Well, Kurt, I'm going to have to follow you around some more because you're taking me
to some awesome places.
This is unbelievable.
It's beautiful.
Where are we and what do we see?
Well, we're at a place called Fall Creek Falls.
That particular falls there drops the greatest free-fall distance of any waterfall east
of the Rocky Mountains.
So we're in Tennessee, eastern Tennessee, not too far from where we were looking at
Richland Creek there, about 20-25 miles or so by the crow flies, because we had to drive
further than that.
So what would a geologist and a paleontologist see when you look around here?
Rocks and trees.
Oh, I…
There's something a lot more interesting.
Yeah.
Well, what's spectacular about this particular canyon — you can only see a part of it here
— is there's a huge U-shaped beautiful canyon here.
Yeah, we're going to stand right on the edge of it.
Right on the edge of it, and it goes straight out from here into another canyon perpendicular
to it.
And then they've got this little trickle of water going off the side of this thing in
a very much larger canyon.
There's something funny about this.
Did that creek actually cut this enormous canyon?
That really doesn't make any sense at all.
It doesn't.
This is what we call an underfit river, or underfit creek, meaning that the canyon itself
is made by something much bigger and much different than the creek that now runs through
it because it's the path of least resistance.
So there must have been a catastrophic event that formed this rather than a long, slow
process.
In fact, the shape of this canyon is consistent with the idea that all of this material basically
slumped out into the main canyon all in one shot very quickly.
How could that happen?
Well, the best possibility is that that canyon — the main canyon across there — was itself
cut extremely rapidly when this whole area was waterlogged with water.
All these rocks were full of water.
When that canyon's cut out very quickly, then all the water in the rocks surrounding
that canyon push in and want to collapse, basically, in.
And if the rocks fail, they will slump into the main canyon, be washed — all that material
— be washed down the canyon, leaving these U-shaped, wide, deep canyons perpendicular
to the main canyon.
With a dead end in them, just like you see here.
If you started from the main gorge and walked this way, you'd have this huge cliff that
is the beginning of that canyon.
And so this indicates a period of time when there must have been a huge amount of water
that was cutting the main canyon, and, in fact, waterlogged this entire plateau.
So are we talking about a time during the flood, or are we now dealing with that post-flood
time?
The rocks themselves that are being cut here, that slumped in, are the rocks we were looking
at before that have evidence of the flood itself.
So these rocks have already formed.
They've already hardened enough to create cliffs and be resistant.
So we must be talking about the period after the flood.
In addition, this feature is relatively small.
I mean, it doesn't look small to us here, but if you look at it from a satellite, the
flood sediments cross entire continents.
But what you find about these canyons and the sediments that are formed at the same
time is they're very localized — they're in smaller regions.
And so it suggests we're no longer in the global flood, we're in that period of recovery
following the flood.
That's that exponential curve we were talking about yesterday, where we've got a lot of
tremoring going on, trembling in the earth.
Exactly.
Whatever catastrophism was occurring during the flood, it eases off and gets less and
less catastrophic as time passes following the flood.
So we're in that period, then.
We're in that period, the Arphaxadian epoch, when the earthquakes of the flood — enormous
earthquakes of the flood — are reducing in intensity to smaller and smaller earthquakes.
The volcanoes of the flood — enormous volcanoes of the flood — are getting smaller and smaller
and less frequent in time.
And the wetness of the flood — the flood is obviously water covering the entire earth
— that the earth is drying following the flood.
But immediately following the flood, the earth would have been extremely wet, not just from
the water of the flood, but actually huge amounts of rain.
Well, Kurt, I think a lot of people think that after the flood, you know, we don't have
a lot of rain, but you're talking about kind of a wet environment, then.
Yeah, the Arphaxadian epoch that we're talking about is a period of transition from the time
of the flood — the catastrophism of the flood, the destruction of the world, and the
present.
So you have a transition from a period with enormous volcanoes that are incomprehensibly
huge to the volcanoes that we have today.
We have enormous earthquakes during the flood to the kinds of earthquakes we have today.
We have enormous rainfall, it turns out, to cool the oceans heated up in the flood, to
the drying of the earth, and the production of deserts, all the way to the present.
You've got organisms — for example, the animals in the ark.
You've got just a few basic kinds of animals on the ark, and this is a period when, in
a few centuries, those kinds are going to diversify so that within each kind you're
going to produce hundreds or even thousands of species.
And then those animals are going to spread across the earth to get to every portion of
the earth.
So this is a transition period in everything — in geology, biology, anthropology, in climate
— everything from the destruction of the world to the present.
So there's a lot of things changing here.
What's the biggest thing that's happening as far as the earth geology is concerned?
The biggest thing there is that during the flood, we believe continents were moving horizontally
back and forth, smashing into each other, producing mountains, moving sediment over
large areas, dumping — eroding in some places, dumping sediment in others.
What that did at the end of the flood is leave the earth unstable out of what we call isostatic
equilibrium.
It's going to take a while for the ice cubes, if you wish, to bobble back to where they're
supposed to be.
And that's — there's going to be lots of earthquakes as rocks move against each other.
There's going to be a lot of effusions of lava until things settle down.
In fact, they're still not settled down.
So they're still in that process of — it's mostly vertical motions and small adjustments
— well, relative to the flood.
Bad for us, but adjustments that then settle the earth back down to the way — ultimately
to the way it was — very similar to the way it was before the flood.
Would that mean, then, that we have the ocean levels changing in the midst of that?
And what is that?
Yeah, there's so much of the water from the ocean that evaporated out of the ocean ends
up in ice that it actually drops the sea level a total of 200 meters, which is a lot of it.
And so that connects, like, Europe to England, connects Siberia to North America.
It makes it possible for organisms to spread out from the ark and get to many places that
they'd have to swim to in the present.
So that's part of that distribution — probably part of what God had in mind in designing
the world in such a way that it could be filled with organisms and with people.
Well, Kurt, the conventional paradigm would tell us that we have a lot of ice ages.
And looking at ice cores tells us that, oh, we've got all of these layers.
That means we've got many, many thousands of years from those ice cores.
What's your perspective on that?
Yeah, the conventional wisdom is that there are multiple ice advances.
In our model, there's good reason to believe there's only one ice motion.
However, the idea is that the ice that's collapsing, surging out, is surging out in lobes
that intersect one another.
One lobe would go out, melt back, another one would come in.
So you've got a succession of events, but they're probably only separated by a few years.
And so this is actually one collapse event, not multi.
So that might get appearance of several ages.
Yes, there's a sequence of time,
but it's not hundreds of thousands of years or millions of years.
Well, Kurt, that also brings to mind the woolly mammoth that we find frozen in the ice.
So those were creatures that are post-flood.
They're not creatures that were caught in the flood.
That's correct.
They're all post-flood creatures.
They would have — in the case of the mammoths,
there would have been an elephant that got off the ark.
There would have been diversification of elephants,
producing a whole bunch of series of different species
of elephants within the created kind of elephants.
And one of those, produced late in that process,
would have been a mammoth — a woolly mammoth.
And they would have lived in Siberia and Alaska at a time,
again, when the oceans were still somewhat warm.
It's not as warm as right after the flood,
but they've cooled down considerably,
but enough to support a cold temperate,
or slightly warm temperate, climate of plants.
So, Kurt, after the animals and the people got off the ark,
there must have been a rapid expansion of life.
Yes, the organisms getting off the ark
were relatively few in number,
compared to the number of species that we currently have today.
So, one of the neat things I think is cool
about the Arphaxadian Epoch is that during that period,
each created kind is going to diversify.
You're going to have one species becoming hundreds,
or even in some cases thousands,
of species in the few centuries following the flood.
It's a wild and crazy period of time.
At the same time,
those animals are actually also spreading away from the ark.
So they're following the coastlines
and choosing a temperature that they like.
They're crossing what is now water barriers
because the ocean has been dropped
because of the accumulation of ice.
They're crossing oceans on rafts of vegetation still floating
on the oceans after the flood,
and getting to the various places on the planet.
By that point also, we have dropped sea level.
It's a couple centuries.
It's probably elapsed since the flood.
Most animals have already reached all the distant locations
on the planet, and now humans move out.
So the apes get there first, then the humans.
So you've got this sequence
that some people interpret to be the evolution of apes to humans.
Well, it's not that.
It's the apes got there first,
but eventually the humans go to all parts of the earth going
across land bridges,
but I suspect also probably using ships.
I mean, after all, Noah built a ship.
So you've got shipbuilding ability.
Noah would still be alive at that time,
at the time of the dispersion from Babel,
and so probably some humans dispersed by ship as well.
Well, that dispersion of people must really be
an interesting story.
How do we track that?
It is an interesting story,
and I think it's probably best to talk
to an archaeologist about that.
Okay, so I guess we're off on another trip.
Yeah, let's go.
Okay.
All right.
Well, Kurt, this is all amazing.
I mean, all of that evidence points back to the history
of Genesis and the Flood,
but you know and I know that there are a lot of people
who just see the same evidence, but they don't get it.
Why not?
It's easy to understand why unbelievers don't get it.
Second Peter tells us why.
Second Peter tells us they want to live in their sin.
And so they're willingly ignorant of all this,
because I think you have to be willingly ignorant.
If you can see it, not everyone can see it, okay?
When it's pointed out, they can see it.
But those people who can see it,
the reason they don't get it is
because they don't want to get it.
They're willingly ignorant of it.
The real question that you're asking, though,
is what about believers?
What about those who would want this knowledge
and would want it to be true?
And that's what's frustrating, isn't it?
It is.
It is frustrating.
And part of that, I think,
in this particular society where we're living,
I see far too much science worship in our society.
It's the way we even teach about what science is.
You learn in school that science…
I can remember a picture in my mind of a grade school.
I was probably, what, three or four… third or fourth grade.
I'm picturing the page in the textbook,
and there's a bold-faced word, science.
And in parentheses, following it,
derived from the Latin word,
scientia, meaning knowledge, close parentheses.
I said, ooh, knowledge, truth.
So from early age,
we're taught in the school that science equals knowledge,
equals truth.
People… I talk to people all over the world.
They associate science with something you could prove.
You'd think proof and science could be used
in the same sentence, but it's not true.
You can't prove anything in science.
We can't prove anything.
We can… we have some educated guesses called theories,
but you can never know for sure if the theory is actually true.
You can't check around every tree, and every planet,
and every star, and ever really know.
So the real status of science,
which is exciting to me, is you never really know.
You keep discovering.
You keep hoping you're getting closer,
but you really don't know for sure.
But most people learn that science is proof,
that whatever scientists say is proof.
So I see Christians all over the world saying,
well, if the scientists said it, it must be true.
I've got to believe it.
And so they themselves close their minds,
their hearts to the… to what God has put
in the creation very evidently to teach us about himself
and to confirm what he's claimed in his Word.
So when you say worshipping science,
we essentially are turning away from the source of real truth,
and we're substituting for that source of truth,
not only the creation around us, as we see in Romans 1,
and the Word of God itself,
and then we turn to science to be that source of truth.
Is that what you're saying?
That's right.
That's dead on.
We've got the God of truth, who wrote,
who inspired the Word of God.
It is the Word of truth.
It is the truth, the eyewitness, the one who was there.
It ought to be, it is, in Scripture,
it is to be our highest authority.
It's where we go first.
In the Garden of Eden, God said, don't eat of the tree.
It should have… that should have done it.
That should have been enough, okay?
But Eve used her observation in her brain and says,
well, it looks good, smells good,
it's got to be good tasting, it's good for making me wise.
So overrode the Word of God and went with human reason.
Got us into a lot of trouble.
I mean, we see that thousands of years later,
Jesus is tempted by the same serpent,
the same… the same Satan,
and his response is to quote God's Word.
Jesus has the ability, and that's… he created Satan.
He can outthink Satan.
He could have the ability to outmaneuver him intellectually,
but he doesn't choose to do so.
He simply quotes the Word of God.
That's what we ought to be doing.
That's what believers ought to be doing.
But for some reason, we just don't believe.
We don't trust God's Word.
We trust human observation and reason.
And that's what science is.
All science is is human observation, human reason,
coming to conclusions based upon those things.
We should be first,
as it was supposed to be in the beginning,
as it will be in the end,
trust the Word, trust God's Word.
Then from there, fill in… fill in the blanks.
Complete the… the understanding of God's creation.
It seems, Kurt,
that there is also another piece of that as well,
and that is that the believer,
who is indwelt by the Spirit of God,
the Spirit of truth,
that part of it is that the only side of the story they hear
is the science side.
And for a lot of them,
they've never heard the evidence like we see here,
and someone to talk to them about that.
Do you think that may be part of this as well?
Absolutely.
We get into schools, we've got public schools.
They kick the prayer out of the public schools,
they kick God out of the public schools,
the Bible's out of the public…
So what do you hear in the public schools?
You hear supposedly secular things.
In other words, the science.
That's all you hear.
That if you go to the library and take out books,
they're increasingly kicking the Christian books
out of the library, too.
The internet is full of…
there's much more available on there from unbelievers
and from science.
So there's many people who never hear the truth.
There's a whole lot of pastors scared to death
of this particular question.
They don't understand science,
so they don't mention it in the sermons.
Sunday school teachers aren't comfortable with it,
so it's not shared there.
So you could potentially grow up all of your life in the church,
a believer, and never hear the truth.
Yeah.
It'd be like in a trial
where the jury only hears the prosecution's case,
and they never get to hear from the defendants.
Well, the jury is going to make an obvious choice,
and that's for the prosecution.
So it seems like we,
and I know this is your heart as well,
that a part of this is we need to help the body of Christ see
all of this evidence that we've been looking at.
Yeah, people need to hear, need to see.
Just as people cannot come to know Christ
without the Word of God,
I think people can't understand his creation
without the truth of that creation being revealed to them.
Not everybody is designed to be able to read rocks,
and read trees, and read plants, and animals,
and the universe, the stars, and all of that sort of thing.
It's got to be shown to most of them.
Well, that's your specialty, though.
That's how God has made you.
He's given you that gift and talent to see those things.
And so, and I know that is part of the heart
that you have is to help people see that.
And I love sharing it.
Not that very many people like to hear,
but I love sharing it.
Well, I guess that's our task, isn't it?
It is.
To do everything we can to help people see that evidence,
and to find that evidence, if there is any more.
Oh, there's always more.
I'm sure there will be.
you