From: lippard@skyblu.ccit.arizona.edu (James J. Lippard)
Newsgroups: talk.origins
Subject: Re: Progressive Creationism Part 6
Date: 6 Oct 92 21:42:00 GMT
Distribution: world,local
Organization: University of Arizona
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41

In article <1992Oct6.151130.1892@nsisrv.gsfc.nasa.gov>, jgacker@news.gsfc.nasa.gov (James G. Acker) writes...
>James J. Lippard (lippard@skyblu.ccit.arizona.edu) wrote:
>: In article <91243@rphroy.ph.gmr.com>, hamilton@gmr.com (William E. Hamilton CS50 CS/50) writes...
> 
>HAMILTON:
>: >Politics. The young-earth view is incredibly powerful in conservative 
>: >Christianity. Even a person of Boice's stature could be damaged by
>: >openly opposing it. 
> 
>LIPPARD:
>: I'm presently reading Ronald Numbers' _The Creationists_, and was quite
>: surprised to find that things used to be quite the reverse, up until around
>: the 1920's or later.  That is, old-earthers were quite dominant, except in
>: the Seventh Day Adventist crowd, whose influence through George McCready
>: Price led to today's creationism.  Sev'l early U.S. creationist organizations
>: were split over heated battles between Price-following flood geologists
>: and day-age and gap theorists.
> 
>	I just heard this too, in the Sunday class which is accompanied
>by Boice's book.  Apparently, theistic evolution was a major tenet of 
>1920's fundamentalists.
>	It's a shame that we've taken such a step backwards, both in
>tolerance and in knowledge (well, I haven't, but several fundamental
>branches of the Christian church have.)

When the Rev. A.C. Dixon assembled the twelve booklets, _The Fundamentals_,
between 1910 and 1915 (from which fundamentalists get their name), he had
cleric-geologist George Frederick Wright write a chapter for it.  The
chapter was originally to be titled "Evolution from the Christian Point
of View," but was ultimately titled "The Passing of Evolution."  In it,
he argued for special creation at the species level, but that each species
was "nothing more than enlarged or accentuated varieties, which all admit
are descendants from a common ancestry."  (At the same time this was
published, Wright elsewhere, in his 1912 book _Origin and Antiquity of
Man_, stated that "it is difficult to resist the conclusion that, so far
as his physical organism is concerned, man is genetically connected with
the highest order of the Mammalia, but it is equally evidence that he is
not descended from any existing species of that order."  Nobody is quite
clear on just what his views were about the limits of evolution.)
   Wright was an old-earther who did not advocate flood geology.

The following is an interesting paragraph from Numbers' _The Creationists_,
p. 96:

   On occasion [George McCready] Price found himself defending not only
   the geological but the scriptural validity of his flood geology.  The
   amateur historian of science and prep-school science teacher Edwin
   Tenney Brewster (1866-1960) especially enjoyed pestering Price with
   questions about the compatibility of the new catastrophism with the
   Old Testament.  How, wondered Brewster, could the author of Genesis,
   writing about the antediluvian world *after* the deluge, refer to
   familiar geographical landmarks if, as Price claimed, the present-day
   topographical features of the region had resulted from the flood?  If
   the Holy Land rested on stratified rocks deposited during the flood,
   one would expect the pre- and post-flood geography of the region to
   differ markedly; but Genesis refers to "the same rivers and plains,
   the same wildernesses, the same 'Mountains of Ararat,' that Noah saw
   before the Great Flood."  Seen in this light, wrote Brewster, "the
   Prician hypothesis flatly contradicts the Bible."

Jim Lippard              Lippard@CCIT.ARIZONA.EDU
Dept. of Philosophy      Lippard@ARIZVMS.BITNET
University of Arizona
Tucson, AZ 85721
Newsgroups: talk.origins