Creationism - National Center for Science Education

Materialism and Evolution (1932) is a work of theology. He concedes that he is indeed a
theologian, but insists nonetheless that he is demonstrating that science proves theism
true and evolution false. To support this, he fills his book with scientific quotes from
anti-evolutionist, anti-Darwinian, and Bible-believing scientists (and, as in most creationscience
books, these categories are run together and confused).
“Biblical Concordism, or the effort to reconcile the Bible and science, has utterly
failed.” Such is the declaration of Giorgio Bartoli in The Biblical Story of Creation: In
the Light of the Recently Discovered Babylonian Documents (1926). Bartoli, an Italian,
was a professor of chemistry and geology, and director of a mine in Sardinia. A strong
proponent of Gap Theory creationism, he insisted on upholding a literal reading of
Genesis and resolutely opposed evolution for contradicting the Bible. His approach is
primarily theological, though he includes scientific and archeological arguments; he
defends supernaturalism and Genesis against the bitter attacks of what he refers to as
“infidel science.” “With Genesis stands or falls the whole fabric of Christianity,” he
declares in typical fundamentalist style. “The evolutionists, of course, reject the first
chapters of Genesis because these flatly contradict their beloved theory...” If man
evolved, then God is a liar. Man, therefore, did not evolve.
The missing link between man and beast is still missing, and it will never be found. Fossil man does not
exist, and it is useless to look for him. Infidel anthropology is no science at all... Man was created by God,
where and when the Bible tells us.
Another very strong presentation of Gap Theory creationism, Science and Truth
(1940), by L. Allen Higley, the Wheaton professor and president of the Religion and
Science Association, likewise emphasized the dependence of science on the Bible. “The
Bible is the one true foundation on which all true science must finally rest, because it is
the one book of ultimate origins.” Any scheme which contradicts the Bible—and
evolution is the prime offender—is “necessarily false.”
A.I. Brown, the Vancouver physician-turned-evangelist, gives a fair summary of
the fundamentalist position regarding the relationship of science to the Bible in his
booklet Evolution and the Bible (undated:3-4):
There is no conflict between science and the Bible because both are Truth, but undoubtedly, there is direct
antagonism between the Bible and the interpretations of certain scientists who deny the literal value of the
Genesis Record.
The statement is made that the Bible was never intended to teach science. The Author of the Book makes
no such admission, and it is fair to conclude, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, that wherever
the Writer touches a scientific subject He gives us Truth without any admixture of error.
To deny accurate scientific knowledge to the writers of the Bible is to argue in the face of irrefutable
facts. The science of Genesis, to take the most disputed Book of the list, is absolutely in accord with the
findings of the most recent and most reliable investigation. In only one respect does it displease the
“modern mind,” and that is in its unequivocal statement of Creation as the method used by God to bring life
and life-forms on the earth. And since there have never been discovered any facts which make Creation
impossible we have no right to dispute it until the alternative theory can produce more than supposition. In
spite of tireless and long-continued search for evidence which might prove it false, by learned and skilled
enemies of this Record, evolution remains, not only “unproven and unprovable,” but impossible because
directly opposed by known facts.
God reveals himself both in nature and the Bible, affirms Paul Zimmerman in
Darwin, Evolution, and Creation (1959). “Neither form of revelation can possibly