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→Evolutionists vs. Kelvin: rewriting Uniformitarians
|location=New York
|location=New York
|year=2006
|year=2006
|pages=13-18, 39
|pages=13-18, 39,
|isbn=0-8129-6849-2
|isbn=0-8129-6849-2
|url=http://books.google.no/books?id=xzLRvxlJhzkC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Larson+Evolution:+The+Remarkable+History&hl=en&sa=X&ei=PbZfVJugD83vaJengLgI&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=rejected%20Christianity%20&f=false}}</ref>, proposed that the Earth was about 74,832 years old.<ref name="ingv">INGV</ref>
|url=http://books.google.no/books?id=xzLRvxlJhzkC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Larson+Evolution:+The+Remarkable+History&hl=en&sa=X&ei=PbZfVJugD83vaJengLgI&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=rejected%20Christianity%20&f=false}}</ref>, proposed that the Earth was about 74,832 years old.<ref name="ingv">INGV</ref>
[[James Hutton]], while not proposing a date, dismissed the Biblical account and claimed in 1785 that there was not evidence of a beginning at all.<ref name="ingv" />
In the early nineteenth-century, the so called [[uniformitarian]]s conspired to overthrow the [[Biblical chronology]] that would measure geologic time in generations of man.<ref name="Richter">{{cite journal |title=Geological Notes: Kelvin and the Age of Earth |author=F.M. Richter |publisher=Journal of Geology |year=1986 |volume=94 |pages=395-401 |url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/30068713}}</ref> The dictum as a fundamental maxim for their geological speculation was expressed through [[James Hutton]]’s aphorism, who claimed in 1785<ref name="ingv"/> that ''“The revolt, therefore, of this physical inquiry is, that we find no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end.“''{{#tag:ref|cf.[[Singularity#Antipathy_to_the_idea_of_beginning|Antipathy to the idea of beginning]]|group=note}}
[[Charles Lyell]] supported Hutton's idea in 1830, in ''Principles of Geology''.<ref name="ingv" />
[[Charles Lyell]] supported Hutton's idea in 1830, in ''Principles of Geology'' <ref name="ingv" />, a book that later influenced [[Darwin]]. The latter claimed that'' "I always feel as if my books came half out of Lyell's brains"'' and that ''"the great merit of the Principles, was that it altered the whole tone of one's mind & therefore that when seeing a thing never seen by Lyell, one yet saw it partially through his eyes."''<ref>{{cite web |title=Darwin Correspondence Database: Darwin, C. R. to Horner, Leonard 29 Aug 1844 |author=Ch.Darwin |publisher=Darwin Correspondence Project by Cambridge University Library |url=http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/entry-771 |accessdate=May 17, 2015}}</ref>
In 1854 [[Hermann von Helmholtz]] estimated an age of between 20 and 40 million years.<ref name="ingv" />
In 1854 [[Hermann von Helmholtz]] estimated an age of between 20 and 40 million years.<ref name="ingv" />
The doctrine that the Earth was of unlimited age allowed Uniformitarian geologists to evade [[explanation in science|explaining]] any [[phenomenon|phenomena]] by laws of [[physics]] and resort to [[Fog displacement|blurring]] them by ''“reckless drafts on the bank of time”'' instead.
Around the same time [[Lord Kelvin]] put his mind to deriving an age, and came up with a range between 20 million years and 400 million years. He later refined that down to between 20 million and 40 million years.<ref name="ingv" /> More recent discoveries of radioactivity and mantle convection explain why the assumptions Helmholtz and Kelvin made resulted in dates that are much lower than current uniformitarian estimates.
Around the same time [[Lord Kelvin]] put his mind to deriving an age, and came up with a range between 20 million years and 400 million years. He later refined that down to between 20 million and 40 million years.<ref name="ingv" /> More recent discoveries of radioactivity and mantle convection explain why the assumptions Helmholtz and Kelvin made resulted in dates that are much lower than current uniformitarian estimates.