Science interprets the fossilised remains of living things in the Earth's rocks as clear evidence that life evolved over billions of years, with new species gradually arising and old species dying out. Creationists take a different view. They believe that all living things were created by God several thousand years ago in more or less the same form as the species that now inhabit the Earth. They argue that the fossil record was laid down over a very short period at the time of Noah's biblical flood. In the past, however, many creationists believed that God created the fossil record instantaneously when creating the Earth. Why God would do this was explained in detail by Philip Henry Gosse (1810-1888), a respected 19th century British naturalist, an experienced fossil-hunter, and probably Britain's best popular narrator of nature's wonders. He wrote a book called Omphalos (Greek for navel), subtitled An Attempt to Undo the Geological Knot, in 1857. The story is entertainingly told by Stephen Jay Gould in the essay `Adam's Navel' in The Faber Book of Science.
Gosse was also a fundamentalist Christian of the Plymouth Brethren sect and completely accepted a literal interpretation of Genesis as recorded in the Bible. It is fascinating to ponder how a man so familiar with fossils explained how God planted them in the earth in an instant and in a manner that clearly points to the gradual evolution of life over eons.
Gosse's explanation centres around the concept of cycles in nature. Thus, for example, an acorn grows into an oak tree that produces another acorn that grows into another oak tree, and so on. In other words, the biological world is a vast collection of circular processes. If you examine any point on any of these circular processes it will bear evidence of its development to that point. For example, the human navel recalls the connection to the mother by the umbilical cord.
Gosse reasoned that when God created the world, all these circles were set up for the first time. No matter where he started a circle, that particular part would bear evidence of a history of development on the circle, even though this history never happened in real time. Real time started at the instant of creation.
Gosse invented a terminology to compare the two parts of the circle, before and after creation. He called those appearances of preexistence created by God at the moment of creation, marking earlier stages in the circle of life, as "prochronic", that is, occurring outside of time. Events that occurred after creation unfolded in real time and he called these "diachronic". Adam and Eve were created as adults. Each bore a prochronic navel, whereas their subsequent lives were diachronic.
Gosse cited many examples of how God created adult animals bearing prochronic marks of a history that never happened. The teeth of a mature animal carry the marks of a lifetime spent crushing, grinding, shredding, etc. Some of the teeth are worn down, some are pitted, some are cracked, some in a state of decay, and some teeth are missing. Gosse envisaged God creating mature animals instantaneously, but whose teeth testified to a lifetime of active use.
While the biological world is clearly full of cyclical processes, Gosse had difficulty in identifying a profusion of cyclical processes in the physical world. There are some, of course, and he drew attention to the water cycle of evaporation and precipitation. Gosse knew of the theory of the gradual evolution of living species over eons, but he rejected it in favour of the literal biblical account of creation. Gosse would not accept that a detailed examination of the fossil record demonstrates the evolution of life and he explained the fossil record, just as he explained the creation of worn-down adult teeth, as a prochronic event created instantaneously by the Creator. The animals and plants in the fossil record had never lived in real time. Even fossilised turds in the fossil record did not shake his confidence.
Gosse reckoned he had comprehensively reconciled science and religion. He confidently expected his explanation would be greeted enthusiastically. But it wasn't. The evolutionists believed they had a natural explanation for the history of life, and they weren't about to reintroduce God into the explanation. Even the creationists never fully warmed to Gosse's idea.
In everyone's mind there was something sly about a Creator who deliberately "planted false evidence" in the Earth. Among creationists, Gosse's explanation was gradually supplanted by Noah's flood. Although he was an eminent naturalist, the proposal put forward by Gosse was not scientific. For a proposal to be scientific it must be refutable in the light of new evidence. You might think Gosse's proposal is ridiculous, but there is no way to prove it wrong. On the other hand, the theory of evolution is an adequate and refutable scientific theory to explain how life evolved on Earth over billions of years into the diverse forms we see around us today.
Gosse's argument was dismissed as ridiculous by the evolutionists. This was unfair because it took a brilliant mind to fashion the arguments found in Omphalos. All things considered, he made quite a good attempt to do an impossible job, given that he refused to consider evolution as a possible explanation. He might as well have tried to swim on dry land - but he made an entertaining attempt.
William Reville is a Senior Lecturer in Bio-chemistry and Director of Microscopy at UCC.