04-17-2021, 06:53 PM
Let us turn to the anti-creationist ‘hostile witnesses’ Wikipedia and National Geographic for our evidence, in the hope that it will be less easily dismissed (emphases ours throughout).
Quote:“ ‘Theory of the Earth’ was a publication by James Hutton which laid the foundations for geology. In it he showed [!?] that the Earth is the product of natural forces. What could be seen happening today, over long periods of time, could produce what we see in the rocks. It also hypothesized that the age of the Earth was much older than what biblical literalists claim. This idea, uniformitarianism, was used by Charles Lyell in his work, and Lyell’s textbook was an important influence on Charles Darwin.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_the_Earth)
Quote:“ ‘Principles of Geology: being an attempt to explain the former changes of the Earth's surface, by reference to causes now in operation’ is a book by the Scottish geologist Charles Lyell that was first published in 3 volumes from 1830 - 1833 … The book established Lyell’s credentials as an important geological theorist and popularized the doctrine of uniformitarianism (first suggested by James Hutton in ‘Theory of the Earth’ published in 1795).
The book is notable for being one of the first to use the term ‘evolution’ in the context of biological speciation. In Lyell’s work, he described the three rules he believes to cause the steady change of the Earth. The first rule is that geologic change comes from slow and continual procedures that have been happening over a long period of time. This rule is the basic ideal of Uniformitarianism […] Lyell’s interpretation of geologic change as the steady accumulation of minute changes over enormously long spans of time, a central theme in the Principles, influenced the 22-year-old Charles Darwin, who was given the first volume of the first edition by Robert FitzRoy, captain of HMS Beagle, just before they set out (December 1831) on the ship’s second voyage. […]
Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology was met with a lot of criticism when it was first published. The main argument against Lyell is that he took an a priori approach in his work. This means that Lyell was pulling from a theoretical idea instead of pulling from empirical evidence to explain what was occurring in the geological world. One opponent of Principles of Geology [on] this point was Adam Sedgwick [who argued] that the evidence of geologic events points to a catastrophic event.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principles_of_Geology)
Quote:“The principle of uniformitarianism is essential to understanding Earth’s history. However, prior to 1830, uniformitarianism was not the prevailing theory. […] Among the scientists who agreed with Hutton was Charles Lyell. […] The combined efforts of Lyell and Hutton became the foundation of modern geology. Charles Darwin, the founder of evolutionary biology, looked at uniformitarianism as support for his theory of how new species emerge. The evolution of life, he realized, required vast amounts of time, and the science of geology now showed Earth was extremely old.”(https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyc...itarianism)