Creationism - National Center for Science Education

[1] That during the time of the Deluge...all the stone and marble of the antediluvian earth, all the metals of
it, all the mineral concretions, everything, in a word, that had obtained any solidity, were totally dissolved
and their constituent corpuscles all disjointed, their cohesion perfectly ceasing. [2] That all this sand, earth
and the like, together with animal and plant remains were all assumed up promiscuously into the water and
sustained in it in such a manner that the water and bodies in it together made up a common, confused mass.
[3] That at length all the mass that was thus borne up in the water was again precipitated and subsided
toward the bottom. [4] That this subsidence happened generally, and, as near as possibly could be expected
in so great a confusion, according to the laws of gravity. [5] That the matter, subsiding thus, formed the
strata of stone, of marble, of coal, of earth and the rest, of which strata. lying one upon another, the
terrestrial globe...doth mainly consist. [6] That human bodies and the bodies of quadrupeds and other land
animals, of birds, of fishes, as also trees, shrubs and all other vegetables...were not precipitated till the last,
and so lay above all the former, constituting the supreme or outermost stratum of the globe.
Nelson stressed the importance of Woodward’s hypothesis of sorting by specific
gravity (1968:35), but pointed out that, by itself, it was incomplete. To this agency must
be added the hypothesis that the Flood consisted of successive tidal waves or currents
sweeping back and forth, each wave depositing another set of sediments, thus accounting
for the alternatively layered nature of much of the stratigraphic record. Flood Geologists
such as John Williams were to add this later (1789), as Nelson carefully explained; and
Morris, after Nelson, also made it an important feature of his Flood Geology.
William Bell Dawson, son of John William Dawson of McGill University, was,
like his father, a geology professor at McGill. He was active in this era writing books
and booklets such as Forethought in Creation (1925), Evolution Contrasted with
Scripture Truth (1926), The Bible Confirmed by Science (1932), Is Evolution True?
Error and the Way of Truth (1932). “The essential contrast between the doctrine of
Evolution and the Bible, and the need to choose between them is thus clear”; the spread
of unbelief is due to evolutionary teaching.
Captain Bernard Acworth, the founder and later president of the Evolution Protest
Movement, was a British submarine commander (according to Nature 1973:360 he was
reputed to have won a libel suit against Churchill), and also a respected amateur
ornithologist. He wrote a 1929 book based on anti-evolution articles published in various
journals (Morris 1984b:206; Acworth 1929). Later (1934), he wrote a book subtitled The
Tragedy of Evolution, which is an eloquent plea for creationism. Stating that evolution
and creation are “flatly contradictory,” he contends that if creationism were to be
accepted as true, then Christianity would regain the ground it lost in England due to the
advance of evolution. Evolution, he claimed, resulted in bad morals and evil behavior.
Acworth founded the Evolution Protest Movement in 1932. The EPM’s first
leaflet (quoted in Munday 1986:41) explained the new organization’s motivation and
objectives:
Dear Sir (or Madam),
The public is conscious that the country is in a critical state and that subversive doctrines are undermining
every aspect of our national life. There must, therefore, be some fundamental fallacy operating in the mind
of the country as a whole.
We believe this fallacy to be the acceptance, as true, of the theory of Evolution and its employment as the
spring of action in all spheres...
Christianity sanctifies the individual and the home; Evolution glorifies the herd and is the parent of
Socialism and Communism. In Russia the theory of evolution has supplanted Christianity. Darwin is the
new Messiah.