Hi Jon,
>-----Original Message-----
>From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu]On
>Behalf Of Jonathan Clarke
>Sent: Monday, February 11, 2002 11:48 PM
>
>I agree also, but you are coming are coming across as lumping all
>these people into the
>same category. You also seem to be giving undue emphasis to these
>people in the
>1800-1850 time frame.
I have emphasized the period from 1830s-1850s. That was when geologic
knowledge seemed to be seeping down to the laity. I wanted to know what was
being said by the authors during that time. I have paid more attention to
how the flood was viewed than the age of the earth, although the two views
are related. In the 19th century one of the most widespread views of those
who believed in a global flood was that the earth was old but the flood was
global. This view is almost non-existent today--I knnow only one person who
holds this today. Within this view, one is able to concord the Scripture by
allowing an old earth, but keeping mankinds history at less than 6,000
years. This was a peculiar form of young-historyism which seemed to satisfy
the Biblical literalists during that time. Today the only thing left of
this view is the use of erratic boulders and bone breccias as evidence that
the flood occurred, but all but one modern advocate holds to a young earth.
Because of this different view point, it is difficult to place in modern
terms the people of the 19th century. There were YECs of modern form as
evidenced by Miller, but most people who would otherwise probably have been
young-earth, believed in a youthful history for mankind. This position was
destroyed as more knowledge cambe about showing that mankind has been on
earth more than 6,000 years. What I have found are the beginnings of many of
the modern YEC arguments, like the polystrate fossil argument, the comet
explanation for the flood, the sinking and rising of continents for the
cause of the flood, waters under the earth's surface as the cause of the
flood, the vapor canopy (or rings) as the cause of the flood, the
earth-axis-shift theory of the flood, the Flood-as-miracle view of the
flood, the-glacial-drift-as- evidence-of-the-flood (which is still used and
published today), the use of Guadalupe man as evidence of the flood, the
Cambrian explosion arguement, the transitional form argument, the tree ring
argument, the appearance of age argument, the population argument, the
frozen mammoth as evidence of the flood argument, the lunar recession
argument for a young earth, longevity of the patriarchs caused by no
radiation argument, Woodmorappe's magical carbuncle that lights the ark
argument, the natural reading of Genesis argument for what intepretation
should be allowed, and the use of anthropological tradition as evidence of
the flood. The same suspicion of scientific data and, like Allen, waiting
upon future discovery to explain things, is also evidenced among many of the
people I have read. Many of these arguments are to be found among people who
were old earth but today these same arguments are used by YECs. Thus, it is
a bit difficult separate their arguments from modern yecs.
I have also found analogues for Dick Fischer, Michael Behe, and me, in the
19th century books.
>
>>
>>
>> In the 19th century there was a position which is extremely
>rare today. The
>> old-earth global flood advocate. They believed that human history was
>> short, that there was a global flood. This is a variant of the modern
>> young-earthers in which youth is applied only to human history but not to
>> the earth's history.
>>
>
>And this was a very reasonable position based on what was then known.
Agreed! up until 1835-early 1840, when it was known that the 'diluvium' was
really glacial till and was not caused by Noah's flood. Buckland had
recanted his views of the diluvium in the mid 1830's, Sedgwick in 1831 or
so, and Aggasize's article had been published Of course, people, including
Granville Penn (1840), John Murray (1840),James Monroe (1843), Burton
(1845), Louis Figuier(1872), Dawson (1894), Wegg-Prosser (1895), Joseph
Prestwich (1896), continued to cite it as evidence until the end of the
century.
>Nobody that some of these people were YEC Glenn. What I am
>suggesting is that you are
>giving much greater prominence to these people than their numbers
>warrant. The vast
>majority of clergy 1800-1850 were not YEC. The vast majority of
>people who wrote about
>geology 1800-1850 were not YEC. OEC's like Buckland, Whewell and
>Miller had a large
>and appreciative audience.
Jon, I have already, several times stated that I agree that most clergy were
not YEC. As to whether or not I am giving too much prominence to them, that
may or may not be. History, it is often said, is written by the winners.
Evolution and the scientific method were the winners. That doesn't mean
that there wasn't a whole range of history going on of which, the winners
speaking to themselves, may have missed. As you have agreed, someone was
buying those books. And there were certainly a lot of them. While the
winners were congratulating themselves, the losers were busy buying books
that totally disagreed with the visible winners.
By the 1880s, no geologist believed in a global flood except the very old
geezer-geologists. Yet the books on the flood begin to multiply. We can pay
attention to the geologists who never wrote about the flood, other than as a
local event, after about 1840, or we can chose to learn what we can of those
who were ignoring the geologists AND the clergy.
>After 1850 all sorts of things happen, and I think this is the
>interesting period
>because we still know so little. The anti-geologists die out, to
>surface in a few
>decades in the SDAs who were not mainstream evangelicals. Where
>had the ideas been in
>the meantime? We don't know.
That is what I am finding out. They did not die out. That simply isn't true.
Miller fights against them, but doesn't actually give their names, although
he makes it clear that he is fighting particular people. Granville Penn,
grandson of William Penn, and probable progenitor of Gosse's extreme
appearance with age argument(I am about to read that work, so I will verify
if that claim is true), wrote Mineral and Mosaic Geology in 1825 and
Conversations on Geology in 1840, and died in 1844. Yet Miller, in 1857 felt
the need to whack a book written 32 years earlier. Miller writes:
"Granville Penn, for instance, does not scruple to avow his
belief, in his elaborate 'Estimate of the Mineral and Mosaic
Geologies,' that both sun and moon were created on the first
day of creation, though they did not become 'optically visible'
until the fourth. " ~ Hugh Miller, Testimony of the Rocks,(New
York: Hurst and Company, 1857) p. 188
Why would Miller feel the need to whack a dead viewpoint? Indeed Miller has
an entire chapter entitled "The Geology of the Anti-geologists." If they had
died, why would he have to write this chapter?
By the way, that view of Granville Penn is exactly Hugh Ross' viewpoint!
The Fundamentals are partly (not completely)
>anti-evolution but accepting of an old earth. William Jennings
>Byran was OEC. Only
>the SDA's Price and Clark visibly kept the fires burning into the
>1940's when Henry
>Morris takes it up.
You are unfamiliar with William Williams who was a young-earther, non-SDA
who presented this population growth argument in 1925. He started with the
assumption that the Jews doubled population every 161 years from 3850 b.p.
He writes:
"But let us generously suppose that these remote ancestors,
beginning with one pair, doubled their numbers in 1612.51 years,
one-tenth as rapidly as the Jews, or 1240 times in 2,000,000 years.
If we raise 2 to the 1240th power, the result is
18,932,139,737,991 with 360 figures following." ~ William A.
Williams, Evolution Disproved, (privately published, 1925), p. 10.
You are unfamiliar with Harry Rimmer who was a Young-earther ( in the 1930s
and wrote lots of books and seemed to be a yec. He too was not SDA. Some say
he was a gap theorist but I find that hard to reconcile with some of his
statements Does this argument sound familiar having been placed on this
reflector just this week?
"The confusion grows worse when we leave the textbooks and get out in
field research, for we then see that the rocks with stubborn ignorance
refuse to follow the chart laid down by the World Congress of Geology!
In many places rocks one hundred million years old (?) are laid down on
top of rocks only one million years old! And this according to the
geologists' own way of reckoning. How could it happen? Why the only
possible way was for the earth's crust to slip and turn over. In some of
our California formations, notably of the Eocene period, the strata of
rock run straight up and down instead of across the mountain! When did
this tremendous shift take place? Dr. Price says that it was at the
time of the Flood. . ." ~ Harry Rimmer, The Harmony of Science and
Scripture, (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1936) 22nd printing 1973, p.
241
and
"But in the second chapter of this same book another meaning of 'day'
appears when the text starts:
'These are the generations of the heaven and of the earth when they were
created, in the day that Jehovah made heaven and earth.'
Here we have the day (yom) embracing in its meaning all the days (yoms)
of the first chapter, yet without doing violence to the meaning of the
word. We note again in the book of Deuteronomy, chapter ten and verse
ten:
'And I stayed in the mount, as at the first time(yom) forty days(yoms)
and forty nights, and Jehovah hearkened unto me that time (yom) also."
"Here we see the word yom used for a solar day, and for forty solar
days, and for an occasion, all in the same verse. . .If the student
desires to accept the era theory, and say that these days were vast
periods of time, there is room enough in the Hebrew meaning to allow of
this interpretation BUTùwhile we thus concluded that the days of
Genesis do not arbitrarily demand a solar day meaning, we must not lose
sight of the fact that these days of creation may very well have been
solar days." ~ Harry Rimmer, Modern Science and the Genesis Record,
(Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1952), p.16-17
and
"Sixth: in the Hebrew manuscripts, when a definite number precedes or
accompanies the word 'yom,' a solar day is intended." ~ Harry Rimmer,
Modern Science and the Genesis Record, (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans
Publishing Co., 1952), p. 19
and
"Finally, there is no reason to demand an extensive time period in the
days of creation in Genesis, except the desire to be in conformity with
the contentions and demands of the evolutionary school of geology." ~ Harry
Rimmer, Modern
Science and the Genesis Record, (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans
Publishing Co., 1952), p. 22
The fact that Morris found a ready ear in
>non-evangelical circles
>for YEC among American evangelicals, indicates that it was there.
>Was Harry Rimmer
>sufficiently influential?
Rimmer was extremely influential, he is just forgotten today. He wrote lots
of books which sold a whole lot, long before Henry began his career as a
writer.
What about the role of the Missouri
>Lutherans? What
>position did the Moody Science Institute play? What about the ASA?
My recollection from H. Morris' History of Modern Creationism is that the
ASA split over the issue of YEC.
> What were people
>reading in Christian magazines, newspapers, hearing in Sunday
>School? I think this is
>an area worthy of research.
Well, they were buying the books I am reading during the 19th century.
glenn
see http://www.glenn.morton.btinternet.co.uk/dmd.htm
for lots of creation/evolution information
anthropology/geology/paleontology/theology\
personal stories of struggle
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