GEOLOGY

ZETETIC COSMOGONY:
OR
Conclusive Evidence
THAT THE WORLD IS NOT A
ROTATING—REVOLVING—GLOBE,
BUT
A STATIONARY PLANE CIRCLE.
By Thomas Winship
1899

 start here

(Post 15/47)

GEOLOGY.

In "Geology," by Skertchley, page 101, it is confessed: "So imperfect is the record of the earth's history as told in the rocks, that we can never hope to fill up completely all the gaps in the chain of life. The testimony of the rocks has been well compared to a history of which only a few imperfect volumes remain to us, the missing portions of which we can only fill up by conjecture. What botanist but would despair of restoring the vegetation of wood and field from the dry leaves that autumn scatters? Yet from less than this the geologist has to form all his ideas of past floras. Can we wonder then at the imperfection of the geological world?"

The Vice-President of the Royal Geographical Society of Ireland holds that this, the only earth, was made during six successive periods, corresponding to six series of rocks, and that particles of mud and sand deposited by rivers in sea bottoms could only become rocks of a heterogeneous mixture, but never such as the primary with sub-divisions, having each its own marked peculiarities. In his "Errors of Geologists," page 15, he says:

"Neither the brown gneiss, nor the primary red sandstone, nor the yellow quartz rock, nor the gray mica slate, nor the blue limestone. Not one band out of all these could be formed out of the river sediment coming down from the pre-existing continents, because not one of them has mixed particles. The quartz rock has no lime, the limestone is purely crystalline, &c."

Although the deepest mine in the world is only a few thousand feet down, the assertions of geologists that they know what underlies the "crust" of the earth to a depth of 4,000 miles, are received as though they had actually been down making a personal inspection and favoured the world with the result of their researches. Sir D. Brewster, in his "More Worlds than One," says:

"The proportional thickness of these different formations have been estimated by Professor Phillips as follows, but the numbers can be regarded only as a very rude estimate:—Tertiary 2000 feet, Cretaceous 1000 feet, Oolite and Lias 2500 feet, New Red Sandstone 2000 feet, Carboniferous 10,000 feet, Old Red Sandstone 9000 feet, Primary Rocks 20,000 feet, equals NINE MILES nearly."

"On these ASSUMED data they founded different theories of volcanoes."

"It is TAKEN FOR GRANTED that many of the stratified rocks were deposited at the bottom of the sea by the same slow processes which are now going on in the present day."

Almost needless to remark that whatever speculations have nothing better than "taken for granted" to support them, must be rejected as purely fanciful and utterly incapable of proof. Geologists are very fond of parading their knowledge (?) of what they are pleased to term the "glacial period" of the earth's history.   

Sir R. Ball writes a book on "The Cause of an Ice Age." But he vitiates the entire volume by stating:

"I have found it necessary to ASSUME the existence of several ice ages."

He then goes on to endeavour to prove his assumption to be correct by stating:

"In fact it might almost be said that the astronomical theory (of accounting for ice ages) must be necessarily true, as it is a strictly mathematical consequence FROM THE LAWS OF GRAVITATION."

We have already seen that this magical, indefinable, what-do-you-call-it influence has no existence. We may, therefore, reject the learned writer's "mathematical consequence" as a myth.

In his "Second Appeal to Common-sense from the Extravagance of some Recent Geology," Sir H. H. Howorth, K.C.I.E., M.P., F.R.S., F.G.S., says:

"One of the chief objects of this book is to show that the Glacial theory, as usually taught, is not sound; but that it ignores, and is at issue with, the laws which govern the movements of ice, while the geological phenomena to be explained refuse to be equated with it. This is partially acknowledged by the principal apostles of the ice theory. They admit that ice as we know it in the laboratory, or ice as we know it in glaciers, acts quite differently to the ice they postulate, and produces different effects; but we are bidden to put aside our puny experiments which can be tested, and turn from the glaciers which can be explored and examined, to the vast potentiality of ice in shape of portentous ice-sheets beyond the reach of empirical tests, and which we are told acted quite differently to ordinary ice. That is to say, they appeal from sublunary experiments to á priori argument drawn from a transcendental world. Assuredly this is a curious position for the champions of uniformity to occupy."

"I hold that the Glacial Theory, as ordinarily taught, is based, not upon induction, but upon hypotheses, some of which are incapable of verification, while others can be shown to be false, and it has all the infirmity of the science of the Middle Ages. This is why I have called it a Glacial Nightmare. Holding it to be false, I hold further that no theory of modem times has had a more disastrously mischievous effect upon the progress of Natural Science."

"I not only disbelieve in, but I utterly deny, the possibility of ice having moved over hundreds of miles of level country, such as we see in Poland and Russia, and the prairies of North America, and distributed the drift as we find it there. I further deny its capacity to mount long slopes, or to traverse uneven ground. I similarly deny to it the excavating and denuding power which has been attributed to it by those who claim it as the excavator of lakes and valleys, and I altogether question the legitimacy of arguments based upon a supposed physical capacity which cannot be tested by experiment, and which is entirely based upon hypothesis. This means that I utterly question the prime postulate of the glacial theory itself."

In the Scientific American Supplement of 10th September, 1898, in an article on "Glacial Geology in America," by H. L. Fairchild, the following is stated:

"The cause of the glacial period remains quite as much a mystery as it was in 1840. A large body of fact has been collected, but it points in different directions. Every person has entire liberty of opinion. MOST GLACIALISTS HAVE NO OPINION AT ALL UPON THIS SUBJECT."

The reader need not trouble to have any opinion on the subject, for there never was a glacial period in the history of the world. We challenge the whole scientific world to prove the romance.

A. Mclnnes, in his paper "The Flood and Geology," says:     

Next, how was the flood caused? Moses says by the opening of the netting (not windows) of heaven to pour down rain, and by the opening of the fountains of the great abyss of waters. What deplorable ignorance prevails regarding the true constitution of the universe! The old pagan delusion of Pythagoras is now generally believed in opposition to common sense, reason, and God's own revelation—that men are now living on an impossible large ball of land and water, flashed above and round the sun more quickly than a thunderbolt. Thus apostle's prediction is fulfilled, that men in the last days would not endure sound doctrine, but would give heed to fables. As of old so now, "they glorify not God, but have become vain in their reasonings and their heart is darkened. Professing themselves wise they have become fools."—Romans i. 21.     

We have God's own revelation—Job xxxviii.—manifestly opposed to the fables now falsely called science. God asks of Job—"Where wast thou when I laid the foundation (Heb. fixed) of the earth?" Where has the earth or land been fixed? "He has founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the floods."—Ps. xxiv. 2. "The earth standing out of the water and in the water."—2nd Peter iii. 5. Thus the land does not, as is assumed without proof by modern astronomers, contain the sea; but the sea contains the land, and is the great abyss out of which the dry land appeared at God's creative word,—Gen. i. 9. Likewise, the antarctic icebergs surround the sea on every side, utterly baffling all attempts of navigators to proceed further south. "Who shut up the sea with doors, and prescribed for it my decree, and set bars and doors, and said: 'Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further; and here shall thy proud waves be stayed.'?"—Job xxxviii. 8. Next, as to the structure of the earth it was asked: (v. 5) "Who has set its layers?" or, "laid its measures?" "Or, who stretched out a measuring line upon it?" "On what are its bases (or sockets) sunk?" "Or, who laid down its key-stone rock?" This rendering is precisely according to the Hebrew. Now, does not the fifth verse plainly declare that the earth's strata or layers were arranged by God himself, and not according to suppositions of modern geologists? The layers are found to be set with the regularity and exactness of the stones of a house, and as if the builder's measuring line had been used. The unstratified or key-stone rock, whether basalt or granite, lowest on the sea, but above are the various beds according to density, such as sandstone, slate, limestone, coal, chalk, clay, with sand, gravel or soil on the surface. How the all-wise God did 6000 years ago produce by His almighty word the vast construction of the earth's interior in such wonderful order, and all within a few hours, not during millions of years as the geologists foolishly suppose, is the awful mystery. God's ways are not as man's nor His thoughts as ours. He also in the beginning made all the various kinds of animals, not according to a slow process of growth or development; but the birds and fishes on the fifth day, beasts, creeping things and man on the sixth day, each kind separate from the other, contrary to the atheistic supposition of evolution; and the day limited by the evening and morning, 12 hours. "Are there not 12 hours in the day?" asked the Lord.     

Thus the whole mighty mass of rock, stratified and unstratified, has been made to float upon the unfathomable waters, yet as securely fixed as a ship in a Liverpool dock. The bases of the earth are so sunk as to make it immovable forever. Man is challenged to tell how. "Upon what are its bases sunk?" Job 38. "He founded the earth on its bases; it is not moved forever and ever."—Ps. 104, 5. Now, why can an iron ship float, though that metal is seven times heavier than water? Because, chiefly of the shape. But the heaviest rock is only three times the weight of water. Then consider the tremendous buoyancy of the ocean causing some substances to float on the surface, and others to sink only to a certain depth. The earth, its density decreasing from the foundation rock upwards to the soil of the surface, is sunk to a depth several miles in the sea, yet so as to have a dry surface, and shores on a level with the surrounding waters. It consists of four continents of an irregular and somewhat triangular shape, stretching out from the central north, thousands of miles towards the icy barriers of the far south, against which winds and waves rage in vain. The continents are connected by sub-marine rocky beds, varying in depth, whilst the Arctic and Antarctic oceans are found to be unfathomable.     

The flood, as we have seen, was caused by the opening of the netting of heaven and the fountains of the abyss, The heaven or sky "is an expanse for the clouds, strong as molten mirror."—Job 37, 18; and was made on the second day of creation to separate the waters above from the waters below. "Hast thou come to the springs of the sea?" asks God—Job 38, 16. It was formerly the opinion of Christian writers that these springs or fountains are in the central north, confined by the impenetrable walls of ice, which were broken down at the flood. However, when Noah had entered the ark, from heaven and the abyss rushed the waters to fulfill God's purpose to destroy the earth with its inhabitants. Hence, the rending of rocks, the shattering of hills, the breaking up of the earth's strata, the piling of mass upon mass, wherein were buried animals and plants to be dug up many centuries afterwards. All lands were filled with the wreck of the old world—a terrible warning to all future ages against the commission of unrighteousness.     

And, let it be noted that the petrifaction of fossils is not surprising, seeing that the earth was wholly sunk under the waters for a whole year. Even geologists confess that the degree of petrifaction is no proof of the antiquity of a fossil. "The mere amount of change, then, which the fossil has undergone, is not by any means a proof of the length of time that has elapsed since it was buried in the earth; as that amount depends so largely on the nature of the material in which it was entombed, and on the circumstances that have since surrounded it"—Jukes, p. 190.     

Then, what was the origin of the rocks, indeed of the entire earth? Aqueous, according to Genesis, 1. 1,2. "In the beginning of God's framing the heavens and the earth, the earth was in loose atoms and empty." (Hebrew). Where were the loose atoms? In the abyss of waters; and God on the third day of creation consolidated all into rocks, stratified and unstratified, causing the land to appear.     

But, why is man not found as a fossil embedded among the rocks, as are the animals? The answer is not difficult. Before the flood man was not so prolific as now. During the 1656 years of the old world there were, according to Moses, only ten generations counting from Adam to Noah; and Noah during 600 years had only three sons. However let us reckon approximately the antediluvian population, allowing eight children to each couple. 1st generation, 2; 2nd generation, 8; 3rd generation, 32; 4th generation, 128; 5th generation, 512; 6th generation, 2,048; 7th generation, 8,192; 8th generation, 32,768; 9th generation, 131,072; 10th generation, 524,288. The sum is 699,050; and the whole human population before the flood might not amount to one sixth of the population of London. Be it remembered that mankind in the old world dwelt in Asiatic Turkey, speaking the same language, and it was not till after Noah's death that the dispersion from Babel over the earth took place. Asiatic Turkey contains at present fifteen million human beings, and there only could fossilised man be found. To what extent, if at all, has that country been geologically examined?     

Is it possible to deliver men from the spell and sorcery of "great names?" If only a fable or lie is called scientific, and, fathered by a writer reputed a "great man," how many thousands believe at once without proof? Is it not as hard to turn men from the worship of their fellow-worms, as to turn a Hindoo from the worship of sticks and stones? The scientific favourites of newspaper scribblers are larded over with flattery until the reputation of greatness is attained; and to argue against pet scientific fictions is only to provoke silly jesting or astonishment at the presumption of daring to differ from the scientific slave-drivers. Will any of their slaves of science dare be free, or use their common-sense?   

Is geology not a tissue of suppositions from beginning to end? Let us see. How do the Geologists manage to get dupes? Some disguised infidel who has had sufficient influence to obtain a professorship in a college writes a book about the Creation, in which he attempts to prove to the entire satisfaction of atheistic journalists that the world made itself without the help of God at all. Of course the blasphemous character of the book is carefully veiled, lest soft-headed religionists take alarm, and the book does not sell. Perhaps even a pious whine is dropped so that the work of Judas may be done more effectually; and the author is reputed so very great a man, for all the newspapers say it. By way of preface astronomy is appealed to as a science so well-established that none but fools object to it; therefore, the reader must imagine all the vast continents and oceans making up a ball no larger than the school room globe. Next he is assured that recent researches in science have proved that those lights, the sun, moon, and stars, consist of the very same constituents as the earth and sea, as well as the nebulae, science supposes to be clouds of glowing gas. So all these must have had a common origin, and, therefore, the simpleton must next imagine the school room globe along with sun, moon and stars, changed into a quantity of fiery gas. In the beginning—how many million years ago science cannot yet decide—was gas, is the dogma of Geology. But he dare not ask about the origin of the gas itself. Then the mesmerist requires him to suppose that all the fiery mass very conveniently began to cool, particularly a quantity in the centre, which also whirled about until it became the sun.     

The victim of duplicity is next to suppose that other quantities also cooled until they changed into planets. Especially one quantity went on cooling until it very conveniently became the earthball with a rocky crust, and though on fire originally, yet a portion of it changed into all the oceans and seas. "In the study of science," says Dr. Dick in his book on Geology, "one is permitted to suppose anything if he will but remember and acknowledge to others that he only makes suppositions; will give reasons to show that his suppositions may be true, and be ready at any time to give up his suppositions when facts go against them. The last of these two suppositions, namely, the gradual cooling of the world from a state of intense heat, is often made by those who wish to form to themselves a notion of how the rocks and rivers, mountains and plains of the world have been brought to exist as they are." p. 10. Can the foolish Geologists, instead of making these absurd suppositions, not believe the fact that God made the world as stated on God's own authority? Instead, however, of opening their eyes they further suppose that despite the cooling, as much fire remained inside the ball as heaved up the rocky crust into mountain chains, whilst the waters went on channelling and levelling so as to make all the river and ocean beds. Then the rivers would carry down to lakes and seas matter containing animal and vegetable remains to form sediment, which we must suppose hardened after millions of years into rocks, especially the stratified ones, the unstratified rock being supposed due to the original fire. All these atheistic suppositions are expressed in words of Greek origin so as to amaze the gaping simpleton. The rocks immediately above the unstratified are called metamorphic. Next in ascending order are the palaeozoic or primary, the mesozoic or secondary, the cainozoic including the tertiary and quaternary. The guesses about fossils make up Paleontology.     

Now, let it be observed that not one of these suppositions is even probable. Who ever saw gas changed into granite, or a fiery vapour into water, or a river channel its own bed? Is there within the memory of mankind one considerable mountain more or less on the earth—notwithstanding volcanic eruptions and earthquakes—one considerable county more or less, or what continent has materially changed its shape? What do fossils prove? The following is a confession from Skertchly's Geology, p. 101:—"So imperfect is the record of the earth's history, as told in these rocks, that we can never hope to fill up completely all the gaps in the chain of life. The testimony of the rocks has been well compared to a history of which only a few imperfect volumes remain to us, the missing portions of which we can only fill up by conjecture. What botanist but would despair of restoring the vegetation of wood and field from the dry leaves that Autumn scatters? Yet from less than this the Geologist has to form all his ideas of past floras. Can we wonder then at the imperfection of the geological world?" Indeed it is confessed that the age of a fossil is not determined by the degree of its petrification, but by the age of the rock in which it is embedded; and the age of the rock by its position among the strata. Have men in these last days become so silly that with old bones and stones, and foot-marks, they may be led to deny the very God that made them? But was not this folly foretold ages ago by the inspired Hebrew prophets?     

Each layer of rocks is supposed by Geologists to have occupied an indefinite number of millions of years, and the age of the earth is still more a mystery to them. Professor Thomson, who is a scientific dictator, has, however, announced that the solidification of the earth could not have taken less than 20,000,000 years, and not more than 400,000,000 years, and so that the date of the world's beginning is somewhere between these two numbers. Some time ago Geologists proved from scientific data (to their own entire satisfaction and that of their dupes), that the earth is a ball of liquid fire with a thin crust of rock, so that at a depth of 25 miles the rocks must melt, and at 150 they would go off in vapour. (Dr. Dick's Natural History, p. 12). But Professor Thomson has found out that those suppositions do not square with the supposition of gravitation, and accordingly he supposes rather that the mass of the earth can not be much less rigid than a globe of steel of the same size would be, yet that there must be some quantity of the fiery liquid left in the interior, enough at least to cause earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. What tinkering the imaginary globe of the astronomer needs?   

Some geologists, such as Jukes, are not certain whether the earth was a molten mass at first, and whether granite is of igneous or aqueous origin. Formerly rocks were classified as primary, transition, secondary, tertiary, recent, but now by a new arrangement the transitionary rocks are denied any place in the series. Jukes says that he holds "views with regard to the Devonian period which differ from those taken by most geologists, and that the question is hardly yet settled," p. 203. Also, regarding the stratified rocks, he observes, "that at one time it was thought that there was some essential distinction in the nature of these rocks, and their mode of formation. It is now known that the primary rocks when first formed were exactly like the corresponding secondary and tertiary," p. 202. Indeed, is there anything certain about geology except that it is disguised atheism denying God the Creator?     

Geologists profess to prove extinct species. Of course they can produce large bones to show that at one time there were large elephants and lizards, but are big dogs not dogs as really as little ones? Is it a fact according to Moses, there were human giants before the flood, and that, since the lower animals have degenerated in size and age as well as men, need not surprise this nineteenth century of crime and infidelity. But the trick of comparative anatomy is to claim with an old bone the power of reproducing the sketch of the entire animal, though formerly unknown. If the monkey had been unknown to Darwin and the scientists, would they have been able by seeing one hand only, to tell that that beast has four hands? If zoologists think the serpents once had wings or feet, let them read Genesis iii. 14—"On thy belly shalt thou go." Let scientists ere concluding that any kind of animal has become extinct consider the words of Jukes himself: "As all the truth about anything whatever is absolutely unattainable by us, it would only lead us astray if we required it from Geology, or reasoned as if we had attained it." p. 202. But recently the existence of the gorilla became known. What of the leviathan, the swift serpent, the crooked serpent, the dragon that is in the sea.—Isa. xxvii. Is it not chiefly the fossilised bones of the sea serpent that geologists are exhibiting as the remains of extinct species of a vast size? No wonder the present existence of the leviathan is so eagerly denied. (End of McInnes' paper.)   

S. Laing, in his "Modern Science and Modem Thought," page 27, informs us that:

"The total thickness of known strata is about 130,000 feet, or 25 miles . . . . . . of this, about 30,000 feet belong to the Laurentian, which is the oldest known stratified deposit, 18,000 to the Cambrian, and 22,000 to the Silurian. These form together what is known as the Primary or Paleozoic Epoch."

Mr. Laing is very careful to omit the names of those who know strata for a depth of 25 miles. Can it be that he has been down there himself? If so, we may expect to have further revelations as to the contents of the bowels of the earth. But no, he cannot have been there, for he tells us a little further on (page 37):

"At this rate of increase water would boil at a depth of 10,000 feet, and iron and all other metals be melted before we reached 100,000 feet."

We are thus satisfied that the gifted author was not actually there, or he would have been melted in company with "iron and all other metals." This is a relief, and enables us to at once and for ever dispose of his wild theories as baseless assumptions. In a certain case before the Magistrate, the culprit hardly liked to say that the witness against him was telling a lie, so he mildly said that the witness was "handling the truth very carelessly." When Mr. Laing has the impertinence to tell us what lies below the surface of the earth for a depth of 25 miles we are bound to say that he handles the truth in a careless and most reprehensible manner.

With the usual unqualified manner for which scientists have become famous, Mr. Laing goes on to say:

"Reasoning from these facts, ASSUMING the rate of change in the forms of life to have been the same formerly . . . . . . Lyell has arrived at the conclusion that Geology requires a period of not less than 200,000,000 of years to account for the phenomena which it discloses."

To reason from facts and then to assume something which in its very essence is utterly incapable of proof, is bad enough; but to miscall fictions facts and then to add on to them whatever assumption is necessary to maintain the result in keeping with the theory with which the start was made, is so atrocious that we are again forced to the conclusion that Geologists are lost in the fogs of their own creation, and cannot find their way through the millions of ages of their own imagination, to anything having the remotest bit of truth in it. Once more, and I have done with Mr. Laing and his Geology. He informs us in the work already referred to that:   

"The law of gravity, which IS THE FOUNDATION OF MOST OF WHAT WE CALL THE NATURAL LAWS OF GEOLOGICAL ACTION has certainly prevailed, as will be shown later, through the enormous periods of geological time and far beyond this WE CAN DISCERN IT OPERATING in those astronomical changes by which cosmic matter has been condensed into nebulae, nebulae into suns throwing off planets, and planets throwing off satellites, as they cooled and contracted."

The laws of geological action being based on a myth—the law of gravitation, Geology itself may be "thrown off into space" without any ill effects being felt anywhere.

GEOLOGY and ASTRONOMY as at present taught by the schoolmen are nothing more than fables.

Hear what The Future of February, 1892, says:

"Astronomers are very fond of boasting of the wonderful exactness of their science, and that it is based on the principles of incontrovertible mathematics; and of ridiculing astrology as a pseudo-science. The exactness belongs to practical and not to theoretical astronomy. For example, when the writer learnt the principles of astronomy at school, he was taught that the Sun was exactly 95 millions of miles from the earth; now-a-days astronomers say that this was an error, and that the Sun is only 92 millions of miles distant. Newton made the Sun's distance to be 28 millions of miles, Kepler made it 12 millions, Martin 81, and Mayer 104 millions! Dr. Woodhouse, who was professor of astronomy at Cambridge about fifty years ago, was so candid as to admit the weakness of the Newtonian speculations. Woodhouse wrote: 'However perfect our theory, and however simply and satisfactorily the Newtonian hypothesis may seem to us to account for all the celestial phenomena, yet we are here compelled to admit the astounding truth that if our premises be disputed and our facts challenged, the whole range of astronomy does not contain the proofs of its own accuracy.'"