History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science

by John William Draper

To the same conclusion we are brought if we consider the filling of lakes, the deposit of travertines, the denudation of hills, the cutting action of the sea on its shores, the undermining of cliffs, the weathering of rocks by atmospheric water and carbonic acid.

Sedimentary strata must have been originally deposited in planes nearly horizontal. Vast numbers of them have been forced, either by paroxysms at intervals or by gradual movement, into all manner of angular inclinations. Whatever explanations we may offer of these innumerable and immense tilts and fractures, they would seem to demand for their completion an inconceivable length of time.

The coal-bearing strata in Wales, by their gradual submergence, have attained a thickness of 12,000 feet; in Nova Scotia of 14,570 feet. So slow and so steady was this submergence, that erect trees stand one above another on successive levels; seventeen such repetitions may be counted in a thickness of 4,515 feet. The age of the trees is proved by their size, some being four feet in diameter. Round them, as they gradually went down with the subsiding soil, calamites grew, at one level after another. In the Sydney coal-field fifty-nine fossil forests occur in superposition.

Marine shells, found on mountain-tops far in the interior of continents, were regarded by theological writers as an indisputable illustration of the Deluge. But when, as geological studies became more exact, it was proved that in the crust of the earth vast fresh-water formations are repeatedly intercalated with vast marine ones, like the leaves of a book, it became evident that no single cataclysm was sufficient to account for such results; that the same region, through gradual variations of its level and changes in its topographical surroundings, had sometimes been dry land, sometimes covered with fresh and sometimes with sea water. It became evident also that, for the completion of these changes, tens of thousands of years were required.

To this evidence of a remote origin of the earth, derived from the vast superficial extent, the enormous thickness, and the varied characters of its strata, was added an imposing body of proof depending on its fossil remains. The relative ages of formations having been ascertained, it was shown that there has been an advancing physiological progression of organic forms, both vegetable and animal, from the oldest to the most recent; that those which inhabit the surface in our times are but an insignificant fraction of the prodigious multitude that have inhabited it heretofore; that for each species now living there are thousands that have become extinct. Though special formations are so strikingly characterized by some predominating type of life as to justify such expressions as the age of mollusks, the age of reptiles, the age of mammals, the introduction of the new-comers did not take place abruptly. as by sudden creation. They gradually emerged in an antecedent age, reached their culmination in the one which they characterize, and then gradually died out in a succeeding. There is no such thing as a sudden creation, a sudden strange appearance—but there is a slow metamorphosis, a slow development from a preexisting form. Here again we encounter the necessity of admitting for such results long periods of time. Within the range of history no well-marked instance of such development has been witnessed, and we speak with hesitation of doubtful instances of extinction. Yet in geological times myriads of evolutions and extinctions have occurred.

Since thus, within the experience of man, no case of metamorphosis or development has been observed, some have been disposed to deny its possibility altogether, affirming that all the different species have come into existence by separate creative acts. But surely it is less unphilosophical to suppose that each species has been evolved from a predecessor by a modification of its parts, than that it has suddenly started into existence out of nothing. Nor is there much weight in the remark that no man has ever witnessed such a transformation taking place. Let it be remembered that no man has ever witnessed an act of creation, the sudden appearance of an organic form, without any progenitor.

Abrupt, arbitrary, disconnected creative acts may serve to illustrate the Divine power; but that continuous unbroken chain of organisms which extends from palaeozoic formations to the formations of recent times, a chain in which each link hangs on a preceding and sustains a succeeding one, demonstrates to us not only that the production of animated beings is governed by law, but that it is by law that has undergone no change. In its operation, through myriads of ages, there has been no variation, no suspension.

The foregoing paragraphs may serve to indicate the character of a portion of the evidence with which we must deal in considering the problem of the age of the earth. Through the unintermitting labors of geologists, so immense a mass has been accumulated, that many volumes would be required to contain the details. It is drawn from the phenomena presented by all kinds of rocks, aqueous, igneous, metamorphic. Of aqueous rocks it investigates the thickness, the inclined positions, and how they rest unconformably on one another; how those that are of fresh-water origin are intercalated with those that are marine; how vast masses of material have been removed by slow-acting causes of denudation, and extensive geographical surfaces have been remodeled; how continents have undergone movements of elevation and depression, their shores sunk under the ocean, or sea-beaches and sea-cliffs carried far into the interior. It considers the zoological and botanical facts, the fauna and flora of the successive ages, and how in an orderly manner the chain of organic forms, plants, and animals, has been extended, from its dim and doubtful beginnings to our own times. From facts presented by the deposits of coal-coal which, in all its varieties, has originated from the decay of plants—it not only demon strates the changes that have taken place in the earth's atmosphere, but also universal changes of climate. From other facts it proves that there have been oscillations of temperature, periods in which the mean heat has risen, and periods in which the polar ices and snows have covered large portions of the existing continents—glacial periods, as they are termed.

One school of geologists, resting its argument on very imposing evidence, teaches that the whole mass of the earth, from being in a molten, or perhaps a vaporous condition, has cooled by radiation in the lapse of millions of ages, until it has reached its present equilibrium of temperature. Astronomical observations give great weight to this interpretation, especially so far as the planetary bodies of the solar system are concerned. It is also supported by such facts as the small mean density of the earth, the increasing temperature at increasing depths, the phenomena of volcanoes and injected veins, and those of igneous and metamorphic rocks. To satisfy the physical changes which this school of geologists contemplates, myriads of centuries are required.

But, with the views that the adoption of the Copernican system has given us, it is plain that we cannot consider the origin and biography of the earth in an isolated way; we must include with her all the other members of the system or family to which she belongs. Nay, more, we cannot restrict ourselves to the solar system; we must embrace in our discussions the starry worlds. And, since we have become familiarized with their almost immeasurable distances from one another, we are prepared to accept for their origin an immeasurably remote time. There are stars so far off that their light, fast as it travels, has taken thousands of years to reach us, and hence they must have been in existence many thousands of years ago.