Young Earth Creationism

In 1695, John Woodward's An Essay Toward a Natural History of the Earth viewed the Genesis flood as dissolving rocks and earth into a thick slurry which caught up all living things, and when the waters settled formed strata according to the specific gravity of these materials, including fossils of the organisms. When it was pointed out that lower layers were often less dense and forces that shattered rock would destroy organic remains, he resorted to the explanation that a divine miracle had temporarily suspended gravity.

William Whiston's New Theory of the Earth of 1696 combined scripture with Newtonian physics to propose that the original chaos was the atmosphere of a comet with the days of creation each taking a year, and the Genesis flood had resulted from a second comet. His explanation of how the flood caused mountains and the fossil sequence was similar to Woodward's.

The book is organized as follows:

• Introduction, discussing the text of Creation according to Genesis

• Book I: Lematta, discussing the premises and assumptions on which his argument is based;

• Book II: Hypotheses, discussing his model for the origin of the Earth;

• Book III: Phaenomena, discussing evidence predicted by his model;

• Book IV: Solutions, discussing how his model explains the evidence;

• Appendix: An abstract of his theory drawn from various sources.

In the introduction, Whiston discusses the Mosaic account of creation. He argues for a literal interpretation of Genesis, writing:

"We must never forsake the plain, obvious, easy and natural sense, unless where the nature of the thing itself, parallel places, or evident reason, afford a solid and sufficient reason for so doing."

In so doing, he challenges allegorical and mythological interpretations of Genesis, concluding that:

"The Mosaic Creation is not a nice and philosophical account of the origin of all things; but a historical and true representation of the formation of our single Earth out of a confused Chaos, and of the successive and visible changes thereof each Day, till it became the habitation of mankind." (p.3)

He interprets the Genesis account of creation as being only of the preparation of the Earth for mankind, and not as an account of creation from nothing. He draws this from the text, as the account speaks of the waters that existed before God's first creative act on the first day, implying that the Earth predates Genesis chapter one.

He interprets the account of "placing the heavenly bodies in the firmament" as simply being a consequence of the terrestrial frame of reference, for the heavenly bodies do in fact revolve about the Earth from the perspective of a man standing on the Earth.

He describes his Arianism, or the view that Jesus is subordinate to God but first in creation, a view considered heretical within much of Christianity. He also asserts that it is very reasonable to believe that man may well be simply one of many intelligent beings, and certainly not the highest before God. He wrote that humanity was fallen, and currently in a miserable state akin to probation.

He concludes the introduction with his three Postulata:

1. "The obvious or literal sense of scripture is the true and real one, where no evidence reason can be given to the contrary.

2. That which is clearly accountable in a natural way, is not, without reason to be ascribed to a miraculous power.

3. What ancient tradition asserts of the constitution of nature, or of the origin and primitive states of the world, is to be allowed for true, where ‘tis fully agreeable to scripture, reason, and philosophy."

Other naturalists were critical of Diluvialism: the Church of Scotland pastor John Fleming published opposing arguments in a series of articles from 1823 onwards. He was critical of the assumption that fossils resembling modern tropical species had been swept north "by some violent means", which he regarded as absurd considering the "unbroken state" of fossil remains. For example, fossil mammoths demonstrated adaptation to the same northern climates now prevalent where they were found. He criticized Buckland's identification of red mud in the Kirkdale cave as diluvial, when near identical mud in other caves had been described as fluvial.[5] While Cuvier had reconciled geology with a loose reading of the biblical text, Fleming argued that such a union was "indiscreet" and turned to a more literal view of Genesis:[30]

But if the supposed impetuous torrent excavated valleys, and transported masses of rocks to a distance from their original repositories, then must the soil have been swept from off the earth to the destruction of the vegetable tribes. Moses does not record such an occurrence. On the contrary, in his history of the dove and the olive-leaf plucked off, he furnishes a proof that the flood was not so violent in its motions as to disturb the soil, nor to overturn the trees which it supported.

Fleming was a vitalist who was strongly opposed to materialism. He believed that a 'vital principle' was inherent in the embryo with the capacity of "developing in succession the destined plan of existence."[8] He was a close associate of Robert Edmond Grant, who considered that the same laws of life affected all organisms.

In 1824, Fleming became involved in a famous controversy with the geologist William Buckland (1784–1856) about the nature of The Flood as described in the Bible. In 1828, he published his History of British Animals. This book addressed not only extant, but also fossil species. It explained the presence of fossils by climate change, suggesting that extinct species would have survived if weather conditions had been favorable. These theories contributed to the advancement of biogeography, and exerted some influence on Charles Darwin (1809–1882). Flemings' comments on instinct in his book Philosophy of Zoology had influenced Darwin.[9]

In 1831, Fleming found some fossils which he recognized as fish in the Old Red Sandstone units at Fife. This did not fit the generally accepted notion that the Earth was approximately 6,000 years old.

Partial list of publications

• 1821: Insecta in Supplement to the fourth, fifth and sixth editions of the Encyclopae-dia Britannica, with preliminary dissertations on the history of the sciences

• 1822: Philosophy of Zoology (Volume 1, Volume 2)

• 1828: A History of British animals, exhibiting the descriptive characters and systematical arrangement of the genera and species of quadrupeds, birds, reptiles, fishes, mollusca, and radiata of the United Kingdom, including the indigenous, extirpated , and extinct kinds, together with periodical and occasional visitants Edinburgh: i–xxiii + 1–565.

• 1837: Molluscous Animals

• 1851: The Temperature of the Seasons, and Its Influence on Inorganic Objects, and on Plants and Animals

Meanwhile, orthodox Christianity was saved from

the embarrassing inadequacies of the Diluvial Theory

by the French geologist, naturalist, and member of

the Académie des Sciences, Baron Georges Cuvier

(1769-1832). To explain the progressive sequences of

fossils found in rock sediments, Cuvier proposed

a series of catastrophes, each of which had totally wiped

out animal and plant populations (thus producing the

fossils), followed by a period of calm during which

God restocked the earth with new (and improved)

species, The Noachian Flood was just one of these.

The Catastrophe Theory was a great balm to many

troubled minds. Adam Sedgwick, a geologist at

Cambridge University and a teacher of Charles Darwin, 

expounded the theory thus: 'At succeeding periods

new tribes of beings were called into existence,

not merely as progeny of those that had appeared

before them, but as new and living proof of creative

interference; and though formed on the same plan,

and bearing the same marks of wise contrivance, of-

tentimes unlike those creatures which preceded them,

as if they had been matured in a different portion of the

universe and cast upon the earth by the collision of

another planet.'

In formulating the Catastrophe Theory, Cuvier rou-

tinely took for granted an extreme rapidity of changes

in times past as compared with the present, but con-

ceded that perhaps a little more than six thousand

years was required. So, following the example of his

countryman, Comte Georges de Buffon (1707-1778),

he added eighty thousand years on to the age of the

earth. According to calculations of members of the

Académie, made after Cuvier's death, there had been

twenty-seven successive acts of creation, the products

of each but the last being obliterated in subsequent

catastrophes, thus providing a geological 'clock'. An

Englishman, William Smith (1769-1839), raised the

number of strata to thirty-two.

Opposite: This fossil

crocodile, illustrated in

Cuvier's book, The

Animal Kingdom (1830),

is obviously related to

present-day species

and it was such finds

that posed a problem to

the proponents of the

Diluvial Theory.

Baron Georges Leopold

Cuvier, the French

comparative anatomist,

explained away the

progressive sequences

of fossils found in strata

by proposing a series of

catastrophes, the Flood

being just one of these.

In one of the great statements in the history of science, Sedgwick, who was Buckland's close colleague in both science and theology, publicly abandoned flood geology and upheld empirical science—in his presidential address to the Geological Society of London in 1831.

Having been myself a believer, and, to the best of my power, a propagator of what I now regard as a philosophic heresy, and having more than once been quoted for opinions I do not now maintain, I think it right, as one of my last acts before I quit this Chair, thus publicly to read my recantation...

There is, I think, one great negative conclusion now incontestably established—that the vast masses of diluvial gravel, scattered almost over the surface of the earth, do not belong to one violent and transitory period...

We ought, indeed, to have paused before we first adopted the diluvian theory, and referred all our old superficial gravel to the action of the Mosaic flood... In classing together distant unknown formations under one name; in giving them a simultaneous origin, and in determining their date, not by the organic remains we had discovered, but by those we expected hypothetically hereafter to discover, in them; we have given one more example of the passion with which the mind fastens upon general conclusions, and of the readiness with which it leaves the consideration of unconnected truths.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/09/genesis-vs-geology/306198/?single_page=true