The Origin of Old-Earth Geology and Its Ramifications for Life in the 21st Century

The Origin of Old-Earth Geology and Its Ramifications for Life in the 21st Century

Elements of Earth Science

Professor Underwood

PHSC 210-B01

201330 Summer 2013

June 3, 2013

The Origin of Old-Earth Geology and Its Ramifications for Life in the 21st Century

Dr. Mortenson opens his article with an explanation of how people still believe that the earth and the universe are billions of years old. He reports that in the 19th century a group known as the "scriptural geologist" [1] from Britain that was made up of Christian and non-Christian geologist came up with the concept of the Old Earth. He tells us that before the turn of the 19th century, the commanding view in Eastern and Western Europe and in North America, was what we believe as the Bible tells us that "God created the world in six 24 hour days". [2] He states that it was about "4000 B.C." and then at approximately 2400 B.C. Noah's catastrophic flood, when God, "judged the earth".

Dr. Mortenson introduces three French scientists that each has new but different theories about the creation history. He says that Comte de Buffon assumed that earth was evolved from an incident between the sun and a comet, and that the earth was lava shaped from the incident that took about 78,000 years. [3] The second French scientist was Pierre Laplace, who expressed in his hypothesis that he believed our solar system was developed and evolved from a gas cloud with took, as Dr. Mortenson stated, "a very long period of time". [4] The third French scientist was Jean Lamark, whose theory was biological evolution, which he wrote about in his Zoological Philosophy (1809). Dr. Mortenson explains that Catastrophists believed that there were many catastrophic floods, and God replaced man over and over as though God continued to make mistakes making man and continued to start over. Then there were the Uniformitarians that believe that "all things develop at the same rate geologically as it did in the beginning". [5] Then Dr. Mortenson comments on the Christians who disagree with each of these theories, but stand on the fact that God created the earth and universe in "six 24 hour days". [6] But what does the Scriptural Geologist have to say? According to Dr. Mortenson, "this group of individuals, some were clergymen and some were not". Young was a Pastor, Fairholme was a businessman, Murray was an educator, and Rhind was a surgeon. Each of these men had different views, but the same conclusion. Each rejected the theories of the old-earth. Dr. Mortenson tells us, "The