Page 15

ETS 2001: Boundaries on creation and Noah's Flood: Early 19

century British Scriptural Geologists

Terry Mortenson, PhD

tmortenson@AnswersInGenesis.org

P. 15

important to note that Werner based his theory only on his knowledge of the sedimentary rocks
around his home in Saxony, Germany.

Hutton first sketched his theory of the earth in a journal

article before he had done any fieldwork and he traveled very little inside or outside Scotland to
look for confirmation of his theory.

Cuvier built his catastrophist theory exclusively on the

fossils and formations of the Paris Basin, most of which he did not personally investigate in the
field. But furthermore, in a candid and revealing admission, he stated that almost all of the fossils
upon which he based his theory were found by people, who did not carefully observe or record
the precise geological location where the bones were found.

And Charles Lyell developed the

essential points of his whole uniformitarian theory after only a few years of geological
observations in England and before his first major geological tour on the European continent.

These theories were indeed based on a very limited knowledge of the geology of Britain and
Europe, to say nothing of the rest of the earth. The Scriptural geologists rightly concluded that
this theorizing on skimpy data was contrary to the method taught by Bacon.

So because of these major geological objections and other minor ones, along with Biblical

objections, the Scriptural geologists argued that the old-earth theories were false and that the
acceptance of them would not only undermine the Christian faith and morality, but would also
slow the progress of geology in the acquisition of true knowledge.

So what was the debate really about?

In spite of these significant objections against the theories of both the catastrophists and the

uniformitarians, the writings of the most geologically competent Scriptural geologists were ignored
or misrepresented, but never refuted. Why? Well, the historical evidence clearly shows that they
were not rejected because their objections had no basis in the science of their day. They were not
naïve, Bible students nor "wholly destitute of geological knowledge," as their opponents and
historical critics said.

Rather, I believe that the reason they were ignored is that they were in a

conflict of philosophical or religious worldviews.

The Scriptural geologists were not opposed to geological facts, but to the interpretation of

those facts. And they argued that old-earth interpretations were based on anti-Biblical
philosophical assumptions. They did not label those assumptions with the modern term of

History, Vol. I (1829), pp. 250-51; William Conybeare, "Report on th Progress, Actaul State, and Ulterior Prospects
of Geological Science," Report of the BAAS: 1831-32 (1833), pp. 410-13; William Whewell, The History of the
Inductive Sciences (1837), Vol. III, pp. 621-22.

Milton Millhauser, Just Before Darwin (Middleton: Wesleyan U. Press, 1959), pp. 42-43. Millhauser, a

respected historian of science, bluntly states that Werner "drew the broadest generalizations from the scantiest and
most haphazard supply of facts; untraveled, indifferent to contemporary studies abroad, he evolved out of local
formations and his own consciousness an intricate, largely hypothetical, immensely influential, and almost
completely wrong theory of the world."

Article on Hutton, Dictionary of National Biography (UK), p. 354; Charles Lyell, Principles of Geology

(1830), Vol. I, p. 62.

Cuvier makes his revealing admission of ignorance in his Theory of the Earth (1822), pp. 111-13.

Martin J.S. Rudwick, "Lyell on Etna, and the Antiquity of the Earth," in Cecil J. Schneer, ed., Toward

a History of Geology (Cambridge: MIT, 1969), p. 289.

The quoted words are from Charles Lyell, Review of Memoir on the Geology of Central France by G.P.

Scrope, Quarterly Review, Vol. XXXVI, No. 72 (1827), 482.