 | ||
 | | |
 | ||
| | |
 | ||
| | |
religion / volume 10 number 6, June 2008 The Missionary Position on Atolls An atoll is a roughly circular coral reef surmounted by a series of closely spaced coral islets that enclose a shallow lagoon. They sit atop extinct volcanos and are the stuff of World War II military campaigns and young men’s dreams. Mine, at least…blinding white sands, turquoise blue water, swaying coconut palms, and brown-breasted women. That same magical turquoise color can be seen in holes poked in Alaska snow because sunlight follows the same laws of dispersion both here and in the tropics. I think that particular hue may have some psychological benefit to us humans, especially us northerners. Is that why so many homes in Siberia have turquoise trim? Is that why I enjoy our local pool so much—because swimming pools are tiled or painted to try to recapture the warm-water color of the atoll? Or is it because I know there are no sharks about? In 1976, I arrived on Enewetak Atoll less than a week after a seventeen-foot tiger shark, a known man-eater, had been hooked in waters I would soon be swimming in. Its jaws were wide enough to swallow me whole if it took me end-on. Alas, there were no bare-breasted women, brown or otherwise. All the Marshallese Islanders had been removed so the United States could use their remote island paradise to test our nuclear weapons. I was part of a government project to evaluate the quality and quantity of potable water prior to their repatriation. They would probably miss two of their tiny islands, Eugilab and Lidilibut, which are now no more—having been vaporized by hydrogen fusion. Ultimate destruction of ultimate beauty. While I was there, I had the surreal experience of looking into a raw, flooded, A-bomb crater and had the shivering expectation of giant radioactive crabs sidling out to devour me. I guess I'd watched too much science fiction. A science fact from Enewetak Atoll is that continuous core samples have been recovered down through 4,610 feet of reef-rock to the olivine basalt of the underlying volcano. The reef was built by living organisms, primarily corals, as the volcano slowly sank into the ocean depths. Since reefs grow at a maximum rate of eight millimeters per year under the tropical conditions found at Enewetak, the reef has a minimum age of 175,000 years. There are also three major unconformities (interruptions in the growth of the reef) found at depths of 300, 1,000, and 2,780 feet. These contain pollen from seed-bearing shrubs and trees and show that there were periods when the reef surface was above sea level long enough for land plants to colonize it. Radiometric dating of the reef gives an age of 24 million years. Creationists who believe the earth (and universe) are less than 10,000 years old cannot accept these facts. Nor can they accept the hundreds of thousands of years of atmospheric records trapped in the ice caps of both Greenland and Antarctica. The ice records are dated simply by counting the annual depositional layers in the ice cores. These fundamentalists reject the Geology 101 principle of uniformitarianism, which teaches that “the present is the key to the past,” and applies to the counting of tree rings, growth and sedimentation rates, and annual ice accumulations to determine age. However, the Bible endorses it. Solomon, writing in Ecclesiastes 1:9, explained it this way: “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.” Unfortunately, there is a real consequence to the creationists’ lunacy, in that they have substantial political influence and help to undermine the integrity of the history of past climate changes. Knowledge of this history depends, in large part, upon samples of elements, isotopes, and gasses obtained from accurately dated samples from sources such as those mentioned above. These evolution deniers are a subtle but serious stumbling block to the public’s understanding of global warming. And though Solomon never saw an atoll, he did write to his beloved (in Song of Songs 7:7-8), “Your stature is like that of the palm, and your breasts like clusters of fruit. I said, ‘I will climb the palm tree; I will take hold of its fruit.’” Amen to that.
| ||
| | |
