Uniformitarian geology has its origins with Charles Lyell, and others but was most strongly pushed by Lyle. It was an attack on catastrophism and general but specifically the Genesis Flood. Lyell made it clear that he wanted to free geology from it, that is that he wanted to get rid of the Genesis Flood. At the time d Lyell began pushing Uniformitarianism besides the Genesis Flood there was another form of catastrophism that included multiple global catastrophes, in such cases the Genesis Flood was usually considered the most recent. These other catastrophes were considered by proponents of this theory to have been responsible for there being multiple layers. Lyell’s Uniformitarianism attacks the ideas of both single and multiple global catastrophes.
Contrary to a common misconception, Uniformitarianism never excluded all catastrophes, Lyell himself was familiar with the existence of small local catastrophes. The point within uniformitarianism is that such local catastrophes are too small to produce any significant changes in the rates of physical processes acting in geology. Unfortunately, the misconception Has been used the claim that modern geology is no longer uniformitarian because it does accept some catastrophes. The problem with this claim is that while the range of allowable catastrophes has been increasing, old earth geology is still dependent upon a lot of geology being highly uniformitarian. Furthermore, it still holds on to the most fundamental uniformitarian aspect of Uniformitarianism, that being absolute uniformity in natural laws. That is the presupposition that there have been no supernatural acts of God involved in the origin or history of the earth. By definition, this absolute naturalism excludes both Biblical creation and the Genesis Flood as possible considerations regardless of what the evidence may be.
Furthermore, they are still extremely uniformitarian when it comes to calculating ages. For example, they insist on one layer of ice, lake sediment layer, or tree ring per year even though there is evidence that all three can produce multiple segments in a single year under the right conditions. Furthermore, they completely ignore that these conditions would be prevalent after the flood.
Ultimately the point of uniformitarian geology is that all things continue as they always do. If this requires allowing some room for relatively minor disasters such as earthquakes and volcanoes, then fine. As long as it doesn't really change the uniformitarian nature behind the systems of dating and everything else. It certainly does not change the atheistic naturalistic nature of it. In either case, both God and anything even remotely miraculous is off the table in this way of thinking, consequently, when you look at geology from this perspective you are inevitably going to conclude immense age because young earth is by its very nature a supernatural earth. Consequently, regardless of the word games that may be played, naturalistic geology today is inevitably uniformitarian in its insistence on absolute naturalism and that is the key even when they are forced to allow some catastrophes to mess up strict uniformitarian figures a little bit.
Help support these articles.
4 Volume Answers Book Box Set Paperback by Ken Ham
The Ultimate Answers Pack Paperback by Ken Ham and, Bodie Hodge
