Old Earth

¶ … Feminist Hermeneutics and Biblical Studies Terry Mortenson's "The origins of old-earth geology…" is quite an interesting read. The author covers a fair amount of both scientific and religious history in a relatively short amount of text. He writes with a certain scholarly flair, and is discussing pivotal information about the history of the earth and how that has been interpreted by men of different religious convictions. Typically, articles that address these two concepts diametrically oppose them.

To Mortenson's credit he actually bridges these two concepts, and elucidates little known history in the process. Mortenson's work largely details the history of the time-honored debate between what he terms "old-world geologists" and "scriptural geologists" (Mortenson, 2003) regarding an accounting of the earth's history and point of origination. The several men who encompass the former group tended to believe that the earth is much older than the age ascribed to it in the Bible -- particularly the Book of Genesis.

The latter are convinced that the former are wrong and that the Bible's rendering of the earth's origination -- including its founding approximately 6,000 years ago -- is accurate. To the author's credit, he is able to provide both the religious dogma and scientific proofs that each group used to buttress its viewpoints, before siding with the latter and including important social, scientific, and ecclesiastical relevance to this debate in contemporary times. The principle strength of the book is the meticulous nature of Mortenson's research.

He lists several different scientific theorists, their major works, and their theories regarding the history of the earth. In this respect the article provides a deluge of information that all but the most learned geological historians are largely unaware of.

Furthermore, he does not spend all of his time wallowing in events and theories long-since disproved in the 18th and 19th centuries; he provides points of interest drawn from his conclusion that affect the way that science is practiced today (with more than a little bit of faith, according to the author) (Mortenson). Doing so makes this argument germane to modern applications of science and religion, specifically as they relate to the fields of geology. Nonetheless, it is difficult to argue that the strengths of this article outweigh its weaknesses.

Whereas on the one hand the great detail that the author goes into in explicating the various theorists pertaining to geology which addressed the age of the earth is diligent, the lack of structure in the essay greatly makes it seem as though he is maundering. In fact, it is not until the final third of the essay that the author reveals to the reader that his principle point is writing this article is to compare the old-earth geologists with the scriptural geologists.

As such, he risks seeming like a doctrinaire, spouting out a number of different (and obscure) scientists whose theories have long been replaced. More dangers still is the fact that many of the conclusions he reaches about the relationship between science and religion seem dubitable at best. The author's premise, for instance, that these two disciplines affect one another (and that scientists only look for phenomena which confirm there religious.