First the European thinkers in the past centuries believed that Earth was God’s creation and that the Earth had been created in 4004B.C. They believed that Earth was about 5,500 to 6000 years old. Two most common perspectives of the history of the Earth in the 17th and 19th centuries are catastrophism and uniformitarianism. In the late seventeenth many groups believed that the Earth has been affected in the past by sudden violent event.One example that catastrophists used as evidence of the process of catastrophic destruction was Noah’s flood. A new concept, known as uniformitarianism , replaced catastrophism. James Hutton proposed an opposing, infinite cycle on natural history and not on the Bible. He thought that Earth was much older that
Christians today have a biblical principle and opinion of the universe existence. Christians believe that God created earth and that he accomplished that in only six days. Genesis 1 explains the creation and the interpretation is so utterly clear and one writer states “Thus, any interpretation that goes beyond a clear plain meaning of the text is considered to compromise Biblical authority and capitulate to evolutionary theories”. One look at the Young Earth View is said to be formed from the Modern English
James Hutton was the first scientist to address the Earth was millions of years old, as well as alive and is continuously being formed. Charles Lyell popularized uniformitarianism, and believed the Earth was being shaped by slow moving forces. Alfred Wegener introduced the foundation for the theory of continental drift. Wegener was one of the first to recognize and have an understanding of how the Earth works which required data and information from earth sciences. In the 1960s, the theory for the continental drift became known as the theory of plate tectonics or plate building.
1. Uniformitarianism is the theory that the Earth has remained the same, or uniform, over hundreds of millions of years. With that uniformity of the rocks and sediments in the layers of the Earth, we can trace these geological principles back to the habitats of dinosaurs because we can understand that the rocks they may have walked on, are the same rocks we see today. This helps explain the findings of fossils; archaeologists often find fossils whether it be a leaf or carbon-print of a dinosaur bone in rocks that are hundreds of millions of years old. Thus justifying uniformitarianism and how Earth has stayed uniform after all these years and we are able to find dinosaur bones and remains from our planet that is extremely aged.
Charles Lyell was a British lawyer and one the smartest geologist known in his time. He was known as the author of the Principles of Geology, which helped popularize the theories and concepts of uniformitarianism. The Principles of Geology was the first book written by Lyell and explained the changes of the earth’s surface. He used the research and information in the book as his proof to determine that the earth was over 6,000 years old. The central argument in his book was “the present is the key to the past”, this meant that to find out what happened in the past you had to look at what was happening now. It explained that changes which happened in the past, were happening in the present, and will happen in the future.
Throughout history, science has always faced challenges from outside groups who work to mold science to their beliefs, ignoring evidence and commonly held facts. Following in the legacy of the flat world and an Earth centered Universe, young Earth creationists bend science to fit their explanations of the Earth’s origin and timeline. Evidence for the ancient age of the Earth is present in every discipline of Earth science and directly refutes claims made by young Earth creationists. It is important to examine these claims and rebut them, as their denial of proper scientific understanding hampers progress and has wider implications for the future of our society.
In regards to Judaeo Christian religion, for many years’ people believed that the creation of the earth had taken place in 4004BC. Nigel Scotland, a senior lecturer in The Faculty of Arts in St. Paul and St. Mary, Cheltenham College wrote in his article, Darwin and Doubt and the Response of the Victorian Churches, “Up until the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, the church held the Bible to speak authoritatively on all matters in which determined the relationship between God and man” and how man was to deal with all living things on the earth (Scotland 1). Also, “the bible remarks all that takes place on the earth was a result, in God’s divine powers” (Scotland 1), without providing proper explanation for all that has happened; However, all that started to change during the Victorian Era, as many people began to doubt Christianity and the Biblical scriptures (Scotland 1). One of the main reasons for this doubt to burst to the surface was because of new scientific discoveries. In particular, in1859, during the time Charles Darwin published his book “The Origin Of Species by Means of Natural Selection Of the Preservation Of Favored Races In the Struggle For Life.” Charles Darwin’s book caused a mass evolution in scientific theory. His theories challenged long held religious teachings and beliefs, which caused a major backlash from the Victorian churches and religious believers (Scotland 3). The three main
In the early medieval period, the masses believed that earth was at the center of the universe and everything revolved around it. “...the judgement of many centuries has approved the view that the Earth remains fixed as center in the midst of the heavens…” Nicolaus Copernicus thought that this idea was absurd and continued to explain that the Earth actually moves. He was afraid to even discuss the idea as anyone during the period would just reject it immediately. The Earth being flat was in part influenced by religion and by writing his theories, he was almost apologetic for suggesting the heavens were different from what almost all people believed. “...that the earth is situated in the third sphere and revolves with great speed around the sun, is a very dangerous thing, not only by irritating all the philosophers and scholastic theologians, but also injuring our holy faith and rendering the Holy Scriptures false.” The change in culture was seen as a danger to religion as the new ideas went against a lot of factors in religion. The strict religious ideas caused almost a cultural revolt for new ideas. But because religion was being changed radically, it left room for new ideas like this to start spreading to the
In the old Earth view of the original creation of Earth we are told about the
James Hutton discovered uniformitarianism; one of the most fundamental principles in geology today. Uniformitarianism is the theory that changes in the earth's crust during geological history have resulted from the action of continuous and uniform processes. Hutton also discovered that Earth is much older that most scientists believed, allowing for the process of gradual and slow change. Natural selection and continental drift would not have been able to have been supported without the research done by Hutton. In 1752 Hutton started to pay attention to little details like how there were outlines of underwater crustaceans on rocks high above sea level. At the age of 58, Hutton published a 2 page summary of everything he had discovered in the
Notably, William Thomson’s beliefs are an opposition to the modern idea that science and religion are incompatible. Accordingly, Thomson was a believer of Christianity through the duration of his lifetime, as a man who regularly attended chapel and contributed to his church, yet, according to today’s standards, he is not a fundamentalist. Furthermore, he saw his faith as a pillar of support on his scientific findings. Historically speaking, he wasn’t a typical creationist as he often debated the age of the earth. This intrigue in the age of the world stem from his interest in the properties of heat conduction, typically investigating the cooling of the Earth and the implied inferences of the planet’s age. However, he did believe in creation
In Language of God, Francis Collins tries to create a balance between the different views on the origins of the Universe. He responds positively to his own question on the possibility for a satisfying harmony between scientific and spiritual worldviews in the introduction and endeavors to highlight in the rest of his book that a person can be a scientist and also a believer concurrently. Francis Collins grew up in a family without religious views and although a member of his church choir, he was instructed not to learn anything more than music. Growing up, he developed a keen interest in Science particularly Chemistry not so much in Biology because he felt it involved studying mindless facts. He moved to college and afterwards decided to get
During the Scientific Revolution scientists such as Galileo, Copernicus, Descartes and Bacon wrestled with questions about God, human aptitude, and the possibilities of understanding the world. Eventually, the implications of the new scientific findings began to affect the way people thought and behaved throughout Europe. Society began to question the authority of traditional knowledge about the universe. This in turn, allowed them to question traditional views of the state and social order. No longer was the world constructed as the somewhat simple Ptolemaic Model suggested. The Earth for the first time became explicable and was no longer the center of the universe. Many beliefs that had been held for hundreds of years now proved to be
The gap theory states that there is a large gap of time between Genesis 1;1 and 1;2 .In the very beginning the lord created the heavens and the earth .Then ,over a long period of time the earth become without form and void and darkness covered the earth . The former civilization and creation of God corrupted itself and was destroyed by God .Then, at a certain point in time around 6,000 years ago the lord reformed this earth and brought into existence the creation that we know today
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Christian belief encountered significant opposition. Until then, most of the world shared the belief of the “Medieval world view” that not only was the earth positioned at the center of the universe, but that God was all knowing, all powerful and all good. God was thought to have created and sustained the wondrous workings of the universe. This belief told the people all they needed to know about the meaning and purpose of life. Then, scientific discovery and methods began to undermine religious beliefs. Scientists began to reveal that natural laws and natural forces governed the world. Opposing beliefs, e.g. the Marxism belief, criticized Christian views. People like, Bacon, Copernicus, Kepler,
This would allow for minimal change in species over time, as their environment would be fundamentally altered and not survivable with each cataclysmic event. Catastrophism, therefore, completely precluded any form of evolution. This stood in contrast to uniformitarianism, also known as gradualism, which posited that the earth 's morphology has been brought about in gradual incremental changes, and that geological processes are essentially unchanged today from the unobservable past. Lyell, a contemporary and friend of Darwin’s, was a geologist who published books advocating for this view. Darwin would have had access to Lyell’s Principles of Geology, and almost certainly relied upon it to formulate his theories of evolution- after all uniformitarianism provided the geological timeframe in which natural selection could operate, in that one could extrapolate present geological changes to the distant past. Lyell 's argument for uniformitarianism served as a natural complement and muse for Darwin 's theories in the capacity of the geological background that could finally afford credibility to evolution.