Creationism - National Center for Science Education

each other in the 1920s—and indeed all three are still competing today. In fact, while
Price raged against all compromises with strict young-earth creationism, Riley and
Rimmer held friendly but serious debates on Day-Age versus Gap Theory creationism
(Riley and Rimmer’s 1929 A Debate: Resolved, That the Creation Days in Genesis Were
Aeons Not Solar Days; also The Creation Days of Genesis: A Profound Debate Between
Dr. W.B. Riley and Dr. Harry B. Rimmer, 1974).
William B. Riley, pastor of First Baptist Church in Minneapolis, was the founder
of the World’s Christian Fundamentals Association in 1919, and also founder and
president of Northwestern Bible College. Riley declared that evolution was even worse
than compulsory vaccination:
I confess to no small degree of revolt against having an impure virus forced into the pure blood of a girl of
perfect health; but a thousand times over would I prefer my daughter’s blood tainted, and her flesh scarred
for a time, to having her mind tainted with infidelity and her soul scarred for eternity. I believe in
education, but not in an Anti-christian one! I believe in Science, but not in an anti-scriptural one! I believe
in the college, but not if it deny my Christ...
When Christ is no longer worshipped, men will sink back into cannibalism... [1917:127-128]
Riley’s 1923 book Inspiration or Evolution was a “call to arms” to protect American
democracy and Christian faith against the destructive doctrines of modernism and
evolution. The title refers to the divine origin of the Bible as opposed to its supposed
“evolution” according to Higher Criticism. But Riley attacks biological evolution
ferociously as well, emphatically asserting that evolution promotes atheism and anarchy.
Evolution is not science, and it destroys the Christian beliefs of students to whom it is
taught. Proclaiming that “bestial Bolshevism” is the product of evolution, Riley writes
that the Soviets are actively seeking to control U.S. education by planting the evil seed of
evolution in our schools. “Science is now the subtle word of Satanic employment,” he
warns; he then goes on to quote many academics and scientists who oppose either
evolution or Darwinism.
Riley demanded that evolution be removed from both private and public schools.
Since it is false, it should not be taught. Riley rejected the accommodationist view that
science and the Bible spoke of different but harmonious truths.
To be sure, all truths are harmonious! But why speak of evolution as a truth? ... Our entire contention is
that in its conception, development and application, evolution is utterly false; as false to science as to
Scripture; and so Scripture and this unproven and unprovable hypothesis can never speak together. “What
communion hath light with darkness?” Truth is the embodiment of intolerance! It cannot be forced into
any fellowship with falsehood. God’s Word is truth! Darwin’s theory is a falsehood and between them
there can be no fellowship! [1923:116-117]
...I affirm without fear of contradiction—For this age, at least, the theory of evolution is the evil seed. It
has evilly affected every ground into which it has been sown... [N]o two phrases were ever coined that
became such shibboleths of blood as “The struggle for existence,” and “The survival of the fittest” proved
in the combat of 1914-1918. “By their fruits ye shall know them.” If any philosophy was ever weighed in
the balance and found wanting, to such an extent that intelligent men ought to turn with loathing from the
same, it is the theory of evolution... [1923:122-123]
The tares of evolution have been surreptitiously sown. [W]hen, five years ago, the Christian Fundamentals
Association began to fight this theory, it was soon discovered that, like cuckoos, they had laid their eggs in
almost every college nest, and made sacred endowments to unwittingly hatch them, and unknowingly