Geology versus Genesis

Until the 19th century, Christians generally believed that the Earth and all species had been created by God in six days, as written in the Book of Genesis in the Bible. Archbishop Ussher of York had calculated that this took place in 4004 B.C., making the Earth about 6000 years old. Fossils were understood to be the remains of living things which had perished in Noah's Flood.

By the time the Dura Den fossils were discovered in 1836, a geological controversy was raging which radically changed these traditional ideas and led to an even wider debate about evolution.

Theories challenging the traditional view were put forward in the late 18th century by French naturalist Buffon, German geologist Werner and the Scottish 'founder of modern geology' James Hutton. Hutton's Theory was the most significant, proving that the immense changes which had occurred on the Earth's surface would have required a much longer period of time. The leading enlightened scientists came to accept this idea, yet a traditional belief in Creation prevailed

The study of rocks and fossils became increasingly popular during the first half of the 19th century and the existence of thousands of extinct species became apparent. William Smith, the 'father of English geology', began to work out the relative ages of rock strata from the characteristic fossils they contained. The evidence could not be explained by a great flood, nor by the series of catastrophes proposed by biologists Cuvier and Buckland.

Scottish geologist Charles Lyell made the next important step forward in his Principles of Geology (1830-33). He expanded on Hutton's theory, showing that the Earth's surface was shaped by slow continual processes like erosion which could account for the geological record.
 

Photograph of Charles Darwin. Courtesy of the University of St Andrews Library Special Collections.
Charles Darwin
Courtesy of the University of St. Andrews Library,
Special Collections		 Because the geological evidence contradicted the Genesis story, it became the centre of heated debate, especially in Britain. One newspaper announced, 'Geology has the devil for its author'. Doubting the Bible was a serious matter and those making the scientific progress at first found themselves to be 'fish out of water'. Many people had a crisis of conscience and struggled to reconcile their beliefs with the new science. Some arrived at a compromise in which the six-day Creation was thought to be a symbolic account of six much longer epochs of time.

This controversy of the 1830s - 1850s, argued in newspapers, sermons and at dinner tables, was extremely important in 'preparing minds' for the evolutionary theory of Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace. It had undermined the literal acceptance of the Bible which had hampered scientific research into the origins of Earth and species.

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