Mount St. Helens in the Rearview Mirror: Developing A Philosophy of Science for Applying Analogues in Flood Geology

“The present is the key to the past.” Such is the dictum of uniformitarianism, the paradigm that developed a stranglehold over geology through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. However, evidence has mounted over the past century that demonstrates that the present is only an imperfect key into the past, which was at times dominated by geologic processes and events we do not currently see (Gould, 1987; Baker, 2014). Consequently, the use of the present as a lens to understand the past has shifted in both secular and Flood geology alike. One such example where this was illustrated was through buildup to, eruption of, and recovery from the 18 May 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens. On the scale of minutes to mere years, a myriad of geologic processes, each in their turn, radically altered the landscape (Austin, 2009). Through this event, geologic features previously thought to require up to millennia to form were instead rapidly produced. Consequently, many creation apologists have hailed Mount St. Helens as a monument to the death of uniformitarianism if not naturalistic geology. However, more work is necessary to develop a philosophy of science for incorporating these geologic case studies into our process of scientific inquiry. In many ways, secular and Flood geology have adopted a new philosophy that “the present is an analogue for the past.” This is illustrated by the secular acceptance of volcanic events as a catastrophic yet regular agent in the unfolding of Earth’s alleged 4.4-billion-year history (e.g., Karowe and Jefferson, 1987). In Flood geology, it is key we recognize the shortcomings of our analogues in order to better understand how well they scale to past events like the Genesis Flood. Rather than effectively modeling geologic history as might be expected in the naturalistic framework, events like Mount St. Helens should provide a coarse resolution view of processes unfolding in the Genesis Flood. Conversely, what we observe in the geologic record should instead far out scale what we observe at Mount St. Helens. Emphasis should be made in examining the difference between modern catastrophic events and the Genesis Flood so as to better inform our modeling. Austin, S. 2009. The dynamic landscape on the north flank of Mount St. Helens. In J. O'Connor, R. Dorsey, & I. Madin, Volcanoes to Vineyards: Geologic Field Trips through the Dynamic Landscape of the Pacific Northwest (Vol. Geological Society of America Field Guide 15, pp. 337–344). Boulder, CO: Geological Society of America Baker, V.R. 2014. Uniformitarianism, earth system science, and geology. Anthropocene v. 5, pp. 76-79. Gould, Stephen J. 1987. Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle: Myth and Metaphor in the Discovery of Geological Time. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Karowe, A.L. and Jefferson, T.H. 1987. Burial of Trees by Eruptions of Mount St. Helens, Washington: Implications for the Interpretation of Fossil Forests. Geological Magazine, vol 124, no. 3, pp. 191-302.