Creationism - National Center for Science Education
Creationism - National Center for Science Education
Creationism - National Center for Science Education
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Holy Scriptures to a merely human level, and challenged its direct verbal inspiration,<br />
infallibility, and inerrancy—all doctrines which the fundamentalists came to insist upon.<br />
In his book Collapse of Evolution (1922; originally 1905), Luther Townsend<br />
blamed evolution as a major causative factor <strong>for</strong> the misery and damnation of the new<br />
century. He quoted Benjamin Kidd’s The <strong>Science</strong> of Power (a book much cited by later<br />
anti-evolutions, including W.J. Bryan) to show “that the theory of evolution as presented<br />
by Nietzsche has a dominant tendency to paralyze everything in human life that is worth<br />
while.”<br />
It denounces Christianity as being a system calculated to make degenerates out of men, denies the existence<br />
of God, overturns all standards of morality, eulogizes war as both necessary and desirable, praises hatred<br />
because it leads to war, denies to sympathy and pity any rightful place in a manly heart and endeavors to<br />
substitute the worship of the superman <strong>for</strong> the worship of Jehovah. [Kidd, quoted in Townsend 1922:35]<br />
Between 1910 and 1915, a series of twelve small paperback books called The<br />
Fundamentals was published and widely distributed. This series, aimed at setting <strong>for</strong>th<br />
the “fundamentals” of Christianity (as did the earlier “Five Points of fundamentalism”),<br />
did much to define and publicize the new movement. It was conceived by Los Angeles<br />
millionaire Lyman Stewart of Union Oil, who, with the aid of his brother, distributed free<br />
copies of the initial volumes to every pastor, missionary, evangelist, theology professor<br />
and student, and YMCA or YWCA secretary in the English-speaking world (later<br />
volumes were sent on request). Stewart hired A.C. Dixon of Moody Church in Chicago<br />
to edit the series, to which many of the greatest American and British theologians<br />
contributed.<br />
Although several authors criticized or attacked evolution in The Fundamentals,<br />
none insisted on recent creation or Flood Geology, and some permitted a mediating<br />
position. Rev. James Orr of United Free Church College in Glasgow, Scotland, <strong>for</strong><br />
instance, writing on “<strong>Science</strong> and Christian Faith” in Vol. IV and on “The Early<br />
Narratives of Genesis” in Vol. VI, was willing to accept considerable evolution, but<br />
warned against equating evolution with Darwinism.<br />
Certainly there would be contradiction if Darwinian theory had its way and we had to conceive of man as a<br />
slow, gradual ascent from bestial stage, but I am convinced that genuine science teaches no such doctrine.<br />
Evolution is not to be identified offhand with Darwinism. Later evolutionary theory may rather be<br />
described as a revolt against Darwinism, and leaves the story open to a conception of man quite in harmony<br />
with that of the Bible. [1912:(IV):96]<br />
Orr advocated Day-Age creationism, and tried to allow <strong>for</strong> a <strong>for</strong>m of non-Darwinian<br />
evolution within this framework. Gradual evolution by natural selection is now rejected<br />
by science, said Orr. Sudden evolution by large mutations can be seen to correspond to<br />
Genesis. This new “evolution” is thus “but a new name <strong>for</strong> ‘creation”—the only<br />
difference being that it acts from within instead of externally (1912:(IV)102). Orr then<br />
affirmed that the origin of life, of consciousness, and of man’s rationality and morality<br />
are steps which required special acts of creation by God. Man himself must be a special<br />
creation, whose origin may be as recent and “as sudden as Genesis represents. “Man’s<br />
origin can only be explained through an exercise of direct creative activity, whatever<br />
subordinate factors evolution may have contributed.”<br />
George Frederick Wright, the respected Oberlin College geologist and minister,<br />
was selected to write on evolution from a scientific perspective. His approach was