On the Edge of Eternity; why Ussher got it wrong on 4004BC

Well, surely only Creationists believe that James Ussher got it right today? That is right, but he had also got it wrong in 1656 and went against the traditional teaching of the church – and by that I mean the Western Churches, both catholic and protestant.

So  often we are told all Christians believed that God created everything in about 4000BC, until the late 18th century and later when the naughty James Hutton and Charles Lyell started arguing for a very ancient earth. This can be seen in two ways; either the church was beguiled by those wicked geologists into destroying Genesis, or that that Hutton and Lyell liberated people from believing biblical fantasies.

Recently the book On the Edge of Eternity  by Ivano Dal Prete of Yale has rather scuppered that view and taken the ground away from Creationists and afficionados of the conflict thesis of science and religion

Ivano Dal Prate; Oxford University Press , New York 2022

The blurb on Amazon says;

It is commonly assumed that the creation story of Genesis and its chronology were the only narratives openly available in medieval and early modern Europe and that the discovery of geological time in the eighteenth century came as a momentous breakthrough that shook the faith in the historical accuracy of the Bible. Historians of science, mainstream geologists, and Young Earth creationists alike all share the assumption that the notion of an ancient Earth was highly heterodox in the pre-modern era. The old age of the world is regarded as the offspring of a secularized science.

In this book, Ivano Dal Prete radically revises the commonplace history of deep time in Western culture. He argues that the chronology of the Bible always coexisted with alternative approaches that placed the origin of the Earth into a far, undetermined (or even eternal) past. From the late Middle Ages, these notions spread freely not only in universities and among the learned, but even in popular works of meteorology, geology, literature, and art that made them easily accessible to a vernacular and scientifically illiterate public. Religious authorities did not regard these notions as particularly problematic, let alone heretical. Neither the authors nor their numerous readers thought that holding such views was incompatible with their Christian faith. While the appeal of theories centered on the biblical Flood and on a young Earth gained popularity over the course of the seventeenth century, their more secular alternatives remained vital and debated. Enlightenment thinkers, however, created a myth of a Christian tradition that uniformly rejected the antiquity of the world, as opposed to a new secular science ready to welcome it. Largely unchallenged for almost three centuries, that account solidified over time into a still dominant truism.

Based on a wealth of mostly unexplored sources, On the Edge of Eternity offers an original and nuanced account of the history of deep time that illuminates the relationship between the history of science and Christianity in the medieval and early modern periods, with lasting implications for Western society.

Dal Prete is not quite the first to do this and even I have had a few attempts!! But despite a strongly Italian bias he makes a good case. To affirm his non-anglo-centricity poor Archbishop Ussher doesn’t even get a mention and his date of 4004BC is nowhere to be found. He makes a good case but it needs to be extended to anglophones as well. 

The book is subtitled The antiquity of the earth in Medieval and Early Modern Europe but its sweep is wider. Its thesis is bold. It argues that in Western Europe Deep Time was common in the early Catholic Church and thus not introduced in the 18^th century. It carefully garners the evidence focussing on the Medieval Church in the West and then after 1500 mostly from northern Italy. The rest of Europe is mentioned in passing. The book is a dense read but rewarding. Much has been described briefly elsewhere but this focusses on this one issue.

Its thesis is that Deep Time was not discovered in the 18^th century but goes back fifteen centuries. Simplistic views based on the Conflict Thesis are hammered as the author uses a vast amount of documented evidence from the Mediaeval Church and mostly northern Italy. The main text is 214 pages and the notes 83, and it adopts a chronological sequence.

The first two chapters deal with medieval church and their flexibility on the antiquity of the earth. At one end the Chronologists, who were more literalist, insisted that the earth was created in 4000BC or 5300 BC depending whether they followed the Hebrew or Greek Old Testament. At the other  end some insisted that the earth was eternal until that was proscribed in 1215 at the Fifth Lateran Council with a range of ideas in-between these extremes.

There were four main views;

Deep Time with eternalism – proscribed in 1215 but remained outside official belief. ;

Deep Time with a point of creation and tending to allegorical Biblical interpretation. There was no precision as to time, beyond the fact that the earth was ancient, and that it had undergone many changes in its long existence and there had been lots of flood.

“Shallow Time” of the Chronologists, who were more literal and historical. These take the chronologies of the Old Testament. As most Christians in Europe tended to use the Greek translation of the Old Testament (LXX), they normally took creation as occurring inc5300BC. Probably the first was probably Ad Autolycum  by Theophilus of Antioch in the second century, followed by Constantine’s favourite bishop, Eusebius, in the early 4th century and a little later Jerome. Thus they opted for 5300BC give or take. The Hebrew texts points to 4000BC and when the Venerable Bede argued for creation in c4000BC, some monks complained to the local bishop about Bede’s heresy.  (There have always been prigs complaining to  bishops about clergy.)

and lastly, but very significant, Shallow Time with Chaos. These looked not only to the Bible, but also Latin writers and after 1200 Greek as well. These included Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Pliny’s Natural History (Pliny never got round to writing up his observations on the eruption of Vesuvius.) Seneca and latterly Plato. Ovid was the most widely read and the first part talks about the disorganised chaos which was later re-ordered. This chimed in with Genesis chapter one vs 2 with the initial creation being  “a formless void”.It gave a longer timeframe than the chronologists, resulting in the Western Church being open to Deep Time. [The last view has often been ignored but is was very widely held, not only in the Medieaval Church but also after reformation and up to 1860. After that it was gently dropped but taken up by ultra-evangelicals with their “Gap Theory”, a thoroughly degenerate version of an old and respected understanding. Dal Prate scarecly touches on this but it was held by many post Reformation commentators – Catholic and Protestant, and even by many poets including Stephen Spencer and Milton.

It comes out in  Haydn’s oratorio The Creation, with the  orchestral introduction The Representation of Chaos and then the re-ordering of chaos with the beautiful aria “a new created world sprung up”. Needless to say many early British geologists adopted it to allow for geological time, most notably William Buckland in 1818. But that is another story needing telling.

All these ideas spread beyond the church as is discussed in the chapter Vernacular Earths 1250-1500. The merchants of Tuscany were well-read and interested in the structure of the earth and hence deep time spread beyond the church. Da Vinci was born into this environment. This chapter gives a flavour of ideas of time and Natural philosophy in a wider educated culture.

The Reformation disrupted the church in 1517. One result was a greater emphasis on a literal Biblical interpretation by Protestant and Catholic alike and thus a shorter timescale for earth. The Jesuits insisted on a short chronology. Biblical chronologies flourished, including the Calvinist Scaliger, and (not mentioned) Ussher. Even so the multiplicity of older views did not disappear, but were diminished, or held privately within and without the churches only to resurface. Despite the bias to biblical literalism, many theologians followed my Shallow Time with Chaos and that is another story needing telling.

As Prete emphasises during the Middle Ages many accepted multiple deluges with Noah’s the last. That changed with rise of diluvialism after 1650, when only the Noachian Deluge was accepted influencing geological thought. Prete looks wider than Italy on diluvialism and discusses both French and British exponents. The most influent Briton throughout Europe was Woodward who was also the most literal. Other theorists of the earth opted for shallow time with chaos thus allowing geological time to slowly creep in.

The chapters on the early church up to diluvialism give a good perspective but does not explain the religious aspects which is necessary to fully understand his argument. Hence some of my explanatory comments.. The chapter entitled The INVENTION of the History of Deep Time is more how the history of Deep Time was rewritten by the philosophes claiming that Deep Time was put forward to oppose the “young earth” orthodox churches, and then used as an argument against religion. It is not convincing, as during the 1700s more savants, Christian or not, adopted Deep Time. Even Buffon tended to value the scenario of Genesis One, but allowed far more time that 144 hours, with his seven epochs. This is a good example of the Day-Age interpretation

The  RC priest Fr Needham had a similar outlook.The conflict was not Deep Time versus Shallow Time, but an eternal earth versus an oldish one, epitomised by Hutton and de Luc. Some competent geologists were still Young Earth up to 1800 as were Smith and Parkinson, but don’t tell anyone!.

The chapter Political Fossils gives some insights into controversies in Venice and Verona, noting they may not be “an indicator of larger trends”. His mention of Chateaubriand (1768-1848) is tantalising brief. Like Gosse years later, Chateaubriand claimed that the earth was created with an appearance of history.  Prete’s claim that a young earth was identified with the tradition of Christian Europe is questionable, particularly for Britain. His concluding chapter brings the arguments up to the present time, but is rather disjointed.

To conclude; this book gives an instructive and well-evidenced thesis up to 1650, which, despite caveats, I find convincing. It gives some excellent insights how the Western Church considered (deep) time and belief. However it is as tough to read as it is stimulating and not for bedtime reading.

Hutton did not invent Deep Time from the depths of his unbelief, and now was the church locked into a creation in 4004BC.

 

 

 

2000 years of Genesis and Geology

Yes, I am not joking! People of all faiths and none have wondered and written on how old the earth is for three thousand years.

However the geological understanding of the strata in a particular order only goes back 250 years and then our order Cambrian Ordovician etc was worked out by 1850. Here is an early cross-section from Snowdon to London

In 1963 I actually went from the top of Snowdon to south of the Thames under my own steam. I had climbed Snowdon, leaving my bike at the bottom. When I descended I cycled the 300 miles home. So I traversed all of this geological section!

For nearly two thousand years Christians have tried to tie ideas of ages that into the Bible, which if we take Genesis literally means the earth is only a few thousand years old. But we are often told that all Christians believed in a young earth until godless geologists like Hutton and Lyell came along. .

This podcast looks into most of these issues.

First, most Christians have never believed that the earth is only a few thousand years young.

Secondly, they have taken many different views. Some argued the earth was eternal but that got bopped down in 1215. Some insisted the earth was created in about 4000BC or 5500BC, depending whether they preferred the Hebrew or Greek text. Some thought it was extremely old and others just old. Apart from the first all held their views agreed with the Bible.

To summarise the alternatives were;

1. Deep Time as observations on rocks pointed that way and the Bible is allegorical in parts
2. Shallow Time when the chronologies of the Bible are taken at face value and there was a 6-day creation. Creation was 5500BC if the Greek TText was followed and 4000BC if the Hebrew.
3. Eternalism. What it says but God is creator. To stop any confusion the Lateran Council of 1215 banned eternalism, but it kept cropping up, especially outside the church
4. Chaos  in the Shallow End. This was like Shallow Time but it was thought that Genesis 1 vs2 spoke of a chaos which lasted some time before God re-ordered it. It is sung in Haydn’s Creation !

All these were common before the Reformation  after which both Protestant and Catholic tended to adopt shallow time , but the other ideas persists and came to the fore with geology in the 18th century.

It is simply wrong to say the church (which one)  thought the earth was a few thousand years old until Hutton and Lyell came along about 200 years ago. That is simply not true and further neither was out to destroy the Christian faith.

Christians were leading lights among early geologists.

Here is a map produced in 1821 by Rev Prof John Henslow from Cambridge. It is an incredibly good map and shows great geological skill. As I have researched Henslow I have used it in the field along with newer maps

And now here is Rev William Buckland of Oxford inspecting  a roche moutonnee at Rhyd Ddu in Snowdonia in October 1841. As well as discovering megalasuarus he also introduced the idea of the Ice Age to Britain.

Here is a photo of it with the Nantlle Ridge behind. It is also the start of the Rhyd Ddu path up Snowdon which I climbed in 2011 – the 60th anniversary of my first ascent of Snowdon

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He was a good devout theologian too and followed the “Chaos in the Shallow End ” view which was the dominant view 200 years ago.

And here is Augustine criticising those silly Christians who try to chuck out good science

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And now here is the podcast on the age of the earth. It was a bit of a rush getting through so much in so short a time!!

Recently I was asked to deal with this for a Podcast with Doubts Aloud

Episode 74 – The age of the earth with Rev Michael Roberts

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/episode-74-the-age-of-the-earth-with-rev-michael-roberts–58950631?utm_medium=app&utm_source=widget&utm_campaign=episode-title

And here it is

Show Notes We are excited to have guest Rev Michael Roberts with us, he’s an Oxford geologist who subsequently became an Anglican vicar. He is extremely knowledgeable on the history of geology and the age of the earth in science, Christian academic thought, theology and the modern Young Earth movement. Did you know that Darwin was a geologist at the start of his career? Neither did we. Links:Michael’s blog is:

https://michaelroberts4004.wordpress.com/

Michael’s paper “Just before the Beagle”:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/17qo3zEeYKZlwL_Y8DpoX3F-35BO4rPPz/view?usp=sharing

His 5 day trip exploring Darwin in Wales

 https://www.newscientist.com/tours/retracing-charles-darwins-travels-across-north-wales/?fbclid=IwAR372bjMkHAcr0UU4p6B9KqztYkaOk5bxLH4PUgXRT06Nfo75iuhank-gac
That Ovid book

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamorphoses

That Genesis Flood 1961 book:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Genesis_Flood(

The link also mentions the Bernard Ramm book “The Christian View of Science and Scripture” we mentioned.) That irreverent cartoon on Adam and Eve overpopulating the globe due to obedience:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/episode-74-the-age-of-the-earth-with-rev-michael-roberts–58950631

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Navel gazing with Philip Gosse

Here’s someone who thought the earth was only 6000 years old but when you studied it, it appeared  to be millions of years old!

An odd idea but often called Last Thursdayism.

Last Thursdayism always gets a wry smile. It is the claim that everything was created last thursday with the appearance of history in everything. So an eighty year old was created last thursday and implanted in his brain are the many memories. And the thousand year old yew, likewise and the wood propping it, up was created last week and recorded by the church as being put in place in 1867. Logically this position is totally irrefutable. This is just an extreme form of Creation with Apparent Age.

The classic work on this is Omphalos by Philip Henry Gosse (1804-81), which was published in 1857, two years before Darwin’s Origin of Species.

Omphalos is the word for navel in Greek, and the title seems to be a reference whether Adam was created without a navel! Gosse’s argument that the whole world had been created with the appearance had been put forward before, but I don’t think Gosse knew about them as he was trying to resolve his view that the bible taught a six day creation a few thousand years ago and the pesky geologists were demanding millions of years. The ultra-reactionary French Catholic Chateaubriand argued this in 1804 and Granville Penn in the 1920s. But Gosse’s idea was ex nihilo.

One could say that Gosse was one of the last of the scientific literalists until Young Earth Creationism came in with a bang in 1961. He is a lovely example to buttress the Conflict Thesis of Science and Religion where everything is framed as conflict between belief that God created everything in six days flat and thus Archbishop Ussher was correct with his date of 4004BC and the progressive scientists who ditched God and allowed aeons of time. The Conflict Thesis has suffered mortal wounds in the last fifty years but it is still the popular belief of those who think they are well-informed! Of course, his son’s book Father and Son brings out the conflict.

Gosse was an able and unusual Victorian naturalist, who communicated with many scientists including Darwin. His life is frequently seen through the eyes of his son Edmund in the book Father and Son (Gosse, 1907, 1949), which paints and unflattering and spiteful picture of his father.

Gosse began work as a clerk and was a self-taught naturalist and thus was very able – when he kept to a limited and biblicist timeframe!

Gosse was a very competent naturalist and highly skilled with aquaria and as well as his researches wrote several popular books, especially on aquaria – a word he coined. Today we might call him a fundamentalist, but that term only came into being in about 1900. He was a devout christian and became a member of the Brethren, but I don’t know whether he belonged tot he exclusive side. The Brethren founded by J N Darby in the 1830s took the Bible literally and thus the earth cannot be more than a few thousand years old. They also had a great interest in prophecy and the Second Coming. For a time he was a preacher but for his last thirty years he was a solo Christian and did not go to church or chapel.

 See more here;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Henry_Gosse

Or in his biography

or read Father and Son if you want a jaundiced account.

His most (in)famous book was Omphalos (1857), which was an attempt to get out of the logical and scientific impasse of the 1850s, when Progressive Creationism reigned supreme. In a sense Progressive Creationsits held a Prochronism but spread over aeons of time! There was a twofold theme to Omphalos. First he holds that Genesis One has to be taken to mean 144 hours of creation. Secondly this he reconciles with “science” by his principle of “Prochronism,” and criticizes  geologists because “they have not allowed for the Law of Prochronism in Creation” (p. vi). This he contrasts with “Diachronism” which allows Deep Time

I venture to suggest in the following pages an element, hitherto overlooked, which disturbs the conclusions of geologists respecting the antiquity of the earth. Their calculations are sound on the recognised premises; but they have not allowed for the Law of Prochronism in Creation.

The enunciation of this principle will lie in a nut-shell; the reader will find it at p.124; or p.347. All the rest of the book is illustration.

I do not claim originality for the thought which I have here endeavoured to work out. It was suggested to me by a Tract, which I met with some dozen years ago, or more; the title of which I have forgotten: I am pretty sure it was anonymous, but it was published by Campbell, of 1, Warwick Square. Whether it is still in print[Pg vii] I do not know; I never saw another copy. If the author is alive, and if he should happen to cast his eye on this volume, he will doubtless recognise his own bantling, and accept this my acknowledgment.

The germ of the argument, however, I have found, since these pages were written, in “The Mineral and Mosaical Geologies,” of Granville Penn (1822). The state of physical science when he wrote did not enable him to press the argument to a demonstration, as I have endeavoured to do; for he could not refer to structural peculiarities as sensible records of past processes, inseparable from newly created organisms.

I would not be considered as an opponent of geologists; but rather as a co-searcher with them after that which they value as highly as I do, Truth. The path which I have pursued has led me to a conclusion at variance with theirs. I have a right to expect that it be weighed; let it not be imputed to vanity if I hope that it may be accepted.

But what I much more ardently desire is, that[Pg viii] the thousands of thinking persons, who are scarcely satisfied with the extant reconciliations of Scriptural statements and Geological deductions,—who are silenced but not convinced,—may find, in the principle set forth in this volume, a stable resting-place. I have written it in the constant prayer that the God of Truth will deign so to use it; and if He do, to Him be all the glory!

Expounding that Law he stresses that the course of nature is a circle; for example the life cycle of a moth.  God the creator can create at any point in the life cycle. BUT that will leave the imprint of its apparent history

It is not necessary,—at least it does not seem so to me,—that all the members of this mighty commonwealth should have an actual, a diachronic existence; anymore than that, in the creation of a man, his fœtal, infantile, and adolescent stages should have an actual, diachronic existence, though these are essential to his normal life-history. Nor would their diachronism be more certainly inferrible from the physical traces of them, in the one case than in the other. In the newly-created Man, the proofs of successive processes requiring time, in the skin, hairs, nails, bones, &c. could in no respect be distinguished from the like proofs in a Man of to-day;[Pg 347] yet the developments to which they respectively testify are widely different from each other, so far as regards the element of time. Who will say that the suggestion, that the strata of the surface of the earth, with their fossil floras and faunas, may possibly belong to a prochronic development of the mighty plan of the life-history of this world,—who will dare to say that such a suggestion is a self-evident absurdity? If we had no example of such a procedure, we might be justified in dealing cavalierly with the hypothesis; but it has been shown that, without a solitary exception, the whole of the vast vegetable and animal kingdoms were created,—mark! I do not say may have been, but MUST have been created—on this principle of a prochronic development, with distinctly traceable records. It was the law of organic creation.347

Creation is God suddenly breaking into the circle, thus Adam had a navel (omphalos) but had no history though his navel gave the “appearance” of history (pp. 123–124). Thus “The strata of the surface of the earth (with fossils) may possibly belong to the prochronic development of the mighty plan of the life history of this world.” He asks “who will dare say that such a suggestion is a self-evident absurdity?” The reaction to Gosse was predictable and severe. To Charles Kingsley, Gosse made God a liar; as to create a world with such an appearance of antiquity a mere six millennia ago would be dishonest. However, there is an impeccable logic to Gosse, and Omphalosis the only consistent “anti-geology.”

Charles Kingsley wrote in a letter to the author:

“Your book is the first that ever made me doubt, and I fear it will make hundreds do so. Your book tends to prove this—that if we accept the fact of absolute creation, God becomes Deus quidam deceptor [‘God who is sometimes a deceiver’]. I do not mean merely in the case of fossils which pretend to be the bones of dead animals; but in the one single case of your newly created scars on the pandanus trunk, your newly created Adam’s navel, you make God tell a lie. It is not my reason, but my conscience which revolts here … I cannot … believe that God has written on the rocks one enormous and superfluous lie for all mankind.”

His picture of breaking into the circle of life is logically no worse than Progressive Creationists, who held that at regular intervals in the words of Micron (Paradise Lost,
vii line, p. 463) “the grassy clods now calfed, now half appeared” not only “the tawny lion” but also all mammals, dinosaurs, reptiles, and amphibians at regular intervals throughout the history of the world. In a sense Progressive Creationists were having their cake and eating it, by adopting a naturalistic geology, yet on life forms were as supernaturally interventionist, that is, creationist in the strict sense as any anti-geologist. Seen in this light, the paleontology in the 1850s was crying out for Darwin to
remove the implicit absurdities. Gosse’s thesis is logically irrefutable, and unintentionally exposes the fatal flaw in pre-Darwinian Progressive Creationism. That flaw is to accept “Natural Law” for the astronomical and geological development, but to
insist on intervention or miracle for the cause of life. Darwin realized this
inconsistency both in early notebooks and in later work. Perhaps the only consistent alternative to a thoroughgoing evolution is Gosse’s Prochronism, which raises even more theological problems than does evolution.

Various modern Young Earth Creationists accept Creation with Apparent Age but do not think it through, as it is totally at variance with any kind of Flood Geology which is a lynch pin of Creationism. In practice Creationists are not Prochronists but Diachronists over a very short timescale. They are totally inconsistent unlike Gosse who carried his ideas through with remarkable consistency.

But Gosse would agree with this, from a Southern Baptist. 

Gosse was heart-broken no one accepted his ideas, but however logical and internally consistent they are, they do, as Charles Kingsley argued, make God a liar and are simply absurd.

It was a mammoth mistake

The Bishop and his pet dinosaur

I love the idea of a bishop having a pet dinosaur. Can you imagine the bishop taking his dino for a walk on lead? But he would have to live in a very big house or even a castle. Perhaps to be safe the bishop lived in a house like this;

This is Rose Castle where the Bishops of Carlisle lived from 1230 to 2009. It would have space for a dinosaur. It seems reasonable as there are dinosaurs on the tomb of Bishop Bell who died in 1496 and was buried in Carlisle Cathedral.

Some may scoff at this but it has been put forward in all seriousness. So let’s consider it very carefully, and claims of dinosaur petroglyphs in Utah, which a science professor at Leeds University visited and wrote about..  

Every child loves dinosaurs and some people never grow out of it. Ever since they were first discovered over 200 years ago they have held a fascination for so many. For over 200 years all geologists have been aware that they went extinct millions of years before humans appeared on the scene. One of the most notable dinosaur hunters was Mary Anning of Lyme Regis, who was held in very high esteem by geologists like Murchison and the Revs William Conybeare and William Buckland. It was Richard Owen who dubbed them dinosaurs or terrible lizards in 1841, the year before Darwin wrote his first essay on evolution.

Roll on 150 years and it is clear that dinosaurs went extinct 65 million years ago, most probably due to a meteor going splat in Mexico. Some suggested they got over-constipated! For two hundred years it has been well-known and beyond doubt that dinosaurs went extinct ant the end of the Cretaceous period, but Young earth Creationists insist that they not, and the Bishop’s dinosaur is part of that story.

Young Earth Creationists insist that the earth is only a few thousand years old and all these geologists have simply got it wrong! They hold that dinosaurs lived alongside humans and were probably present on Noah’s Ark.  This is repeated time and again in creationist books and websites.me across when I read The Genesis Flood, the book that launched creationism in 1961. There was a long section on alleged human footprints alongside those of dinosaurs at Paluxy in Texas. In fact the human-looking footprints were embellished by some in the 1930s. Most creationists have since rejected the claims but they still crop up like a bad penny.

However Creationists insist humans lived with dinosaurs and were even on the Ark. For size considerations Noah only took a pair of baby diplodicuses. Ken Ham wrote a book about them living in the Garden of Eden. Poor Adam must have had fun naming them.

Some tens years ago a creationist church distributed books to a primary school in Scotland with pictures of triceratops towing a cart! The second photo is of an exhibit at the Creation Museum!

This is the nearest we have on contemporary life forms co-existing with ancient life. A rabbit in the Cambrian Burgess Shale!!!!!!!!  It this were so geology and evolution are dead!!

[Two articles on the Paluxy footprints] 

https://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/1988/PSCF9-88Hastings.html

https://ncse.ngo/paluxy-man-creationist-piltdown

So far my examples have been American, but now for two British ones. Creationism is not as strong in Britain as in USA, but it is common among evangelicals, especially of those outside “older” denominations and in “evangelical” denominations. They form a small minority in the Church of England. Some are university lecturers in engineering or science. I will consider two creationists. The first is Phillip Bell, who is a biology graduate and works for CMI (Creation Ministries International) who claimed that Bishop Bell’s 1496 tomb at Carlisle cathedral has dinosaurs on it. The other is Prof Andy McIntosh D.Sc of Leeds university who claims some petroglyphs in Utah are of dinosaurs.

 Phillip Bell and the Bishop’s Dinosaur

Bishop Bell was bishop of Carlisle  and died in 1496 at the age of 86. He was buried in the cathedral. He is buried in a magnificent tomb with unusual brass plates. These Bell thinks are dinosaurs

Actually, several Old Testament writers were inspired to mention dragons¹² and the book of Job (chapters 40 and 41) describes two impressive creatures—behemoth and leviathan—which are unlike any living creatures today, but sound very like dinosaurs. What is more, stories of large and/or frightening reptilian creatures (often referred to as dragons) abound from cultures all over the world.¹³

Today, due to the modern evolutionary belief that no dinosaurs survived beyond the so-called Cretaceous (an alleged 65 million years ago), most people disregard all of this evidence as mere myths and legends, while ignoring the clear teaching of the Bible. To the unprejudiced mind, however, Bishop Bell’s ‘brass behemoths’ suggest that at least some such creatures were alive and well in the Middle Ages.

However, the existence of dinosaur motifs from this period presents no problem to the person who accepts what the Bible clearly implies—that people were once contemporary with dinosaurs. No doubt many would have us believe that the Renaissance artisan made up a beast that, by pure coincidence, just happens to look like a dinosaur.

Unless this is an elaborate forgery¹⁷ (which is highly unlikely, considering its location!), it represents further evidence that the standard evolutionary dogma concerning dinosaurs and their supposed 65-million-year-old extinction is just plain wrong.

https://creation.com/bishop-bells-brass-behemoths

We cannot say that these are definitely dinosaurs as they are too vague. I suppose a good imagination and sound teaching in a church might persuade you otherwise. Bell uses an argument from special pleading. He writes”Today, due to the modern evolutionary belief that no dinosaurs survived beyond the so-called Cretaceous (an alleged 65 million years ago),…” This is aimed at his readers and has no scientific content. It is not due to “modern evolutionary belief” as geologists were aware long before Darwin in 1859 that dinosaurs were long extinct and had been since the end of the Cretaceous, later dated at 65 my. We just need to consider the fossils found by Mary Anning in Dorset in the 1820s. They were studied by such geologists as Murchison, Cuvier and the Revs William Conybeare and William Buckland. None of those four accepted evolution. and are better described as creationists and old earth. This is rather misleading of Bell. 

His use of the poetry of Job is simply bad interpretation. The poetic description could be any large animal or none. The tail may not be a tail but an item of male anatomy!

Bell dismisses it being a forgery. Rightly so as it is simply the imagination of the artist, but it was a time of belief in dragons. To claim this is further evidence against evolutionary dogma is simply risible.

 

Andy McIntosh D.Sc and dinosaur petroglyphs in Utah

My other example is from a science professor at a leading university. McIntosh was a Professor of Thermodynamics and  Combustion Theory (hot air?) at Leeds University until 2014 and has had a distinguished career in that field. He is a Young Earth Creationist and has written widely on the subject

He wrote Genesis for Today, an exposition of early Genesis, with some “scientific” appendices striving to show how real science supports a literal Genesis. It was first published in 1997 and has gone through six editions. His treatment of geology leaves much to be desired and is simply inaccurate and full of misrepresentation. This is not what one would expect from a science professor. His treatment of geology includes many howlers and whoppers, which might be acceptable for a teenager but not a leading science professor. I would like to know how he made them. He told me he rejects my charges.

https://michaelroberts4004.wordpress.com/2017/05/14/creationist-nonsense-on-geology-the-odd-case-of-prof-mcintosh-d-sc/

 In 2006 McIntosh visited the fantastic parks in Utah as we also did in 2013. He, like us, visited Kachina Natural Bridge and Bryce Canyon. At Kachina Bridge he saw the “dinosaur” petroglyph, which is faint in this photo.

https://answersingenesis.org/geology/natural-features/utahs-testimony-to-catastrophe/

He wrote “The petroglyph of a sauropod dinosaur clearly has important implications—indicating that dinosaurs were indeed known to men after the Flood until they eventually died out and became (apparently) extinct.” and then puts it on a par with Bishop Bell’s dinos. He concluded;

This evidence of dinosaurs with man in relatively recent times is indirect evidence of the Flood, as it shows the fallacy of millions of years of gradual geological change being responsible for the rock record. The Flood explains the rocks and the fossil dinosaurs much better, and the Bible‘s history explains the existence of men and dinosaurs at the same time.

This is face-palmingly daft! Neither give any evidence whatsoever. Further as I wrote above his understanding of geology is dire. I am baffled how someone with a D.Sc. can believe such things.

His university published an understated disclaimer of his views in 2006, reported in the Guardian, during the brouhaha over Truth in Science;

Not surprisingly, therefore, the university has issued an official disclaimer: “Professor Andrew McIntosh’s directorship of Truth in Science, and his promotion of that organisation’s views, are unconnected to his teaching or research [here]… The university wishes to distance itself publicly from theories of creationism and so-called intelligent design, which cannot be verified by evidence.”

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2006/dec/19/schools.education

I am willing to say that some bishops are dinosaurs but not that any bishop had a pet dinosaur or ever saw a living one. All this is fantabulising by Young Earth Creationists and brings ridicule on themselves and sadly on all Christians.

l

Did God subject Creation to pointless futility?

Now  that might seem a very odd question? Surely Creation i.e the natural world – call it what you will, is wonderful and beautiful as these two photos show;

The first is of Llyn Idwal and the Glyderau behind. I have been visiting there in all weathers and seasons since 1963 and it’s always wonderful. On the right is a typical January scene on the river Wyre near me. Snowdrops never fail to enchant. There is nothing futile here.

Most people would agree that this planet and the rest of the universe is full of wonder and awe, and many would point to Attenborough documentaries. It is clearly beautiful, though at times very harsh, but I can’t see many looking for and finding futility.

Yes, our world is also full of suffering alongside the incredible beauty. There are those, following the poet John Milton, who think the suffering is the result of Adam and Eve’s misdemeanors when the ate the fruit (note that the latin word malus means both apple and sin). suffering and death is God’s punishment for that  and seems rather excessive. It is still widely held by Creationist Christians who won’t accept that the earth is billions of years old and suffering and death have been around as long as life. As all this was known over two hundred years ago it is surprising that some seem to think that the creation is subject to futility. Some even hold it along with an acceptance of evolution.

Let’s now consider a leading Anglican New Testament scholar who accepts evolution and that creation is subject to futility – N. T. Wright. With his vast output he needs little introduction and has probably written one of the best books on the resurrection, where he deftly avoids a simplistic physical resurrection and a non-bodily one. Theologically he is a leading representative of moderate evangelicalism, but some of his Perspectives on Paul are less appreciated by the more conservative and reformed Christians. That is another issue, but I side with Wright on these. But let’s first consider his understanding of Romans 8 in his series Paul for Everyone.

Here is his translation of Romans 8:19-21 New Testament for Everyone (NTE) (which is closer to the Greek than given by Sanday and Headlam in their commentary!)

19 Yes: creation itself is on tiptoe with expectation, eagerly awaiting the moment when God’s children will be revealed. 20 Creation, you see, was subjected to pointless futility, not of its own volition, but because of the one who placed it in this subjection, in the hope 21 that creation itself would be freed from its slavery to decay, to enjoy the freedom that comes when God’s children are glorified.

That is followed by a brief exposition beginning with taking a country walk. I was not happy that he normally walks to take exercise as to me walking is a multi-faceted activity as I enjoy the effort/exercise of climbing 3000ft up a Lakeland fell, as looking at the views, finding unusual flowers like sundews, spotting glacial features and looking for all things new! He had taken an overgrown path and found it led to fantastic view and then likens Rom 8 vs18-25 to a fantastic view of “the whole plan of salvation for all of God’s creation”. He criticises, rightfully, those who see Paul’s theology solely in terms of individual justification and salvation. But after that I depart with haste from his view.

I was proud of this photo of a struggling rowan high up the Bowland fells. I see beauty and the tenacity of life but no futility. Also God must be a rum lad if he subjected creation to futility!

He then wrote; “The language of creation on tiptoe with expectation is not what they expect. The strange idea of God subjecting creation to futility and slavery, and of creation then being rescued, simply isn’t what people wanted to hear. …. So the path to the viewpoint has been covered over with thorns and thistles.” This made me blink. I am afraid that in the summer months my legs are covered in scratches. Once, in a desert, I walked past a bush and a venomous snake popped out and tried to nip my bare leg! There must be some theology in that. On another occasion I nearly trod on a sleeping Cape Cobra ……

He continues, “the present suffering, … will be far outweighed by ‘the glory that is going to be unveiled for us’. He’s spot on there, but not in his conclusion to the paragraph “then, at last, creation … will know that the time has come for it to be rescued from corruption.”

I want to ask, how is creation corrupted? Except where stupid humans have polluted it.

I am baffled in what way creation, like all the strata from the early Precambrian to the Ice Ages, needs to be rescued from corruption. Much of my field geology has been on glacial geology ancient and modern!I cannot see anything corrupt in the Precambrian Numees Tillite  (c800 million) or recent Lower Dryas moraines,(20,000 years)  which I worked on.  He continues:

“To understand this, we need to grasp the big biblical story of creation. … God has allowed creation to be subjected to its present round of summer and autumn, growth and decay, birth and death.”

He wrote more fully in Evil and the Justice of God. P116-7

Creation, writes Paul, has been subjected to futility (Romans 8.20). Don’t we know it: the tree reaches its full fruitfulness and then becomes bleak and bare. Summer reaches its height and at once the days begin to shorten. Human lives, full of promise and beauty, laughter and love, are cut short by illness and death. Creation as we know it bears witness to God’s power and glory (Romans 1:19-20) but also to the present state of futility to which it has been enslaved.

I question this interpretation, both of Romans and Genesis, as it makes creation to be rotten to the core. Romans does not say that and it is so contrary to experience – at least my experience. I cannot see futility in the shortening days after the summer solstice. Also the word futility (mataiotes in Greek is ONLY used of the human condition in both the Old and New Testaments, so it is odd to use here for the inorganic creation. I cannot see it in geological studies, which trace out a detailed history of the surface of a planet. I cannot see the Four Seasons as anything but wonderful in their variety and nothing futile.

The beauty of creation in the seasons- a random selection of my photos

and the futility;

Where is the futility in a struggling moorland oak in autumn or a British mountain under snow. The mountain is Ingleborough which I had just climbed for the nth time!

(The word translated futility is mataiotes which in the Greek New Testament and the Septuagint is only used for human folly!)

Also I am one of those who cycles, walks and climbs mountains every month of the year and in all weathers. As I write this on St Nicholas’s day my last three months of walking during the autumn must have witnessed that annual subjection to futility. No way! I’ve had three glorious walks in the Lakes, three in the Yorkshire Dales and many more in the Forest of Bowland. Yes, I’ve experienced wind, rain, snow, cold and warmth and gone up to my thighs in a sphagnum bog! Now that was futile!! My feet were frozen.

Stinging nettles, thistles, thorns, midges and horseflies – and in the past, tsetse flies! I have watched autumn unfold and merge into winter, fungi helping the process of decay/recycling/upcycling in weird and wonderful ways, stands of bog asphodel after losing their fantastic yellow flowers and turning bronze before sinking into a peat bog, frozen pools and a little snow. Beauty, awe and wonder, but no futility. I now look forward to climbing in the snow, and then to the pastel greenness of spring with its flowers, on to the height of summer and back to autumn. At Christmas I am looking at the buds in my garden and daffs poking through. Come January I’ll be looking for snowdrops in the road verges. In all of it I echo G M Hopkins;

The world is charged with the glory of God

not to mention some of the  psalms like Psalm 8 and hymns like How great thou art on creator and  creation

Yes, this has been going on for 4 billion years and is the nature of creation which was written in at the beginning. But his representation of “corruption, futility and slavery” shows that he believes that the creation is not as God intended. He writes of “the sharp end of corruption of creation – on an earthquake fault line, for instance, or by an active volcano – you may sense the awe of that futile power.” Power, yes, but not futile. Often it may be tragic as with the recent eruption in New Zealand. Plate Tectonics, and the attendant quakes and volcanoes were there from the beginning. And that beginning predated humans by a few billion years.

On Feb 6 2023 a massive Mag 7.8 hit Turkey and Syria along a major weakness, which contiues to the Himalaya and was the localituy of the Nepal quake and the 1950 Assam quake.

( I discuss the Assam quake which nearly knocked our house down and local tremors here

https://michaelroberts4004.wordpress.com/2017/08/15/assam-earthquake-15th-august-1950/

One of my great climbs was up Mt St Helens in 2009, which blew its top in 1980. It was totally awesome. Many years before I was scalded in Bumpas Hell just below Lassen Peak in California, while taking a photo of sulphur crystals. I was shirtless at the time when a gust blew steam over me. I squealed!

A view from the summit of Mt St Helens showing the devastation caused by the 1980 eruption. Is Mt Ranier is the distance next to go? The grey area was green forest.

I’ve experienced a few minor quakes in Britain and a massive Mag 8.6 as a child which I do not remember, and one about Mag 4.5 in the middle of a hymn during worship in Uganda. The organist missed a few notes and carried on as we did!

If Wright is correct then there should be something marking the introduction of quakes and volcanoes in the geological record, as that should have occurred when Adam and Eve went scrumping.

There are none.

If there were, I could not have found volcanic lavas in strata some 900 million years old in the Namib Desert nor glaciation in 650 million year old strata nearby, nor some big faults caused by tectonic shifts resulting in quakes some 600 million years ago. I could also mention all the other ancient volcanic rocks I’ve seen from the 2.2 billion year Scourie dykes in the Highlands, 450 million year old lavas in Snowdonia and the Lakes giving excellent rock-climbing, not to mention the mere 65 million year old rocks in Skye. In fact, volcanoes and igneous rock have been formed for a good 4 billion years.

In 2005 Wright gave a lecture God, 9/11, the Tsunami, and the New Problem of Evil (Transcript of one of N.T. Wright’s May 18-19, 2005, lectures at the Church Leaders’ Forum, Seattle Pacific University. https://spu.edu/depts/uc/response/summer2k5/features/evil.asp)

In the lecture he wrote;

What then about the tsunami? There is of course no straightforward answer. But there are small clues.

We are not to suppose that the world as it currently is, is the way God intends it to be at the last. Some serious thinkers, including some contemporary physicists, would actually link the convulsions which still happen in the world to evil perpetrated by humans; and it is indeed fair enough to probe for deeper connections than modernist science has imagined between human behaviour and the total environment of our world, including tectonic plates. But I find it somewhat easier to suppose that the project of creation, the good world which God made at the beginning, was supposed to go forward under the wise stewardship of the human race, God’s vice-gerents, God’s image-bearers; and that, when the human race turned to worship creation instead of God, the project could not proceed in the intended manner, but instead bore thorns and thistles, volcanoes and tsunamis, the terrifying wrath of the creation which we humans had treated as if it were divine.

I was simply stunned to read that and have long restrained from discussing it. I am well-aware of induced seismicity from hydropower, mining and fluid injection in wells, but this is another level or two up.

All these quotations could have come straight from a recent publication of Answers in Genesis and I find it difficult not to read it in the sense that the author believes that “thorns and thistles, volcanoes and tsunamis” are the result of human behaviour i.e. a Curse as the result of the Fall. That was dealt with by the assault of geological hammers and biological microscopes, if not by good exegesis. I am, of course, aware of induced seismicity, at times up to Magnitude 6, whether from mining, fracking, geothermal energy, or the unsettlement of strata from hydro-electric dams, but human activity cannot be the cause of tectonic movements before humans appeared on the scene and could not cause the massive earthquake which resulted in the 2004 boxing Day tsunami, or the eruption of Mt St Helens to give two examples.

The next paragraph makes his understanding clear;

“The human race was put in charge of creation (as so often Paul has Genesis 1-3 not far from his mind). When humans rebelled [in Garden of Eden] and worshipped parts of creation instead of God himself (Rom 1 21-23), creation fell into disrepair.”

How did creation fall into disrepair not so many thousands of years ago? How does the disrepair manifest itself? My bicycle takes a battering as I cycle over 4000 miles a year and continually edges towards disrepair necessitating repairs or replacement. Yes, it is continually falling into disrepair – particularly after winter cycling! But the creation? How?

I expect to read something like that on the website of a Young Earth Creationist group. What Wright is claiming is that when Adam and Eve fell in the Garden of Eden that affected the whole of the natural order, or creation, or cosmos, or universe and made it change from a good state to one of disrepair and had fallen into corruption, whereas it was uncorrupt before. Seriously, From my fieldwork, I cannot distinguish between the basic make-up of glacial material deposited 600 million years and those from 20,000 years ago, or alpine moraines today. I have studied all three in the field. We need more on how the creation is corrupt whereas previously it was incorrupt.

He concluded his lecture;

The Gospels thus tell the story of Jesus, and particularly of his death, as the story of how cosmic and global evil, in its suprapersonal as well as personal forms, are met by the sovereign, saving love of Israel’s God, YHWH, the creator of the world. They write intentionally to draw the whole Old Testament narrative to its climax, seeing that narrative precisely as the story of God’s strange and dark solution to the problem of evil from Genesis 3 onwards.

Here he first looks to a past event when “evil” was introduced to a pristine planet – including earthquakes – and also conflates natural with moral and spiritual evil. Wright seems to imply that natural events like volcanoes and earthquakes are not as God intended. On could add disease and death, but all these are part of the fabric of the natural world.  Leaving aside the issue of natural and moral evil, this whole discussion brings out the Achilles heel of many theological “reconciliations” of theology and evolution. Most are aware of the reality or brute fact of the vast age of the universe and evolution, but then approach their theology and biblical interpretation implicitly rejecting that reality and thus adopting a theology more amenable to young earth ideas. Most commentators on Romans 8 do this as do many other theologians.

If all these scholars are correct in taking ktisis as meaning the whole of creation , the cosmos, or the universe, then their theology and that of the apostle Paul is totally contrary to the physical realities we have in geology, biology and cosmology.

Is Paul simply wrong or have we got Paul wrong?

As Wright presents his understanding of the Fall in these three places he effectually adopts a Miltonic view of the Fall accepting that it had a serious and deleterious effect on ALL creation and that is how his epic poem Paradise Lost begins

“Of man’s first disobedience, and the fruit

Of that forbidden fruit, whose mortal taste

Brought death into the world, and all our woe“.

and

Beast now with beast gan war, and fowl with fowl,

And fish with fish; to graze the herb all leaving,

Devoured each other. P.Lost X 710-12

We are too easily lulled by Milton, as the the geologist Rev Edward Hitchcock stressed in the 1850s, when he wrote, “we groan under the burden of Milton’s mythology.”.

https://michaelroberts4004.wordpress.com/2016/02/19/why-the-apple-didnt-kill-adam-and-eve/

Great though Paradise Lost is, it is putting the whole Genesis account as portraying a young earth and the dramatic change to the constitution of this planet caused by “man’s first disobedience.” Some New Testament scholars are saying that – at least implicitly. In other words, all of these are essentially saying Young earth Creationism is right, there was this CURSE and thus the earth is thousands of years old. That is simply untrue as the earth is billions of years old and life nearly as old, and thus death also and earthquakes.

Creation is wonderful and not subjected to futility as these photos show;

A Creationist from Merica goes to Scotland and gets Hutton all wrong on geology

Henry ford is alleged to have said “history is bunk”. He was right as much supposed history is utter bunk and here is an example about James Hutton who some wrongly reckon to be the Father of Geology and invented the idea of millions of years!

It is a sort of inverted version of the Conflict Thesis of Science and Christianity, and is an example how misunderstanding the history of science leads to all kinds of distortions

Here an American comes out with a load of bunk on Hutton

https://creationmoments.com/sermons/the-birth-of-deep-time/?mc_cid=9e2c97f9ff&mc_eid=251871d2b4&fbclid=IwAR1ZEJMqm_G48c8UdAXZJQCLyudxug1CdP7Pi9y26aMeAXaaRBdpmXrXVLo

Psalm 78:15
“He clave the rocks in the wilderness, and gave them drink as out of the great depths.”

I was on an open-topped tour bus, seeing the sights of downtown Edinburgh—the capital city of Scotland. From this vantage point, our guide stopped frequently, to tell us about John Knox’s grave and house, the Royal Mile, and beautiful Edinburgh Castle. At one stop, there were three things to see. To our left was Britain’s ugliest building—the Scottish Parliament. Straight ahead was Holyrood House—where the Queen lives when she is in Edinburgh. And to the right was a cliff face, called Salisbury Crag. This rocky outcrop consists of a lower level of greywacke, topped by several layers of sedimentary rock.

The guide pointed the crag out to us, and said that in 1787, the crag was studied by James Hutton. In fact, the guide said that in 1787, it was by studying these rocks that James Hutton proved the Bible to be wrong.

Why would this guide think that Hutton had disproved the Bible? Hutton invented the concept of deep time; of millions of years. He supposed the unconformity separating the two rock sections must have been formed by erosion, millions of years ago. In fact, this smooth erosion is evidence consistent with a much shorter age. The lower rock would have been laid down early in the Flood, and turned over while still plastic. Powerful underwater currents would have caused the erosion that we see. Finally, the layers of rock would have been laid down on top. This model is fully consistent with the truthful account in God’s word.

Prayer: Your word stands forever, O Lord. Nothing can take away from Your word. We pray that we might submit completely to Your word, that we might not sin against you. Amen.

Author: Paul F. Taylor

Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hutton’s_Unconformity. Image: Ann Traynor, Creative Commons Attribution, Share-Alike 3.0 Unported.

© 2022 Creation Moments.  All rights reserved.

************************

Now here is a Merican touring England, except of course it is Scotland not England! We have the matey approach saying “I was there like Kilroy so I must be right.”!!

And so Paul Taylor learnt ” In fact, the guide said that in 1787, it was by studying these rocks that James Hutton proved the Bible to be wrong.”

I sorta have my doubts whether the tour guide actually said that, or anything like it. Anyway Hutton never ever said such thing!!

In fact two years earlier in 1785 He was writing a summary of his geological views, which contained a summary of perceived religious implications. These he sent to the Moderator of the Church of Scotland, Dr Robertson for consideration and comment.

Here is part of it and he never thought he had disproved the Bible!!

So there’s the first mistake. But he goes on to say

Hutton invented the concept of deep time; of millions of years. 

  Poor lad, he was a bit wrong. It all started in the 1680s in the Llanberis Pass in Snowdonia when Edward Lhwyd reckoned from the numbers of boulders lying on the floor, many had been there before 4004BC. A decade earlier than Hutton the Frenchman Buffon was insisting on at least 74,000 years from cooling experiments. Privately he indicated millions of years. Even earlier Fr Needham accepted “millions of years” and was hardly an atheist. 

In fact, most savants in the 18th century thought the earth was ancient, and the discussion was whether it was millions or hundreds of thousands. By 1787 an old earth was quite acceptable to most educated Christians – if they knew much about science.

To claim “millions of years” was the atheistic idea of Hutton is just nonsense. Yes, he was a deist but his science and ideas of geological time were acceptable to all but the most conservative Christian, even though many preferred a little less time time, that is less than a million but never 4004BC!!

There is no unconformity here!!! He got that wrong too!

It is magma intruded into sandstone as Hutton realised

This is very clear when you read this BGS (British Geological Survey) excursion guide to Salisbury Crags

https://earthwise.bgs.ac.uk/index.php/Arthur%27s_Seat,_Salisbury_Crags,_Edinburgh_-_an_excursion

It says;

The justly famous Hutton’s Section of the base of Salisbury Crags Sill is found towards the south-eastern end of the escarpment, and provided Hutton and his followers with telling evidence in favour of magmatic intrusion in the great argument with the Wernerians in the eighteenth century. Beneath the sill lie well-bedded Cementstone Group strata, alternately red and white. The sill transgresses the bedding conspicuously in two places. At the first the sediment against the transgression is crumpled; at the other a wedge of teschenite has been intruded beneath a block of sediment, rotating it upwards from its original position and partly engulfing it in the sill. At the western end of the section, the teschenite immediately above the contact has been chilled to a glassy skin up to a centimetre thick, which has now been devitrified to a greenish material. Above the glass the teschenite is very fine in grain but coarsens markedly upwards. In the rock-face to the south-east of Hutton’s section large rafts of sediment can be seen high in the sill. The rafts are not distorted and lie parallel to the strata below the sill. Still farther to the south-west, syenitic segregation veins up to 5 in thickness cut the sill.

Here is a contemporary sketch in which the scales are all wrong as the men would need to be FOURS TIMES the size for a true scale. However it brings out the magma intruding into the shales.

In fact it was in June 1788 that Hutton discovered the unconformity  at Siccar Point some 30 miles south east of Edinburgh.

The photo shows near horizontal Devonian strata (red) (360my lying on nearly vertical grey Silurian Greywackes (420my)

This is an article but rather mythical on what Hutton was doing as it is wrong to say ;

Siccar Point is world-famous as the most important unconformity described by James Hutton (1726-1797) in support of his world-changing ideas on the origin and age of the Earth.

https://www.geowalks.co.uk/siccar-point/

By the time Hutton went there many had realised that the earth was ancient decades before. Sadly many repeat myths about Hutton.

Well the author Ken Taylot got things so badly wrong that this is the only reaction

this is a good book to read;

   

Creation Moments is one of the many American Creationist sites and is possibly more inaccurate than Answers in Genesis. It goes back 60 years.

The History Of Our Christian Radio Broadcast

FIVE DECADES AGO, A MINISTER NEAR BOISE, IDAHO, NOTICED A TROUBLING TREND…

Founder Pastor Walter Lang found many of the young Christians in his congregation abandoning their Christian roots after spending a year or two in college. “Could this be happening in other churches around the country?” he wondered. It was. Lang decided to do something about it.

Evolutionary theory, with its godless worldview, was poisoning young minds in Lang’s church. These young people were taught evolutionary theory as fact, with no mention of Biblical perspectives and creationism theories. Lang searched the country for a publication devoted to promoting creationism theories. There was none. That’s when he decided to start Bible-Science Association (now Creation Moments, Inc.)

Lang saw a problem and did what he could to solve it. Today, every Christian creationist organization owes a debt of gratitude to Lang’s vision. We know, however, that his work is not complete. Every day, evolutionary theory is taught in public schools, confusing the hearts and minds of young people. It dismantles the faith the godly parents have sought to instill in their children. Instead of “Train up a child in the way he should go.” (Proverbs 22:6), evolution promotes the secular humanist dogma that “God is dead; religion is an opiate.” In the end, evolution seeks to dislodge God from His rightful place as our Creator and Sustainer.

From Walter Lang’s simple vision, Creation Moments now serves Christian youth and adults alike. We are committed to promote, teach and study creationism theories and the truth of divine creation as revealed in the Bible. It is our goal to build up the Church and enlighten the world to the wonder and the truth of God’s marvelous creation. We hope you will join us in this important mission. Together we can reach the hearts and minds of a lost and needy world!

Since 1963, Creation Moments, Inc. (formerly the Bible-Science Association) has been communicating the truth of creation. That ministry continues today through Christian radio broadcasts, seminars, publications and a bookstore outreach. In 1986 the two-minute international Christian radio broadcast “Creation Moments” was born. “Creation Moments” is one of the top five US syndicated radio programs of five minutes or less. “Creation Moments” is carried on five major networks: Bible Broadcast, Moody, LifeTalk Network, Family Radio and Bott Radio.

I first came across this when it was the Bible Science Association in the 1980s, when I trawled every possible American creationist outfit.

It is a good idea to get your facts right and it is not quite right to make stories up to prove the Gospel

‘God intended it as a disposable planet’: meet the US pastor preaching climate change denial

John MacArthur must be my least favourite American pastor. I am quite sure he would not consider me a Christian – and I hope he wouldn’t.

He is a 6-day creationist

He seems to lack love and loathes Roman Catholics and his (per)version is ghastly.

He seems to reject the fact that Creation will be renewed and restored  – the apokatastasis
Here he simply denies any kind of climate change following the steps of earlier Brown evangelicals
https://michaelroberts4004.wordpress.com/2018/07/10/evangelicals-and-climate-change-1990-to-2011/

Primate's Progress

This piece,written in October 2020, seems more relevant now than ever. The Reverend John Macarthur returned to this theme in November 2021, repeating his description of the world as disposable and comparing it to a styrofoam cup

Reverend John MacArthur. Wikimedia

Paul Braterman, University of Glasgow

Every so often you come across a piece of writing so extraordinary that you cannot help but share it. One such piece is a sermon on global warming by American pastor John MacArthur. Full of beautifully constructed rhetorical flourishes, it is forcefully delivered by an experienced and impassioned preacher to a large and appreciative audience.

For me, as a man of science, it is the most complete compilation of unsound arguments, factual errors and misleading analogies as I have seen in discussions of this subject. But it’s important because climate change is a big election issue this November in the US, where there…

View original post 879 more words

Evolution doesn’t scupper Christianity, nor do scrumpers

One of the most popular ways of debating is to parody a view to ridicule it. You know most won’t see past your misrepresentation. It is even easier when some extremists adopt what you parody.

Here is a good example

When this meme appeared on my Facebook feed I presumed Zindler was a typical young earth creationist, repeating the usual claims of young earthers to bludgeon people into accepting Young Earth Creation as necessary as a result of faith in Christ.

But before considering the apparent plausibility of the meme we need to ask who is Frank Zindler. Being British I cannot keep up with all American Creationists and the atheists who take them on. I know of many and have met some, and some like Ken Ham have written against me! However this meme is from an atheist. Zindler was born in 1939 and was president of American Atheists in 2008. for more read; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Zindler

among other things he had a debate with the creationist Duane Gish in 1990

https://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/gishzindler.html

Many of these are unsatisfactory partly as a result of the way Gish galloped through everything in his famous “Gish Gallop”. That is a useful tactic as it gives the impression of omniscience, without giving the opponent time to respond. I had a similar problem in 2003 when I debated the Australian John Mackay, who likewise used a scatter gun approach. I attempt to correct some of his terminological inexactitudes, and was accompanied by boos from his acolytes. Were I not a Christian, Mackay would have persuaded me to be an atheist!! However the purpose of Creationists in debates and presentations is to win an argument not to present truth.

At first, I thought this was a Creationist Gotcha meme, as Ken Ham, Mackay, Gish, Morris and so many others put forward similar  ideas. Here Zindler takes the same ideas and lobs them back like an unexploded grenade to Christians who may not be Creationist. At first sight the arguments here seem to be orthodox Christianity, but….

In this meme Zindler makes five points which lead to the next and clinches the argument against Christianity, or rather any version of Christianity which is not dogmatically wedded to Young Earth Creationism. All five points are made by creationists like Ken Ham.

1. Adam and Eve were never real people

Well, did Adam have a navel when he was created that October in 4004BC? A serious question! In all fairness before 1800 belief in in a historical Adam and Eve was a most reasonable belief, and few Christians questioned it, though many from 1680 onwards realised the earth was slightly older than Ussher reckoned! Even when the earth was reckoned to be millions of years old some serious Christian theologians believed in a historical Adam and Eve.

For many the image of Adam and Eve is provided by John Milton in Paradise Lost. Here Milton takes early Genesis in a most literal way and put it into an epic poem. Milton has unhelpfully influenced the understanding of Genesis for centuries.

https://michaelroberts4004.wordpress.com/2016/02/19/why-the-apple-didnt-kill-adam-and-eve/

When we consider the interpretation of Genesis historically from 1600, we find that first chapter one was interpreted to allow more than six days. This was most often by a “Day-Age” theory or a Chaos-Restitution stance. By 1780 most educated Christians including the “orthodox” from both Protestants and Catholics favoured one of these to a 6-day creation. By 1859 hardly any educated Christians thought the earth was created in 6 days.   Details on this;

https://michaelroberts4004.wordpress.com/2021/01/28/genesis-chapter-1-and-geological-time-from-grotius-to-thomas-chalmers-1620-1825/

In the 17th century most European savants thought that most strata were laid down in the Flood, but by 1800 Noah’s contributions were limited to the top 30 ft of strata. Perhaps the last geologist to take the geological efficacy of the flood seriously was William Buckland in some illegible notes in 1842/3. He suggested the flood was a result of melting ice from the Ice Age, later taken up in the 1990s by Ryan and Pittman in Noah’s Flood.

In the 19th century the more conservative still insisted on a historical Adam and Eve but it was getting more fraught especially after radiometric age dating after 1907 showed that humans had been around for hundreds of thousands of years. B B Warfield’s attempt to keep Adam and Eve was not convincing, nor Denis Alexander.

2. If no Adam and Eve, then no Original Sin

What is Original Sin? It was not held by Christians until about 400AD, largely due to St Augustine. Eastern Orthodox churches have no doctrine of Original sin, but have a deep awareness of sin. Original sin is the belief that we inherit sin from forbears i.e. Adam and Eve. In the hands of Augustine and successors Sin is both Original and what humans do which is sinful. There is much discussion over this, which I will leave to one side. Even so all stress that Jesus died for you and your sin and forget Adam while you consider yourself!!

Here we have the classic YEC misrepresentation. Jesus died on the cross for Original Sin, rather than all human sin, present and past. Doing this takes away the fact that every human is sinful and needs forgiveness. That is ignored by focusing on Adam and Eve and Original Sin in an overly narrow sense.  If that is what Sin is, then we are not responsible for sin as we can do nothing about what we inherit.

(Whoopee, we can go out and sin to our hearts’ content!!)

Far better is to see that every human is sinful and sins. Any understanding of Original Sin which underplays individual sin effectively removes our responsibility for our actions.

3.If no Original Sin then no need of salvation

This implies that salvation through Jesus is ONLY for Original sin and not our actual and continuing sin. That is most odd. If that is right then we are not sinners in ourselves, never need to admit to or confess our sins. It makes a mockery of almost every hymn on Jesus’ death on the cross, as all point to the individual sinner, rather than something way back in time, which could have no effect on our sinning today. Frankly it is a muddled view of salvation and what Jesus did on the cross, as well as distorting what Original Sin is.

The extreme evangelical view that Jesus would have died on the cross for you, even if you were the only sinner, crassly makes a valid point.

No, every human is sinful and has the HPtFtU  as Francis Spufford said.

Human Propensity to Fuck things UP, 

More here https://michaelroberts4004.wordpress.com/2015/02/19/lent-the-human-propensity-to-fuck-things-up/

This is somewhat earthy but brings out the squalor of human sin in non-theological language. It shows where  we are wrong and need forgiveness from Jesus, not for some guy who went scrumping in 4004BC, but that nasty thing we did a short while ago.

We need salvation because we are shits, sorry, sinners, not because of neolithic scrumpers

4. If no need of salvation, then no need of a saviour. Jesus is unemployed

Well, if Jesus only died for scrumpers, then the rest of us have no need of a saviour and the whole Christian edifice tumbles down. Yes, Jesus is on the dole. We may as well go scrumping.

That is not the case, Jesus died for YOUR salvation, for YOUR sin and that makes him fully employed and doing overtime. That is, of course, what Christians of all shades have said for 2000 years in contrast to this meme.

5. Evolution is the death knell of Christianity

First, Evolution does not affect the nasty nature which show easily surfaces in each one of us. That is called SIN, and is the fault of the person.

Only if our focus is on the sin of scrumping does Christianity come crashing down

Jesus saved me and you, not some naked scrumpers

Lying about Lyell

For several years “Is Genesis History?” Has been churning out videos and articles from a creationist standpoint, trying to show the earth is only  a few thousand years old and geologists have got it wrong.

The group are centred around videos striving to show that Young earth Creationism is a viable option and better than the sad, sad story of long age geology and evolution. They have recruited experts, some of whom have Ph Ds in geology  eg Kurt Wise , Marcus Ross, Andrew Snelling and Steve Austin. I’ve met all bar Snelling. It’s odd they have Ph Ds in geology and then say it’s all wrong. Here’s a list of experts with bios;

https://isgenesishistory.com/category/experts/

The videos and short blogs are posted on FB and social media at regular intervals. Here’s one on how to measure geological time, which is replete with inaccuracy, inuendo and falsehood, which completely gets dear Lyell wrong. The geologists I mentioned should know that!!

It is classic science denial from an ideological standpoint which twists the science to convince their clientele, who usually know little science. Thus their beliefs are reinforced and doubters forced out as heretics.

Part of the Explore the Film series.

5.How do you measure Time?

“The Bible would say that the past is the key to the present.” – Andrew Snelling, Geologist at SP Crater & Sedona, Arizona

This youtube video is very critical of radiometric age dating and other things but I’ll focus on the short blog

Learn more about radioisotope dating and flood geology in

•  ‘Beyond Is Genesis History? Vol 1: Rocks & Fossils’
• Dr. Andrew Snellings’s videos and articles

https://isgenesishistory.com/5-measure-time/?fbclid=IwAR2d2EFczYUjQbSkLSg6XsyQ55NqY7DbKDHHD3YypoA3VzB3ud0FJghRfYY

The text of this is very short so I reproduce it full.

If the Bible presents a concise timeline of history, where does the idea of millions of years come from?

Geologists like Charles Lyell wanted to replace the history recorded in Genesis with a naturalistic history of their own construction. They started with the idea of long ages, then interpreted the rocks in light of their new paradigm.

Today, geologists rely on measuring radioisotope decay and interpret its results in terms of the conventional paradigm. Yet anomalies in these dating methods question their conclusions. Instead, one can look at geological formations to see evidence of a young earth transformed by a global catastrophe: the flat and enormous extent of sedimentary layers; a lack of deep and widespread erosion between most layers; and evidence that sediment was rapidly deposited by huge amounts of water.

If the Bible presents a concise timeline of history, where does the idea of millions of years come from?

This sounds very plausible but begs so many questions.

Yes the bible does have a time line, but even for conservative scholars it is difficult to be precise on dates before King Saul in about 1000BC. This is not to question whether all those mentioned never lived, but giving dates is very tricky.  At best one can say Abraham lived in about 2000BC and before that the text is too vague to compile a timeline, as did Ussher in 1656.

To ask:

 where does the idea of millions of years come from?

is a loaded question implying that the naughty boys like Lyell simply made it up to deny the Bible. That is simply untrue.

You are given the idea that it was conjured up to discredit the bible.

Geologists like Charles Lyell wanted to replace the history recorded in Genesis with a naturalistic history of their own construction. They started with the idea of long ages, then interpreted the rocks in light of their new paradigm.

These two sentences simply do not acknowledge either what Lyell did or where “long ages” came from.

It is fair to say that before 1660 most educated Christian s in western Europe thought the earth was thousands of years old. In 1490 Columbus not only thought that the earth had a smaller circumference but also reckoned it to be a few thousand years old and wouldn’t last much longer! The classic date was Ussher’s

4004BC date of 1656, which didn’t have much longevity, though it was included in some bibles from 1700. Cracks/faults appeared in a few years as geological savants began to study strata and by 1700 many of these (mostly Christian) realised it was older than Ussher thought. These included Rev John Ray, who tentatively added on tens of thousands to 4004BC in the 1680s, thanks to his Welsh friend. Edward Lhuyd, of the flower lloydia serontia.

During the 18th century more and more evidence was found for an old earth as more and more throughout Europe looked at rocks. By 1800 hardly any, who could be called geologists, reckoned the earth to be thousands. De Luc and his ilk went for hundreds of thousands and others including Hutton went for millions. None went for 4004BC. So when Lyell was born in 1798 “long ages” were well and truly proven.

Hutton chipping away

Unless Lyell was a geologist while in diapers/nappies, which I doubt, “long ages” had nothing to do with him and was the prevailing, unanimous view, when he started to study geology under Rev William Buckland in about 1820. Buckland reckoned on millions but the Rev William Coneybeare, a friend and sparring partner of Lyell only went for quadrillions!!

Buckland in Wales in 1841 and lecturing at Oxford, possibly to Sam Wilberforce & St John Newman

None for these geologists from 1660 started with “the idea of long ages” but continually found evidence pointing to an older earth.

Lyell and his contemporaries had a “new paradigm” but simply built on those who went before. Here I must add that “Catastrophists” and “Uniformitarians” all accept a very ancient earth, so far as “long ages” were concerned they sang from the same hymn book.

As “Is Genesis History?” has several with degrees in geology, it is amazing that they could support such a serious error of fact. It is difficult not to ascribe a severe moral lapse as this seems to more than amateurs getting confused about the science.

At best this is duplicitous.

Today, geologists rely on measuring radioisotope decay and interpret its results in terms of the conventional paradigm. Yet anomalies in these dating methods question their conclusions.

This is a duplicitous slur on how radiometric age-dating has been used since 1907, when Boltwood first tentatively applied it to rocks. To say that geologists “interpret its results in terms of the conventional paradigm.” is simply untrue. One only has to read the history of the development of radiometric age dating. This can be seen in Cherry Lewis’s biography of Arthur Holmes,

who wrote successive books on the age of the earth from 1913. Initially he thought the age of the earth was 1.8 billion and by the 1940s found the evidence pointed to 4.6 billion. I could mention Claire Pattison too, who was more precise and whose age for the earth is still accepted 70 years later.

“Paradigm” is used here to cast doubt on radiometric age dating. That is not honest.

Creationists often produce “anomalies” but these have been showm to be misrepresentations of research as over Austin’s claims on Mt St Helens

and Woodmorappe’s list of a 1000 anomalous ages. Years ago I checked about 200 of his list and every time I found he had misrepresented the source.  Exod 20 vs 16 springs to mind.

Instead, one can look at geological formations to see evidence of a young earth transformed by a global catastrophe: the flat and enormous extent of sedimentary layers; a lack of deep and widespread erosion between most layers; and evidence that sediment was rapidly deposited by huge amounts of water.

I suppose having flung out these false accusations he comes out with the ultimate explanation;

Noah’s Flood

He fails to say many sediments are not laid down by water – e.g desert sands or glacial strata, or that limestone reefs form very slowly.

This presentation is a mixture of bad science and duplicity. One would expect more from Christians, whether or not they have geology degrees.

If you want to read more , try this

How do you measure (geological) time? (according to Creationists)

So asks a recent blog of “Is Genesis History?”

They seem to think that geologists in the early 19th century just made it all up from their fantastical imaginations!!

That is not quite true as I show, but first a family diversion.

When our daughter was about 6 or 7 she took some rocks and put labels on them with enormous numbers – 436740 years , 736400 years etc. All were less than a million. Sadly, many like Mr Snelling do not have as an advanced understanding as she had then!!

I found this short blog absolutely face-palming as it made almost as many serious errors as words! It is amazing, and very concerning, that anyone with more than a 6 year olds understanding could get so much wrong.

Yet “Is Genesis History?” has qualified geologists producing their material and one has to ask why it is so wrong, as well as pointing out where it is wrong. Today we hear much of Unconscious Bias, but this seems worse than Conscious Bias.

https://isgenesishistory.com/5-measure-time/?fbclid=IwAR13z2BSgB3mmkOnq0pWnq9Hk8LpyBGh0Pd6QDrGOIA1sZYXgt6XY-bv-AU

Here it is in full

“The Bible would say that the past is the key to the present.” – Andrew Snelling, Geologist at SP Crater & Sedona, Arizona

If the Bible presents a concise timeline of history, where does the idea of millions of years come from?

Geologists like Charles Lyell wanted to replace the history recorded in Genesis with a naturalistic history of their own construction. They started with the idea of long ages, then interpreted the rocks in light of their new paradigm.

Today, geologists rely on measuring radioisotope decay and interpret its results in terms of the conventional paradigm. Yet anomalies in these dating methods question their conclusions. Instead, one can look at geological formations to see evidence of a young earth transformed by a global catastrophe: the flat and enormous extent of sedimentary layers; a lack of deep and widespread erosion between most layers; and evidence that sediment was rapidly deposited by huge amounts of water.

Learn more about radioisotope dating and flood geology in

•  ‘Beyond Is Genesis History? Vol 1: Rocks & Fossils’
• Dr. Andrew Snellings’s videos and articles

ggg

“The Bible would say that the past is the key to the present.” – Andrew Snelling, Geologist at SP Crater & Sedona, Arizona

Simply empty affirmation . Where does the Bible say it? It is meaningless.

Geologists like Charles Lyell wanted to replace the history recorded in Genesis with a naturalistic history of their own construction. They started with the idea of long ages, then interpreted the rocks in light of their new paradigm.

This is simply a gross misrepresentation about how “long ages” came into being. Not one geologist started “with the idea of long ages”. Consider how “long ages” developed;

Up to the mid-17th century almost all scholars from Columbus to Ussher thought that the earth was a few thousand years old, with Ussher giving his famous date of 4004BC.

This made great sense at the time but was undermined within a few decades.

The journey began in the 1660s, when Nils Steno (later a Catholic bishop who got beatified) was studying fossils and strata in Italy and worked out the Principle of Superposition. He was rather undecided on the age of the strata. But he had made a vital breakthrough.

Twenty years later Edward Lhwyd and Rev John Ray

spent much time botanising in Snowdonia. Lhwyd was struck by the number of boulders in Nant Peris. As only one had fallen in living memory, he tentatively concluded that the hundreds of boulders must have fallen at intervals of several decades, meaning that Ussher’s age of 4004BC needed to be revised upwards. After all 500×50 =25,000. A wee advance on Ussher! In fact, they were glacial erratics dumped almost together some 20,000 years ago, so Lhwyd was wrong! Even so, it was an interesting idea showing a questioning mind.

Others reckoned the earth must be older too as did Hooke and Hobbes (see my Genesis and Geological time p41)

Genesis 1 & geological time from 1600-1850

Going into the 18^th century more and more studied the rocks throughout Europe and almost all concluded that the earth was old. Less geological was Buffon who in his Epoques of 1778 argued from cooling globes the earth had to be at least 74,000 years old, but privately argued for millions. If you want more read Martin Rudwick’s Earth’s Deep History or Gabriel Gohau Les sciences de la terre aux XVII et XXVIII siecles.

Few continued with a young earth after Scheuzer, apart from the English Hutchinsonians, followers of John Hutchinson (1674-1737). One was Alexander Catcott whose Treatise of the Deluge (1768) is the oldest book I own. It’s a mix of biblical theology, speculations about the ark ( which included 2 camelopards and quoting Bishop Willkins “1825 sheep… for the rapacious beasts” ) and some good geomorphological observations.

By the end of the 18^th century few scientists/savants did not accept Deep Time and the Irishman Richard Kirwan was one of the handful who didn’t. Even J.A. de Luc, who is often presented as a young earther, believed in an ancient earth, but not as ancient as Hutton’s!

In the last decades of the 18^th century Hutton just took the standard view of an ancient earth along with a galaxy of workers all round Europe –Rev J  Michell, Fr. Soulavie, de Saussure (of Mt Blanc fame), De Luc, Werner and others in almost every country, but an Anglocentric approach, which only considers Hutton and Lyell, misses that.

Hutton is NOT the father of Deep Time, but one of many very able scientists, who worked on deep time.

James Hutton and Siccar Point

We also need to note that from 1660 Christians, especially clergy, were involved in the discovery of geological time. In 1785 the Rev William Robertson, Moderator of the Scottish Kirk, was totally supportive of Hutton and reckoned that nothing in Hutton’s  work was “in any respect repugnant to the Mosaic account of creation.” And for the last 235 years most Christian ministers, evangelical or not, have agreed with Robertson, from Billy Graham to John Stott, loads of Popes and Archbishops and those in local churches.

By 1800 few geological savants denied “long ages”. The geologist William Smith

     

William Smith and his map of 1815

was persuaded out of a young earth by several local vicars, notably Benjamin Richardson and Joseph Townsend. Townsend, an evangelical, published a major work in 1813, but his prowess was soon overtaken by several other Church of England clergymen, John Henslow, William Conybeare, William Buckland and Adam Sedgwick, who made great contributions to the Geological Column, especially from the Cambrian to Carboniferous. Buckland introduced the concept of an Ice Age to Britain

Henslow and his exquisite map of Anglesey 1823

William Buckland checking for ice and hyenas!!

 Sedgwick wanting to get back to the field

As they were in their prime a young Scot and pupil of Buckland began his geologising, but disagreed with the catastrophic “long ages” ideas, especially of his friend Conybeare and in 1831 published the first volume of his Principles of Geology. By the time Lyell began geology almost all geologists were convinced of the evidences for “long ages”. Here we’ll be told of the Scriptural Geologists expounded by Terry Mortensen. Despite Mortensen’s claims only one, George Young, carried out any field geology  (in Yorkshire) and was criticised for rejecting geological time.

Lyell was very much a johnny-come-lately , and neither he nor anyone else “started with the idea of long ages”. That is blatantly false. By the time Lyell picked up his hammer, geologists had slowly been finding evidence for “long ages”. Lyell continued and found even more evidence!!

   Lyell looking principled 

Many geologists didn’t like Lyell’s uniformitarianism in 1831 and so De La Beche painted a watercolour of why Buckland’s son could not make a big valley by having a pee.

 Tow others having a pee with no more success

To claim that “Geologists like Charles Lyell wanted to replace the history recorded in Genesis with a naturalistic history of their own construction.” is also a falsehood and without evidence. It is not true of Lyell, nor any other geologist, except George Young. Lyell was very critical of those like Young who tried to squeeze a “history” of the earth from Genesis. Here he was almost entirely in agreement with all the clerical geologists like Buckland.

This is a blatant misrepresentation which has no basis in history. I would have thought Dr Snelling would have known that it was wrong. Or perhaps not.

Today, geologists rely on measuring radioisotope decay and interpret its results in terms of the conventional paradigm.

It is so much easier, and briefer, to make a statement like this, which is devoid of truth than to refute it. Yes, radiometric age dating is used, but its results are weighed up, with and against the older geology and assessed with care

Yet anomalies in these dating methods question their conclusions.

What anomalies does the writer mean? This statement simply gets readers to be suspicious and thus dismiss all geological dating. It does not seem to be in the spirit of the Ninth Commandment. Over the years I have come across many alleged anomalies and when I have been able to check them I ALWAYS found them to be false accusations.

A classic example is the paper “Radiometric Dating Reappraised” by John Woodmorappe which originally appeared in the Creation Research Society Quarterly (Volume 16, September 1979. It lists some 800 anomalies and some 40 years ago I went through and checked about a hundred. None were anomalies and all were misrepresented. Sadly I didn’t record my findings but here is a short account of some whoppers.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/woodmorappe-geochronology.html

Again the Ninth is pushed to one side!!

And so at the end of a short article replete with dissimulation there is a triumphant conclusion

Instead, one can look at geological formations to see evidence of a young earth transformed by a global catastrophe: the flat and enormous extent of sedimentary layers; a lack of deep and widespread erosion between most layers; and evidence that sediment was rapidly deposited by huge amounts of water.

What can anyone say to that?