Creationism - National Center for Science Education

ut he also criticizes “hyper-orthodox” interpretations (such as strict recent creationism)
as naive, unscientific, and selfdefeating. The Bible is neither full of scientific error, he
explains, nor filled with modern scientific predictions and theories. Ramm, after he
wrote this book, led the American Scientific Affiliation resistance to the rising youngearth
creationism and Flood Geology movement led by Henry Morris. In this book
(which is dedicated to Alton Everest of the Moody Institute of Science and the ASA) he
criticizes Morris’s Flood Geology predecessors: G.M. Price, Harold Clark, Byron Nelson
and others.
Ramm argues that the language of the Bible is “phenomenal,” and also “prescientific”
(though not antiscientific): it uses popular (not technical) terminology,
expressed in terms of the cultures of the time, and deals with the appearances of things
and events rather than with any scientific theorizing. The creation ‘days,’ he said, were
“pictorial-revelatory,” not literal: they were revealed to Moses in six visions or in six
days. Ramm describes his own view as “progressive creationism,” by which he means
that God created the major types by direct supernatural fiat, but that this was
accomplished over long ages. He insists that, if understood properly, the Bible cannot be
contradicted by science: “If the Author of Nature and Scripture are the same God, then
the two books of God must eventually recite the same story” (1954:25). He denounces
“hyper-orthodox” young-earth Flood Geology creationism as scientifically ignorant;
worse, it makes people suppose that good science opposes the Bible. Ramm insists upon
creationism, though it must be creationism which properly harmonizes with science:
“Any weakening, enervating, softening, hedging or compromising of the creationism of
the Bible is not true to the Bible, and already is a crack in the wall which unbelief will
smash open into a huge crevice” (1954:56).
Robert C. Newman and Herman Eckelmann advocate a form of Progressive
Creationism in Genesis One and the Origin of the Earth (1977). Newman, who has an
astrophysics Ph.D. from Cornell University, is a New Testament professor at Biblical
Theological Seminary and a leader of the Interdisciplinary Biblical Research Institute in
Hatfield, Pennsylvania; he is also a co-author of later editions of Peter Stoner’s Science
Speaks. Eckelmann is a pastor and a researcher at the Cornell Radiophysics and Space
Center. They dedicate their book, interestingly, to Frank Drake, Thomas Gold, Carl
Sagan, and other Cornell evolutionist astronomers. The first part of the book consists of
scientific evidence for the age of the earth and is a strong refutation of young-earth
creationism. In the second part the authors present theological arguments for old-earth
creationism, correlating Genesis with scientific theories of the earth’s origin in a
modified Day-Age approach. Their interpretation is different from standard Day-Age
creationism, though, in that they do not equate the Genesis days with the corresponding
ages. They advocate instead an “intermittent day” theory of progressive creationism.
The Genesis days are real, but not successive: they are separated by long ages, one
occurring each age; the seventh is yet to come. In their scheme, the first day intervenes
after the planets form from nebular clouds after the Big Bang. The second day follows
out-gassing of the ocean and atmosphere from the hot primitive earth. The third day
occurs after the formation of the continents and the appearance of land vegetation. The
fourth day occurred after the atmosphere became altered and cleared by photosynthetic
organisms.