18th Century Geologist reaction to ancient earth

I had the opportunity to attend a lecture at Biblical Seminary given by Dr David Bossard entitled "The Stones Cry Out: How Early Christian Geologists Enlarged Their Understanding of the Creation Account."

His goal was not an evaluation of the "correctness" of the views he reported, but rather just to document their thinking in the face of the growing evidence that the earth is ancient. He maintains a large site of old geology and theology works at www.geology.19thcenturyscience.org or for a wider range of documents www.19thcenturyscience.org The question and answer session was good and I had a chance to talk with Dr Bossard for a few minutes afterwards.

I though the talk was quite good (although it was not accompanied with any visuals). His position was that prior to the discoveries that he chronicles there was little to move theologians and geologists off the position of a young earth. When the scientific evidence appeared, most of the geologists (orthodox Christians many) felt forced to move to other positions and propose various interpretations of Genesis. What was very interesting was that many views one hears are presented without any reference to the fact that the ideas are NOT new.

I would suggest looking at the document (at <http://www.ibri.org/in-progress/57StonesCryOut.html> and his own website for yourselves.

He did not seem to know either Ted or Michael. I think you guys would love to share ideas. He is not a geologist by training, but appears to have done his homework and his web site appears to be a great resource for complete old works.

Ted, I sent him to your web site at Messiah, so I hope you might be able to communicate.

Michael, I also mentioned your name, and suggested he contact you.

I am also sending this to David.

Alan McCarrick
Received on Fri Mar 17 09:27:38 2006