Page 17

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

century British Scriptural Geologists

Terry Mortenson, PhD

tmortenson@AnswersInGenesis.org

P. 17

A second lesson from the Scriptural geologists' battle with old-earth Christians of their day is

that the increasingly popular old-earth Intelligent Design Movement, lead by Phillip Johnson, is
fatally flawed. But I appreciate what IDM writers are doing to expose the inadequacy of theories
of biological evolution to explain the incredible design we see in living creatures and to challenge the
philosophical naturalism that controls science, they are leading many Christians astray regarding
geological and astronomical (or cosmic) evolution, which most IDM people uncritically accept as
proven fact. Like the early 19

century old-earth advocates, Phillip Johnson and the IDM are only

focusing on design in creation and overlooking the obvious witness in creation to God's wrath poured
out at the fall and at the flood. Also, they apparently fail to see (or at least explain to others, if they
do see), that philosophical naturalism controls geology and astronomy as much as, if not more than,
it controls biology and that naturalism did not take control of science through Darwin but through old-
earth geology and astronomy half a century earlier. Ultimately the age of the earth controversy is not
just a philosophical argument; rather old-earth geology and old-universe astronomy, like evolutionary
biology, are massive assaults on the authority and clarity of the Word of God. Furthermore, as in the
19

century, Intelligent Design proponents insist on keeping the Bible, or at least Genesis, out of the

discussion or, when they do allow the Bible in, they give only a superficial attention to the text. In
his recent book, Johnson encourages Christian readers, "The place to begin is with the Biblical passage
that is most relevant to the evolution controversy. It is not in Genesis; rather, it is the opening of the
Gospel of John."

He then quotes and discusses Jn. 1:1-3.

This same kind of old-earth, intelligent-design approach by Christians almost 200 years ago

failed to halt the rising tide of skepticism and unbiblical religion. All the early 19

century

Christian old-earth proponents used or supported intelligent design arguments against pre-
Darwinian evolutionary theories.

Furthermore, all of them gave very superficial attention to the

text of Genesis. But the old-earth geology they supported actually paved the way for Darwin's
victory. I see no reason to think that the present strategy of the IDM will lead the culture or
individuals back to the God of the Bible and to His inspired, inerrant and authoritative Word.

One final point can be made here. Several of the Scriptural geologists expressed their

concerns that if the early chapters of Genesis were rejected as literal accurate history it would
only be a matter of time before other parts of the Bible would be rejected as well, leading
inevitably to the spiritual decline of the church and its evangelistic mission and the moral decay of
society. As one of the Scriptural geologists, Rev. Henry Cole, put it this way in 1834:

Phillip Johnson, The Wedge of Truth (Downers Grove: IVPress, 2000), p. 151. He has said similar

things many times to Christian audiences. In a recent interview in Australia (P. Hastie, "Designer genes: Phillip E.
Johnson talks to Peter Hastie," Australian Presbyterian, No. 531, October 2001, pp. 4-8) he stated, "I think that one
of the secondary issues [in the creation-evolution debate] concerns the details of the chronology in Genesis. . . . So I
say, in terms of biblical importance, that we should move from the Genesis chronology to the most important fact
about creation, which is John 1:1. . . . It's important not to be side-tracked into questions of biblical detail, where
you just wind up in a morass of shifting issues." This article is on the Web at http://members.iinet.net.au/~sejones/
pjaustpr.html.

Next to William Paley's Natural Theology (1802), probably the most famous examples of design

arguments against naturalistic explanations for the origin of living things were the series of eight Bridgewater
Treatises. These were written from 1833-36 by eight different prominent authors, only one of whom (William
Kirby, an entomologist) was a young-Earth proponent.