Deism and Modern Geology

Deism and Modern Geology – Episode 19

Deism and Geology, what does this have to do with geology? This is an important area to study if we are to understand the evolution/creation debate.

The word, Deism comes from a Latin word, deus, meaning god. It was used to describe a particular belief about god that was distinguished from the Greek word used in the New Testament of God, – theos – from which we get the word, theology.

The idea of deism took shape during the Enlightenment (1700 1800s) and was a period of intense challenge for the church. Most deists were part of the church of England but struggled with traditional Christian belief. Many deists were Unitarians, who did not accept the Trinity, the deity of Christ, the Scriptures as inspired writings nor miracles. They believed that Jesus was a good moral teacher only.

In 1795 James Hutton introduced the idea that the Earth was much older than the Bible stated, based on rocks he was studying at Siccar Point, Scotland; to him, long ages was the only way to account for the formation of the rock layers. Hutton developed his own ideas about their formation, calling his new idea, uniformitarianism (uniformity of geologic processes operating the same way and at the same pace throughout all of time). Instead of maintaining the standard that had been established in the Garden several thousand years before, to listen to and trust what God had revealed in the Scriptures, Hutton abandoned it in favor of a totally naturalistic process for explaining the rock layers he saw. So, instead of interpreting the rock layers in light of the historical geology of the Flood, he concluded that the rock layers had been formed over perhaps millions of years, much longer than the Bible’s chronology would allow. This is really the beginning of modern geology.

Deism and Geology:

Uniformitarianism became the bedrock of modern geology, and it involved belief. This meant that geologists would have to jettison the foundational Biblical concepts of a young earth or recent creation and a global flood. Uniformitarianism would serve as the new revelation, and substitute a new religion called Deism. These two faiths, uniformitarianism and Deism were the children of the Enlightenment and the foundation of the new geology we now embrace in our modern culture.

Deism is really a heresy of theism and an intermediate step to the atheism so prevalent in our modern culture. The god of Deism was a god removed from his creation. He did create at some distant time in the past, but then left natural laws to govern his creation. Man no longer needed a god or religious writings to understand Earth history. Man was to use his powers of observation within a naturalistic view of Earth history. This belief would soon be endorsed by the scientific community and taught in science classes as scientific fact.

Deism and Geology, what this have to do with geology? This is an important area to study if we are to understand the evolution/creation debate.Deism has elements of both atheism and theism, but clothes itself in scientific jargon. As a religion, however, Deism has sort of slipped back into the shadows so that it looks like just another religious bygone component of Christianity. But it is here in the form of uniformitarian geology.

Deism is neither an active belief in God nor an active disbelief in God. It allows the conscience to simply deal with God by considering Him irrelevant. And this is what many scientists of that time (1800s) did.

One of the biggest consequences of Deism is what it does with accounts in the Scripture that document God’s direct involvement in His creation. For example, read Psalm 78:43-55, concerning what God did in the land of Egypt when He brought Israel out of Egypt.

When He performed His signs in Egypt and His marvels in the field of Zoan, and turned their rivers to blood, and their streams, they could not drink. He sent among them swarms of flies which devoured them, and frogs which destroyed them. He gave also their crops to the grasshopper and the product of their labor to the locust. He destroyed their vines with hailstones and their sycamore trees with frost. He gave over their cattle also to the hailstones and their herds to bolts of lightning. He sent upon them His burning anger, fury and indignation and trouble, a band of destroying angels. He leveled a path for His anger; He did not spare their soul from death, but gave over their life to the plague, and smote all the firstborn in Egypt, the first issue of their virility in the tents of Ham. But He led forth His own people like sheep and guided them in the wilderness like a flock; He led them safely, so that they did not fear; but the sea engulfed their enemies. So, He brought them to His holy land, to this hill country which His right hand had gained. He also drove out the nations before them and apportioned them for an inheritance by measurement and made the tribes of Israel dwell in their tents.

What is the practical consequence of Deism on Biblical history?

Deism denies this historical account. It treats it as myth.
It denies this account of God’s involvement in history. The account recorded in this passage was an unenlightened scribe’s way of explaining the unexplainable.
It denies the miraculous nature of the events that are recorded in the passage. Since Deism denies the existence of miracles and insists that everything must be explained in terms of naturalistic processes, the whole of God’s nature and even His existence is in question.
It denies the legitimacy of Israel’s appointment to the land apportioned to them by God. As Deism denies the Biblical story of Israel, as secular archaeologists tell us, then Israel has no foundation for their insistence that Israel and Jerusalem belong to them.
As this history, as recorded in this passage, is in doubt, then the whole ascendancy of the Messiah (Jesus) is in doubt. Jesus came out of Israel. If Israel is in question, so is the Messiah. Consequently, the whole Bible is in doubt.

Deism in the guise of uniformitarianism is not a science, but another religion masquerading as scientific geology.

Deism is also a different presentation of history. It is a different story about a different god than the story and the God of the Bible. It is that secular geologists say that the recent history of the Earth (as the Bible teaches) is a myth and cannot be trusted because it cannot be verified by scientific research. And yet, these same geologists ask us to trust their work and their teaching about an alternative Earth history that happened hundreds of millions of years ago, which also cannot be tested or verified by science.

The effects of deism have left their mark on our modern fields of science and history. Modern geology has combined two different subjects, Earth Science and Earth History, to come up with a respectable-looking academic subject. In reality, however, we are learning a religious, atheistic view of Earth history that has earned the respect of the scientific establishment.

Geology

Genesis Rock Solid

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and Bedrock Geology (the book)

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and Bedrock Geology (the kit)

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