Scriptural geologist

[8] Early work in the developing science of geology sought "theories of the Earth" combining mechanical physical laws in the natural philosophy of René Descartes with belief in the global flood as described in Genesis 6-8.[8][10][11] In the 18th century, geologists became convinced that an immense time had been needed to build up the huge thickness of rock strata visible in quarries and cliffs, implying extensive pre-human periods.Although liberalizing churchmen were busily instructing people that the Bible was not intended to teach facts about the natural world, the text of Genesis 1 appeared on the face of it to suggest otherwise, with its bald statements of what had been created when."[25] O'Connor argues that terminology in the 21st-century is a stumbling-block to modern analysis of geologic competence of the scriptural geologists because science today is understood in the language of Lyell and Charles Darwin rather than that of Penn and Fairholme.[8] They have been described as "genteel laymen ... versed in polite literature; clergymen, linguists, and antiquaries—those, in general, with vested interests in mediating the meaning of books, rather than rocks, in churches and classrooms", although a number of them were involved in fossil collecting or scientific endeavours.Historian of science Charles Gillispie chastised a number of them as "men of the lunatic fringe, like Granville Penn, John Faber, Andrew Ure, and George Fairholme, [who] got out their fantastic geologies and natural histories, a literature which enjoyed surprising vogue, but which is too absurd to disinter"."[50] Martin J. S. Rudwick initially dismissed them as mere 'dogmatic irritants', but later discerned a couple of points of consilience: a concern with time and sequence; and an adoption of the pictorial conventions of some scriptural geologists by the mainstream.