Creationism - National Center for Science Education

Bacon’s scientific method “to reestablish Moses’ claim to be a source of unquestionable
scientific authority” (1951:62). Deluc, a Swiss Calvinist who moved to England, devised
a Day-Age Flood Geology scheme.
Such appeals to Baconian and Newtonian ideals continued to characterize antievolutionist
arguments; from the moment of the publication of Darwin’s Origin, “one of
the major objections to evolutionary theory was that it was not sufficiently
‘inductive;’”(Hull 1973:vii).
Wigand, a German opponent and contemporary of Darwin’s, wrote a threevolume
work entitled Darwinism and the Natural Science of Newton and Cuvier
(1874-1877). “Parading in the guise of natural science,” he says of Darwinism, “it is
really a perversion which bears within it a menace to true science.” Wigand (according
to Graebner (1943:295) argued that:
Darwin’s doctrine is based on false premises and that its results do not agree with actual observation; that it
is not even a scientific hypothesis but philosophical speculation; that it grossly offends against the principle
of Causality and organic development.
George Ticknor Curtis, who, like Mauro, was a New York lawyer, wrote
Creation or Evolution? A Philosophical Inquiry (1887), in which he discussed the nature
of evidence and of proof. Mere piling on of great quantities of indirect evidence, which
is what Darwin did, does not constitute proper proof. According to the rules of evidence,
“every fact in a collection of proofs from whch we are to draw a certain inference must
be proved independently by direct evidence, and must not be itself a deduction from
some other fact.” Each link must have its own logical justification and proof. Also, the
several facts must be arranged in proper relationship to one another. Further, the whole
collection must then be consistent with the inference to be drawn. Finally: “the collection
of facts from which an inference is drawn must not only be consistent with the probable
truth of that inference, but they must exclude the probable truth of any other inference
(quoted in Price 1920:37-38). Evolution doesn’t measure up to these standards. “The
whole doctrine of the development of distinct species out of other species makes
demands upon our credulity which is irreconcilable with the principles of belief by which
we regulate, or ought to regulate, our acceptance of any new matter of belief.”
In The Glacial Nightmare and the Flood (1893), subtitled “A Second Appeal to
Common Sense from the Extravagance of Some Recent Geology,” Henry Howorth
claims that what he proposes is of “no school of thought—merely an inductive argument
from the facts”—unlike the speculative “religion” of uniformitarian geologists Hutton
and Lyell. Howorth rejected the Glacial (Ice Age) Theory, insisting that the geological
and paleontological evidence—especially the Siberian mammoths (Howorth 1887)—was
explainable only as a result of a catastrophic (but not worldwide) flood. He is much cited
by creationists for this, and for his compilation of Flood myths and traditions from
around the world. He denied any special status to the biblical account, though, stating
that it was “absolutely valueless in geological discussion,” with no authority except as a
collection of cosmological tales, myths and traditions.
In Questions Evolution Does Not Answer (1923:9), John Herget, a Baptist
minister, explains that facts must be accepted, but not “philosophical opinions.”