Underground Rivers - University of New Mexico

Chapter 13 -- Hydrotheology/Theohydrology
George Louis Lecrec Buffon (1707-1788), a Catholic, translated
Newton’s Principia into French and directed what was to
become Paris' Museum of Natural History. In Théorie de la
Terre, the first volume of Histoire Naturelle (1749), Buffon
assumed not a geo-central fire, but rather subterranean firehearths
directly linked to volcanoes and earthquakes. It's a
Kircher graphic of Chapter 9.
Buffon argued that the earth was impermeable at a depth
beyond four feet where rainwater stagnates until flowing out as
springs. "Each river is a large lake that stretches out far
underground." is not far from sounding like an alluvial aquifer,
but in this case, he appears to have meant a literal lake.
Nature's service to mankind is proof of God's wisdom. That
underground rivers -- having never been actually observed -- did
not technically qualify as "phenomena" wasn't of concern on
Sunday.
While Anglican William Paley (1743-1805) offered no particular
insight regarding underground waters, we can’t skip his Natural
Theology, or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the
Deity, Collected from the Appearances of Nature (1802) in which
was introduced the famous metaphor of the watchmaker.
When we come to inspect the watch, we perceive... that its
several parts are framed and put together for a purpose, e.g.,
that they are so formed and adjusted as to produce motion,
and that motion so regulated as to point out the hour of the
day; that if the different parts had been differently shaped from
what they are, or placed after any other manner or in any
other order than that in which they are placed, either no
motion at all would have been carried on in the machine, or
none which would have answered the use that is now served
by it... the inference we think is inevitable, that the watch must
have had a maker -- that there must have existed, at some
time and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers who
formed it for the purpose which we find it actually to answer,
who comprehended its construction and designed its use.
If God has taken such care in guiding the machine of nature, how much more must He care for us
wretched sinners!
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