Geology and Revelation: or, the Ancient History of the Earth, considered in the geological facts and revealed religion.Molloy, Gerald
Religion
Geology and Revelation: or, the Ancient History of the Earth, considered in the geological facts and revealed religion.
Molloy, Gerald
Bible and geology; Bible and science
The reader must not think it amiss, in this distribution of the Mosaic
Days, that four out of six are crowded together into one Geological
Age, while each of the other two has an entire Age assigned to
itself. If the Days of Creation were indefinite periods, there is no
incongruity in supposing that one may have corresponded to a longer,
another to a shorter interval in the history of our planet. But, in
truth, our scheme of distribution does not of necessity imply that
the Mosaic Days were periods of unequal length. Geologists do not
pretend that there is even a remote approximation to equality between
the several divisions of Geological time. The three great Epochs are
distinguished from each other by reason of the very marked difference
in the character of their Fossil Remains. And the multiplication
of Periods in each Epoch seems to depend rather upon the degree of
completeness with which the strata of that Age have been examined,
than upon any conjecture as to the probable length of its duration.
Thus, for example, Sir Charles Lyell thinks that, as far as the present
condition of Science affords the means of forming an opinion, almost
any one of the Periods in the Palæozoic Age was as long as all the
Periods of the Tertiary Age taken together.[175]
But there is another and a more serious objection against our
hypothesis. It has been observed more than once that the periods of
Geology are out of harmony with the Days of Genesis, even as regards
the history of Organic life. According to the Scripture narrative
no Organic life appeared upon the Earth previous to the Third Day.
Now the Third Day of Scripture corresponds, in our scheme, with the
Carboniferous Period of Geology. And yet there is abundant evidence
in the Fossil Remains of the Devonian, the Silurian, and the Cambrian
Formations, that Organic life--both plants and animals--prevailed upon
the Earth for many ages before the Carboniferous Period began. Nay,
it is now commonly held, since the discovery of the famous _Eozoon
Canadense_, the oldest known Fossil, that life already existed during
the deposition of the Laurentian Rocks, the earliest of all the
Stratified Formations. Furthermore, in the Mosaic account, Fish are
represented as having been created only on the Fifth Day, which we have
fitted in with the Secondary Age of Geology: whereas in the Geological
Record we find Fish as early as the Silurian Period, which is far back
in the Primary Age. These considerations, and divers others of a like
nature, have been regarded by some eminent writers as altogether fatal
to the hypothesis for which we are contending.
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