Creationism - National Center for Science Education

Existence of Man During the Paleozoic or Most Ancient Period of the Earth (actually
written by William Elfe Tayler) which refutes the standard geological chronology:
These discoveries are so clear and incontrovertible that impartial inquirers after the truth are amazed at the
obstinacy with which geologists persist in shutting their eyes to the real facts in the case. The world offers
no parallel to such conduct, unless, perhaps, that of the Church of Rome in reference to the discoveries of
Galileo. [1857:142]
Scientific Creationism, by Henry Morris and the ICR staff, says:
It is precisely because Biblical revelation is absolutely authoritative and perspicuous that the scientific
facts, rightly interpreted, will give the same testimony as that of Scripture. There is not the slightest
possibility that the facts of science can contradict the Bible. [1974:15]
Evolutionists often fail to comprehend how opposed to common sense evolution
seems to many people, and how obvious it seems that adaptation is the result of conscious
Design. George Vandeman, a Seventh-day Adventist with a weekly telecast from
Thousand Oaks, California, says:
Wouldn’t it be better—and easier too—to take the clear, simple, plain, understandable statement of Genesis
that “in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth”? ... Isn’t that easier than believing that life,
unaided by intelligence, could arise from lifelessness? [1978:74,81]
CREATIONISM AS A KEY TENET OF FUNDAMENTALIST BELIEF
Although it is clear enough that the plainest, most literal reading of Genesis seems
to preclude evolution—which was just the kind of interpetation that fundamentalism
came to require—there were other factors in the first few decades of this century which
contributed to evolution becoming such a key issue. The early fundamentalists often had
a somewhat more tolerant attitude towards evolution. Most of the fundamentalist leaders
accepted standard geological chronology, and more often than not were willing to accept
some evolution of animals prior to man, or some mediating position. It was only later
that anti-evolutionism became a key fundamentalist plank and a predominant concern of
the movement, and that the issue became so sharply polarized.
As the fundamentalist movement took shape around the turn of the century, it
tapped into a reservoir of pre-existing opposition to evolution amongst many Southerners.
This type of anti-evolutionism was largely inchoate, and seems to have made little or no
attempt to appeal to science. It was often hostile to science, as well as to modernism and
liberalism, and was thus unlike the Bible-science creationism advocated by heirs to the
natural theology and Protestant scholastic traditions. Rather than Bible-science, the
attitude it represented was: “if science contradicts the Bible, then science can go to hell.”
Nevertheless it provided a ready pool of anti-evolutionist sentiment which helped fuel the
anti-evolution drive when fundamentalism became a major movement, and provided
another source of potential converts to “scientific” creationism (though the creationscience
leaders came from elsewhere—largely from high-technology areas).
As to why anti-evolutionism had become entrenched in Southern culture, one
reason suggested by Marsden has to do with the sundering of denominations and
churches caused by the Civil War. After the war, the churches did not reunite. One way
to rationalize this continued split was to suppose that the Southern churches were