The conference continues to be characterized by highly varied presentations with strong affirmations of historic, conservative positions, along with forceful statements about the problems with those positions and varied suggestions for how the conventional views might be modified. There are not many surprises in the public presentations. Most of the presenters' views are well known. But the conference brings people with different views into close contact with each other. Following the presentations, the presenters respond to questions from the group. Some questions have been pointed and direct and serve to bring into sharper focus the wide range of views held by the Adventist academic scientific and theological community in the area of faith and science. However, in personal conversation, differences are sometimes found to be less than they appear in the public presentations.

In the evening, the various disciplines meet in break-out groups to focus attention on issues specific to that discipline. Preliminary reports from the various groups indicate that, in some cases, sharp differences of opinion are being expressed. However, as far as has been reported to us, all dialogue to date has maintained a courteous and positive tone. In some groups, there has an effort to begin crafting statements that reflect positions they all can affirm, positions they cannot agree on, and areas where future study is needed. Generally, the list of affirmations is short and the areas where future study is needed is very long.

For one of us personally (McLarty), one of the most intriguing presentations featured an account of one of Ellen White's visions. Joseph Bates, among others, was present when she had the vision, and while she was in vision, she spoke of seeing several planets. When questioned on how many moons she saw around these planets, she said she saw four moons around Uranus. Bates was an avid amateur astronomer and knew that recent discoveries had found four moons orbiting Uranus. When Bates asked White if she had been reading about astronomy, she indicated she knew nothing about it. This gave Bates great confidence in White's status as a prophetess. The question posed to us was: what do we do with the fact that according to current astronomy there are 16 moons orbiting Uranus and we now know that it has a ring around it. (The full account of the vision can be read in the Biography of Ellen White written by Arthur White.)

One of the deans of Adventist creation science and most forceful expositor of traditional Addventist short-age and worldwide flood views is Ariel Roth, now retired former director of the Geoscience Research Institute. The title of his presentations was "Some Persistent Scientific Evidence that Affirms a Recent Creation." Roth devoted most of his presentation to paraconformities.

If you look at the walls of the Grand Canyon, you'll see very flat layers of rock piled up. The various layers have been carefully dated. The fossils in the rocks fit the ordinary pattern of progression as you move from the bottom to the top. But between a number of layers that lie smoothly on top of each other there are gaps (paraconformities) of millions of years. Paraconformities are very difficult to account for in conventional geologic time and they are found all over the world. Roth believes paraconformities are best explained by a world-wide flood. Another problem that he addressed was rates of erosion in the geologic record: According to present rates of erosion, the continents should have been eroded flat a hundred times over in geologic time. This would mean there would be no geologic column. All of the fossils would have been eroded away. Another feature that Roth believes is best explained by a catastrophic event like the flood are the very widespread formations in the American West. The Morrison formation, for example, stretches from Canada to Arizona. Roth states that it is very difficult to account for these formations with conventional geologic processes.

Interestingly, in conventional geology there is a steady increase of catastrophic explanations of various features in the geologic record. However, others have pointed out that these catastrophic explanations apply to very restricted localized contexts scattered throughout the geologic column and do not work as an explanation of all or much of the tens of hundreds and thousands of feet of sedimentary record that is the reality of most sections of the geologic record.

Another paper was titled: "Biome Succession: A Theory in Crisis." Biome

Succession is a new name for Ecological Zonation, the name of a theory developed by Harold Clark to try to reconcile the geologic column with the Bible's story of the flood. While Adventists have talked about the theory for years, we have actually done very little research that has actually supported it. And from what research has been done there have resulted more questions than answers. He outlined some research that Adventist scientists could engage in that might strengthen or overturn the theory.

One of the key questions addressed on Monday was the extent of the flood. There was a paper that forcefully argued for a literal interpretation of the Bible words about the universality of the flood. This paper said that we should interpret the words of Genesis 6-9 in the light of their connection with the same words in the creation story. The whole world was created in Genesis 1-2; the whole world was inundated in Genesis 6-9. The paper included several additional textual arguments in favor of a global flood.

Another paper stated that according to the Hebrew language there were categories of animals that did not enter the ark. The author concluded the flood could not have literally covered the entire earth because reptiles and carnivorous animals were not transported on the ark, yet they appear on the earth after the flood. And if literally all the animals that were not on the ark were killed by the flood waters, what would the carnivores have eaten in the early post-flood months? They would have destroyed all the herbivores.

Another paper by an archeologist argued that the author's use of "worldwide" language had to understood within the context of the author's worldview and not in the context of our understanding of similar language. He pointed out that there is no archaeological evidence anywhere (in wells, caves or tells) for a Noachian flood in the Middle East.

Outside of Genesis, the Bible uses global language to describe less than global realities. For example, Nebuchadnezzar is said to have ruled over the whole earth, but he actually ruled only Mesopotamia. Paul said the gospel had been preached to the whole world, but we don't believe early Christian preachers reached the Solomon Islands or Australia. In this view, the Bible itself does not teach a flood that actually covered the entire globe in Noah's time.

One participant wondered if the linkage of language between the flood and creation stories might not mean that we should understand the creation story as reflecting a more limited reality than we usually have understood.

In the panel discussion at the end of the morning when questions from the audience were addressed, the extent of the flood received the most attention. There was no consensus.

There was a paper on the role of Ellen White in shaping our thinking on earth history. The author affirmed that she could and did make errors in small details. The author even acknowledged that her many statements attributing 6,000 years to earth history might be an accommodation to the popular chronology of Bishop Ussher. Conservative Bible believers in her day believed in Ussher, and she would not have been credible to them if she had written about a different time scale. But the author insisted that the six-day creation and the global flood are not small details. These cannot be surrendered without fatally undermining her entire theological structure.

The author declared that Ellen White "rejected the 'smorgasbord' approach to her writings, stating, 'There is no half-way work in the matter. The Testimonies are of the Spirit of God or of the Devil.' Nor did she make a distinction between the inspired and the less inspired, the authoritative commentary and

the nonauthoritative." The author further quoted her: "Moses wrote under the guidance of the Spirit of God, and a correct theory of geology will never claim discoveries that cannot be reconciled with his statements."

An Adventist geologist presented his well-known work on paleocurrents in a presentation titled, "Paleocurrents as Tools: What they can tell us about the history of the earth." Paleocurrents are flow structures in sedimentary rocks which reveal the direction of the wind or water which worked the material before they indurated. In North America, the paleocurrents are highly directive on a continental scale. The direction of the paleocurrents changes from geological epoch to epoch, but within the epochs of the Paleozoic and Mesozoic, the directions of the paleocurrents are highly coherent. These trends are inconsistent with standard geological models. The presenter sees them as best explained by a flood. In the upper Cenozoic periods, the paleocurrents no longer exhibit the patterns. The author believes this indicates the end of the flood.

A well-known leader in Adventist creation science presented a tentative theory for a new flood model. He called it, "The Extended Flood." This theory assumes a literal creation week which resulted in a balanced ecosystem. Historically, flood geology has assumed that there was no significant sedimentation, erosion, or any other geological process working before the flood. But the author pointed out that this assumption is not actually supported by the Bible.

In his theory, the Phanerozoic (fossil-bearing strata) began forming shortly after the fall. These early fossils would have formed in ocean basins and lowland areas, so there would be no human fossils there. This sedimentation and fossilization process would have continued for the 1500 years between creation and the flood. Then there would have been very dramatic changes during the flood and a period of accelerated change following the flood. This model might help explain some of the complications in the fossil record which do not fit in the usual theory of a single-year flood for the deposition of most of the geologic record.

A popular presentation focused on research done on fossil whales in Peru. These whales are found in sediments that are generally regarded as being deposited very slowly. At the accepted rates of deposition, it would take anywhere from 500 to 4,000 years to bury a whale of average thickness. However, the whales are beautifully preserved, with even their baleen intact. They had to be buried in a matter of days or a few weeks at the very most. So far the researchers have found and documented about 2500 whales. They know there are many, many more. The whales had to have been buried in a short time, but the formation in which they are found has been reckoned by radiometric dating to have taken 100,000 years to form. The difference between the preservation state of the whales and the time given for the formation by radiometric dating raises interesting questions about the reliability of conventional dating.

One geologist talked about the role of applied geology in the mission of the Adventist church. Instead of spending all our "geologic time" arguing about the age of the earth, we should devote some time to asking how we can use geology to fulfill the commission of Jesus to take the gospel to the world. One of the greatest human needs at present is clean water. Geology provides the

tools for finding and managing water resources. Another need is earthquake-safe housing, a province of geology. The presentation helped to challenge our ivory-tower obsession with theoretical issues related to origins.

In the view of one of us (Taylor), a presentation on ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica provided the most dramatic and compelling evidence during the conference so far, that earth history and the fossil record reflect the passage of massive amounts of time. Ice cores preserve the record of annual deposits of snow. Several lines of evidence point to the fact that the individual layers can be directly observed to reflect annual events. Contained in these layers are many types of organic products such as pollen and spores and inorganic particulates such as lead and volcanic ash. Correlations between these annual layers and various historical events and processes can be documented. For example, the ice cores give a precise date for the eruption of Mt. Mazama which created Crater Lake at about 7686 B.P.

The ice cores also map the beginning of copper smelting about 500 years ago

and the beginning of the use of lead in gasoline and the subsequent elimination of leaded gasoline. However, in the view of some, the most disturbing aspect of this record to traditional Adventist creationism is that the total length of time recorded in the Greenland ice cores is about 110,000 years. In Antarctica, cores have been drilled to 12,000 feet deep. The standard calculations give a maximum age of 420,000 years. It is important to note that these cores represent only the very top of the geologic column.

The conference continues through Wednesday noon, with field trips planned for Wednesday afternoon and Thursday. Fascinating papers are scheduled for today. The debates in the meetings and in the halls and over meals continue.