Petrified Wood at Meridian Magazine

Meridian Magazine recently posted an article about petrified wood. You can find the article here. The authors comment on a news story that reports that scientists have been able to petrify wood in the laboratory in a short amount of time. They raise the question of how long it actually takes petrifaction to occur in nature. Rather than millions of years, they suggest a much shorter amount of time. They wonder whether decay processes require a short timescale for petrifaction.

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Now the issue of petrifaction is interesting enough, but their purpose in writing the article appears to be to neutralize arguments against a young earth or worldwide flood. They seem to think that some petrified wood could be a result of Noah's flood--that the timescale is plausible. However, they state that they are not trying to be dogmatic about age of the earth or flood issues. They also propose that the reason that science does not convincingly point to God is because it would degrade the testing ground of mortality. Finally as proof-of-principle that petrifaction can occur quickly, they discuss a wall in England where objects placed in the flow of highly mineralized water petrify in months.

In discussing the petrifaction process they offer only a couple of references--one of them World Book Encyclopedia. Now I don't mean to be snobbish or anything, but World Book Encyclopedia? Is that really the most authoritative source they could dig up? Wouldn't a geology textbook or an interview with a geologist be a little more authoritative? I'm not saying that the encyclopedia information is incorrect, just that if they really want answers to their questions a more authoritative and specialized source would be prudent.

Well, I don't have time to go to the library and research the issue--although next time I'm there I may see what I can find--but I did some internet searching as well. I found this page on the North Dakota Geologic Survey website. It seems to answer some of the questions about petrifaction. The specimen is buried in a manner that excludes oxygen--thus slowing, if not halting, the decay process. It also points out that various amounts of detail are retained. Perhaps this reflects varying amounts of decay. Oh, and there is an "ask a geologist" feature. As for the time required, my limited reading suggests that it depends on the circumstances. It seems obvious to me that the concentration of the relevant minerals would be an important factor, as illustrated by the wall discussed in their article.

One other thing about the article struck me as strange. They refer to Christian Sunday school manuals and then quote from Gospel Principles. Now the book is a Sunday school manual for us, and we do consider ourselves Christian. It's just that their use of a generic designation suggested to me that the quote would come from another denomination.

As to the issue of testing in mortality--I don't disagree with their basic suggestion. However, I wonder if they would go the next step to arguing that the many evidences that contradict the young-earth view of the earth are deliberately made to test us. I don't want to put words in their mouth. However I find this extension of the argument distasteful because not only does it mean that God is deliberately tricking us (or perhaps allowing us to be tricked by Satan), but the whole charade was orchestrated for the very tail end of mortality (assuming the Second Coming is within a couple hundred years.) It has only been within the last couple of hundred years that we have begun to understand physics, geology, and biology in unprecedented depth and accuracy. Why, in all of human history, are we the ones who need to be tricked? Isn't that a lot of work to go through just to "test" of few of us?

Ultimately I don't think that the time required for petrifaction is that important of an issue in our understanding of the history of the earth and life on it.