Sponsored by the Seventh-day Adventist Church, the Geoscience Research Institute’s mission is “to discover and share an understanding of nature and its relationship with the Biblical revelation of the Creator God.” Number 65 (2018) of their peer-reviewed journal, Origins, is now available online. Articles include:
Some Things We Can Know by Jim Gibson
In this editorial, GRI’s director discusses the evidence of design and catastrophe in nature. Corroborated by both observation and revelation, these themes are good foundational points for the study of origins.
The Grand Staircase: A Case Study in Scientific Thinking from a Biblical Worldview by Leonard Brand
“In Utah and northern Arizona is a unique geological landscape feature… There is much evidence that the Grand Staircase must have been carved out of the landscape, not by rivers, but by a massive, catastrophic flow of water across southwestern United States.”
Similar Plan, Similar Response: The Biblical Narration of Planetary Beginnings at Creation and After the Flood by Ronny Nalin
“Genesis narrates God’s instructions to humans and their response to these instructions after two planetary beginnings: creation (Gen 1:28-3:21) and the flood (Gen 9:1-27)… The understanding of God’s vision for the creation and our role in it, which emerges from comparing the two accounts, can contribute to the framing of the foundations of a biblically-informed approach to environmental issues.”
A Chemist’s Perspective of the Yellowstone Petrified “Forests” by Clyde L. Webster, Jr.
Yellowstone National Park’s fossil forests are intriguing for scientists and others curious about the natural world. After conducting a baseline study using samples from dated lava flows in Hawaii, Dr. Webster focused on the multiple ash layers in the Yellowstone Fossil Forest area.
The Explanation for the “Yellowstone Fossil Forests,” An Uncompleted Research Project by Leonard Brand
“When we do geology research, the accuracy of our conclusions will depend on whether our worldview, or philosophy, is correct. Much experience shows us that geology research that is done carefully, and guided by the information in Genesis has the best chance of reaching reliable conclusions. An early example of this, from the 1970s, was a study of the fossilized forests in Yellowstone National Park. These fossil deposits consist of a series of volcanic layers with numerous tree stumps and logs, one layer above another. Previous researchers concluded that each layer with its trees grew where it is fossilized, was killed by a volcanic eruption, and then another forest grew on top of it. If this were true, the whole sequence would have taken much more time that the biblical account allows. A group of scientists who take the Bible seriously went much deeper in research on the ‘fossil forests,’ and found that the evidence indicates the trees grew somewhere else and were transported by water into the Yellowstone area before they were buried. The eruption of Mount St. Helens provided insights that helped explain how this process worked. This research was well done, but is not completed. It offers opportunity for more insightful research, if the Bible is still used as our inspiration.”
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CIRCLE Editor
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