From: Glenn Morton (glenn.morton@btinternet.com)
Date: Sun Mar 30 2003 - 02:13:59 EST
Hi Michael, you wrote:
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Michael Roberts [mailto:michael.andrea.r@ukonline.co.uk]
>Sent: Saturday, March 29, 2003 9:16 PM
>To: Glenn Morton; asa@calvin.edu; Jonathan Clarke
>Subject: Re: The YECs you have with you always
>
>
>I dont wish to say much about Glenn's piece.By using a sleight of hand in
>defining any who accept a late creation of man (c4000BC) as YEC he is able
>to makes lots of people YECs. By his definition I would like to add the
>following to his list of YECs from the 19th century; Lyell, Darwin,
>Sedgwick, Buckland, Henlsow, Herschell, Conybeare, Kelvin, Playfair and
>hundreds of others. His definition reduces his article to sheer farce and
>historical nonsense.
It is not farce to say that your claim that the age of the earth issue was
settled long before 1860 is falsified strongly by the evidence. One must
ask, 'For whom was the issue settled?'
It certainly wasn't settled for those between 1850 and the end of the
century who were YECs by ANY definition. All these people beleived that the
earth and the universe were created approximately 7000 years ago. They
include Eleazar Lord, Moses Stuart, Strachan, Thomas Hutton, Dr. Gordon,
Patrick MacFarlane, Dean Cockburn, Phillip Gosse(of whom you erroneously
claim was about the only YEC in the late 1850s), MacDonald, the anonymous
American author of the Creation and the Deluge, Abraham Mills, George Weber,
Benjamin Newton, Herbert Morris and Rev Cunningham mentioned by MacFarlane.
Given this, exactly who are you claiming that the issue was settled for?
Only those of whom you have read? I quote you again:
ìBy the 1850s the Anti-geologists were a spent force and even such an
extreme Evangelical as J. Cumming accepted geology. Almost the only
exception was Phillip Gosse in Omphalos (1857)î (Roberts, 2001)
http://www.asa3.org/archive/asa/200102/0174.html
and
ìFinally there was no serious battle of Genesis and Geology, but a few
Christians objected to geology. By 1860 biblical literalism was virtually
extinct but was revived in the USA in 1961 in the form of Creationism.î
(Roberts, 2001) http://www.asa3.org/archive/asa/200102/0174.html
Both of these statements are clearly falsified by the data I present on my
web page
http://www.glenn.morton.btinternet.co.uk/nineteenth.htm. Christians kept
publishing books with titles like: Antidote against Modern Geology or
Atheisms of Geology. Doesn't sound like there wasn't a battle between
Genesis and Geology with things like that being published. And evidence I
have on that web page shows that even christians like Savile didn't accept
geology, nor did Galloway, an Anglican minister. And Savile, an old
universe guy, clearly was a Biblical literalist. He wrote:
ìNow, if we come to examine Bunsenís theory for extending the period of the
creation of man to 20,000 B. C., we find it resting upon these three
grounds. (a) He considers that it would requires that length of time for the
formation and perfection of the various languages in use amongst the
civilized nations of the earth. The question which virtually arises is this.
Shall we prefer the inference of a learned scholar in the present day, to
the positive statement of an inspired man made between 3000 and 4000 years
ago? ì (Savile, 1862, p. 71)
He literally prefers the Scripture to science.
You have the tougher position epistemologically. You claim that biblical
literalism was virtually extinct. All these YEC people and then including
Savile, Galloway and other old-earth creationists, who believed the Bible
told a literal history of the earth, prove you wrong. How many and how
large a group of YEC is required for you to acknowledge that Biblical
literalism WASN'T extinct as you claim? Tell me what it would take and how
many authors of YEC persuasion I must find in order for you to give up this
erroneous claim that the age of the earth issue was settled in 1860.
Whatever number you give, me, I bet I can find them. All I have to do is go
look at the devotional literature of the day!
>
>I also politely request him to read carefully what I wrote. I have no doubt
>that there were some YEC in the 1860s but they were rare. The only written
>one I found was Newton in 1862 out of several hundred I read. But if I
>followed Glenn's definition of YEC then I can probably add another 20-30.
Forget my definition. I listed 15 published YECs who believed that the earth
was created a few thousand yeas ago. Explain the 15 published YECs from
1850-1871 which I have run into in only two and a half years of reseach.
Explain why in 25 years of research you have failed to find any of these
guys? Is it because you weren't looking?
These books and Authors were published and republished over and over.
MacFarlane was publishing from the 1840s until the 1870s.
Weber's YEC history book was published from 1853 until the 1890s (14 times
from 1853-1859).
Newton was published at least 3 times from the early 1860s until at least
1882
Mills was published in 1856 and 1875.
Who was buying all those books? Those for whom the age of the earth issue
was settled? I doubt it. Look at it logically, Michael. I have presented 15
YECs by anyone's definition from a period for which you said (from your 25
years of research) there were only 2 (Newton and Gosse). I found at least 13
more in only a tenth of the time you have been looking.
>
>Also he needs to judge all agianst a backcloth of what the range of
>geological opinion was on the age of the earth, geological times and
>especially the base of the Cambrian and the antiquity of man. If he did so
>he would realise just how false his argument is.
I would suggest that my argument is aimed at your claims that Biblical
literalism was 'virtually extinct' in 1860. My research shows it wasn't.
As I said, these books are not hard to find. One must wonder why you have
missed them in your 25 years of 'research'.
You wrote:
"After twenty-five years of research, I have not found one
Anglican clergyman who held to a six-day creation in 1860, so how
could
Darwin destroy that belief? (If you ever read that Darwin destroyed
belief in a six-day creation, then consider the writer a monkey
rather
than descended from apes!)î
I agree that Darwin didn't destroy six-day creationism. It continued right
past Darwin's time.
Sincerely,
The monkey.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Mon Mar 31 2003 - 00:17:52 EST