At the Wrong End of the Telescope
By George McCready Price
Deposits of Animal Bones All Over the World—Do They Signify Successive Geological Ages, or Was There a Universal Flood?
DID you ever take up a telescope and look at the fellow alongside of you with the big end of the telescope next to your eye? How very small he looked, and how far away! It seemed, perhaps, that you might have to walk long distances to get where your companion appeared to be, when in reality you could reach out and take him by the hand without a single step. What was it that caused this strange optical illusion?—Just a good instrument used in a wrong way. But about the same thing happens in a mental fashion when scientists use the facts of nature in a wrong way, or reason incorrectly regarding the facts they have discovered. By a pseudo-scientific method, they get the inductive glass turned wrong end first, and in this way the past of our poor old world stretches away in almost endless vistas, till, in dealing with the early history of our earth, it seems that we are looking back far into the recesses of eternity. Under the illusive spell of this false view which they have conjured up by careless methods of analysis and inaccurate handling of facts, these scientists eloquently describe the successive ages they behold, and the wonderful successive changes that have taken place in the earth's past, when in reality these successive ages are of their own manufacture, and due entirely to their false methods of looking at the facts of the rocks. These false methods have thrown the world before the Flood into an artificial perspective, as we might do with a telescope; and in this way they have shown us a long series of successive millions of years that have absolutely no existence except in the mind's eye—a sort of scientific mirage that has been called up by false conclusions from very much misunderstood facts. AT THE WRONG END OF THE TELESCOPE
Of course, it is a fact that the fossils found buried in the rocks are the real remains of animals and plants that used to live on the earth. And it is also true that a careful and correct method of studying these specimens, their condition, surroundings, etc., ought to give us a correct notion of the circumstances under which they lived and the way in which they died and were buried. But most of these fossils show such telltale marks of a violent death and burial by an abnormal action of moving water, that we naturally think of what the Bible calls “the Flood”; and for centuries this was the universal explanation given by all who found seashells on the mountain tops, or forests and herds of animals buried in the ground. But of late years scientists have invented the present popular method of arranging these deposits in an artificial series of successive ages, a sort of historical perspective analogous to the results obtainable by reversing the telescope; and this is what is now taught as science to the little children in the public schools throughout the civilized world. PREHISTORIC ANIMALS IN TAR PITS
Not long ago the writer was taken by a scientific friend, Professor —, of the Los Angeles city schools, to visit the famous La Brea tar pits to the northwest of the city, where so many skeletons of prehistoric animals have been dug up. These tar pits are not far from a large group of oil-wells; and the tar deposits have been formed by the crude oil or petroleum coming to the surface through cracks in the ground and becoming thick and tar-like by evaporation, much like asphalt. And it has been found that the earth around each of these tar deposits is literally packed full with bones of mastodons, gigantic sloths, camels, saber-tooth tigers, etc., the oil and tar having acted as a wonderful preservative, many of the bones being as fresh in appearance as if they had been buried only a few months. As we stood there on the bank of one of the pits which had been excavated by the University of California, and out of which they had taken several car-loads of bones, my geological friend grew eloquent in describing how in the long ago these various animals had come to this spot, one after another, and, getting mired in the soft, oily mass, had been buried in the black depths without any means of getting out. And of course the mental picture he gave—implied, if not formally expressed—was that the oil and the tar had been here for long ages first, and that the entombment of the animals was a much later event, and a gradual process, long drawn out, by commonplace causes, one at a time, just as a gopher, a rabbit, or a bird might now be stuck in the tar and suffocated. A few rods to one side was another digging, where little or no tar appeared in the ground; and I pointed out to my friend the calcareous (limy) appearance of the whole mass of the soil thus exposed. I asked him if it were not possible or probable that all the ground for acres around us might once have been just as much of a bone-yard as the particular spots where the oil had preserved them in such a wonderful manner, but by having nothing to preserve them, these bones had since completely decayed, leaving only the limy deposits in the soil to show where they had once been. I also reminded him of the fact that almost all authorities acknowledge that some oils and very soft coals have undoubtedly been produced in part at least by animal matter, instead of by plants; and that thus it would be the animals which were the source of the oil and tar, and not the oil and tar which were the cause of the death of the animals. And of course this would involve the idea that these animals were not buried singly, or one at a time, but that an enormous mass of them had been buried here together by some awful catastrophe, and that the oil had since been formed from their remains. SIMILAR DEPOSITS THE WORLD OVER
But when we remember that quite similar telltale deposits are found in almost every country on earth, we naturally begin to think of the great event spoken of in the Bible as “the Flood.” In some ages, like the time of the later Stuarts or that of the French Revolution, it was sufficient to condemn any scientific or historical theory if it was found to be in harmony with the Christian religion and the Bible. But surely for us in this enlightened age, it ought on the contrary to be a strong recommendation to any scientific theory, that it harmonizes most wonderfully with the Biblical record. Surely it ought to be a great source of courage for us to find that so many facts from the great book of nature are now confirming the record that the Creator has handed down to us in His written word. Thus by putting the geological telescope to our eye in the proper manner, the long ages of the common text-books disappear, and the things of nature are seen to be wonderfully in harmony with the early history of our world as given in the Bible. GEORGE McCREADY PRICE is professor of geology in the College of Medical Evangelists at Loma Linda, California. He is also the author of several books, such as “Outlines of Modern Science and Modern Christianity,” “God's Two Books,” and his latest work, “The Fundamentals of Geology.” His writings have attracted the attention of leading teachers and geological students in various parts of the world. His article herewith presented is not the effervescence of an amateur. EDITOR.