During the lifetime of Harvard's Louis Agassiz, antievolutionists could
cloak themselves in the respectibility of America's most famous scientist.
Already an internationally acclaimed authority on fossil fishes and
glaciers when he emigrated from Switzerland to the United States in 1846,
Agassiz used his scientific standing to defend the idea of scientific
creation. His creationism, however, bore little resemblance to the
narrative found in Genesis. Agassiz adamantly refused to let religion
determine the course of his science, whether it be with respect to the age
of the earth, the appearance of humans, or the reality of the Noachian
flood. The scion of a long line of Huguenot ministers, Agassiz by 1859 had
drifted into nominal Unitraianism and sporadic churchgoing. His ice-age
theory helped, in the 1840's, to drain the last drops of geological
significance from the Noachian deluge, and his espousal of the plural
origin of the human races in opposition to the biblical account of Adam and
Eve had, in the 1850's, aroused the enmity of many devout Christians.
Instead of a single Edenic creation in six days, he taught that the
geological evidence indicated a series of catastrophes and creations by
which the earth had been repeatedly depopulated and repopulated. In his
_Essay on Classification_ (1857) he explained that "species did not
originate in single pairs, but were created in large numbers," in the
habitats they were intended to populate, and he dismissed the notion that
fossils were "the wrecks of the Mosaic deluge." Living species thus had no
genetic connection with previous inhabitants of the earth -- and might not
even be related, except ideally, to members of the same species now living.
His creationism owed more to philosophy than to revelation.
In light of this I should qualify my earlier statement to read something
like, "Agassiz was not the sort of creationist today's young-earth
creationists would be comfortable with. In fact there is some question
whether today's Christians would be comfortable with his theology."
Bill Hamilton
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William E. Hamilton, Jr, Ph.D. | Staff Research Engineer
Chassis and Vehicle Systems | General Motors R&D Center | Warren, MI
810 986 1474 (voice) | 810 986 3003 (FAX) | whamilto@mich.com (home email)