Creationism - National Center for Science Education
Creationism - National Center for Science Education
Creationism - National Center for Science Education
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Genesis should be kept out of public schools, and made an eloquent appeal to democracy.<br />
Shipley, to his credit (this was when paleo-anthropology was still strongly influenced by<br />
Piltdown), noted the great significance of the just-discovered Taung (australopithecine)<br />
fossil from South Africa.<br />
The year after this debate, Baker and Nichol came out with Creation—Not<br />
Evolution (1926), a book with a Foreword by George McCready Price. It included the<br />
standard creationist scientific objections to evolution, with many scientific references, but<br />
also openly proclaimed its religious basis; chapters included “Evolution’s Unsavory<br />
History,” “The Flood,” “Questions <strong>for</strong> Evolutionists to Answer,” “Evolution a<br />
Philosophy and a Religion,” “The Bible, the Crux of the Controversy,” and “Back to<br />
<strong>Creationism</strong>.” Baker and Nichol declare that the Bible “is not only not unscientific, but it<br />
is very scientific in its allusions” (1926:150). They then demonstrate various Biblescience<br />
propositions.<br />
The Bible does not have to catch up with science; science must catch up with the Bible. The Bible has not<br />
had to correct its science in thirty-five hundred years; current science finds itself wrong about every thirtyfive<br />
days. [1926:151]<br />
Baker and Nichol also discuss (1926:46-7) the recently discovered pictograph from Hava<br />
Supai Canyon in Arizona which is allegedly of a dinosaur (which would refute the<br />
evolutionist time-scale); these drawings, and others interpreted similarly, have become<br />
widely-used creationist evidence. The authors use the probability argument in reference<br />
to biblical prophecy, which Stoner (1958) elaborated on, and which is now a great<br />
favorite. The probability that various “fulfilled predictions” in the Bible would all come<br />
true by chance is calculatd to be one in a trillion (1926:164-5).<br />
Despite this appeal to science, Baker and Nichol conclude by affirming that the<br />
greatest proof is “The Bible’s Trans<strong>for</strong>ming Power”—its power to change lives:<br />
Has anyone ever heard a one-time thief and criminal say, “I once was an inmate of the state’s prison<br />
because of my repeated burglaries, but since reading Henry Fairfield Osborn’s ‘Men of the Old Stone Age,’<br />
I have seen the error of my way, and all my desire <strong>for</strong> a dishonest life has been miraculously taken away”?<br />
[1926:171]<br />
There were debates across the Atlantic as well, though the most important were<br />
written rather than oral exchanges. In <strong>Science</strong> and the Supernatural (Lunn and Haldane<br />
1935), a series of 31 letters, Arnold Lunn debated J.B.S. Haldane, the famous British<br />
geneticist (and outspoken Marxist) who played a key role in bringing genetics into<br />
harmony with evolutionary theory in the 1930s (the neo-Darwinian Synthesis). This<br />
correspondence largely concerned evolution.<br />
There is “no real evidence in support of Darwinism,” claimed Lunn, who also<br />
quoted many anti-Darwinian scientists. Haldane, <strong>for</strong> his part, observed that all people are<br />
affected by science in their lives, but that few of them understand the nature of scientific<br />
thought.<br />
Lunn, author of several books on Alpine skiing, had earlier written two books,<br />
The Revolt Against Reason (1930) and The Flight from Reason (1931) arguing against<br />
Darwinism. In the first, he quotes a Fellow of the Royal Society as expressing gratitude<br />
that Lunn is tackling the idol of evolution, since, he says, the professional scientists’<br />
“hands are tied.” Those in authority, un<strong>for</strong>tunately, “regard Darwin as a Messiah’; “no