Now that Dr. Brown would be walking the halls of the geology department, he decided he had better say hello to Dr. Dietz. By now, Dr. Brown knew exactly who Robert S. Dietz was. He was the leading atheist of the Southwest, completely hostile to creationists. He was also a world-famous geologist, one of the founders of the plate tectonic theory—one of the most significant theories of the twentieth century in the opinion of most scientists.
Dr. Brown went to Dr. Dietz’s office and told him he was there to learn geology from Dr. Dietz’s perspective. Oddly enough, that was the beginning of their friendship. Dr. Dietz offered to meet with Dr. Brown each Wednesday afternoon for several hours of discussion. They spent hundreds of hours discussing geology, comparing Dr. Dietz’s plate tectonic theory and Dr. Brown’s hydroplate theory. After their private sessions, they went down to the Wednesday afternoon geology forum and listened to a visiting geology speaker. Sometimes Dr. Dietz would invite Dr. Brown out to eat with the guest speaker.
In private, Dr. Dietz would give straight, honest answers. He would say things that he would never repeat publicly. When he saw a draft of Dr. Brown’s book, he went through every point and acknowledged, “Yes ... that’s a problem for evolution. Well, we might have an answer to this point. Yes ... there are gaps in the fossil record.”
But when they were on radio programs together as creationists versus evolutionists, Dr. Dietz couldn’t be trusted. Once Dr. Brown brought up the gaps in the fossil record. “Oh, that’s not a problem at all,” Dr. Dietz said. “We’ve got lots of intermediate forms.”
During the commercial break, when Dr. Brown reminded Dr. Dietz that he knew there were many gaps, Dr. Dietz just laughed.