Caroline Winterer

You know, at that time, natural resources was meant to imply that long ago, God had planted these first baby forests on the baby earth as gifts for us modern people.

So they're super optimistic about the discovery of sources of heat and light, you know, because for thousands of years, humans, you know, it had been dark and they were always tired.

You know, we forget how hard life was before the Industrial Revolution.

And suddenly they found a solution and they directed their energies toward using science and engineering to dig up the fossil forest.

But then also on Sundays, giving thanks to the God who implanted those forests long ago.

It's quite extraordinary.

Louis Agassiz is the greatest scientist you have never heard of.

You know, he's been completely eclipsed by Charles Darwin.

But Louis Agassiz, a Swiss scientist who has a sick French accent, comes to the United States in 1848 and he becomes this nationally famous figure.

He goes out on the lecture circuit and everyone thinks he's handsome and he has a million students.

But he believes in deep time, but he does not believe in Charles Darwin's idea that deep time is the container for species evolution.

He says, oh, no, no, no, no.

No, God created each layer of life in a sequence of creation and destruction and creation and destruction over many, many millions of years.

So what you're seeing in the fossil record of

over deep time is the constant workings of the benevolent creator God, not some weird idea that says that God is not necessary.

Yes, but God, you know, natural selection basically says, well, you know, maybe God is out there, but we don't need God for natural selection.

It can happen just according to nature.

Nature is a kind of way of talking about God without talking about God.

And so Darwin is very, very threatening when The Origin of Species is published in 1859.

And Agassiz is just jumping up and down in rage.