Water!

Water is the most distinguishing characteristic of our planet from the others in our solar system and, from all we know to date, from any other heavenly body in all creation. Water covers most of the earth, and is the reason that, from a vantage point in space, it has a distinctly blue color. Most school children know that now, thanks to a very popular NASA photograph taken from space of this beautiful blue planet with shining oceans, swirling clouds and gleaming polar ice.

The ancient creation theorists had little idea of either the vastness or roundness of the earth, or of the extent to which it is a watery world. Nevertheless, they reasoned that the world originated from and was founded upon a watery abyss, which in some translations of this passage is called "the deep." Their …