In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month,
on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the
fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the
heavens were opened. Gen 7:11 (ESV).   In 1830 Charles Lyell
published Principles of Geology. He believed that the geological
processes we observe today have gone on essentially uniformly
since the beginning of time. To understand the past, we only
need to observe the present. Lyell’s theory forbids the
possibility of any catastrophe on a planetary scale. Since we do
not observe worldwide catastrophe today, Lyell reasons that no
such catastrophe has occurred in the past – at least not since
the rise of life. Lyell’s Uniformitarianism is not as widely
accepted today as it was half a century ago. Many geologists
today recognize that substantial catastrophes have occurred
including large regional floods, glaciation, tectonic plate
movement, and so forth. Even so, Lyell’s basic premise – which
denies a recent global flood – is still