "snowball" glacial epoch" (PDF). Geology 35 (4): 299–302.Bibcode 2007Geo....35..299R.doi:10.1130/G23400A.1.

Young, G.M. (1999). "Some aspects of the geochemistry, provenance and palaeoclimatology of the Torridonian of NW Scotland". Journal of the Geological Society 156 (6): 1097–1111.doi:10.1144/gsjgs.156.6.1097.

Kilner, B.; Niocaill, C.M.; Brasier, M. (2005). "Low-latitude glaciation in the Neoproterozoic of Oman".Geology 33 (5): 413–6. Bibcode 2005Geo....33..413K.doi:10.1130/G21227.1.

Crowley, T.J.; Hyde, W.T., Peltier, W.R. (2001). "CO 2 levels required for deglaciation of a 'near-snowball'Earth". Geophys. Res. Lett 28 (2): 283–6.Bibcode 2001GeoRL..28..283C.doi:10.1029/2000GL011836.

Poulsen, C.J.; Pierrehumbert, R.T.; Jacob, R.L. (2001). "Impact of ocean dynamics on the simulation of the Neoproterozoicsnowball Earth". Geophysical Research Letters 28 (8): 1575–8. Bibcode 2001GeoRL..28.1575P. doi:10.1029/2000GL012058.

Kennedy, M.J.; Christie-blick, N.; Sohl, L.E. (2001)."Are Proterozoic cap carbonates and isotopic excursions a record of gas hydrate destabilization following Earth's coldest intervals?" (PDF). Geology 29(5): 443–6. Bibcode 2001Geo....29..443K.doi:10.1130/0091-7613(2001)029<0443:APCCAI>2.0.CO;2.

Kirschvink, J.L.; Ripperdan, R.L., Evans, D.A. (25 July 1997). "Evidence for a Large-Scale Reorganization of Early Cambrian Continental Masses by Inertial Interchange True Polar Wander". Science 277 (5325): 541. doi:10.1126/science.277.5325.541. Retrieved 5 May 2007.

Meert, J.G. (1999). "A palaeomagnetic analysis of Cambrian true polar wander" (PDF). Earth Planet. Sci. Lett 168: 131–144. Bibcode 1999E&PSL.168..131M.doi:10.1016/S0012-821X(99)00042-4. Retrieved 6 May 2007.

Torsvik, T.H. (2 January 1998). "Polar Wander and the Cambrian". Science 279 (5347): 9. Bibcode 1998Sci...279....9T. doi:10.1126/science.279.5347.9a. Retrieved 5 May 2007.

You had a 1998-era Harvard webpage to back up your claim.

On the contrary to your implication, a lot more money is in the religion con-game. After all, isn't tithing a religious duty? Let's leave alone sin-indulgences of the Catholic Church of yore.

LOL.

Modern science kicks the jaws of stone-age literature to the curb on a daily basis and that's why even archaic organisations based on it like the aforementioned church in Rome now accept evolution as fact.

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Note: this topic is from 9/30/2012. Biblical-Type Floods Are Real, and They're Absolutely Enormous Thanks 2ndDivisionVet. Blast from the Past. Just adding to the catalog, not sending a general distribution. To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.