From: Glenn Morton (glenn.morton@btinternet.com)
Date: Fri Jan 31 2003 - 01:20:41 EST
>However, it is important not to project the situation in 20th/21st
>century America onto 19th century Britain.
>Comparisons tend to do so, when it is often the contrast that is
>important. Science was immensely popular in 19th
>century Britain, scientific literancy was probably higher than in
>the US at present.
Jon, it is equally important not to confuse lack of publication with lack of
existence in significant numbers. There can be lots of reasons for lack of
publishing. If the editors were eductated, they would be less willing to
publish. Secondly, the uneducated poor who might have believed YEC were a
poor market for books, not being able to buy many thus leaving no market for
the product. Just because one doesn't see the earthworms doesn't mean they
aren't there.
But the YECs did exist in significant numbers. Hugh Miller cites many in his
book and spent 1/10 of his 1857 book arguing against them. Why would he do
that if they were so non-existent?
I would cite Strachan from England from 1852 as a YEC who illustrates some
pretty bad logic but he was there in that generation and was publishing:
“If the Mosaic narrative be rejected, then we must believe that the world
was 3600 years without any written account of its own origin and of the
supervision exercised, over the affairs of men, by Divine Providence. Now I
ask the unbeliever himself, whether this be at all probable?” Rev. Alexander
Strachan, The Antiquity of the Mosaic Narrative, (Burnley: Thomas Sutcliffe,
c. 1852), p. 57-58
The latest reference in that book is to Hitchcock's 1851 Religion of
Geology so I believe this book is in the 1850s. This guy also favorably
cites Granville Penn. Scientifically literate people and non-YECs don't do
that.
glenn
see http://www.glenn.morton.btinternet.co.uk/dmd.htm
for lots of creation/evolution information
anthropology/geology/paleontology/theology\
personal stories of struggle
>
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