"He speaks in stones"

In Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, the ur-villain, Judge Holden, fancies himself (and may be) a polymath. In one scene (set in the American/Mexican West in the mid-eighteenth century) he offers what in my judgement is an excellent rebuttal to those who doubt the antiquity of the earth:

…holding an extemporary lecture in geology to a small gathering who nodded and spat. A few would quote him scripture to confound his ordering up of eons out of the ancient chaos and other apostate supposings. The judge smiled.
Books lie, he said.
God don’t lie.
No,said the judge. He does not. And these are his words.
He held up a chunk of rock.
He speaks in stones and trees, the bones of things.