Abstract
I appreciate the thorough work of Edward B. Davis in tracing down the fallacies of the l9th-century story of James Bartley's supposed experience in the stomach of a whale (December 1991 Perspectives, pp. 224-237). I agree that we should expose and warn against the use of such unfounded stories in teaching the relation between the Bible and science. But to me, a much more current and burning question is that of the many totally unsupported stories regarding the supposed means by which our earth's crust was formed. These have been accepted by large numbers of conservative Christian workers as useful in their ministry. The stories or scenarios to which I refer have been created in the minds of the "scientific creationist leaders in order to argue that God created all the "heavens and the earth only a few thousand years ago. By now they have confused untold numbers of honest Christians who want the truth and really do not want to pass error on to others. Such erroneous myths...now widespread in the English-speaking world...have disgraced the Bible in the eyes of a high percentage of the educators and scientists in the United States, Canada, and England.