Creationism - National Center for Science Education

We “must simply follow the record of Genesis regarding [creation], which must ever lie
beyond the reach alike of man’s guessing and his research.”
Harry Rimmer, in The Harmony of Science and Scripture (1936) and his other
works, similarly defends the absolute scientific inerrancy of the Bible (though his
interpretation of the ‘literal’ sense of Genesis, unlike Price’s, allows for Gap Theory
rather than recent creationism).
Militant fundamentalist Gerald Winrod, founder of the Defenders of the Christian
Faith, proclaims in Science, Christ and the Bible (1929) that Christianity and the Bible
are scientific. In a section titled “Christianity is Scientific,” Winrod says:
The scientist deals with natural laws. The Christian deals with spiritual laws. Christianity is more than
dogma and theology—it is demonstrable truth. It rests upon certain immutable, spiritual verities and laws
which are as unerring as the laws of mathematics. [1929:34]
Scientific laws are not matters of opinion; they cannot be broken. Comply with them,
and certain results definitely follow; ignore them, and suffer the consequences.
Likewise, the Bible says that unless you repent, you will perish. That statement is science; not sentiment.
Paul was scientific when he said, “Prove all things.” [1929:35]
The Bible, “the greatest textbook ever written,” is replete with facts “which can be
scientifically proved.”
All true science, and Christianity, the one true religion, starts at the same place with the first four words of
the Bible—”In the beginning God.” A godless science has no place to begin. [1929:28]
God wrote two books—the Book of books and the book of nature. There is no discord between the two
books. [1929:32]
Between the proved facts of science and the truth of Christianity there is perfect harmony, but between the
guesses of scientists and the dogma of religionists there is discord... Let the men of science confine
themselves to what they can actually prove and demonstrate about the natural world, and let religionists
confine themselves to the spiritual verities of our religion, and science and Christianity will go hand in
hand. [1929:31]
The fundamentalist attitude expressed here is that “true” science cannot conflict with the
Bible. The concordist or harmonizer affirms this also, but—unlike the fundamentalist—
is willing to reinterpret scripture in order to conform to science. The fundamentalist
insists that science must conform to scripture.
Evolution, says Winrod, is—in contrast to science—a philosophy which “purports
to reduce everything to natural law.” In so doing, it reduces the world to a “physical,
heartless, soulless machine in which man is merely a broken cog.” “When the theory of
evolution hits the rocks of geology, it goes to pieces.”
All organisms reproduce within the charmed circle of the species.... If the transmutation of the species
were true, we would see about us all manner of hideous monstrosities. There would be creatures with
heads like men and necks like giraffes and bodies like horses. Species would be all mixed up, but such is
not the case, because each type of life reproduces according to kind. [1929:137]
Theodore Graebner, a member of the Religion and Science Association of the
1930s, denies that his book God and the Cosmos: A Critical Analysis of Atheism,