Creationism - National Center for Science Education

devotes much of his book to the moral and civic lessons which are to be derived from the
study of God’s work in nature, Bible prophecy as a study similar and parallel to science,
and the revelation of God in geology and physiology. Woodman defends the old
“Neptunist” theory of earth history—that the geological strata were deposited out of the
ocean—the Flood—, and ridicules the “Plutonic” theory of volcanic origin of geological
deposits (though both these two rival theories were already quite obsolete among
geologists). Woodman compares the absurdity of supposing that the earth’s interior is
molten with:
that credulity of the ancients, who placed hell in the center of the earth, and made it consist of literal fire;
who turned our Saviour’s figures of speech into corporeal realities, made the gospel repulsive with the
thought of unnecessary physical torture. [1875:283]
Volcanoes are caused by underground combustion of coal and oil, he explains.
Woodman never mentions Darwin or contemporary theories of evolution, but does deny
that life could have originated without creation by God. The truth about origins is
revealed in the Bible; “The development theory contradicts universal observation.”
The Jamieson, Fausset and Brown Critical and Explanatory Commentary on the
Old and New Testaments (1871) is strongly accommodationist: the authors strive to
accept the findings of science without, however, elevating them above Scripture. Rather
than condemning scientists for being anti-religious, they accept their conclusions
regarding the age of the earth and of life (they harmonize this with Genesis by advocating
Gap Theory creationism.) In Jamieson’s “Introduction to the Mosaic Account of
Creation” in the 3-volume edition, he warns that some scientific interpretations may be
wrong, however, and he shuns the full uniformitarian view. We should beware of
arraying certain immature speculations against Scripture. But the “thoroughly
established principles of Geological Science” are in “perfect unison” with the Mosaic
account. Facts discovered by science must always agree with the Bible, as God’s Divine
Word cannot be contradicted by true science. Jamieson, a Presbyterian minister in
Scotland, says that the Bible is concerned with religion; the province of science is “to
deal with the facts drawn exclusively from the volume of nature: and these facts...will be
found to prove the truth, and give strong confirmation to the statements contained in the
Mosaic account of Creation.” The Jamieson, Fausset and Brown Commentary is still
highly regarded by many fundamentalists.
Edward Hitchcock, the distinguished Amherst College geologist, sought to prove
the compatibility of the Bible and modern science in works such as The Connection
Between Geology and the Mosaic Account of the Creation (1836), and endorsed Gap
Theory creationism as a means of reconciling the two. In The Historical and Geological
Deluges Compared (1837) and in his best-selling textbook Elementary Geology (1841,
with several editions up to 1871), he showed that sedimentary deposits are far too deep to
have all been caused by the biblical Flood, which effected upper layers only. In The
Religion of Geology and Its Connected Sciences (1851), a tremendously popular book,
Hitchcock eloquently argued for the unity of truth of both science and theology, as
opposed to the view of separate domains of truth for each. He stresses that religion
should have nothing to fear from modern science, not because they deal with separate
domains, but because the truths of science must harmonize with biblical truth, since God
is the author of both nature and Scripture. “Scientific truth is religious truth.” It is a