CA114.4: Babbage as creationist

Claim CA114.4:

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Response:

1. Babbage was a theistic evolutionist; indeed, he was one of the first to promote theistic evolution. He believed in a god who created "one general and comprehensive law, from which every visible form, both in the organic and inorganic world flows" (Babbage 1838, 50). Such a god, he thought, deserves more credit and glory than a god who intervenes in the course of creation. He cited with approval a letter in which Sir John Herschel proposes that the origination of new species "would be found to be a natural in contradistinction to a miraculous process" (Babbage 1838, 227).
   
   Babbage also recognized and accepted that geological evidence indicates an old earth.

   In truth, the mass of evidence which combines to prove the great antiquity of the earth itself, is so irresistible, and so unshaken by any opposing facts, that none but those who are alike incapable of observing the facts, and of appreciating the reasoning, can for a moment conceive the present state of its surface to have been the result of only six thousand years of existence (Babbage 1838, 67-68).

2. Babbage recognized the priority of evidence over revelation (Babbage 1838, v-vii). In this, he was in direct opposition to today's creationists.
   
   
3. The general arguments against authority apply. The validity of evolution is based on evidence, not on what Babbage or anyone else says, and Babbage did most of his work before Origin of Species was published.

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