19th Century Evangelical Scholars, Old Earth and Evolution
by BilboThanks to Victor Reppert at dangerousidea.blogspot.com for linking to E.T.Babinski's very interesting article. Babinski writes:
Many evangelical Christians today suppose that Bible believers have always been in favor of a "young-universe" and "creationism." However, as any student of the history of geology (and religion) knows, by the 1850s all competent evangelical Christian geologists agreed that the earth must be extremely old, and that geological investigations did not support that the Flood "in the days of Noah" literally "covered the whole earth."
Rev. William Buckland (head of geology at Oxford), Rev. Adam Sedgwick (head of geology at Cambridge), Rev. Edward Hitchcock (who taught natural theology and geology at Amherst College, Massachusetts), John Pye Smith (head of Homerton Divinity College), Hugh Miller (self taught geologist, and editor of the Free Church of Scotland's newspaper), and Sir John William Dawson (geologist and paleontologist, a Presbyterian brought up in a fundamentalist atmosphere, who also became the only person ever to serve as president of three of the most prestigious geological organizations of Britain and America), all rejected the "Genesis Flood" as an explanation of the geologic record (or any part of that record), and argued that it must have taken a very long time to form the various geologic layers. Neither were their conclusions based on a subconscious desire to support "evolution," since none of the above evangelical Christians were evolutionists, and the earliest works of each of them were composed before Darwin's Origin of Species was published. The plain facts of geology led them to acknowledge the vast antiquity of the earth. And this was before the advent of radiometric dating.
Babinski goes on to discuss the question of evangelical scholars and evolution:
By the very early 1900s, even conservative theologians at Princeton Theological Seminary were prepared in varying degrees to concede to science a long earth history, the transmutation of species by evolution, and even an evolutionary past for the human physical form. Such theologians included B. B. Warfield, the famous inerrantist Presbyterian, who at that time oversaw the publication of the Princeton Theological Review.
Even when the twelve-volume paperback series, The Fundamentals, was published between 1910 and 1915 (an interdenominational work that launched this century's "fundamentalist" movement), it contained cautiously pro-evolution stances of conservative Christian theologians like George Frederick Wright, James Orr, and R. A. Torrey. It was only in the eighth collection of Fundamentals papers that this cautious advocacy of evolution was matched by two decisively and aggressively anti-Darwin statements, one by someone who remained anonymous and another by the relatively unknown Henry Beach, both of whom lacked the theological and scientific standing of the senior evangelicals already mentioned.
So by the turn of the century a substantial number of evangelical Christian leaders in science and theology had little trouble reconciling their conservative theological views to the theory of evolution. In fact, the sort of pitched battle being waged by the "creationist" movement today has its roots not in the evangelical heritage of the 1800s but in the fundamentalism that emerged during the half decade or so before 1920, when fundamentalists shifted from moderation to militancy, opposing all "modernist" ideas.
January 21st, 2010 at 5:21 pm
1- The Bible doesn't say anything about the age of the universe nor the Earth
2- The 6,000- 12,000 year figure is based on genealogies from the Bible.
3- Dr Russell Humphreys has a YEC cosmology based on relativity which provides for an old universe and a much younger Earth.
4- What would evidence for a global flood look like- especially thousands of years after?
Comment by ID guy — January 21, 2010 @ 5:21 pm
January 21st, 2010 at 5:33 pm
If there was a global flood just a few thousand years ago, and all life except for the few on the ark was wiped out, and all current species are therefore descendants of the few on the ark, the rate of evolution must have been (and may still be) incredibly high.
Yet most YEC's are opposed to evolution.
I have yet to see an explanation of current biological diversity from a YEC perspective. The view appears to me to be self-contradictory.
Comment by Mung — January 21, 2010 @ 5:33 pm
January 21st, 2010 at 5:38 pm
Mung,
YECs are opposed to blind and non-goal oriented processes giving rise to all living organisms from non-living goop.
They are perfectly fine with variation.
Read "Noah's Ark: A Feasibility Study"
Comment by ID guy — January 21, 2010 @ 5:38 pm
January 22nd, 2010 at 9:16 pm
The animals on the ark were not non-living goop.
And just how does that variation spread through a population?
Comment by Mung — January 22, 2010 @ 9:16 pm
January 23rd, 2010 at 11:53 am
Mung,
Accoding to YEC all animals alive today are descended from the animals that survived "The Flood".
Variation speards through the population the same way as evolutionists suggest- reproduction.
Comment by ID guy — January 23, 2010 @ 11:53 am
January 23rd, 2010 at 1:26 pm
One of the major flaws with the YEC global flood hypothesis is that it, perhaps unwittingly, posits a very-rapid-ultra-efficient kind of Darwinian evolution. The following article addresses that problem.
IMO their hypothesis strains credulity.
Comment by JOHN_A_DESIGNER — January 23, 2010 @ 1:26 pm
January 23rd, 2010 at 4:46 pm
Exactly. That's a premise of my argument. But it's absurd, don't you think?
Have you ever heard of the "cost" argument? Those with the variation have to not just reproduce, but out-reproduce, those who do not have it. Their capacity for reproduction has to be greater. How did that happen?
And yet at the same time most YEC's I've ever come across are anti-evolution. They don't believe it can or does happen. IOW, their position is incoherent. It's irrational.
That too.
Comment by Mung — January 23, 2010 @ 4:46 pm
January 23rd, 2010 at 5:16 pm
From JAD's link:
This points out another contradiction in the YEC argument. Where are the missing links? There are no transitionals.
Yet the YEC position itself demands that such transitionals existed. So they argue against the existence of something that their own theory requires, and never see the inherent incoherence.
Comment by Mung — January 23, 2010 @ 5:16 pm
January 23rd, 2010 at 5:51 pm
The YEC philosophy is consistent with saltational evolutionary theories such as those put forth by Schindewolf, Goldschmidt, and more recently Davison.
IOW, (according to the them) evolution doesn't work through laboriously slow processes but rather through rapid ones. Many documented cases of real evolution in the past 200 years happened much faster than would be expected via Darwinian mechanisms. Nylonase was a frameshift, much antibiotic and viral drug resistance is due to gene cassettes, transplanted finches develop new beak types in 20 years, multiple instances of plant speciation (same species) in the Pacific NW in the past 60 years…
The idea is not as far fetched as it may seem. You just have to unlearn Darwinism.
Comment by Daniel Smith — January 23, 2010 @ 5:51 pm
January 23rd, 2010 at 5:52 pm
Mung:
They may not want to use the “e-word” but YEC’s at AIG are certainly arguing for something resembling descent with modification. Consider the following:
Aren’t horses and zebras different species? If they are it means that YEC’s (at least those at AIG) believe that species can originate by a completely natural process.
Comment by JOHN_A_DESIGNER — January 23, 2010 @ 5:52 pm
January 23rd, 2010 at 9:19 pm
Guys read the book "Noah's Ark: A Feasibility Study" it is all explained.
I have a neighbor who has the book. I read it and it seems plausible.
Daniel has nailed- it is evolution not by chance.
As for the "e-word" that isn't used because everyone equates that with Darwinism.
Variations within a Kind.
Comment by ID guy — January 23, 2010 @ 9:19 pm
January 24th, 2010 at 3:03 am
Mung -
"If there was a global flood just a few thousand years ago, and all life except for the few on the ark was wiped out, and all current species are therefore descendants of the few on the ark, the rate of evolution must have been (and may still be) incredibly high…Yet most YEC's are opposed to evolution…I have yet to see an explanation of current biological diversity from a YEC perspective. The view appears to me to be self-contradictory."
I can only say that if you think this way, it merely means you have not read any of the technical literature from creationists in the last hundred years (actually, maybe the last four hundred years). YECs don't believe in "evolution" meaning "evolution by random mutations and natural selection". ID-based evolution (often called "adaptation" by creationists to separate it from RMNS) is well believed by YECs. Since the turn of the century, the most common suggestion for the level of the "created kind" has been at the level of the family, although many current creationists think that for some groups it may be at an even higher taxonomic level. It's not self-contradictory to think that RMNS doesn't work, but that design-based evolution could happen at super-high speeds.
Also, regarding the 19th century, creation geologists made a pretty nice showing (for instance, proposing plate tectonics about 75 years earlier than everyone else). They still do. It's just that the evolutionary geologists like to forget them. Steven Austin is becoming more well-respected each day (he led one of the field trips for the GSA this year to Mt. St. Helens to talk about catastrophic river-formation). Leonard Brand even got his work on the front cover of the journal Geology. John Baumgardner's model of the earth's mantle processes that he uses for modeling the Genesis flood is also used by NASA and LANL among others.
Anyway, here's just a small sample of creationist writing on biodiversification:
Wood and Cavanaugh 2001
Lightner 2008
Borger 2009
Earlier creationist writings either left the mechanism of diversification untouched, or used a purely Mendellian notion of diversification. However, this is mostly because creationists had assumed the truth that mutations were haphazard, and did not think to question this part of evolutionary theory!
Anyway, this is also my area of publication as well. If you're interested, here are my contributions:
Discussion on how metaprogramming can contribute to our understanding of diversification (R17 on the last two pages)
A discussion on randomness and design
Classifications of mutations (full paper available)
Theoretical foundations of Irreducible Complexity and ways of using it in biology (full paper available – also see my non-technical introduction and background)
If you want to get the modern view of creation geology, you should check out Andrew Snelling's new two-volume work.
Comment by johnnyb — January 24, 2010 @ 3:03 am
January 24th, 2010 at 2:12 pm
Doh! Forgot to link my introduction and background to my paper on IC. Here it is.
Comment by johnnyb — January 24, 2010 @ 2:12 pm
January 24th, 2010 at 3:17 pm
ID guy:
Except that's not what Daniel said.
Daniel:
It's also consistent with God twiddling with the DNA of multiple animals in the population and then miraculously separating them into separate populations so that the new genes don't have to spread through a population lacking them.
But is that what YEC's believe?
What's the difference between that view and the view that God is continuously creating new species?
By accepting "kinds" and "evolution within kinds" what the YEC is claiming is that God originally created these groups and no others have appeared since and that all evolution within kinds is by descent with modification.
Any new "God created" species would be the introduction of an entirely new kind. They reject this view.
So what is left other than chance re-arrangements of the genomes?
Comment by Mung — January 24, 2010 @ 3:17 pm
January 24th, 2010 at 3:20 pm
http://www.rae.org/noah.html
Comment by Mung — January 24, 2010 @ 3:20 pm
January 24th, 2010 at 6:52 pm
Mung, why do you think that "chance" is the only other side of God's direct creation? If the genomes were built with the ability to adapt, then that is neither chance nor immediate design.
Comment by johnnyb — January 24, 2010 @ 6:52 pm
January 30th, 2010 at 2:28 am
We're not talking about Creation. We're talking about what happened after the flood. What happened when the waters receded and the animals disembarked, and went forth throughout the earth to present to us our current array of modern species.
There's is absolutely no evidence for, or reason to believe, the hypothesis that all living species evolved from a few ancestors which came off an ark a few thousand years ago. I find it difficult to understand why God would require me to believe this in order to be a Christian.
One problem with the YEC position (among many) is the view that God stopped creating on the 6th day. So if God is not doing the creating, what is? What's left, if you don't have God doing the creating?
So what if a genome is "flexible." What makes it flex? What makes that "flex" beneficial? If it's not God, what?
Now, to summarize, and clarify.
My major complaint in this thread is not the Cra5tion, it's not the flood, it's not the ark, and it's certainly not God. It's the outright inconsistency and incoherence and downright self-refuting position that YEC advocates adopt.
They make arguments against positions which their own positions requires them to advocate!
1. Evolution
2. Common Descent
So that's what I would prefer to discuss.
Comment by Mung — January 30, 2010 @ 2:28 am
January 30th, 2010 at 12:09 pm
Mung,
If I understand the position correctly, the YEC views on evolution are analogous to an oak tree "evolving" from an acorn. God planted the seeds (kinds) and they proceeded to differentiate (evolve) into the myriad species we have today. The act of creation (the planting) was done in six days, yet God is behind it all in the sense that he planned it out and set it in motion.
Of course this does not take into account such metaphysical arguments as Aquinas' five ways which show that God holds everything together and keeps everything going at every instant.
Comment by Daniel Smith — January 30, 2010 @ 12:09 pm
January 30th, 2010 at 7:42 pm
How is this different from the position of theistic evolution ?
Sounds like common decent to me.
But instead of universal common decent we have a near universal common decent depending on how we define "kind".
When we get down to brass tacks the hill that YEC dies on is always the seven literal days for universal creation.
IMHO it all has to do with the question of continueing validity of the seventh day Sabbath in the NC. Which explains the early popularity of this position the Seventh Day Adventist church.
It's sad that the historical illiteracy in Evangelical community is such that we now believe that YEC has always been the position of those who strive to be bibical in their thinking.
peace
Peace
Comment by fifth monarchy man — January 30, 2010 @ 7:42 pm
January 30th, 2010 at 9:54 pm
I don't know enough about theistic evolution to answer that.
Yes. Leo Berg's Theory of Nomogenesis postulated "tens of thousands of primary forms". He was no young earth creationist. I don't know what a YEC would think of Berg's, Davison's, Goldschmidt's or Schindewolf's theories, they just seem compatible with limited timeframes to me.
Comment by Daniel Smith — January 30, 2010 @ 9:54 pm