Science and Earth History

Book excerpt: In this comprehensive treatment of the ongoing conflict between creationists and evolutionary scientists, well-known geomorphologist Arthur Strahler carefully examines creationists' claims of scientific evidence for the six-day divine creation of the universe, followed by the catastrophic flood of Noah, as claimed in Genesis. The creationists' arguments are examined and evaluated against the findings of mainstream science in the fields of cosmology, astronomy, geophysics, geology, paleontology, and evolutionary biology. Updated with a new preface and responses to recent attacks on evolutionary theory, Science and Earth History can serve as both a popular overview of earth history and as a scholarly anecdote to the fictions of creationism once again finding their way into classrooms and universities. Strahler illuminates the controversy by reviewing the philosophy, methodology, and sociology of empirical science, as contrasted with the belief systems of religion and pseudoscience. The author also includes lucid criteria for distinguishing science from pseudoscience, and reviews the great discoveries and developments in science that point to the evolution of life over the earth's three-billion-year history.