Date: August 2008 Series: Worldviews at War Title: Geology and Time

     How long does it take to bake a cake?  Well, if you assume an intelligent baker is involved to collect, mix, and cook the right materials, the answer would be “not long.”  On the other hand, if all you have are raw materials and natural processes, then it would statistically require massive amounts of time to accidentally collect the correct mix of materials and heat them at the correct temperature for the right amount of time.  Unless you have a philosophical “axe to grind” against the existence of a living “cook,” then option #1 seems far more likely to explain the existence of the cake on the counter.  Essentially, this is the basic issue underlying the creation/evolution controversy as to how to explain life – a designed product of intelligence or “given enough time chemicals could accidentally turn into people.” 

     A foundational difference between the Biblical and Enlightenment views of the past is the issue of “time.”  The history of the universe and earth do not require “lots of time” if there is a supernatural Creator involved and Genesis certainly gives the impression that earth history should be measured in thousands of years.  Atheists, committed to explaining life without an intelligent Creator and having only matter and unguided natural processes to work with, are forced to assume massive amounts of time for all of the unguided “trial and error” failures necessary in order to come up with the rare and unlikely combination of all the right ingredients.  Before the Enlightenment’s apostles could provide a plausible story of life evolving by natural means, they needed a very old universe and earth.

     “Miraculous Time” - The Enlightenment rejected the Bible’s miracle-working God in favor of materialism and naturalism, but with increasing understanding of the complexity of life even at the cellular level also came the realization that a naturalistic story of life’s origin also requires a ‘miracle-working hero” to make it plausible.  One of Stephen Jay Gould’s teachers - George Wald - noted the complexity and improbability of life arising and developing by natural processes alone and identified the “hero” that made the evolutionary scenario plausible,

“In Wald’s view, the spontaneous origin of life was a virtually inevitable consequence of the earth’s atmosphere and crust, and of its favorable size and position in the solar system.  Still, life is so staggeringly complex that its origin from simple chemicals must have consumed an immense amount of time -- probably more time that its entire subsequent evolution from DNA molecule to advanced beetles (or whatever you choose to place atop the subjective ladder).  Thousands of steps,  each requiring the one before;  each improbable in itself.  Only the immensity of time guaranteed the result, for time converts the improbable to the inevitable - give me a million years and I'll flip a hundred heads in a row more than once.  Wald wrote in 1954: ‘Time is in fact the hero of the plot.  The time with which we have to deal is the order of two billion years...Given so much time, the impossible becomes possible, the possible probable, and the probable virtually certain.  One has only to wait: time itself performs the miracles.'" [1]

Before Lamarck, Wallace, and Darwin could produce an “evolving life” story, they needed a very old and gradually-changing earth without a catastrophic Biblical flood to mess things up.  Thus, geology was one of the first areas that got an Enlightenment make-over.

     Re-tooling Geology – James Hutton (1726-1797) was trained to be a medical doctor, but became interested in geology as a hobby.  He was self-taught and never held a university teaching position in geology, yet today is viewed by many as the “founder of modern geology."[2]  What was Hutton’s greatest contribution to geology?  Why “lots’ of time” of course,

“His greatest contribution to science and philosophy, was his recognition of ‘deep time’, which was an essential forerunner to Darwinian evolution."[3]

     How is it that a medical doctor without academic training in geology became the “founder of modern geology”?  Simple, he eloquently promoted enlightenment values by assaulting the catastrophic view of earth history that was found in the Bible and held by most professional geologists.  To eliminate major catastrophes, especially the Biblical flood, Hutton argued that normal processes of erosion, sedimentation, and mild volcanic activity acting at constant rates over long spans of time – uniformitarianism - could carve all geological features.

     Next came a lawyer who also took an interest in geology – Charles Lyell (1797-1875).  Lyell embraced the anti-flood views being debated in the 1820’s and later published his own three-volume work, The Principles of Geology (1830-33), the first volume of which Charles Darwin took with him during his voyage on The Beagle.  Like Hutton, Lyell argued that non-catastrophic natural processes must have been uniform over time and, if so, would carve the features of the earth’s surface very gradually and at rates very similar to what is observed today.  Lyell also targeted Genesis and the Biblical flood as a major obstacle to eliminate for a “scientific” (a.k.a. materialistic/naturalistic) understanding of earth history.

     Uniformitarian Orthodoxy – After Hutton and Lyell, the “uniformitarian” gradualism view became geological orthodoxy.  This provided the essential “old earth” necessary for Darwin to theorize on life developing slowly.  My readings have revealed a couple of disturbing points.  First, it is has been admitted by Gould and Brooke that Lyell’s uniformitarianism was not good science being done by an amateur, but rather a lawyer very effectively promoting an anti-Biblical philosophical position as “scientific” by ignoring contrary evidence and clever argumentation.[4]  Second, the main reason that uniformitarianism became the “orthodox” view of earth history was that Enlightenment disciples were committed to eliminating the Biblical flood from history.[5]

“The main force of this proposition was to eliminate supernatural explanations of material phenomena; for this uniformity denies divine intervention (the suspension of natural laws) . . . Methodological uniformitarianism was useful only when science was debating the status of the supernatural in its realm."[6]

     Third, in addition to Gould, there have been other secular geologists that have asserted that uniformitarian dogma stands in the way of good science and should be scrapped altogether because it is so out of touch with the actual evidence.^[7]  (to be continued)