Scientism and geology. Georges Cuvier and proofs from the 19th century about ‘catastrophism’ and the short timeline of human history.
There is little doubt that Cuvier was essentially correct. Human history is a recent phenomenon and quite likely divorced from the Earth's history.
Abstract
Scientism has preached for at least 200 years that the Earth is of an endless age. ‘Everyone knows’ that the Earth is supposedly 4 billion years old, and that the universe is 13.7 billion years of age. The religious cry is that our endless history is steady and slow and ‘the current world we see is the key to the past’, meaning eternal time and stasis. There is precious little proof to support such declarations. Uniformitarianism is unsupported by observational reality as discussed below. As posted previously, long age declarations based on C-14, isotopes and isochrony simply do not pass scrutiny. The Big Bang has long been in big trouble and will simply die off as a reigning paradigm, as will much of the special theory of relativity. Long ages as a paradigm, regardless of the mountains of studies and expostulations to the contrary, is ineluctably collapsing.
Evolution needs deep time to be even remotely credible as a metaphysical project given that objective science has long ago disproved it. Within the Church of Darwin, Time is the Father. When I grew up the Earth was 400 million years old. Now we are into the low billions. There is every reason to expect the Earth to be re-aged past 10 billion years, based on incorrectly interpreted cosmological assessments of light waves (or redshift), and a disavowal of time dilation and the difference between Earth and cosmological time. Rock-aging will likewise be adjusted upwards based on supernatural incantations of isochrony and isotopic magic.
Within this unknowable, unaccountable philosophy of endless time ‘anything can happen’, including nothing becoming you. No human can actually fathom what the number 1 billion means. If you stacked $1 bills to total $1 billion, the height would reach 100 kilometres. Who can comprehend or visualise that? 4 billion, or 14 billion is impossible to put into perspective or to elaborate as a conceptual design. The number might as well be 4 trillion or 4 gazillion brazilians. No one understands such vastness. Yet we are to believe such massive age calculations based on the flimsiest of evidence because ‘geology’ or ‘cosmology’ says so.
Geology as a science is quite raw and new, dating from the 17th century at best (physics can be traced back to the 13th century), with much of it open to question. Geology is not a monolithic set of acknowledged facts. Most of geology’s findings and ‘facts’ are entirely open to question. Different interpretations and conclusions exist in every area of investigation, rendering geology far less a science, and far more of a philosophical endeavour. Your worldview will frame what you see. If the worldview of geologists is the Lyell-Darwinian uniformitarian philosophy of endless time, and if that theology is the provenance of funding and power, it is rather easy to surmise what conclusions will fall out of observations.
Age failures
Geology is however riven with problems. Some notable failures of long-age geological ‘science’ include:
1. C14: there should be no carbon-14 in coal, oil, or diamonds that are millions, or even billions, of years old, but c-14 is consistently detected above background levels. Its half life is maybe 5700 years. C-14 should not be present in any meaningful way in artefacts dating to be ‘millions’ of years in age. Yet it is found in sizeable quantities in coal, oil and diamonds.
2. Continental erosion: continents should be rising due to processes of land creation, but the reality is the opposite, continents are eroding at >1 mm per year and would not exist after millions of years. North America would have disappeared long before 10 million years at present erosion rates.
3. Planation: or ‘flattish’ surfaces should not exist on exposed ranges or mountains, or rock types of varying hardness, if endless time was true, due to erosion. Yet the opposite is viewed around the world.
4. Layers: flat-gaps or para-conformities should be rare due to the extended timeframe of deposition of the layers, which should mean that there is ample time for erosion of the surfaces of underlying formations. However, the boundaries between layers often show no signs of erosion. Flat gaps are common.
5. Folding: there should be little evidence of large-scale folding of soft sediments involving many strata. This is not what is observed (eg Grand Canyon). Extensive folded sedimentary rocks are found around the world which means that they were soft when folded. This is impossible within a uniformitarian process.
6. Global strata: sedimentary strata should have limited geographical extent due to the localized nature of depositional processes (i.e. no global flooding cataclysms). The opposite is viewed. Continent-wide sedimentary formations are common, even extending between continents and some are global. In fact, there are 6 sequential ‘mega-sequences’ in fossil-bearing strata that are global in extent.
7. Bioturbation: the mixing of sediments due to the activity of marine organisms, called ‘bioturbation’ should be obvious and evident in the fossil bearing strata (called Phanerozoic). Marine burrowing animals mix sediments to many cm within hours. If these layers were deposited very slowly, over endless time, there should be no evident layering. The reality is however the opposite, the layers are clear and there is no admixture.
The above when allied with the previous analysis on the incoherency and false claims of long ages due to c-14, isotopes and isochrony testing, should make it clear that geology is hardly a ‘settled science’. There is precious little evidence for long ages regardless of what the contrived internet search engine returns or the programmed generative-AI chat issues forth.
Cuvier the Catastrophist
Not many have heard of the great Georges Cuvier (1769-1832), the late 18th and early 19th century geologist, biologist, palaeontologist and ossiferous-fossil expert. Cuvier would not have been surprised by the list given above. He understood that ‘science’ was on terra-infirma when it came to geological interpretations. The evidence he viewed and analysed, namely that of ‘catastrophism’ in the form of fossils and the geological formation of the world around us, has never been disproven. Indeed, Cuvier’s claims have only been strengthened and supported with ‘modern’ techniques and methods. Cuvier’s program, based on the fossil and geological evidence he saw can be summarised in 3 points:
1. The age of man is recent and young, no evidence whatsoever, fossil, tool, or cultural, indicates that men have existed for 4 million years, or even 200.000.
2. The age of the Earth might well be indeterminate or of a very long age, but this long age is divorced from the young history of mankind (or it-kind in the modern era)
3. Catastrophic disasters and upheavals in the past have created what we see around us, no ‘evolutionary’ or ‘uniformitarian’ process could possibly have created the natural world, nor the millions of fossils embedded only in certain layers (sedimentary) of the geological record
The above list has never really been controverted or disproven. They are simply ignored by Scientism. It should be stated that Cuvier was not a ‘young earth creationist’. At best he was a lukewarm French Protestant or Huguenot, and he never wrote about or issued support for the Genesis flood. He was politically astute and usually impartial. He served Napoleon as a noted state-funded scientist, as efficiently as he served the post-Napoleonic regime. His Christianity centred on social mores and a belief in the charity, alms giving and forgiveness of Christianity. He did not undertake science to prove (or disprove) Biblical teaching. His own daughter prayed for his ‘conversion’ to a more intense and orthodox variety of Protestantism which indicates a private man with private devotions and a personal belief system.
Fossil records
Cuvier was probably the most important pioneer on fossil research. His analysis of fossilised mammals led him into the new science of geology. Cuvier argued quite rightly for the reality of extinction, and he linked this with a view of geological change that stressed the effects of occasional sudden physical events or ‘catastrophes’ at the Earth's surface.
Cuvier was not the first to propound this kind of ‘catastrophism’ (as it was later termed), but his arguments gave it powerful support, and this approach which supports what we have on this planet, is back in vogue after a long absence. Cuvier’s idea of violent catastrophism is similar to the claims of older savants such as Dolomieu, Saussure, and Deluc. Catastrophism was thus not an isolated crank theory of Cuvier’s but a well-established discipline, containing empirical evidence and well-worn investigations.
Based on Cuvier’s first-hand analysis and comparison of fossil evidence he claimed the following as written in his 1812 opus, financed by Napoleon, ‘Recherches Sur Les Ossemens-fossiles’ (Researches on Fossil Bones):
1. Since the oldest rocks were devoid of fossils, life had not existed eternally
2. Not only had dry land emerged from the sea, but also that the sea had invaded the land (eruptions of catastrophic activity)
3. There had been a sequence of different forms of life over periods of time
4. Some changes in life-forms had been sudden and could not have been caused by any physical agency currently at work (morphological transformation by chance over time was impossible, new structures were somehow created at once)
Cuvier followed his French predecessor and eminent scientist Buffon in dividing the history of the Earth into several epochs or periods. This aligned to his theory expressed above that the Earth had gone through many ages. This comports with Velikovsky’s analysis in Earth in Upheaval, where he cites cultural references from around the globe which propose that the Earth has endured many ages (usually 6 or 7, imitating that of Greek theology, itself partially premised on the Babylonian and Sumerian religions). Einstein was quite impressed by this approach and was eventually convinced by Velikovsky’s work. For most ancient cultures a singular ‘age of the Earth’ ended in a flood, in fire, a cosmic catastrophe, or a combination of these forces.
Cuvier maintained that:
1. Initially in the long-lost past there had been a primal universal ocean, which precipitated the Primary rocks.
2. Life had arisen when continents were formed, though Cuvier (and Buffon) offer no theory as to how (or why) life arose.
3. The present continents, Cuvier argued, were not immeasurably ancient, and might have emerged from the sea no more than ten thousand years ago (the Hindus believed the Himalayas are 3.000 years old, similar ages have been estimated for the Andes, Rockies, and European Alps).
4. There was (and is) no evidence to support a transformist view or evolutionist view of life. Human and animal mummies showed there had been no organic change since the time of the ancient Egyptians.
5. There was (and is) no evidence of a gradual change between fossil and living animal species; on the contrary, all the evidence pointed to the reality of extinction. No human fossils were known (or are known today), and certainly no simian to human intermediary species-fossils had been found (or have been found).
The above are not only still valid today, but almost endlessly validated. In 200 years, the idea of ‘transformation’ or evolution which long proceeded the metaphysical exegesis (interpretation of evolutionary scripture) penned by Darwin, has encountered nothing but failure in the fossil record and layers. Not a single transitional species or fossil has been found, nor will one ever be found for the simple scientific reason that no such creatures have ever existed.
Accessible science
In his speeches and in his books, Cuvier clearly expressed his theories in simple terms, allowing the lay person to read and comprehend the new and exciting worlds of fossils and geological investigation.
(Cuvier, italics, bold is mine) Whether one digs into the plains, or penetrates caves in the mountains, or climbs their torn flanks, one encounters everywhere the remains of organism’s, embedded in thick beds that form the outer crust of the globe. Immense masses of shells are found at great distances from any sea, and at heights that it would be impossible for seas to reach today; beds of shale contain fish; seams of coal display the imprints of plants at heights or depths that are equally striking. But what is still more surprising is the disorder that reigns in the accumulation of these objects: here, shelly beds are covered by others that contain only plants; there, fish are superposed to terrestrial animals, and in turn have plants or shells above them. In other areas, lava flows and pumice stone, the products of subterranean fires, are mixed with products of the ocean.
….Almost everywhere these remains of organisms are utterly foreign to the climate of the ground that conceals them: it is in the tropics that one finds the living analogues of the fossil shells and fish of the north, and vice versa.
….These traces of devastation have always been striking to the human mind. The legends traditions of deluges that are preserved among almost all peoples are due to the marine fossils scattered over the whole earth. Legends of giants-no less universal-derive from bones that are larger than those of any of the [living] animals of the climates in which they are found from time to time. But these are not just vulgar ideas. Men of another kind have sought to comprehend the whole generality of the phenomenon, in order to ascend to its causes.
Graveyards of smashed up animals, many from thousands of miles away, piled up in caves, cracks and fissures, or deposited as fossil and bone-islands in remote lands. Huge, unexplainable bones and gigantic animal debris scattered everywhere. Fossils and evidence of marine life found on Mt Everest and on top of every mountain range in the globe, an impossibility unless the mountains are young, or the seas at one time covered their heights. Geological structures riddled with evidence of omnipotent destruction and chaos. Jumbled assemblies of rock and sediment formations proving that slow and easy deposition is a fantasy.
How is any of this proof of endless ages and billions of years?
Limpid layers
On geology and layers, Cuvier was quite clear that uniformitarianism was a fantasy:
“If we compare the descriptions we have just given of the beds of chalk and those of plastic clay, we notice (I) that not only are none of the fossils met with in the chalk found in the clay, but that no fossils at all are found in it; and (2) that there is no gradual passage at all between the chalk and the clay, since the parts of the bed of clay closest to the chalk contain no more lime than the other parts.
It seems to us that one can conclude from these observations, first, that the liquid that deposited the bed of plastic clay was very different from that which deposited the chalk, since it contained no perceptible carbonate of lime, and that in it lived none of the animals that inhabited the waters that deposited the chalk. Second, that there was necessarily a distinct separation, and perhaps a long span of time, between the deposition of the chalk and that of the clay, since there is no transition between the two kinds of formation.”
None of his geological observations have been challenged. In fact, more proof issues forth every decade to support Cuvier’s contentions. It is simply untrue that long-ages and slow and easy uniformitarianism layers are ‘facts’. The credibility for billions or even millions of years of Earth age, is based on incredible credulity, a worldview, tautological assessments and is contradicted by evidence and the issues listed in the beginning of this post.
Scientism and Lies
The Scientism media is piled high and deep (phd) with ‘studies’ proving that humans are 3.6 million years old or even older (maybe even 7 million), and that cooking was apparently only discovered some 750.00 years ago. Why would it take 3-6.25 million years to ‘evolve’ cooking? Was Prometheus busy? So, for 745.000 years after cooking was invented, not much happened, then within 5.000 years we went from copper tools and small city states in Mesopotamia to building airplanes and computers. This timeline is nonsensical and insulting to anyone with a modicum of critical thinking capacity.
Modern falsehoods and secular theologies would not surprise Cuvier, as he warned the population at large about the deprecations and falsehoods issued by the ‘science’ of geology and its modern offshoot, palaeontology. Scientism as a religion of science, was born during Cuvier’s era in the early 19th century. He would not be astonished by the Scientism of our era and its philosophical claims in lieu of proof.
In any event, reading about Cuvier and his work and going through his output is both refreshing and energising.
Bottom Line
Personally, I think Cuvier was right. The age of the Earth may not be the same as the age of men. There might well be a difference which would explain the cultural artefacts from around the globe, that the human era is young and unique, but has witnessed the ‘end of ages’ or at least the end of one ‘age’, through flood, fire and cosmic disturbances.
A disconnect in time could reconcile the epic legends and codified conventions such as the Bible, with the views of Cuvier and others who believed that the formation of the Earth must have occurred in stages. This formation could have occurred over a protracted period of time (but not millions or billions of years), with the human species arriving recently during the current age and a witness to the ending of a previous age.
Importantly, as Cuvier expounded, there is little evidence that slow and easy processes can produce what we see around us. There is also no evidence that humans evolved from anything, and no corroboration exists anywhere that humans are millions or hundreds of thousands of years old as a species. The dating techniques for making such claims have long been proven false and fraudulent.
Sources
1. Georges Cuvier, History of the Natural Sciences: Twenty-four Lessons from Antiquity to the Renaissance, translated by M. J. Morwood. This book includes Cuvier's lectures on the history of natural sciences, providing insights into his thoughts and perspectives.
2. The Complete Work of Georges Cuvier - Gallica (Bibliothèque nationale de France): The Gallica digital library offers access to a collection of Cuvier's works.
3. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - "Georges Cuvier": The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy provides an overview of his life, work, and impact on the philosophy of science.
4. Martin J. S. Rudwick, Georges Cuvier, Fossil Bones, and Geological Catastrophes: New Translations and Interpretations of the Primary Texts, an excellent overview of Georges Cuvier and catastrophism.