---
title: "Scriptural geologist"
chunk: 3/4
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scriptural_geologist"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:34:08.275358+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

Andrew Ure
Andrew Ure, M.A. in 1799, M.D. in 1801 in Glasgow, was a scientist and physician. He served briefly as an army surgeon then in 1803 became a member of the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons in Glasgow as Professor of Natural Philosophy (specializing in chemistry and physics) at the Andersonian Institution (now the University of Strathclyde).  He was probably the first consulting chemist in Britain and highly esteemed by contemporary scientists. He wrote A Dictionary of Chemistry (1821), Elements of the Art of Dyeing (1824), and A New System of Geology (1829).
The leading University of Cambridge geologist Adam Sedgwick, a Church of England clergyman, condemned A New System of Geology pulling "it to pieces without mercy" and calling it a "monument of folly".  Gillispie chastised Andrew Ure as of the "men of the lunatic fringe" who produced clerical "fulminations against science in general and all its works". Ure was not a cleric.
George Fairholme
George Fairholme was a wealthy banker and landowner, self-taught naturalist.  He was not opposed to studying geology; rather, he did battle with the new theories which were, in his view, inconsistent with Scripture and scientific facts.  Genesis did not teach science or geology, rather, it offers a true grasp of earth history for geologists to follow. He tried to show from geology and geography that a global flood had molded the continents. The strata, in his view, were connected chiefly with this flood. Charles Gillispie listed Fairholme as among "the lunatic fringe." But Millhauser said he was "by no means ignorant of the science [he] assailed".
John Murray
John Murray was self-taught early in his career, but he eventually obtained M.A. and Ph.D. degrees. While traveling widely to observe geological and archeological sites, he lectured and conducted experimental field research using chemical analysis to study rocks and fossils.
Other

Granville Penn
Granville Penn attended Magdalen College, Oxford and became an assistant chief clerk in the War Department. His major work on geology (1822) was A Comparative Estimate of the Mineral and Mosaical Geologies. Penn made no claim to be a geologist, yet he read the geological literature of his day.
Contemporary Hugh Miller described Granville Penn as one of "the abler and more respectable anti-geologists" and "certainly one of the most extensively informed of his class,"  but where Penn's view of biblical verses conflicted with Millers own views, Miller labeled Penn's views as "mere idle glosses, ignorantly or surreptitiously introduced into the text by ancient copyists." Gillispie chastised Penn as among "men of the lunatic fringe, ... [who] got out their fantastic geologies and natural histories, a literature which enjoyed surprising vogue, but which is too absurd to disinter". Millhauser said the Penn "had come to suspect it [the new geology] of a tendency toward Lucretian materialism."

== Reception ==

=== By historians of science ===
A number of modern historians have "rounded on scriptural geologists as simplistic fundamentalists who defended an untenable and anti-scientific worldview". Historian of science Charles Gillispie chastised a number of them as "men of the lunatic fringe, like Granville Penn, John Faber, Andrew Ure, and George Fairholme, [who] got out their fantastic geologies and natural histories, a literature which enjoyed surprising vogue, but which is too absurd to disinter". Gillispie describes their views, along with their "reasonably respectable" colleagues (such as Edward Bouverie Pusey and William Cockburn, Dean of York), as clerical "fulminations against science in general and all its works", and listed the works of Cockburn and Fairholme as among "clerical attacks on geology and uninformed attempts to frame theoretical systems reconciling the geological and scriptural records." Martin J. S. Rudwick initially dismissed them as mere 'dogmatic irritants', but later discerned a couple of points of consilience: a concern with time and sequence; and an adoption of the pictorial conventions of some scriptural geologists by the mainstream.

== Bibliography of works ==
1820, Rodd, Thomas (Philobiblos), A Defence of the Veracity of Moses
1822, Penn, Granville, A Comparative Estimate of the Mineral and Mosaical Geologies
1822, Young, George, A Geological Survey of the Yorkshire Coast
1826, Bugg, George, Scriptural Geology
1829, Ure, Andrew, A New System of Geology
1831, Murray, John, The Truth of Revelation (276 pages), 2nd Ed. 1840, (380 Pages)
1833, Brown, James Mellor, Reflections on Geology
1833, Fairholme, George, General View of the Geology of Scripture
1833, Nolan, Frederick, Analogy of Revelation and Science Established
1834, Cole, Henry, Popular Geology Subversive of Divine Revelation
1836, Gisborne, Thomas, Considerations on the Modern Theory of Geology
1837, Fairholme, George, The Mosaic Deluge
1838, Cockburn, William, A Letter to Professor Buckland Concerning the Origin of the World
1838, Murray, John, Portrait of Geology (214 pages)
1838, Rhind, William, Age of the Earth, Considered Geologically and Historically
1838, Young, George, Scriptural Geology
1839, Cockburn, William, The Bible Defended Against the British Association

== See also ==
Biblical archaeology
Biblical literalism
Flood geology
Genesis creation narrative
Young Earth creationism

== Footnotes ==