ABSTRACT
This chapter examines Dick's views on three prominent and controversial issues between science and Christianity in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. In Dick's advocacy of the nebular hypothesis, we see again the inseparability of science and evangelicalism in his thought. He supported the nebular hypothesis because it squared with his conceptions of the afterlife, of God's attributes, and of progress in society and the universe as a slow yet inexorable march towards the coming millennium. Dick's support for the nebular hypothesis was thus primarily determined by his religious beliefs. Serving to support his conception of the afterlife was the idea that nebulae were incipient solar systems. Dick did not take a lively interest in practising or studying geology. Yet in his day it was a popular, controversial, and even shocking, branch of science. Like others before him, Dick had to reconcile apparent discrepancies between geology and Genesis.
