Renewed greeting, Jim.
Your statement above regarding a "uniformitarian position" may be true of
Glen, but it is not true as a general statement. The Rev. William
Buckland, Professor of Geology at Oxford in the early 19th century is the
most famous geologist attempting to support Noah's Flood as a geological
event. This was most completely stated in Reliquiae Diluvianae (Relics of
the Flood) in 1822. He later abandoned a global flood as his offered
evidence was found to have better explanations. The Rev. Adam Sedgwick,
Professor of Geology at the same time at Cambridge, recanted support for a
global flood in his Presidential Address to the Geological Society of
London in 1830. Both of these men were creationists and explicit opponents
of uniformitarianism. In the Address by Sedgwick noted above, Sedgwick
praised the general quality of Lyell's just-printed Principles of Geology
except for its uniformitarianism, which he specifically denounced. A
general rejection of a global flood can be found in the geological
literature of the 1830's onward. Although Lyell's book was also published
at this time, all the leading catastrophist geologists had abandoned
support for the Flood, while also rejecting Lyell's uniformitarianism.
Don Frack
dcfrack@sowest.net