Happy (Belated) Birthday, Planet Earth!

First, an explanation to Jennie; yes, I'm up, and no I'm not sleeping. Insomnia once again rears its ugly head.

According to the Archbishop Ussher, the geneaologies given in the Old and New Testament leads one to an approximate date of creation for the earth as being October 23, 4004 BC, at midday. Which means that now the Earth can relax and retire, having achieved the ripe old age of 6000 years (well, 6000 and change, given that I am about a week late).

Stephen Jay Gould, in his essay "Fall in the House of Ussher" (a rather clever pun on the Edgar Allen Poe work), in the book Bully for Brontosaurus, admirably defends our Irish friend Ussher by showing that his date was more than a mere show of piety, a symbol of a myopic religious establishment that was against scientific principles. Quite the opposite, in fact -- his estimate was the product of incredible, dilligent scholarship and focused, intensive scientific research. Scientific in that he worked through a deductive process, at a time when the use of the Bible in dating the earth was fraught with immense debate and controversy.

I can't do Gould's essay justice; I really recommend you pick up a good cheap used copy of Bully for Brontosaurus and read it. But what I can say is that it's almost ironic that such a clear, stark contrast can be made between Creationists such as Ussher and the great Louis Agassiz, and the Creationists of today in their scholarship, methodology, and motivation.

Would that the Creationists of today learn from the Creationists of old.

[EDIT: Added the link to "Bully for Brontosaurus", in which "Fall in the House of Ussher" was published. I added it because I really liked it, and I heartily recommend it to anyone interested in evolutionary biology, or in the history of science.]