The Origin of the World According to Revelation and ScienceDawson, John William, Sir
Religion
The Origin of the World According to Revelation and Science
Dawson, John William, Sir
Bible and science; Religion and science
The arguments from geology in favor of a great antiquity for man may
be summarized thus: (1) Human remains are found in caverns under very
thick stalagmitic crusts, and in deposits of earth which must have
accumulated before these stalagmites began to form, and when the
caverns were differently situated with reference to the local
drainages. (2) Remains of man are found under peat-bogs which have
grown so little in modern times that their antiquity on the whole
must be very great. (3) Implements, presumably made by men, are found
in river-gravels so high above existing riverbeds that great physical
changes must have occurred since they were accumulated. (4) One case
is on record where a human bone is believed to have been found under a
deposit of glacial age. (5) Human remains have been found under
circumstances which indicate that very important changes of level have
taken place since their accumulation. (6) Human remains have been
found under circumstances which indicate great changes of climate as
intervening between their date and that of the modern period. (7) Man
is known to have existed, in Europe at least, at the same time with
some quadrupeds formerly supposed to have been extinct before his
introduction. (8) The implements, weapons, etc., found in the oldest
of these repositories are different from those known to have been used
in historic times.
These several heads include, I think, all the really material evidence
of a geological character. It is evidence of a kind not easily
reducible into definite dates, but there can be no doubt that its
nature, and the rapid accumulation of facts within a small number of
years, have created a deep and widespread conviction among geologists
and archaeologists that we must relegate the origin of man to a much
more remote antiquity than that sanctioned by history or by the
Biblical chronology. I shall first review the character of this
evidence, and then state a number of geological facts which bear in
the other direction, and have been somewhat lost sight of in recent
discussions. Of the facts above referred to, the most important are
those which relate to caverns, peat-bogs, and river-gravels. We may,
therefore, first consider the nature and amount of this evidence.
That the reader may more distinctly understand the geological history
of these more recent periods of the earth's history which are supposed
to have witnessed the advent of man, in Western Europe at least, I
quote the following summary from Sir Charles Lyell of the more modern
changes in that portion of the world. These are:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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