Creationism - National Center for Science Education

Science (1862), by Mrs. George J.C. Duncan, and Primeval Man Unveiled: Or the
Anthropology of the Bible (1871), probably written by James Gall.
Arthur Pierson argued that the six days of creation were really “six periods of vast
length” in his chapter “Scientific Accuracy of the Bible” in Many Infallible Proofs
(1886). He asserted that the order of creation is exactly the same as shown in the fossil
record. “The correspondence between the Mosaic account of creation and the most
advanced discoveries of science proves that only He who built the world built the Book”
(1886:120).
In Organic Evolution Reconsidered (1897), Alfred Fairhurst, a professor of
natural science at Kentucky University, disputed Cope’s views on evolution in a long
critical review, and affirmed divine fiat creation and miracles as acceptable scientific
explanation. He supported Day-Age creationism, but argued that detailed comparison of
Genesis and geology is useless, as the purpose of the Bible is moral, not scientific, and it
employs phenomenological language. He accepted standard geological chronology, but
pointed out that species appeared as if by substitution rather than by transformation.
“The doctrine of evolution is not science,” he asserted (1897:3; this “Preface” is dated
1911). He attacked evolution for undermining belief: “My object...is to promote the
belief in Theism...” (1897:11).
George Frederick Wright, the geologist and Congregationalist minister who was
“professor of the harmony of science and revelation” at Oberlin, was an advocate of
“Christian Darwinism.” He sought to mediate between secular evolution and biblical
literalism, allowing for limited evolution and interpreting Genesis in terms of a Day-Age
scheme. In Scientific Aspects of Christian Evidences (1898), he argued that natural
selection cannot operate on chance: there must be a “Contriver” for Darwinian evolution
to work—there must be purpose behind evolution. Wright was basically a theistic
evolutionist, like Asa Gray; in fact Wright collaborated with Gray, and persuaded him to
write his Darwiniana (Numbers 1988:626). He maintained that man was a special
creation, however.
Though he was the “foremost champion of a Christian Darwinist theology”
(according to the Dictionary of Scientific Biography), Wright came to be considered a
fundamentalist after the turn of the century. He became the editor of Bibliotheca Sacra,
which aligned itself with the emerging fundamentalist movement, and he wrote about
evolution for the famous booklet series The Fundamentals. He also wrote an
Introduction to Alexander Patterson’s The Other Side of Evolution (1912; orig. 1903), a
book which accused evolution of being false and unscientific, and “violently opposed” to
the Bible and Christian faith. Though he died some years before the Scopes Trial, he was
invoked during the trial by William Jennings Bryan: when challenged by Darrow to name
a scientist who rejected evolution, Wright was the only scientist Bryan could think of,
besides G.M. Price (who Darrow contemptuously dismissed as a “mountebank and a
pretender”). Bryan recalled that Wright thought that man appeared after the Ice Age, but
that the earth was older. This exchange occurred during the famous cross-examination of
Bryan by Darrow as “expert witness” on the Bible (National Book 1925:297-299).
Darrow then demanded that Bryan say how old he thought the earth was, asking if he
agreed with Ussher’s date. (Darrow, apparently unfamiliar with the Gap Theory, thought
that Scofield’s Bible endorsed Ussher’s date as the age of the earth, rather than of the recreation
and of man, and Bryan did not correct him). Bryan then said that he did not