Creationism - National Center for Science Education

(1984), he says: “The Bible is indeed a book of science, as well as a book of history,
literature, psychology, economics, law, education, and every other field,” even though it
doesn’t use technical, scientific jargon.
How could [anyone] trust the Bible to speak truly when it speaks of salvation and heaven and eternity—
doctrines which he is completely unable to verify empirically—when he is taught that Biblical data that are
subject to test are fallacious?
Similarly, John Warwick Montgomery states that “if the Bible were faulty in secular
matters, it would also be faulty in spiritual things” (1986:121).
The Oldest Science Book in the World is the title of a (1984) book by Charles V.
Taylor, an Australian with a Ph.D. in linguistics who advocates strict young-earth
creationism and Flood Geology. Genesis is straight history, says Taylor, not religion.
And only history—not science—can tell us about the past. The Bible, however,
harmonizes perfectly with science. God wrote the opening verses of Genesis; Adam
wrote the next few. Evolution, and Big Bang cosmology, are similar to folklore: they are
“science fiction,” in contrast to the straightforward factual truth of Genesis. “Miracles
aren’t anti-scientific,” Taylor assures us.
Once we reject the Bible at one point we become judges of the Bible and can pick and choose which points
we accept or reject. ... If man arose from the animals, the it’s hard to see how sin could be the result of the
Fall and hard to appreciate the value of Jesus’ death. [1984:126]
Oscar Sanden, a Presbyterian minister and dean of Northwestern Schools in
Minneapolis, shows that science is proving the Bible correct in every field, in his book
Does Science Support the Scriptures? (1951). A Day-Age creationist, Sanden argues that
the sequence of life on earth shown by science is “virtually identical” to the Mosaic
account, and presents many Bible-science examples. According to Sanden, the Bible
refers to telegraph communication, astronomical parallax, atomic theory, cosmic rays,
and other modern scientific discoveries.
Why should not the great Bible schools and seminaries, the great Gospel centers, the Bible-preaching
pulpits of the land, be known as the custodians and users of true science, for is this not the great book of
God in nature whereby He confirms the Book of His inspired Word, the Bible? [1951:24]
Sanden followed this book with a pamphlet describing obstacles to evolution, Twelve
Bridges No Evolutionist Has Ever Crossed (1961).
In his Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties (1982), Gleason Archer describes the
proper approach for the biblical inerrantist. Archer is a prominent member of the
International Council on Biblical Inerrancy (ICBI), and acknowledges assistance of ICBI
in this book, which is an apologetics compendium of Bible passages and topics alleged
by skeptics to present problems for the inerrantist believer. In his “Recommended
Procedures in Dealing With Bible Difficulties,” Archer begins: “Be fully persuaded in
your own mind that an adequate explanation exists, even though you have not yet found
it.” Either the Bible is inerrant, or it contains mistakes. Since it is inerrant, any apparent
mistakes or contradictions must have some adequate explanation. Where archeology or
history seems to contradict the biblical account, the pagan record, not the Bible, must be
in error (1982:15-17). Archer, who is an old-earth creationist, presents a non-literal (but
strongly inerrantist, of course) interpretation of the six-day creation of Genesis.