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Creationism Intellectual Origins, Cultural Context, and Theoretical Diversity

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Creationism Intellectual Origins, Cultural Context, and Theoretical Diversity Creationism Intellectual Origins, Cultural Context, and Theoretical Diversity A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology Thomas Allen McIver 1989 The dissertation of Thomas Allen McIver is approved. Robert Jay Russell Douglass Price-Williams B.J. Williams Robert S. Westman Philip L. Newman, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 1989 To my parents TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 1. FUNDAMENTALISM AND SCIENCE Pre-Millennialism Protestant Scholasticism Common Sense Philosophy The Baconian-Newtonian Ideal of Science Fact versus Theory Bible-Science Propositional Nature of the Bible Literalism versus Inerrancy Perspicuity of the Bible Creationism as a Key Tenet of Fundamentalist Belief 2. ORIGINS OF MODERN “SCIENTIFIC” CREATIONISM: 1900-1960 George McCready Price W.B. Riley and Harry Rimmer Other Early Creationists Early Debates The Lull: 1940s-1950s Early Creationist Organizations 3. THE MODERN CREATION-SCIENCE MOVEMENT Henry Morris; The American Scientific Affiliation Whitcomb and Morris’s Genesis Flood The Creation Research Society The Bible-Science Association The California Textbook Disputes: 1969-1972 The Creation-Science Research Center The Geoscience Research Institute The Institute for Creation Research Other Active Creationist Groups and Leaders 4. THEORETICAL ISSUES: SCIENCE, RELIGION, AND MORALITY Attitudes Towards the Relationship of Christianity and Science Bible-Science Harmonizations Prior to the 1920s Fundamentalist Rejection of Compromise Harmonizations Nomothetic Creation and Final vs. Secondary Causation Presuppositions Fundamentalist Dichotomies Evolution as Man’s Escape from God Chance versus Purpose and Design Morality 5. DIVERSITY AND SPREAD OF CREATIONISM AND ANTI-EVOLUTIONISM Religious Diversity: Protestant Religious Diversity: Catholic Religious Diversity: Jewish and Islamic Creationism Internationally Leaders, Followers, and Mid-Level Activists Liberal-Conservative Spectrum of Bible-Science Beliefs 6. DIVERSITY OF CREATIONIST THEORY Young-Earth Creationism Gap Theory Day-Age Theory Revelatory Theory Framework Theory Progressive Creationism Omphalos Theory Gap Theory: Recent Advocates and Variants Day-Age Theory: Recent Advocates and Variants Other Old-Earth Creationist Theories Regional Flood Theories Biblical Creationism versus Scientific Creationism Post-Millennialism and Christian Reconstructionism The Cosmonomic Movement CONCLUSIONS BIBLIOGRAPHY Creationism: Intellectual Origins, Cultural Context, and Theoretical Diversity by Thomas Allen McIver Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology University of California, Los Angeles, 1989 Professor Philip L. Newman, Chair A study of creationism as a belief system, examining the intellectual background and origins of creationist theory, its cultural context, including its relationship to other fundamentalist beliefs and to scientific theory, and its theoretical diversity. Given the presuppositions on which it is based, creationism forms a coherent, generally self- consistent and logical system of belief, though contradicted by modern (evolutionist) science. Fundamentalist attitudes towards science and fundamentalist opposition to evolution are largely a consequence of particular religious beliefs and doctrines. Despite necessary agreement on core concepts (biblical inerrancy, supernatural creation by God), creationism is especially subject to diversification and proliferation of competing lower- level theories and subsidiary hypotheses. These theories differ widely regarding the extent and application of biblical literalism, the date of creation (the age of the earth and of mankind), the nature of the Genesis Flood, the relation of biblical truth to scientific evidence, underlying eschatological assumptions and doctrines, biblical hermeneutical principles, and attitudes regarding science and external evidence. Creationist theories are therefore continually elaborated on, diversifying and proliferating as a result of the development of their own cultural logic and as a response to evolutionist challenges and reactions. INTRODUCTION This is a study of the creationist movement emphasizing creationism as a belief system. I present and examine many of the ideas and theories of the creationists in an attempt to understand how these beliefs fit together with other aspects of religious fundamentalism, and to understand the reasons why evolution is so strongly opposed. In doing so I assume that these beliefs follow some sort of logic and form a more or less coherent and understandable system. The actual fundamentalist religious beliefs, and their origins, must be taken into account in order to understand the intellectual background of creationist belief. In the first chapter I examine some of these beliefs and show how they contributed to the rise of fundamentalist opposition to evolution. In the second chapter I discuss the nature of early twentieth-century creationism, before, during, and after the heyday of fundamentalist activity in the 1920s. The third chapter is a description of the modern creationist movement. The fourth chapter discusses some theoretical issues involving various fundamentalist attitudes regarding the relationship of science and religion. The last two chapters emphasize the diversity of creationist belief: religious, national, and social diversity, plus the varying degrees of literalism (chapter five); and finally the various different major types of creationism (chapter six). My own research has been of two main types: “participant observation” and extensive study of creationist literature. My “participant observation” has included graduate-level courses and field trips at the Institute for Creation Research, which is generally acknowledged as the leading “creation-science” institution. I have described a week-long field trip to the Grand Canyon, which was offered as a graduate-level biology/ geology ICR field study course, in a separate article (McIver 1987a). Also, I have taken a graduate-level science education course at ICR, attended several ICR Summer Institutes, and have spent much time reading and studying in the ICR Library, the ICR Museum, and elsewhere on campus. Besides this considerable time at ICR, I have attended several National (and International) Creation Conferences (Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Seattle), plus many meetings of local creationist groups, and a variety of other creationist activities. My other primary source of information has been a very wide-ranging study of creationist literature. In fact, almost as soon as I began spending time at the ICR Library, which has an extensive collection of creationist materials (very likely the best and most comprehensive collection anywhere), I realized that this kind of material merited far more attention. Analyses of creationism have overwhelmingly tended to focus on an extremely narrow range of creationist thought and literature—usually just a few books by ICR members or a few other prominent creation-science leaders. These are certainly the most important: they have had by far the greatest effect on the public. They are also quite widely known now. But my attention was drawn to the seemingly limitless numbers of other, lesser known works attacking evolution. These, I felt, were significant in part because of their sheer number, and because of the fascinating (and usually little-known) diversity they exhibited. The older literature (some of it readily available; much of it not) shed light on the background of the contemporary creation-science movement—the origins of the ideas which make up creationist theory. The newer literature demonstrates the myriad forms opposition to evolution can take, and expresses the often surprising and sharp divisions within the creationist movement. I wrote a book-length annotated bibliography of this literature (McIver 1988a). Much of that literature forms the basis for discussion of various topics in this dissertation as well. Related to this diversity, a theme which emerges, and which is of particular interest to cultural anthropologists, is the process of proliferation and diversification of creationist thought: the cultural and ideological elaboration of creationist arguments and theories. Creationist theory and ideology shows itself to be capable of elaborate and limitless variation. This evolution of creationist thought needs to be comprehensively explored and analyzed in both its historical and contemporaneous manifestations. The process which emerges is a continual fractionation of creationist ideology into competing and opposing theories, all the while responding to scientific and evolutionist developments and arguments in a kind of dialectic, by development of new theories and new variants in response to specific challenges, both internal and external. In this sense the following study is notably different from conventional ethnographies of traditional societies in which theoretical and ideological evolution and elaboration is shunned, or at least not readily confessed to, by informants. By contrast, in this study, creationist believers, though they usually insist that truth is absolute, eternal, and obtainable by man through God’s Word, must admit to the existence of vigorously competing schools of creationist thought and interpretation, which they are forced to confront intellectually and against which they spend much time and energy, and also to the existence and development of often sharply different theories in the past. Thus, though creationism
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