A FALLACIOUS ARGUMENT

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 1, 1879

A FALLACIOUS ARGUMENT.

The argument of the vast antiquity of the earth, founded on elevations of coasts at a given rate of upheaval, needs circumscribing, when we reflect that two hundred and fifty years ago Sir Francis Drake’s fleet sailed into Albemarle Sound through Roanoke outlet, which is now a sandbank above the reach of the highest tides, and which only seventy years ago was navigable by vessels drawing twelve feet of water. The coast of South America has in some places been upheaved twenty feet in the last century; in others, depressed to the same extent. So with other arguments. Lyell thinks that the doctrine of the pristine fluidity of the earth, and the gradual consolidation of its crust, is one of the scientific theories which has been adhered to after the props by which it was first supported have given way, one after the other.

Again, geologists vaunt the long periods of time that roll by while the strata are forming, as if they had determined them with mathematical exactness, without reflecting on the fact that vegetables kept for a year and nine months in hot water have been changed into dark lignite; and a cloth, exposed to steam for six years, changed to black and glistening carbon. Moreover, to show how cautious we must be in arguing from these changes the great antiquity of the earth, let us remember that in tropical countries plains may be in a day converted into lagoons and marshes.

Two thousand four hundred years ago Nineveh flourished in all its grandeur; now, its very site is overwhelmed with sand. Old Tyre—the mistress of the sea, the queen of cities, two thousand four hundred and forty years ago—is now a bare rock in the sea, on which fishermen spread their nets. A thousand years ago, Greenland was a fertile and well-peopled land, and Iceland was covered with woods of birch and fir, with waving fields of barley and other grain.

So strange, so complete and comparatively rapid have been the changes wrought on the face of the earth in historical times, that we need no fabulous myriads of years to account for the formation of geological strata. Wisely on points like these, St. Thomas wrote: “In questions of this kind, keep fast to two things: 1. Let the truth of Scripture be held firm and unshaken; 2. When Scripture may be interpreted in more than one way, we must not stick so fast to any one interpretation that, if it be proved that what we held to be the sense of Scripture is false, we should still continue to uphold it; since this causes Scripture to be laughed at by unbelievers, and keeps them out of the way of believing.”—Selected.