The Great Turning Point: The Church's Catastrophic Mistake on Geology--Before Darwin

by Terry Mortenson

Book Overview

Many people in the Church today have the idea that “young-earth” creationism is a fairly recent invention, popularized by fundamentalist Christians in the mid-20th century. Is this view correct? In... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0890514089
• ISBN13: 9780890514085
• Release Date: September 2004
• Publisher: Master Books
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 1.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 8.4" x 11.0"

Customer Reviews

Fine Historical Overview

This is an important book. It deserves to be read by those interested in the debate between creationists of all stripe-Young Earth and Old Earth Creationists alike. Some OEC and secular evolutionists have charged that the Young Earth approach is relatively recent. They comment that the Creationist revival of the past forty years has been largely fueled by the recycling of ideas popularized by George MacReady Price in the early 1900s. This book conclusively refutes this myth. Terry Mortenson is well qualified to address this subject He has his Ph.D in the history of geology from Coventry University in England and has done extensive research in the early literature by and concerning the scriptural geologists. The book starts off with a short historical overview of those in earlier centuries who believed in a straight forward view of Genesis that points to a recent creation and a global catastrophic flood. Early church fathers like Tertullian, Chrysostom and Augustine are mentioned as well as 17th and 18th century scientists like Niels Steenson (Steno), John Woodward, William Whiston, Alexander Catcott and others who advocated a recent creation and a worldwide deluge. During this periods others argued for a more ancient date for the formation of the earth and denied that the Biblical Flood was significant in producing much of the Earth's sedimentary and fossil bearing geological deposits. Mortenson is careful to set the historical context for what comes next. Through thorough and meticulous research that was the foundation for his doctrinal dissertation Mortenson has amassed a wealth of data that points out principled and intelligent opposition to the forceful tide of geological uniformitarian that was sweeping academic circles in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. This tide was largely stimulated by the works of James Hutton and Charles Lyell. This opposition was carried by by those who would come to be known as Scriptural Geologists. The main portion of the book is dedicated to an examination of the these Scriptural geologists. Most chapters contains a brief biography of each individual, how they viewed scripture and geology and their views of creation and the flood. The author goes to length to examine the qualifications each man had in order to write competently on scriptural and geological subjects. Since the science of geology was in its infancy in the first half of the 19th century qualifications are far different than they are now. Two criteria are used to judge the credentials of these scholars. One was a knowledge of the geological literature of the period and the other was field experience. The men Mortenson examines fair well in these areas and compare favorably to their early uniformitarian opponents. Some were competent theologians like George Young, George Bugg, and others were well known scientists like John Murray, William Rhind, and Andrew Ure. Each of these men wrote well reasoned books and other publications expressing t

When "scientists" first got too big for their britches

This book seeks to counter the rantings of contemporaries of the Scriptural geologists of the early 19th century, repeated by later historians, who unfairly belittled the Scriptural geologists as being entirely ignorant nonscientists. It shows that several Scriptural geologists were about as qualified as anyone at the time to write on geological matters, and that they all made valid points. In the process, he touches on how little education and experience in geology Hutton, Lyell, Buckland, and other well-known geologists of the time had, and how little geological data there was to go on. The title is, perhaps, a bit misleading, as it seems that if there had been a turning point it came a bit earlier. The work of the scriptural geologists came a bit late and was too little to influence enough people to stem the already-rising tide of naturalistic thought that had conquered the young field of geology. It wasn't so much that there was a turning point, but the scriptural geologists' work represented one last warning against the unbridled scientism, uniformitarianism, and philosophical naturalism that would inevitably lead to Darwinism. Unfortunately, the slide down the slippery slope had begun a long time earlier with small, harmless steps. By the time of the scriptural geologists in the early 1800s, so many little steps had been taken that many influential people had already placed human reason above the clear words of Scripture in matters that should have been considered beyond the scope of science. By 1840, three major Christian geologists had recanted their belief in a global Flood. Mortenson also documents a number of commentaries on the Bible from the period of 1639 to 1856, showing the prevalence of the young Earth, six 24-hour day creation viewpoint.

Important History

This book is about the dawn of geology as a science in England. It recounts the early days when men first started studying the earth's crust and recording and interpreting their observations. Soon, many of these pioneers began to arrange these observations into theories about the history of earth. These theories became the center of much controversy at the time. It is this controversy and a forgotten group of men, the `Scriptural Geologists', who were involved in it that this book focuses on. In the early 1800s, geology did not exist as a profession. At the time, many who had the time and money began to study the earth's crust. Among these men, there were three main groups; 1) materialists who insisted on interpreting geology exclusively in terms of natural processes at rates of occurrence observable in the present; 2) clergymen who spent much of their spare time doing geology; 3) a group of men, dubbed `Scriptural Geologists' by their opponents, who insisted on the integrity of Genesis 1-11 as a broad framework within which to interpret geological observations. The materialist camp was divided into uniformitarians and catastrophists. The former postulated that natural processes had always proceeded at the same gradual pace they witnessed in their day. The latter added periodic cataclysms to this picture. Both envisioned untold eons of time - millions upon millions of years. Meanwhile, the `Scriptural Geologists' vehemently disagreed with the materialists' theories (both uniformitarian and catastrophic). They did so for three main reasons; 1) geological science was still in its infancy; it was much to early to be posing any theories of earth history; 2) the few observations and facts that were available were contradicted the idea of millions of years; and 3) `millions of years' theories undermined Genesis (and therefore the Gospel) and would lead to profound moral and social decay. These men, some of whom were eminently qualified in geology and others who were merely astute observers, published widely. Their books included in depth analysis of geological observations and theories. Further, they demonstrated empirically why Genesis was a sound framework within which geological theories could and should be developed. So, what of the clergymen-geologists? Most, in not all, were in full agreement with the materialist theories. However, they realized that this put them in a quandary. The book of Genesis clearly taught an earth history of thousands , as opposed to millions, of years interrupted about 4,500 years ago by a violent global flood. They tried to have their cake and eat it too. In order to harmonize these mutually exclusive approaches to earth history, they had to find the millions of years that were missing from the first three chapters of Genesis. Scripture-twisting commenced, and thus were born the Gap Theory, the Day-Age theory and various ideas about local floods or tranquil global floods. These clergymen joined with the materialists