Re: Colson on Christianity and science

> '. in 1862 the eminent physicist Lord Kelvin greatly worried Darwin by
> 'proving' that the .earth could not possibly be more than 24 million
> years.
> Although this estimate was considerably better than the 4004BC date
> then
> favoured by churchmen.
>
> p155 R Dawkins in The Oxford Companion to Animal Behaviour
>

An excellent book (in my opinion) on the impact of Kelvin and the
ultimate resolution of the age of the Earth problem is "Lord Kelvin and
the Age of the Earth" by Joe Burchfield. He shows how Kelvin first
influenced the geological community that the Earth was really much
YOUNGER than they had supposed on the basis of the geological record.
This persuasion was so effective that when radioactive dating was
developed the geological community was now resistant to the vastly
longer ages indicated.

I do not know what the dominant views of the ecclesiastical community
were at the time of Kelvin.

Keith

Keith B. Miller
Research Assistant Professor
Dept of Geology, Kansas State University
Manhattan, KS 66506-3201
785-532-2250
http://www-personal.ksu.edu/~kbmill/
Received on Mon Dec 8 22:02:49 2003