Creation Moment 3/15/2017 - History of Long Age Heresy

And their word will eat as doth a canker:

2 Timothy 2:17

"Many are concerned about the negative impact of evolution on today’s world. Some see the

consequences in terms of moral and spiritual chaos in society and the church. Others see the damage that the brainwashing of evolution is causing in academic and intellectual arenas. They correctly argue that neo-Darwinism (or any related theory of biological evolution, such as ‘punctuated equilibrium theory’) is not pure science, but largely philosophical naturalism masquerading as scientific fact.
The idea of an old earth really began to take hold in science in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, before Darwin’s controversial theory appeared on the scene.

Two important people in the sixteenth century greatly influenced the development of old-earth thinking at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries. Those two were Galileo Galilei and Sir Francis Bacon.

As is well known, Galileo (1564–1642) was a proponent of Copernicus’s theory that the earth r

evolves around the sun, not vice versa. Initially the Roman Catholic Church leadership had no problem with this idea, but for various academic, political and ecclesiastical reasons, in 1633 the pope changed his mind and forced Galileo to recant his belief in heliocentricity on threat of excommunication. But eventually heliocentricity became generally accepted and with that many Christians absorbed two lessons from the so-called ‘Galileo affair.’ One was from a statement of Galileo himself. He wrote, ‘The intention of the Holy Ghost is to teach us how to go to heaven, not how heaven goes.’ In other words, the Bible teaches theology and morality, but not astronomy or science. The other closely related lesson was that the church will make big mistakes if it tries to tell scientists what to believe about the world.

Francis Bacon (1561–1626), was a politician and philosopher who significantly influenced the development of modern science. He emphasized observation and experimentation as the best method for gaining true knowledge about the world. He also insisted that theory should be built only on the foundation of a wealth of carefully collected data. But although Bacon wrote explicitly of his belief in a recent, literal six-day creation, he like Galileo insisted on not mixing the study of what he called the two books of God: creation and the Scriptures. He stated,

But some of the moderns, however, have indulged in this folly, with such consummate carelessness, as to have endeavoured to found a natural philosophy on the first chapter of Genesis, the book of Job, and other passages of holy Scripture—‘seeking the dead among the living.’ And this folly is the more to be prevented and restrained, because, from the unsound admixture of things divine and human, there arises not merely a fantastic philosophy, but also a heretical religion.

As a result of the powerful influence of Galileo and Bacon, a strong bifurcation developed between the interpretation of creation (which became the task of scientists) and the interpretation of Scripture (which is the work of theologians and pastors). With the advent of the

nineteenth century, the old-earth geologists, whether Christian or not, often referred to Bacon and Galileo’s dictums to silence the objections of the ‘scriptural geologists,’ a group of Christian clergy and scientists writing from about 1820 to 1850 who raised biblical, geological and philosophical arguments against old-earth theories and for the literal truth of Genesis—a literal six-day creation about 6,000 years ago and a global catastrophic Flood at the time of Noah, which they believed was responsible for most of the geological record. The warning of the old-earth proponents was powerful in its effect on the minds of the public. The message was that defenders of a literal interpretation of Genesis regarding Creation, Noah’s Flood and the age of the earth were repeating the same mistake the Roman Catholic Church made three centuries earlier in relation to the nature of the solar system.

In contrast to the long-standing young-earth creationist view, different histories of the earth began to be developed in the late eighteenth century, which were evolutionary and naturalistic in character.

Three prominent French scientists were very influential in this regard.
In 1778 Georges-Louis Comte de Buffon (1708–1788) postulated that the earth was the result of a collision between a comet and the sun and had gradually cooled from a molten lava state over at least 75,000 years (a figure based on his study of cooling metals). Buffon was probably a deist or possibly a secret atheist.
Pierre Laplace (1749–1827), an open atheist, published his nebular hypothesis in 1796. He imagined that the solar system had naturally and gradually condensed from a gas cloud during a very long period of time. In his Zoological Philosophy of 1809,
Jean Lamarck (1744-1829), who straddled the fence between deism and atheism, proposed a theory of biological evolution over long ages, with a mechanism known as the inheritance of acquired characteristics.

Abraham Werner (1749–1817) was a German mineralogist and probably a deist. Although he published very little, his impact on geology was enormous, because many of the nineteenth century’s greatest geologists had been his students. He theorized that the strata of the earth had been precipitated chemically and mechanically from a slowly receding universal ocean. According to Werner’s unpublished writings, the earth was at least one million years old. His elegantly simple, oceanic theory was quickly rejected (because it just did not fit the facts), but the idea of an old earth remained with his students.

Scotsman, James Hutton (1726–1797), was trained in medicine but turned to farming for many years before eventually devoting his time to geology. In his Theory of the Earth, published in 1795, he proposed that the continents were gradually and continually being eroded into the ocean basins. These sediments were then gradually hardened and raised by the internal heat of the earth to form new continents, which would be eroded into the ocean again. With this slow cyclical process in mind, Hutton could see no evidence of a beginning to the earth, a view that precipitated the charge of atheism by many of his contemporaries, though he too was most likely a deist.

Englishman, William Smith (1769–1839). He was a drainage engineer and surveyor and helped build canals all over England and Wales, which gave him much exposure to the strata and fossils. He is called the ‘Father of English Stratigraphy’ because he produced the first geological maps of England and Wales and developed the method of using fossils to assign relative dates to the strata. As a vague sort of theist he believed in many supernatural creation events and supernaturally induced floods over the course of much more time than indicated in the Bible.

Charles Lyell (1797–1875), a trained lawyer turned geologist and probably a deist (or Unitarian,

which is essentially the same), began publishing his three-volume Principles of Geology in 1830. Building on Hutton’s uniformitarian ideas, Lyell insisted that the geological features of the earth can, and indeed must, be explained by slow gradual processes of erosion, sedimentation, earthquakes, volcanism, etc., operating at essentially the same average rate and power as observed today. By the 1840s his view became the ruling paradigm in geology. So, at the time of the scriptural geologists (ca. 1820–50), there were three views of earth history.

The world’s first scientific society devoted exclusively to geology was the London Geological Society (LGS), founded in 1807. From its inception, which was at a time when very little was known about the geological formations of the earth and the fossils in them, the LGS was controlled by the assumption that earth history is much older than and different from that presented in Genesis. And a few of its most powerful members were Anglican clergy.

During the early nineteenth century many Christians made various attempts to harmonize these old-earth geological theories with the Bible.
In 1804, the gap theory began to be propounded by the 24-year-old pastor, Thomas Chalmers (1780–1847), who after his conversion to evangelicalism in 1811 became one of the leading Scottish evangelicals. It should be noted that Chalmers began teaching his gap theory before the world’s first geological society was formed (in London in 1807), and before Cuvier’s catastrophist theory appeared in French (1812) or in English (1813) and over two decades before Lyell’s theory was promoted (beginning in 1830). In part because of Chalmers’ powerful preaching and writing skills, the gap theory quickly became the most popular reinterpretation of Genesis among Christians for about the next half-century.
However, the respected Anglican clergyman, George Stanley Faber (1773–1854), began advocating the day-age theory in 1823. This was not widely accepted by Christians, especially geologists, because of the obvious discord between the order of events in Genesis 1 and the order according to old-earth theory.
The day-age view began to be more popular after Hugh Miller (1802–1856), the prominent Scottish geologist and evangelical friend of Chalmers, embraced and promoted it in the 1850s after abandoning the gap theory.

Scottish zoologist, Rev. John Fleming (1785–1857), began arguing for a tranquil Noachian deluge (a view which Lyell also advocated, under Fleming’s influence).
In the late 1830s the prominent evangelical Congregationalist theologian, John Pye Smith (1774–1851), advocated that Genesis 1–11 was describing a local creation and a local flood, both of which supposedly occurred in Mesopotamia. Then, as German liberal theology was beginning to spread in Britain in the 1830s, the view that Genesis is a myth, which conveys only theological and moral truths, started to become popular.

The source of naturalism’s control of science goes further back than Darwin, back to the old-earth and old-universe theories of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and even back to the writings of Galileo and Bacon (to whose dictums about Scripture and science the early nineteenth-century old-earth geologists frequently referred), who drove the first wedge between Scripture and science.

Conclusion
In light of these considerations, biblically informed students of God’s creation should invoke

supernatural explanations only when there is an explicit biblical indication that God has done supernatural things (e.g., Creation Week, the Fall, the Flood and the Tower of Babel). Otherwise, Christians should seek to explain what they see in creation by the processes and laws of nature. The laws of nature describe not what God must do, but what He normally does to uphold his creation providentially. God does not have to obey the laws of nature. Rather, nature must obey God. Put another way, the laws of nature reflect the customs of God as He works in creation, and miracles are simply God acting in His creation in an uncustomary manner for a special purpose." CMI

Early nineteenth-century views of earth history

Biblical view (scriptural geologists)

SC---F---------------P----------SE

(Time to Present: ca. 6,000 years)

God supernaturally created the world and all the basic ‘kinds’ of life in six literal days (SC) and then judged the world with a global Flood (F) at the time of Noah, which produced most of the geological/fossil record, and all present-day (P) processes have continued essentially since the Flood. This will continue until God supernaturally brings the world to an end (SE).

Catastrophist view (e.g., Cuvier, Smith)

SB------------C----------C----------C----------C ------------------------------------------------------P -------C?---NE?

(Time to Present: ‘untold ages’)

During the earth’s long history (millions of years at least) since God supernaturally began a primitive earth (SB), there have been many natural regional or global catastrophic floods, which produced most of the geological/fossil record and current geography of the earth. After each catastrophe (C) God supernaturally created some new forms of life. Since the past catastrophes were natural events, there may be another in the future on earth, which may also have a natural (or supernatural) end (NE).

Uniformitarian view (e.g., Hutton, Lyell)

SB?---------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------P -------------NE?

(Time to Present: ‘untold ages’)

All geological processes on the earth (perhaps) had a beginning (SB) millions of years ago on a primitive earth. These processes (e.g., erosion, sedimentation, volcanoes and earthquakes) continued into the present and will continue into the future at the same rate and intensity as observed today (P). No one knows whether there will be an end to the current natural processes (NE?).