Creationism - National Center for Science Education
Creationism - National Center for Science Education
Creationism - National Center for Science Education
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enormous successive streams or currents of Flood waters. Whitcomb and Morris do not<br />
mention Williams, though their Flood Geology uses many of the same ideas. They do,<br />
however, pay homage to Byron Nelson, who devotes an entire chapter to Williams’s<br />
theory.<br />
Much of the success of The Genesis Flood can be traced to social and cultural<br />
factors. The launching of the Soviet Sputnik in 1957 triggered alarm in this country<br />
about the quality of American science and, consequently, the quality of science<br />
education. New and more ambitious science curricula were a direct result. The<br />
Biological <strong>Science</strong>s Curriculum Study (BSCS), consisting of textbooks emphasizing<br />
evolution (organized about the time of the Darwin Centennial in 1959), was part of a<br />
larger <strong>National</strong> <strong>Science</strong> Foundation project begun in 1957. As Nelkin points out (1982),<br />
these federally-funded textbooks, and others which also emphasized evolution (especially<br />
the MACOS social science series), aroused widespread fear amongst fundamentalists in<br />
particular about federal control of education.<br />
THE CREATION RESEARCH SOCIETY<br />
At any rate, The Genesis Flood sparked a revival of interest in creationism.<br />
<strong>Creationism</strong> now seemed far more respectable and scientific, and far less easy to dismiss.<br />
Those strict creationist ASA members who had been disappointed and alarmed at the<br />
drift away from creationism by other ASA members and creeping evolutionism within<br />
the organization were heartened by the appearance of Whitcomb and Morris’s book.<br />
Walter Lammerts, William Tinkle, Frank Marsh, R.L. Harris, Edwin Monsma, Duane<br />
Gish, John Grebe, Wilbert Rusch, John Klotz, and Morris himself <strong>for</strong>med a committee<br />
(the “Team of Ten”) and began to plan, in 1961, <strong>for</strong> a new organization dedicated to strict<br />
creationism, either as a distinct group within the ASA or (if ASA reaction was negative)<br />
as an independent Society. Members of this committee met at an ASA meeting in 1963,<br />
and reconvened after the meeting at Grebe’s house in Michigan. The Creation Research<br />
Society was born at these meetings. (Morris, interestingly, was unable to attend these<br />
meetings; he had gotten an NSF grant to attend a water resources conference.)<br />
It was Walter Lammerts, the <strong>for</strong>mer UCLA horticulturist, who largely initiated<br />
these moves which led to the <strong>for</strong>mation of the new Society. In “The Creationist<br />
Movement in the United States: A Personal Account” (1974), Lammerts describes his<br />
own involvement with creationism as well as the movement in general. Lammerts<br />
entered college at the University of Cali<strong>for</strong>nia (at Berkeley—this was be<strong>for</strong>e UCLA was<br />
founded) in 1923, where he was exposed to evolution <strong>for</strong> the first time. He discovered<br />
Price’s New Geology at the university library, and began a study of scientific criticisms of<br />
evolution. Lammerts was asked to join the ASA in 1943 by F.A. Everest, who he said<br />
assured him that the ASA would be anti-evolutionary (Lammerts 1974:54). He was also<br />
involved with the defunct Creation-Deluge Society. But after leaving UCLA in 1945 to<br />
work as a plant breeder in private business, his interest in creationism waned, until<br />
rekindled by reading Rehwinkel’s book, and later Whitcomb and Morris’s. Lammerts<br />
was appointed the first president of the Creation Research Society as well as editor of its<br />
journal, the Creation Research Society Quarterly.<br />
Lammerts is a highly respected plant breeder and geneticist. His new rose breeds<br />
have won the highest awards. (A recent article on rose breeding in Discover, <strong>for</strong>