by Andrew Sibley

This paper considers the rise of belief in deep time in late 17th- and 18th-century France through the writings of Fontenelle, de Maillet, Comte de Buffon, and Voltaire. Evidence for the biblical Flood was rejected in favour of belief in millions of years of change by these men. Although the first three believed they were working within Descartes’ scientific framework, it is apparent that there were many non-scientific factors at work: a vivid imagination, an interest in Eastern religions, and a willingness to misrepresent facts through deliberate deception. The Cartestian methodology, which is essentially methodological naturalism, also led to a perverse situation: the obvious candidate to account for the flood evidence, the Genesis Flood, was not allowed into the discussion because it was part of a religious text. Leclerc (Comte de Buffon) proposed a purely tranquil Flood, while Voltaire thought even acknowledging the fossil evidence publicly gave too much credence to Flood proponents. This paper offers possible reasons for their seeming desire to undermine Scripture, and points to the importance of upholding the integrity of the Genesis account as part of the Reformation.

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