Table of Contents
Preface xi
1 Buddha's Dam l
Discovering evidence for an immense Tibetan flood shows the author that folktales can have an element of truth.
2 A Grand Canyon 15
A hike out of the deepest hole in North America reveals Earth's antiquity and fundamental problems with the creationist view of earth history.
3 Bones in the Mountains 31
Early Christians see evidence for Noah's Flood in fossils and rocks.
4 World in Ruins 53
Seventeenth-century savants lay the foundation for modern geology through imaginative theories of how God triggered the Flood.
5 A Mammoth Problem 79
Recognition of fossils as the bones of extinct animals invalidates grand Flood theories.
6 The Test of Time 93
An eighteenth-century Scottish farmer discovers geologic time and Christians reinterpret Genesis to accommodate an ancient world.
7 Catastrophic Revelations 115
Nineteenth-century geologists refute the idea of a global flood as the most recent of a series of world-shattering catastrophes.
8 Fragmented Stories 143
An introverted Englishman zealously reassembles cuneiform puzzles, proving that the biblical flood story is a Babylonian hand-me-down.
9 Recycled Tales 161
Scholars uncover the evolution of the Bible as anthropologists probe the roots of flood stories around the world.
10 Dinosaurs in Paradise 179
A trip to the Creation Museum sheds light on the twentieth-century resurrection of creationism.
11 The Heretic's Flood 201
A geologist rediscovers grand catastrophes and creationists refuse to believe geologists have discovered Noah's Flood.
12 Phantom Deluge 225
Modern creationists recycle seventeenth-century ideas to explain geological problems and miss the plate tectonics revolution.
13 The Nature of Faith 247
The greatest story never told-the way we read earth history shapes how we see the world.
Notes 259
Sources 265
Acknowledgments 277
Index 281
