Geology Reference
In-Depth Information
Buckland was not the only famous geologist to publicly reverse course on the flood. Less
than a decade after Adam Sedgwick marshaled geological observations to show how a re-
cent catastrophe reworked Earth's surface and deposited England's surficial gravels, he re-
canted, in his last presidential address to the Geological Society of London.
There is, I think, one great negative conclusion now incontestably established—that the vast masses of diluvial
gravel, scattered almost over the surface of the earth, do not belong to one violent and transitory period… . We
had, in our sacred histories, the record of a general deluge. On this double testimony it was, that we gave a unity
to a vast succession of phænomena, not one of which we perfectly comprehended, and under the name diluvium,
classed them all together… .
Our errors were, however, natural, and of the same kind which led many excellent observers of a former century
to refer all the secondary formations of geology to the Noachian deluge. Having been myself a believer, and, to the
best of my power, a propagator of what I now regard as a philosophic heresy, and having more than once been
quoted for opinions I do not now maintain, I think it right, as one of my last acts before I quit this Chair, thus pub-
licly to read my recantation.
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With this spirited reversal, Sedgwick joined Lyell in arguing for disentangling geology
from the biblical flood. It was becoming apparent that the stories in Genesis were too short
and mysterious to either confirm or challenge geological theories.
In the 1830s the question was not when Noah's Flood occurred but how many grand
catastrophes the world had seen. Agreement was growing that there was more to Earth's
story than just what the Bible said. Moses did not lay it all out. Many worlds had come
and gone since the dawn of time. Shortly after Buckland's recantation, the Swiss natural-
ist Louis Agassiz explained the surficial debris and stray boulders of northern Europe. The
evidence traditionally interpreted as resulting from a global flood actually recorded the ac-
tion of glaciers that overran Europe during an age of ice, leaving Noah out in the cold.
By the 1850s, Christian men of science overwhelmingly believed Earth was extremely
old. In the decades before Darwin, the failure of a literal interpretation of Genesis to ac-
count for earth history helped create new rifts in Christian philosophy. In the spirit of
Augustine, many Christians adopted the view that geology could help guide reinterpreting
biblical stories. Others, without a background in natural philosophy or geology, came to be
known as scriptural geologists. They either considered a literal interpretation of the Bible
paramount and geology mistaken or embraced the idea that God just made the world look
