The Christian Origin of Science becomes quite clear when we study the history of science, and we see that until very recently, scientists interpreted the data in light of the Bible. Until the time of Darwin, biologists were creationists, and until the time of Charles Leyell, geological data were interpreted in light of the Flood of Noah's time.
For example, Nicolaus Steno (1638-1686), the distinguished scientist who discovered the circulation of the blood in the human body and who discovered the law of crystallography known as "the law of constancy of interfacial angles," also upheld the Biblical story of Noah's Flood in his work, A Treatise on a Solid Body Enclosed By Natural Process Within a Solid (1669).
The Flood was also upheld by Jacobus Grandius of Venice, who wrote About the Truth of the Universal Deluge and the Remains Which Are Found At Great Distance From the Sea (1676), in which he stated that the remains of marine shells in the Alps were a result of the Deluge.
In 1681, Thomas Burnet wrote A Sacred Theory of the Earth, according to which the Deluge was largely responsible for the present formation of the earth. Later, John Woodward wrote a book on the Deluge, An Essay Toward A Natural Theory of the Earth (1695), which observes that there are fossils of all forms of life in many different places, and in many types of rock. There are sea shells, teeth, and bones of fishes buried in different sorts of strata, not only in chalk, clay, and marl, but even in solid stone. Deposits of sea life are visible at the bottoms of the deepest mines and at the tops of the highest mountains, sometimes in unusual bulk and quantity. There are shells buried in the earth that are not the product of neighboring seas, but of seas a great distance away. The stratified rocks of Greenland contain fossils of ferns, oaks, magnolias, cinnamons, ginkos and breadfruits, even though these plants cannot grow in Greenland's climate. Woodward's explanation for all of this is that a universal flood at the time of Noah brought about this distribution of the fossils.
John Harris wrote in 1697 that "all sober and judicious men are now convinced that the exuviae of sea animals, so plentifully found at this day in the strata of the earth, and in the most hard and solid stone and marble, are the lasting proof of the Deluge itself and of its universality."1
In 1708, J. J. Scheuchzer of Switzerland wrote a book entitled Complaint and Vindication of the Fishes, describing and providing good illustrations of fossil fish found in rocky layers of the Alps, and arguing that they were entombed by the Flood. He wrote that the bent strata of the Alps were originally horizontal and much lower, and that they became bent when that part of the earth was elevated to cause the waters of the Deluge to run off. At that time the strata cracked in many places, and the immense waters flowing away widened and deepened the cracks to form the great Alpine valleys.
In Germany, D. S. Buttners wrote Signs and Witnesses of the Flood (1710), and Fossil Corals (1714), in which he argued that, entombed all over the earth as a result of the Flood were leaves, shells, animal bones and fish. Buried trees had become coal, and the earth before the Deluge was a beautiful thing.
In A New Theory of the Earth (1696), William Whiston of Cambridge wrote that the destruction of the earth by the Flood "is evident by the vast number of shells and other very strange things buried at the Deluge and enclosed in the bowels of the present earth and of its most solid and compact bodies."2
John Hutchinson, author of Moses' Principles (1749), believed that the order in which the various kinds of strata repose on one another in the earth is the result of the flow of tidal waves flowing in varying directions and leaving the earth bare at different times as the waters of the Deluge receded.
Patrick Cockburn, in An Enquiry Into The Truth and Certainty of the Mosaic Deluge (1750), stated that there was certainly enough water in the ocean and inside the earth to cover the earth's surface, while Alexander Catcott's book, A Treatise on the Deluge (1761), argued that the strata of mountain areas were originally continuous, and formed level plains or plateaus. Catcott compared the strata with the broken walls of a castle, which, if partially demolished, would imply that the vacant places in the walls were once filled up with similar substances and were continuous with the rest of the wall. Because the strata in some of the highest ridges of mountains are positioned horizontally, some mountains were formed as a result of the process of erosion, while others were formed by uplifting and erosion. He maintained that the cores of some mountains are the relics of the prediluvian earth, and that the features of the landscape are just such as the waters of the Flood would cause in a final retreat from the earth. He wrote:
You will find the moose-deer, native of America, buried in Ireland; elephants, natives of Asia and Africa, buried in the midst of England; crocodiles, natives of the Nile, in the heart of Germany; shell-fish, never known in the American seas, together with the entire skeletons of whales, in the most inland regions of England; trees of vast dimensions, with their roots and their tops, and some also with leaves and fruit, at the bottom of mines . . . The pyramids of Egypt are reckoned to be some of the most ancient structures of the world, and yet the stones of which these pyramids consist about with fossil marine shells and coral.3
John Williams, in The Natural History of the Mineral Kingdom (1789), said a great deal about the formation of coal during the time of the flood. He wrote:
Coal has a very obvious and striking appearance of being composed of vegetable substances. I have frequently seen evidently the grain and other characters of wood in several coals . . . the antediluvian [pre-Flood] timber was the original [origin] of coal.4
Williams noticed that the coal strata appeared to be "formed by the flowing of successive tides."5 He wrote:
I have already made it pretty evident that the greatest part of the surface of the earth, before the Deluge, was covered with a luxuriant growth of tall timber, that this antediluvian timber is the origin of our pit- coal; and that it was a sufficient and an adequate source of all coals in the world. I am of the opinion that the antediluvian timber floated upon the chaos, or waters of the deluge, until the strata of the highest mountains were formed, with much of the other strata in our sight, and that during the height of the Deluge, and at the time when the greatest part of the strata were forming, the timber was preparing and being fitted for being deposited in strata of coal.6
The various strata were laid down by successive tides of the waters of the Flood:
The very part of the globe where a particular part of the stratum was made, began to be dry land before the next tide brought with it the matter which produced that stratum, and so on, stratum super stratum, tide after tide, until all the strata were completed. And perhaps higher and lower, stronger and weaker tides, might have been the cause of thicker and thinner strata.7
The pressure of the higher strata upon the lower strata then forced the water out, causing breaks in the higher strata in many places. "A great quantity of water forcing its way out would make a large passage, and the violent manner in which this passage was made would greatly disturb and distort the strata about the rupture."8
Thus, by the time of the late eighteenth century, it was considered a majority view that the geological phenomena were best explained by a universal Flood in Noah's time. In England, Brander wrote as follows in 1766:
Various opinions have been entertained concerning the time when and how these bodies (fossils) became deposited. Some there were who conceive that it might have been effected in a wonderfully length of time by a gradual changing and shifting of the seas, etc. But the most common cause assigned is that of the Deluge.9
Byron C. Nelson refers to the early nineteenth century as a period of waning for the Flood theory of geology, because the control of education in Europe and America passed gradually out of the hands of people of great religious faith, who believed strongly in the Bible, and into the hands of those who were either lacking in religious convictions, or who were secretly or even openly hostile to the Bible.10
Similar statements could be made with respect to many other disciplines. As a result, the leadership of Western culture fell into the hands of those who presupposed that the Bible was not to
1 Quoted by Byron C. Nelson, The Deluge Story In Stone (Minneapolis, Minn.: Bethany Fellowship, 1968), p. 51.
2 Quoted in Ibid., p. 52.
3 Quoted by Ibid., p. 66.
4 Quoted by Ibid., pp. 74-76.
5 Quoted by Ibid., p. 77.
6 Quoted by Ibid., pp. 77-78.
7 Quoted by Ibid., pp. 78-79.
8 Ibid., p. 79.
9 Quoted by Ibid., p. 81.
10 Ibid., p. 83.
