Charles Lyell — Lying to Remove God

There were several views of geology floating around in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, including multiple catastrophes, the Genesis Flood, and gradual processes. James Hutton made headway in what is now called uniformitarianism with views that reject the biblical account of creation and the Flood, and has been called the father of modern geology. Charles Lyell took the reigns and galloped forward with his Deistic views which sought to remove God from geological science, and his polemic influenced Charles Darwin.

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Lyell was educated as a lawyer, and Darwin's education was in theology. These "great scientists" promoted anti-God polemics that influenced far too many people. Although it's tempting to make lawyer jokes, it is a fact that lawyers are trained to get their point across. (Did you ever notice that in American courts, lawyers are not sworn to tell the truth?) In the spirit of evolutionism and uniformitarianism, Charles Lyell did not want to let the facts stand in the way of a good story, so he made up his own "facts" regarding Niagara Falls. The book that influenced Darwin was not exactly known for it science.

At the beginning of the 19th century there were two main schools of geology.

Most leading geologists were catastrophists, i.e. they believed that the earth’s geology was best explained as the result of cataclysms. Many of these believed in long ages and multiple catastrophes; however, there were also many ‘scriptural geologists’ who believed that Noah’s Flood, as recorded in Genesis, being worldwide, was the principal such catastrophic event.

The other view was that everything in geology was solely the result of processes now operating in the earth. This belief rejected the Bible, and hence the accounts of Creation and the Flood as recorded by Moses in Genesis. Advocates were either secret atheists or deists, who conceded that the earth must have had a cause, but were not prepared to attribute that cause to the God of the Bible. Charles Lyell was one such deist. In his Principles of Geology, he alluded to “a Creative Intelligence” having “foresight, wisdom and power”, but he did not allow that this “Infinite and Eternal Being” had actually communicated with mankind.

Lyell argued against catastrophic events in the history of the earth—not by citing contrary evidence, but by holding that any such events were not accessible to inquiry. But the same inaccessibility to inquiry also applied to his own view of a tranquil past. What is needed to establish past events is eye-witness testimony. However, Lyell refused to accept the Flood testimony of Noah, recorded in Genesis by Moses.

To read the rest of the article in context, click on "Charles Lyell: the man who tried to rewrite history". You may also want to see "Interpreting Earth History".

 



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