Creationism - National Center for Science Education
Creationism - National Center for Science Education
Creationism - National Center for Science Education
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they can be reconciled. Miller especially praises Chalmers’ courageous and in<strong>for</strong>med<br />
ef<strong>for</strong>ts at reconciliation.<br />
Miller was, relatively speaking, a liberal. One of his chapters is devoted to<br />
refutation of those he calls the “Anti-Geologists”: those conservative religionists who<br />
denounce geology as a satanic undermining of the authority of the Bible. The term “antigeologist”<br />
applies to several of these reactionaries who Miller describes, but is a response<br />
in particular to an anonymous work by an Anglican clergyman titled A Brief and<br />
Complete Refutation of the Anti-Scriptural Theory of Geologists (1853). The author of<br />
that work argued that God created fossils on the first day as models or archetypes “to<br />
typify or <strong>for</strong>eshadow the living plants and animals that were to be called into existence a<br />
few days later” (Miller 1857:397-8). The frozen mammoths were created as such under<br />
the ice; unlike other fossils, they were not then transmuted into stone. Other, more<br />
bizarre, fossils were “created on purpose to silence the HORRID BLASPHEMIES of<br />
geologists.” Miller notes with evident amusement that the existence of coprolites (fossil<br />
dung) infuriated this “anti-geologist,” who tried to blame them on Satan.<br />
Demonstrating that the “anti-geologists” pervert both the biblical account, by their<br />
interpretive contortions, as well as geology, he says of one:<br />
It need not surprise us that a writer who takes such strange liberties with a book which he professes to<br />
respect, and which he must have had many opportunites of knowing, should take still greater liberties with<br />
a science <strong>for</strong> which he entertains no respect whatever, and of whose principles he is palpably ignorant.<br />
[1857:414]<br />
Miller argues <strong>for</strong>cefully <strong>for</strong> acceptance of the geological ages demonstrated by<br />
contemporary science, and <strong>for</strong> the succession of groups of organisms through these ages,<br />
as fully compatible with the biblical account. Though relatively liberal, he does firmly<br />
dismiss the “development hypothesis” as “unsupported by a shadow of evidence”<br />
(remember, however, that this was written two years be<strong>for</strong>e Darwin’s Origin).<br />
Alexander Winchell, the geologist and science professor ousted by the<br />
fundamentalists from Vanderbilt, similarly argued <strong>for</strong> a “liberal” concordist approach to<br />
Genesis and geology. One of his books in fact is titled Reconciliation of <strong>Science</strong> and<br />
Religion (1877). Winchell, like Miller, argued <strong>for</strong> the Day-Age interpretation of Genesis.<br />
With his extensive knowledge of paleontology, he demonstrates that many <strong>for</strong>ms have<br />
emerged and become extinct, that the Flood could not have deposited all the earth’s<br />
sedimentary strata, and that the earth has indeed changed considerably since Creation.<br />
Man first appeared at the end of the Ice Age, which was late in the geological record, but<br />
well be<strong>for</strong>e Adam, according to Winchell.<br />
George Frederick Wright, the eminent Oberlin College geologist, taught both<br />
geology and theology, and was in fact officially professor of the “harmony of science and<br />
revelation.” In works such as Scientific Aspects of Christian Evidences (1898) and<br />
Scientific Confirmation of Old Testament History (1906) he strove to reconcile Genesis<br />
and geology, and prove that science supported the Bible. He argued <strong>for</strong> Day-Age<br />
creationism and allowed <strong>for</strong> limited evolution, but argued strongly that evolution could<br />
not explain the origin of life or of humans, which must have been the result of divine<br />
intervention by the Creator God.<br />
Though those authors of The Fundamentals who were trained in science,<br />
including Wright, tended not to object strongly to evolution, other, non-scientific authors