About us
The Editor: Steven Robinson
My involvement in questions of origins goes back to a day in March 1993 when I made the acquaintance of geologists Michael Garton and Paul Garner. They firmly believed in the historical and world-wide nature of Noah’s Flood, but took a different position on geology from the one put forward by most creationists, considering that deposits younger than the Carboniferous post-dated the Flood. This view had first been put forward by German geo-biologist Joachim Scheven in his book Megasuccessions and Climax in the Tertiary: Catastrophes between Flood and Ice Age (1988). We discussed the issues, and the more we did so, the more this understanding of post-Carboniferous geology seemed to make sense.
We thought the model needed a wider forum. After lengthy correspondence the editor of the Creation Ex Nihilo Technical Journal agreed to publish a suite of papers setting out our main arguments and in the end I wrote the leading paper, entitled ‘Can Flood geology explain the fossil record?’ This suggested that the Flood had begun no later than the Mesoproterozoic and ended somewhat before the end of the Carboniferous, and although written from a fundamentally creationist position, it offered an in-depth critique of the Whitcomb-&-Morris model.
The hope was that creationists would acknowledge the evidence for substantial time in the Mesozoic and Cenozoic and be stimulated to a wholesale rethink. It never came. We were accused of being renegades. Undeterred, I began researching the critical evidence that would need to be satisfied in the Palaeozoic. Would the new model stand up? The answer proved to be no. In many ways the proposal was as flawed as its American counterpart. In a subsequent paper (CEN Tech J. 12:67) I asked whether it was right for creationists to be castigating evolutionists for their preconceptions while being unconcerned about the beam in their own eye.
It seemed clear that creationism from first to last needed to undergo profound self-examination. The ideas it promoted were far from robust, and the culture in which it debated ideas and dealt with dissent was worryingly sectarian. My rather solitary attempt to re-think the fundamental questions led to the recolonisation theory, the essentials of which (since much refined) were first published in a Genesis Agendum occasional paper in 1998.
The theory abandoned the articles of faith on which creationism had built its belief system, such as an ultra-short chronology, or the assumption that the ‘Flood’ was a marine transgression and fossils were the remains of organisms buried in the Flood. Creationist organisations accordingly closed their doors. Michael also abandoned the creationist belief system and decided to pursue a long-held interest in the Cambrian rocks of north-west Scotland through a PhD research program. Paul returned to the fold. At the same time, another door opened at Noah’s Ark Zoo Farm, which saw the merits of the new approach to Earth history and invited my help in communicating some of it to visitors. The decision to set up this separate website was made in September 2005.
Unless otherwise credited, I am the author of the material published on this site. It is hoped, however, that in due course others will make their own contributions.
We created this website in the belief that the issues discussed are important and the public needs to know that there is a more satisfactory way of understanding the history of life than the opposite extremes of creationism and evolutionism. If you would like to support this venture, help would be appreciated. Possibly you could
- publicise the work
- arrange a speaking tour
- make a significant capital injection
- undertake research
- contribute an article
- assist in converting some of the existing articles into pdfs
- offer moral support.
In which case we would be glad to hear from you.
… and the Sponsor: Noah’s Ark Zoo Farm
Noah’s Ark Zoo Farm, located just south of Bristol in the UK, is owned by Anthony and Christina Bush, who opened it in 1999 on their previous dairy farm. Now a fully accredited member of the British and Irish Association of Zoos and Aquariums, the centre offers an opportunity to see, touch and smell most of the exotic animals you would expect to find at a zoo alongside a wide range of animal kinds that were wild once but are now domesticated. It is North Somerset’s top leisure attraction.
Anthony, who read Mathematics at Oxford University, had long been concerned at the way academics accept the theory of evolution without critical questioning or an awareness of its shortcomings. In the light of his farming experience he was clear that some sort of evolution had occurred: breeding programmes can lead to very rapid changes in body form, and he could conceive that natural selection had led to similar differences between one species and another. However, the larger gaps that existed between, say, cattle and horses seemed to be of a different nature. When in the winters of 1997 and 1998 he made an intensive study of the fossil record, he found that these gaps between higher-level groups of animals were just as real in prehistoric times as they are today.
Having also studied at Theological College and trained as a Church of England Lay Reader, Anthony was troubled by how far many churchmen had lost confidence in the historicity of the biblical texts and assimilated a view which left the Creator remote from his creation. Not only was God rendered remote in time but many churchmen no longer considered it reasonable to see evidence of his direct handiwork in the creation itself: the appearance of design, beauty, providence and power was seen as illusory. Part of Noah’s Ark Zoo Farm’s mission therefore became “to give people scientific permission to believe in God”, the same God who had revealed himself in Jesus Christ.
Noah’s Ark Zoo Farm has its own website for visitors and those interested in issues of creation and evolution. The farm itself includes a great number of displays and other exhibition material in the hope of stimulating such interest. Many of these displays have been designed by Steven, who, as explained above, has for the past 9 years been pioneering and developing a ‘recolonisation’ interpretation of the fossil record.
Web design in collaboration with Adam Beaumont.