Re: [asa] Augustine and Young Earth Creationism

Wrong button on spellcheck!

The lists of creationist scientists are rubbish. Many are old earth and those who weren't predate geology and deep time.

20my is fatal to YEC, you only need 50,000 and YEC is no more! To go back to 1770 to 1800 the controversy was whether the earth was c100,000 years old - de Luc , millions Soulavie (Fr Geologist and priest) or eternal. 6000years didn't get a look in by serious geological savants

Michael
  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Merv
  To: Michael Roberts ; asa@calvin.edu
  Sent: Saturday, March 03, 2007 9:07 PM
  Subject: Re: [asa] Augustine and Young Earth Creationism

  "...many held undogmatically to a youngish earth, along with egocentrism." (emphasis added) Was that an unintentional anagram of "geocentricism", Michael? Even if so, I like it!

  I also find it ironic that Lord Kelvin, who is included on lists of important creationist scientists in some YEC publications, was adamant in his dogmatics against dismayed evolutionists of the 19th century that the earth could not have the untold eons of age they thought so necessary. He insisted instead that the earth was clearly a mere ... 20 - 40 million years old! -- due to traditional thermodynamic cooling rates. Radioactive input wasn't in the picture yet. But Kelvin is another example of a creationist who doesn't fit the young-earth pattern.

  --merv

  Michael Roberts wrote:
    One cannot say what the dominant view of the early church was on Genesis, some like Athenagoras thought it was a few thousand - 5500BC others were undecided on the length of days etc. None placed it at the centre but many held undogmatically to a youngish earth, along with egocentrism.

    It is often claimed that until the geologists came along in c1800 the church held to a young earth. That was not the case. In a continuing project on the period from 1500 to 1850 or so, I found that most did not follow Ussher . Also many allowed a long time for the existence of Chaos(tohu va bohu) before creation in 6 days (poss more than 24 hr days), so from 1600 most accepted creation was older than 4000BC, by 1700 many were open to a little more time, and by 1770 many Christians allowed for deep time. What amazes me is that few Christians were vocal against geology until T Gisborne the first of the Anti geologists publ;ished a book in 1817 and then we have those around till most went extinct in c1855. (It resurfaced later in the century in the SDA and pre-LCMS Lutherans).

    I have argued this and given the evidence in a paper in the Evangelical Quarterly in 2002 and in the chapter below which is about to be published

    Genesis Chapter One and Geological Time from Hugo Grotius and Marin Mersenne to William Conybeare and Thomas Chalmers (1620 to 1825), March 2007 in Myth and Geology (Special Publication of the Geological Society of London)

    To claim that the church was YEC is as absurd as criticising all before 1543 for not accepting heliocentricity or Darwin for not accepting genes

    Michael

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Received on Sat Mar 3 17:27:46 2007