Creationism - National Center for Science Education

We feel the public are being deceived. Evolution propaganda does not present the facts impartially; it
dwells upon those which favour the theory, while suppressing those which oppose it. Such are not the
methods of true, but of false, science.
Seventh-day Adventist Harold W. Clark carried on the pioneering tradition of
George McCready Price. Clark studied under Price at Pacific Union College, then taught
biology there himself for 35 years. His 1929 book Back to Creation is “A Defense of the
Scientific Accuracy of the Doctrine of Special Creation, and a Plea for a Return to Faith
in a Literal Interpretation of the Genesis Record of Creation as Opposed to the Theory of
Evolution.” Clark wrote ten more books advocating strict creationism right up to 1980.
“Any true scientific theory regarding the origin and early history of earth and its life,” he
wrote (1947:3), “must agree with a plain, simple obvious rendering” of Genesis.
In Genes and Genesis (1940), Clark tried to correct the common accusation that
all creationists must believe in absolute fixity of species. He allowed for some
speciation, and regarded the created biblical “kinds” as larger taxa, with variation
possible within kinds.
The record says that God created each “after his kind,” but does not say that variations were impossible.
The creationist of today does not make any claims for the immutability of species... He has no dispute
with modern science over the possibility of variation, isolation, natural selection, and such factors
producing new species. He does, however, maintain that the world and its life originally came into
existence in six days through the direct intervention of the power of God. In this position he holds his
ground against the speculations and criticisms of all who attempt to interpose the theory of evolutionary
processes in the place of the record of the creative fiat of the Almighty. [1940:138]
Clark continued to deny fixity of species in later books. The original plan of Creation has
been subverted by Satan, he explained; this itself involved much mixing and variation
within “kinds.” Some animals became carnivores. Parasites are clear examples of
degenerative change. This denial of species immutability is part of Clark’s attempt at a
“positive” treatment of creationism, rather than simply a debunking of evolution.
By the late 1930s, Clark began to realize that his mentor Price’s Flood Geology
had certain shortcomings. He tried to update Price’s New Geology in 1946 with his book
The New Diluvialism. 12 Though remaining a devout strict young-earth creationist and
Flood Geologist, he added a discussion of post-Flood glaciation (Price simply attributed
glacial effects to the Flood). He also introduced his Ecological Zonation theory,
proposing that the systematic order of fossil strata results from burial by the Flood of
different life zones or ecological communities. This was a departure from Price’s
assertion that the strata could and did appear in any order. Price recognized different
fossil assemblages, to be sure, but insisted that these could appear in any order; Clark
proposed that these ecological zones, though still contemporaneous, followed a certain
order from bottom to top; in other words, he accepted the standard geological column
(though not its temporal implications).
According to Numbers (1982:541), Price, when he learned of Clark’s apostasy,
aimed a “vitriolic pamphlet,” Theories of Satanic Origin, at his disloyal student. Though
Price denounced him for years afterwards, Clark insisted that he was still a literal
12 In The New Geology (1923:7), Price had written: “The first edition of any pioneer work of this kind,
which endeavors to reconstruct the whole body of so highly developed a science as geology in many of its aspects
now is, can not fail to be in many respects a crude affair; but the readers of the book can materially assist the author in
making subsequent editions more in keeping with his high aims to build only on that solid ground of nature...”