The Origin of Old –Earth Geology …21st Century
Diane Hammonds
Dr. Travis Bradshaw
PHSC210B11
September 3, 2014

Introduction

This article review will provide the reader with a brief overview of Dr. Mortenson’s article, Origin of Old-Earth Geology and its Ramifications for Life in the 21st Century, which was written on August 5, 2003. One will also read about Dr. Mortenson’s strengths and weaknesses as an author of his article. It should be noted that he does not take one side over the other, but rather presents information that he found during his thesis development. There are some definite strengths and weakness to his article that explores a debate that has been around for generations about how the earth came to be.

Overview

Dr. Mortenson focuses on four main reasons on how the earth was created, some of which have no mention of God and others that explain how God played a role in the creation of the earth. He begins his article out by discussing theories that were developed prior to the 19th century and he lets the readers know that the following three well known French scientists did not believe tat God played a role in the formation of the earth. These scientists were, Comte de Buffon (1708-1788), Pierre Laplace (1749-1827), Jean Lamarck (1744-1829), and how they were involved in the development of theories without the involvement of God. However, during the early 19th century there were three theories/ideas that existed to explain how the earth was formed: catastrophists, uniformitarians, and scriptural geologists. Of these three theories two of them believed that God played some role in the creation of earth. Then came about the idea of the scriptural geologists who believed full heartedly that God played a major role in the creation of earth. There were four prominent scriptural geologists who played a role in the development of how God assisted in the creation of earth. Not all of these gentlemen came from scholar backgrounds, rather they had a passion for understanding and explaining how the earth came to be and God’s role in the process. He defends his arguments with the mentioning of the four scriptural geologists, George Young (1777-1848), George Fairholme (1789-1846), John Murray (1786?-1851), William Rhind (1797-1874) (Mortenson, 2003) who all came from very diverse backgrounds. These individuals were not against the use and mentioning of geological facts of the old-world theory, but rather how it was interpreted based on biases. The true nature of the 19th century debate had its own errors because their beliefs were not objective, without bias, or let the facts-speak-for themselves observers of the physical evidence that was before them. All of the old-earth individuals who supported the theory thought differently of the existence of God, but they all rejected the God of the scriptures. However, they looked to their understanding of the astronomical and geological evidence. How people viewed the world often affected how they interpreted and understood the facts that were presented to them. Their observations of the facts were also affected which brought an end to the scriptural geologists. Today it is key to understand that there are two reasons why the 19th century Genesis-geology debate is important. First scientific facts are not interpreted without bias, but rather are based on the scientific facts that are not self-interpreting. They interpret the information based on their philosophical and religious assumptions. In closing Dr. Mortenson mentioned that today one must worry about naturalism and how it is affecting the world today.

Strengths

I believe that Dr. Mortenson does a great job of providing a variety of examples from each of the centuries that the article discussed. He provides a clear and concise view of how the opinions on the age of the Earth have changed over the centuries. He does so by talking about the progression of theories through a chronological manner based on the deaths of the individuals he references in the article. He includes for each of them at least one “scientist” and what they thought for each of the areas discussed in the article. He does a great job of including the scientists training, credentials, and beliefs for each of the debated beliefs he discusses. He not only discusses what each of the “scientists” believed, but he went on to point out the flaws in modern science and our downfalls today as a society. Dr. Mortenson wrote, “They were in fact just as biased as the scriptural geologists” (Mortenson, 2003, 5/9). In the end the reader is able to clearly and thoroughly understand how Dr. Mortenson feels about naturalism as a whole and how it lets down the whole world because it uses strong scientific evidence against evolution. Dr. Mortenson stated the following in closing, “The only hope for the halt and reversal of the increasing moral decadence and hopelessness in the West and in the East is the return of individuals to God and His Word, which gives us the true history of the world.” (Mortenson 2003)

Weakness

Even though Dr. Mortenson does a nice job of including a variety of scientific evidence for each of the theories that he discusses there are still some flaws/weaknesses in his article. There are several examples of him utilizing vague words to get his point across, which leaves the reader wondering if they can trust the information that is presents. Some of these words are: probably, maybe there were some in continental Europe (Mortenson 2003), and apparently believed. All three of these examples lend themselves to one’s biases one-way or the other.