Creationism - National Center for Science Education

earth in preparation for the creation of man. The earth was created ex nihilo ages prior to
Gen. 1:1 (1966:37-38). Unger, who calls his proposal a “recreation-revelation” theory,
also includes it in his Bible Dictionary (1957:226):
Gen. 1:1-2 does not describe primeval creation ex nihilo but a much later refashioning of judgment-ridden
earth in preparation for a new order of creation—man. The six days that follow are recreation, revealed to
man in six literal days.
DAY-AGE THEORY: RECENT ADVOCATES AND VARIANTS
Day-Age creationism also remains popular. Arthur Rendle-Short, the British
surgeon, advocated a Day-Age approach in Modern Discovery and the Bible (1942).
Fossil men might pre-date Adam, he said, but Adam, with a human soul, was a de novo
creation. Rendle-Short emphasized “purpose and plan in nature,” stating that evidence
for the common ancestry of all life is “totally insufficient.” He also described
archeological confirmation of the Bible, and medical knowledge contained in the Bible.
A. Cressy Morrison, a former president of the New York Academy of Sciences,
suggested a Day-Age approach in Man Does Not Stand Alone (1944), a book he wrote in
response to evolutionist Julian Huxley’s Man Stands Alone. Morrison’s book, which was
excerpted in Reader’s Digest in 1960 (followed by a revised edition), is openly religious,
but its main argument is that the wonders and design of nature prove a Supreme
Intelligence and purpose. Morrison admits the strength of Darwin’s theory, but maintains
nonetheless that Paley’s argument from Design has not been refuted. He describes the
marvelous fitness of the earth for life, which he says disproves origin of life by chance.
Though he does not actually deny that evolution has occurred, he allows for the
possibility of the special creation of man, and insists that any development from lower
forms must have been consciously directed by outside intelligence. “The rise of man the
animal to a self-conscious reasoning being is too great a step to be taken by the process of
material evolution or without creative purpose” (1944:96). The goal of the directive
purpose in nature is the creation of intelligence.
Oscar Sanden, the Presbyterian minister and Dean of Northwestern Schools in
Minneapolis, argue that the six geological eras equal the six days of creation in Genesis
in Does Science Support the Scriptures? (1951). (Billy Graham, then President of
Northwestern, wrote the Foreword to Sanden’s book.) Sanden asserts that the sequence
of life on earth as shown by science is “virtually identical” to the Mosaic account, and
says that science is proving the Bible true in every field.
Peter Stoner, a math professor at Pasadena City College and Westmont College
(Santa Barbara), and one of the founders of the American Scientific Affiliation, simislarly
promoted Bible-science in Science Speaks: Scientific Proof of the Accuracy of Prophecy
and the Bible (1969; originally 1958). (A 1944 version was title From Science to Souls.
The 1969 edition was “assisted by” Robert C. Newman; he is listed as co-author in the
1976 edition.) Stoner concentrates on probability arguments and Bible prophecy, but also
insists that science is confirming the biblical order of creation. “Thus we find that the
thirteen things named in Genesis are in the same order that geology finds them”
(1969:45).
Cora Reno, whoat the time was working on a Ph.D. at Berkeley, covered most of
the standard creation-science arguments in Evolution: Fact or Theory? (1953), which is