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I was already an atheist when I started to learn about geography but this was the subject that confirmed my faith in reason over myth.

I was about 13 or 14 when I proved to myself that it was science that was telling me the truth not religion. My grandfather had a farm, after he retired from farming he sold the sand from under a few hilly fields he owned. Note: he was a true landowner, he had earned money as a silver miner in Canada, came home, invested in a milk-round then bought a farm with an agricultural mortgage, he was a man who could look the world in the eye, one of the twentieth century mythic heroes, a self-made man. He raised his family by his own work, without exploiting anybody.

That farm was my playground and laboratory. I learned there about wild animals and plants and the importance of the soil to all life. The farm had fields, hedgerows, little wooded areas and the edge of it bordered on a peat bog. A microcosm of the English landscape.

There was a huge pile of wet sand dredged up from the bottom of a lake, the water drained off that sand and formed rivers. It formed scale models of rivers. Perfect in every detail, exactly as my geography teacher had taught me. Here was erosion, deposition, oxbow lakes, deltas and confluences. The sand was there because of glacial deposition, my teacher had taught me, and I knew he told the truth. I found with my own eyes and hands compacted sand in layers that told of glacial deposition in an age before the Bible. I did not see the hand of God anywhere. I could see the work of glaciers and their meltwater.

Glaciers had moved this enormous variety of pebbles and sand. I could see that the pebbles I dug from the half compacted sand had been water-washed but not as smoothly as those of a sea shore, a mighty river had deposited them, a tributary of the Mersey that at the time must have made the Amazon look small. A river of meltwater from the glaciers that had buried the land of northern Europe to a depth of several miles.

The pebbles I found were all natural. There were no pieces of smoothed glass or rounded brick like at the modern seashore. These were pebbles of quartz, granite, shale, slate and sandstone. Mixed in with the layers of sand and clay were darker bands of sand that showed traces of organic matter. But I did not find any human remains, no evidence of the flood that wiped the earth clean of sinners. There were two conflicting explanations of what I saw, but not one shred of doubt in my mind as to which one I believed.

I found that science answered questions and helped to predict what you would find. Religion did not. Religion could not explain science and the findings of science. Science and reason could explain religion. As I grew up I learned that I was right. Science and reason did hold the possibility of explanation. Religion was simply a system of delusion.

© 1999 - 2008 by Martin Willett.

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