Why you should become a Bible-believing anarchist
who also believes the universe was created around 4004 B.C.
Charles Lyell is famous for trying to remove Biblical history ("Moses" he said) from "science."
Charles Lyell {1797-1875} was a friend of Darwin. Before Lyell published his famous book on geology in 1830, which championed the idea of "uniformitarianism" (rather than "catastrophism"), he was a lawyer. He was influenced by James Hutton {1726-1797}, who was in turn influenced by Buffon. All three were trained as lawyers and business speculators. They promoted "uniformitarianism" rather than "catastrophism." They said in effect, "We don't have to believe the Bible, with its history of creation and global flood. We can put our faith in long eons of time." They didn't actually "prove" scientifically that long eons of time have actually occurred. They didn't "scientifically" prove that Noah's flood never occurred. Nor did they "prove" that catastrophic events like the eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 could not possibly account for the world's geologic formations. None of them "proved" that the world was billions of years old; they just said "It's possible," and that was enough for them to hang their religious hat on.
Evolution cannot be "proven" "scientifically." Not by scientists. Not even by lawyers.
Today's dominant paradigm was created by "philosophers," lawyers, and other propagandists before it was adopted by "scientists."
In fact, as Mortenson shows in his Ph.D. thesis, these men created the "secular" (Bible-denying) "science" of geology. They created their own official "societies" of geology and captured the recently-created university professorships of geology, beginning the trend of excluding young-earth creationists from teaching and even graduating.
None of the men listed above produced any evidence that would have compelled Isaac Newton to abandon his belief that the world was created in 4000 B.C. Evolution was adopted because it met a religious need -- or an anti-religious need -- not because they were forced by scientific facts to accept it.
Charles Lyell, takes Hutton’s deep-time naturalism and makes it explicitly anti-Mosaic:
Thinker / Culture Theology Theonomy vs. Autonomy Cosmogony Politics Charles Lyell (1797-1875) Anglican by heritage, but privately skeptical; not a worshiper of YHWH in the biblical sense. Treated Christianity as culturally useful but not authoritative. Autonomy — explicitly aimed to “free the science [of geology] from Moses.” Revelation excluded; only present natural causes allowed. Uniformitarianism: “the present is the key to the past.” Earth is millions of years old; no creation ex nihilo, no universal Flood. Saw human progress and law as evolutionary, not theonomic. His uniformitarianism became a cultural weapon for liberal politics — eroding biblical law in favor of secular, “progressive” governance.
✦ Notes
Theology: Lyell outwardly kept a polite Anglican facade, but in private letters admitted he wanted to dismantle the influence of Genesis in geology.
Theonomy vs. Autonomy: Famous line (letter, 1830): he wanted to “free the science from Moses.” That is a deliberate polemic against biblical authority, not just silence like Hutton.
Cosmogony: By insisting on slow, uniform processes, Lyell denied any catastrophic Flood or young earth. Deep time became the unquestioned framework.
Politics: Lyell was a Whig liberal; his “gradualism” in geology mirrored his politics — progress by slow reform, not biblical upheaval. His scientific method carried political-cultural weight: to remove theonomy and enthrone human autonomy.
✅ Lyell is your clear bridge to Darwin: he kept Hutton’s deep time, but with a much sharper anti-biblical edge, and Darwin himself credited Lyell’s Principles of Geology as foundational.