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Lord Kelvin was a creationist (Talk.Origins)

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Response Article
This article (Lord Kelvin was a creationist (Talk.Origins)) is a response to a rebuttal of a creationist claim published by Talk.Origins Archive under the title Index to Creationist Claims.


Claim CA114.1:

Lord Kelvin was a creationist and strong opponent of evolution.

Source: Morris, Henry M. 1982. Bible-believing scientists of the past. Impact 103 (Jan.), http://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=view&ID=185


CreationWiki response:

This Talk Origins response is an example of careless reading. It claims that Lord Kelvin believed in evolution guided by intelligence, but the words that support that in their quote from Kelvin are words of Darwin and of Mr Grove.

For example: (Talk.Origins quotes in blue)

From the Earth stocked with such vegetation as it could receive meteorically, to the Earth teeming with all the endless variety of plants and animals which now inhabit it, the step is prodigious; yet, according to the doctrine of continuity, most ably laid before the Association by a predecessor in this Chair (Mr. Grove), all creatures now living on earth have proceeded by orderly evolution from some such origin. [Quoted words of Lord Kelvin]

In other words, he is politely disagreeing with Mr Grove!

With the feeling expressed in these two sentences [from Darwin] I most cordially sympathize. I have omitted two sentences which come between them, describing briefly the hypothesis of "the origin of species by natural selection," because I have always felt that this hypothesis does not contain the true theory of evolution, if evolution there has been, in biology. [Quoted words of Lord Kelvin]

Note the phrase "if evolution there has been". Those are hardly the words of someone who believes in evolution.

Lord Kelvin was a physicist and his arguments were more on the subject of the age of the earth and the sun. He strongly argued, with reasons that are still valid, that there was no evidence for a long age of either earth or sun and that the earth was no more than 40 million years old. Given that, he is hardly likely to have believed in evolution as presented by Darwin and Huxley, which absolutely requires long ages in which to work. On the other hand, he does not seem to have been what we would now call a Young Earth Creationist.

See also: http://www.icr.org/article/63/


Responses to Anticreationist Assertions
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