By Lana Sweeten-Shults
GCU News Bureau
Dr. Timothy Clarey wanted to be a journalist.
But then dinosaurs came calling. And rocks. And dirt.
“In high school, I was on the school paper,” said Clarey in a phone interview from Dallas. “… But I liked science more. I always liked science and math. I didn’t know what I wanted to do until I got to college."
That’s when the dinosaurs, rocks and dirt started to speak to him and geology started to build the strata of his life.
“It uses chemistry. It uses calculus. It was a nice transition for me … and it touched on my love of history.” As he says, geology is “using the rocks as your pages,” and as a creation scientist and flood geologist, he has focused much of his time shuffling through those pages to prove the truth of the Bible.
Clarey will bring that love of history, dinosaurs and rocks when he visits the Grand Canyon University campus for a One Foundation talk, “Genesis, Global Flood and Giant Reptiles,” from 11:15 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. Friday in Room 104 of the North Lecture Hall.
Clarey, a geologist with the Dallas-based Institute for Creation Research, worked for eight years with Chevron USA, using seismic data to locate oil and gas prospects. In those years of looking at oil data and rock data and what sediments are there, he said he does not believe that the earth is millions of years old.
“Did it take millions of years to deposit rocks or thousands of years? … I think thousands of years.”
There’s no evidence otherwise, he said, and he will be using rock data in his presentation.
He also will detail findings related to the Bible’s Great Flood. He has researched tectonic occurrences during and after the flood, namely on catastrophic superfaults in Wyoming, Montana, Utah and Alaska.
“I’ll be sharing North American data that shows evidence that there was a global flood.”
Beyond science, he shares how Noah's Ark in the Bible is a metaphor for Jesus and how only Noah and his family accepted the invitation to board the vessel. “Jesus opened the door for salvation to him.”
Clarey, who taught at Delta College in Michigan for 17 years and earned doctoral degrees in geology and hydrogeology, will talk dinosaurs, too.
He is the author of the 2015 book, “Dinosaurs: Marvels of God’s Design – the Science of the Biblical Account.”
Christians haven’t known what to do, really, with the idea of dinosaurs and how they fit into the biblical timeline. They aren’t mentioned in the Bible, and then there’s the question, too, of science dating these giant reptiles millions of years back – they became extinct some 65 million years ago.
Clarey, whose daughter is a GCU online student scheduled to graduate this fall with a Bachelor of Science degree in Nursing, said scientists are now discovering protein cells in dinosaurs.
“How can they be 150 million years old and still have these preserved proteins?” he asked.
What he finds exciting about the work he’s doing now in his post-college days is that, whether as a secular or creation scientist, he’s still doing the same science.
“But we’re saying things now we couldn’t say,” he said, when it comes to scientific data supporting the Bible.
Even more exciting, he said, is “how Genesis is verified by all this … science really does support the Bible.”
IF YOU GO
What: “Genesis, Global Flood and Giant Reptiles,” a talk by geoscientist Dr. Timothy Clarey
When: 11:15 a.m.-12:15 p.m. Friday, Sept. 22
Where: Main campus, North Lecture Hall 22-104
Contact Lana Sweeten-Shults at (602) 639-7901 or [email protected].
