Ken Ham’s Alternative History of Creationism

Faith & Science Conversation
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I certainly did NOT think it misleading. I was actually delighted to see it—and didn’t even ponder the issue of which of Price’s works most influenced M & W. I appreciated your including it as an illustration. Before the Internet, those kinds of pamphlets and booklets were often very important in American Christendom. Spreading one’s ideas is so much easier today!

Of course, when I was a young man any such printed materials from SDAs were usually viewed with contempt—because “the cults” were despised and their materials burned. (I remember a pastor being incensed to find JW copies of AWAKE! on his screen door of the parsonage and promptly taking it to “the burn barrel” in the back of the church. Not a moment to lose!

Dr. Davis, I really appreciate any and all history you choose to post here. Many of them bring back memories. (And those memories include reminders of my gullibility as a cocky young professor who actually believed that he was a critical thinker who carefully scrutinized the evidence. However, years later I found that many of my ETS colleagues had had very similar experiences as enthusiastic “creation science” advocates. I’m amazed how many ex-YEC evangelicals have a similar story of having promoted The Genesis Flood and its arguments and taking years to gradually see the folly of it. Several times I’ve had people on forums say “Didn’t I read your story on ______ where you talked about your having one been a big fan of Henry Morris and speaking at Creation Science conferences?” I think a lot of us saw ourselves as science-oriented Bible scholars who were going to equip the Church to fight those evil evolutionists.

P.S. I may vaguely recall someone saying that the Price pamphlet had been given to Whitcomb years before and it led him to seek out Price’s “book”. I may be wrong in that and perhaps I jumped to conclusions when they simply referred to Whitcomb reading a “tract” by Price, so I thought the “tract” was perhaps the pamphlet you included in your post. However, if I recall, the “book” that Price wrote wasn’t all that bulky and book-like. ??? My memories are of a rather amateurish collection of text and illustrations that didn’t look all that “professional”.

Truly, my memory faculties nowadays should not be relied upon.

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Homer Rodeheaver was on`e of the best-selling recording artists of the 1920s. Several of his recordings are available onYoutube. His theme song was “Brighten the Corner Where You Are.” Many of his songs were on the subject of temperance, as were Billy Sunday’s sermons, so it is interesting that they were involved in bootlegging.

Incidentally, I am distantly related to Homer Rodeheaver. My dad said Homer and my great grandfather were about 4th cousins.

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The mention of George McCready Price’s Canadian roots prompts me to offer some additional details.

Teaching as I do at a Canadian university, I like to add Canadian content when pertinent. Thus, when speaking about the Manhattan Project, I usually mention that the largest man-made explosion (albeit accidental) before the Trinity Test in 1945 was the Halifax Explosion of 1917, when a Belgian ammunition ship blew up in Halifax harbour, a modest walk from where I teach. It was a tremendous tragedy and 2000 lost their lives, not to mention 9000 injured and substantial property damage. Robert Oppenheimer’s team studied this explosion when making their calculations of the likely blast damage from an atom bomb.

When lecturing on the history of Creationism, I mention two well-known Creationists who were born in Canada.

G M Price, the one already mentioned, hailed from the small town of Havelock, New Brunswick, which is about three hours by car north of Halifax. New Brunswick borders the U.S. state of Maine, which is where Ellen G. White was born. Price taught in New Brunswick and after a brief stint in Nova Scotia followed by another in New York City, he was in California by 1905 or 1906. He lived to the grand old age of 92 and died in Loma Linda, California.

Another Canadian Creationist is Hugh Ross–who advocates an Old Earth and heads Reasons to Believe. He was born in Montreal, Quebec, grew up in Vancouver, British Columbia and completed his PhD in astrophysics at the University of Toronto. His Old Earth position puts him at odds with Price and other Young Earth Creations like Ken Ham, but he too ended up in California, first for a postdoc at CalTech. Reasons to Believe is based in the Los Angeles area.

Ken Ham himself is of course from Down Under.

I would certainly be interested to learn of any other Canadian Creationists, with or without California associations.

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The first person (not already mentioned) who comes to mind is Arthur Custance: http://custance.org/insight.php, with his areas of interest here: The Arthur C. Custance Centre
Though he was British by birth, he spent his whole adult life in Canada and presumably became a Canadian citizen.

He was IMO the last major proponent of the “gap theory” (I am ignoring popularizers of that view who did not really do their own original thinking about it), but as in all matters he followed his own drummer so it’s misleading simply to say that. To see what I mean, you’d have to read one of his books.

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When I was writing by master’s thesis in Seminary on Genesis 1, I studied Arthur Custance’s Without Form and Void to learn about the gap theory. It was quite interesting, I had never once been exposed to the gap theory before reading it.

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I’d be very interested in a series on Augustine and his thoughts on Genesis that culminated in The Literal Meaning of Genesis. He very much attempts the “literal interpretation” but is thrown back in several respects by the text. His wise and humble reaction is a guide for all of us. Let the God-honoring work of extracting meaning and understanding from Genesis continue until Jesus comes back.

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So would I. If I had the right background to do it, I’d gladly follow through, but I really don’t.

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Ted,

I’m sure you and the team could find someone to tap on the shoulder for that. :slight_smile:

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There is more to be written on the creationist phenomenon than appears in Numbers’ book. As a Diluvialist, I owe far more to Harold Willard Clark than I do to George McCready Price. Whitcomb and Morris drew from both. Yet Clark and Price developed very different approaches to the Geological Column. Although I am not a Seventh Day Adventist, I was very happy to be a co-author with the Adventist geologist Harold Coffin, in the book: “The Geologic Column: Perspectives within Diluvial Geology”. We wrote:

The first modern diluvialist to defend the concept of the geological column was Clark (1946). He consciously sought to correct some of the demolition work undertaken by George McCready Price, who had once been Clark’s teacher. Clark found himself advancing different views because, in his opinion, the field evidences demanded it (an overview of the differences between Clark and Price is given by Numbers, 1993, pp. 123–129). Clark addressed the development of American stratigraphy, their correlation with the rocks of England, and elaborated on the principles by which rocks may be correlated. He wrote:
“The diluvialist may not agree with geologists in interpreting the order of the strata as evidence of long ages of evolution, but this objection to the evolutionary theory should not lead them to close their eyes to the fact that the rocks do lie in systematic order. The detailed correlation that has been made is too exact and clear to make possible a successful denial of a very definite and regular order in the fossil zones (Clark, 1946, p. 52).”
Clark then elaborated on ecological zonation as his explanation of the fossil successions.

This divergence of thinking continues to exist, and this alone should make people realise that YEC geologists are not blindly following a tradition, but thinking through the evidences for themselves. Of course Diluvialism has had a history going back before Price. The Victorian age has the “Scriptural geologists”; and before them many of the pioneers of geology operated within the framework of biblical history (as they saw it). Most of the Bible commentators prior to 1800 understood Genesis as history.

My concern when reading this blog is not the main thesis (the revisionist approach that airbrushes Price out of the history of modern creationism – which I also regard as invalid), but the readiness with which @TedDavis accepts “deep time” as emerging from a scientific analysis of evidences. He indicates that YEC thinking was only viable when there was a “near total absence of scientific evidence to the contrary”. This is what modern Diluvialists contest by reference to both field evidences and the philosophical premises of “deep time” geologists.

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Thank you for this thoughtful comment, @David_Tyler. As you might guess, I especially appreciate your affirmation of my main thesis. And, your statement about the importance of Clark (vis-a-vis Price) for your own position further reinforces my thesis, since (as you must know) Clark was also an Adventist: he had studied under Price before replacing Price at Pacific Union College (an SDA school) when Price took a job at another Adventist college. http://creationwiki.org/Harold_W._Clark

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Since this point appears to be about our present state of knowledge, not the history of that knowledge, I’ll speak to the former. I look fruitlessly for reasons to question the overwhelming evidence for deep time. The evidence comes from multiple sciences (geology and astronomy are the primaries, but others also come in) and is based on multiple, entirely independent lines of reasoning, such as radiometric dating dating of rocks from Earth and other parts of the Solar System; distances to stars and galaxies; non-radiometric dating of many features of the earth’s surface on land and under seas; not to mention other lines of evidence that I understand less well. For the benefit of readers, I recommend this book as a great starting place for sorting this out and drawing your own conclusions: The Age of Everything: How Science Explores the Past, Hedman

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I am currently reading Nature and the Bible, which relates a series of lectures by Sir John William Dawson given in 1874. Dawson was an Old Earth creationist, world-renowned geologist, and “anti-Darwinist of the late Victorian period” (Canadian Encyclopedia). Born in Nova Scotia; Principal of McGill University.

Ronald Numbers refers to Dawson in his excellent book, The Creationists. I would note that Ken Ham could easily have formed his Young Earth beliefs while being ignorant of the strong connection to the Adventist roots. It is quite easy to form beliefs based on second-hand information, isn’t it?

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Sure. But when he was made aware of the Adventist roots of the people he claims were his influences, he just denies those roots even exist:

[quote] Young-earth creation is not a novel view invented by Seventh Day Adventists. It was historic Christian orthodoxy until the 19th century when the millions of years myth was popularized by atheist and deist geologists [/quote] (from the AIG article referenced in the blog post above)

It’s comparable to a Neo-Cal insisting that Puritan Jonathan Edwards had no influence on his beliefs, because all he does is read John Piper and it’s obvious John Piper’s views reflect the Bible-believing Christian view throughout the centuries and he got all his ideas straight from the Bible, not Puritans! (No matter how much Piper himself talks and writes about Edwards). It really doesn’t make logical sense.

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I wanted to say that I so appreciate this article by Mr. Davis. I have read Numbers’ book and was impressed by the fairminded tone it seemed to take. I also noted Henry Morris’ lengthy endorsement of the Numbers book on the back cover copy. I also have perused some of George Mc Price’s New Geology and read Ellen G. White’s account of her visions – that is, the trip to the past wherein she was shown what the creation was like and that it was indeed a week like any other in length. I also recall that she wrote about God and Satan having conversations in the Garden of Eden, quoting them at length, and so on… I have read other things, of course. I have tried to understand what is going on in this debate. I did want to applaud Mr. Davis for giving Numbers the credit deserved. And yes, Numbers does say in his book that he is agnostic.

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Ted,
Thank you for your valuable contribution! Praying for the Holy Spirit to soften the hearts, and to remove prideful and misleading rhetoric, on all those involved in creation-evolution discussions. IHS, John

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Ken Davis,
Thanks for this article. I have noticed other attacks on Numbers as well. A more balanced criticism was recently offered by Warren Johns, and Ham may have read this since it was in his journal. Johns argues that some modern creationists have their intellectual roots in the early 19th century biblical geologists, essentially skipping over the White/Price line of thought. The other modern creationists have their roots in the 17th/18th century catastrophists, and they are connected via White/Price. He criticized Numbers thus:

Historians of science in recent times have wrongly credited George McCready Price with launching the modern creationist movement (Numbers 1982). Although he did much to revive Flood geology as a viable concept after it had been apparently dead for four decades or more, it was Henry M. Morris who broadened the base of support for creationism beyond geology to include biology and all of the natural sciences. Price provided the seeds of modern creationism in geology, but it is also true that the seeds for modern creationism can be traced back to Harry Rimmer in biology and to others championing an anti-evolution approach prior to 1961. SGs focused almost entirely on geology, while modern creationism has a much broader approach and its birth can be dated to the publication of The Genesis Flood in 1961, after which time journals and then societies advocating creationism were formed.

You can find the full article (published Nov. 30, 2016) here: Scriptural Geology, Then and Now | Answers Research Journal

The author is a Seventh-day Adventist with a history of publishing bibliographically dense works.

I would be interested to hear your comments. (My own sense is that even if there is some break in the intellectual thread with the past, nevertheless, Price kept alive “a flavor” of YEC during a time when it had virtually disappeared, and that Johns is splitting hairs to deny Numbers’s claim when geology was seen as the key science in the faith-science debate at the time).

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@Robert_Johnston,
Thank you for this very specific reply and the link to the article by Warren Johns. Note that I identified that article in my column as the only one on the AiG site that gives Price a major role in the history of creationism. So, I hadn’t ignored it. Obviously I didn’t try to summarize its contents, or take issue with any of its conclusions (as I will now in my reply to you); I was mostly interested in pointing out the relative neglect of Price by AiG. Regardless of what Johns says about Price, that point about AiG obviously stands (and you don’t contest it).

IMO, Johns accurately states many facts about the history of creationism, but the overall picture he presents of Price is not entirely consistent. His abstract begins with these two sentences: “The scriptural geology (SG) movement is described by historians as a reaction among both scientists and theologians to the long-ages models being proposed by geologists in the early nineteenth century. Specifically, it occupied the period of 1820 to 1860 after which time the movement essentially died out until revived by George McCready Price and the modern creationist movement of the twentieth century.” That is entirely correct (IMO), and it’s why I referenced his article favorably in my column. To the extent that Johns develops that point in the body of his paper, he’s right.

Thus, readers may be somewhat confused to find him saying this at one point in the paper, as you quoted in your comment: “Historians of science in recent times have wrongly credited George McCready Price with launching the modern creationist movement (Numbers 1982). Although he did much to revive Flood geology as a viable concept after it had been apparently dead for four decades or more, it was Henry M. Morris who broadened the base of support for creationism beyond geology to include biology and all of the natural sciences. Price provided the seeds of modern creationism in geology, but it is also true that the seeds for modern creationism can be traced back to Harry Rimmer in biology and to others championing an anti-evolution approach prior to 1961. SGs focused almost entirely on geology, while modern creationism has a much broader approach and its birth can be dated to the publication of The Genesis Flood in 1961, after which time journals and then societies advocating creationism were formed.”

My first point is that the first sentence in that paragraph cites an early article by Numbers (of which I have a signed offprint), not his famous book (which was first published in 1992). I don’t see anything in that article that is accurately summarized in that first sentence. Numbers sees both Rimmer and Price as having influenced Morris–and that’s certainly correct. He also focuses on Morris in a section headed, “Henry M. Morris and the Revival of Creationism,” which clearly indicates his view (in agreement with Johns) that Morris was the key figure in establishing the major movement we now have. What Numbers does do, however, is to show (in brief) the debt that Morris owed specifically to Price. Yes, Morris went well beyond Price, and partly he was able to do that b/c many more people wanted to join with Morris than had wanted to join with Price in an earlier period. So, I don’t find Johns’ conclusion about Numbers to be warranted.

When people read Numbers today, it’s typically from his later book, the definitive history of the movement, upon which (I note) Johns also relies for certain important details. So, I don’t see in Johns any support for painting Numbers as a second-rate historian, as AiG is now doing. In that book, there is a large amount of evidence, directly from Morris (published works and correspondence) and Whitcomb (correspondence), showing that (a) Morris learned about flood geology from Price; (b) Morris himself regarded Price as the most important influence on his work; (c) Morris regarded Price as basically his intellectual mentor on creationism, forming a close personal relationship with Price and always speaking of Price in highly positive ways–this denies what is said in the article I linked here: Exposing The Anointed | Answers in Genesis (d) Whitcomb learned about Price from Morris; (e) Whitcomb wrote his dissertation to defend Price’s ideas; (f) Morris fully realized that Price’s SDA affiliation was not ideal for promoting creationism among conservative Protestants, so Morris even advised Whitcomb to downplay the connection in their jointly written book, The Genesis Flood, even though they both knew that Price’s ideas were at the core of that book. Note just the title of the book: what could be more obvious than that?

So, all things considered, that article is not an adequate basis for anyone to claim that W & M didn’t get their stuff from Price. And, given the fact that AiG does see W & M as the founders of modern creationism, the conclusion that Price’s ideas lie at the heart of modern creationism is undeniable. Yet, AiG tries hard to deny it.

I also note that you mainly agree with me, @Robert_Johnston. Johns is indeed “splitting hairs” on that particular claim. I think Johns would actually agree with me, that Price’s role in the realm of ideas was enormous and can’t be missed and shouldn’t be denied; it’s simply that Morris launched a movement and Price didn’t. I’ve never said otherwise, and neither did Numbers.

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@Robert_Johnston, let me add this also. The paragraph you quoted from Johns includes this: “Price provided the seeds of modern creationism in geology, but it is also true that the seeds for modern creationism can be traced back to Harry Rimmer in biology and to others championing an anti-evolution approach prior to 1961.”

Yes, yes, and yes. But–in matters geological, Rimmer was also influenced by Price, though hardly in a clear and consistent manner. Like Morris, he praised Price to the hilt for his New Geology, the book that Morris also loved. Unlike Morris, Rimmer wasn’t very consistent in his approaches (deliberately put in the plural) to Genesis. He didn’t seem to realize that the gap view (his personal favorite) was flatly inconsistent with Price’s flood geology. Rimmer was often confused on various things. For example, while he waxes enthusiastically about Price’s book, at the same time he hedges his bets on whether the flood was truly global (Rimmer tended to favor a local flood)–all in the space of a few pages. You get the drift.

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Ted Davis,
You are correct in surmising that I am in agreement with your analysis and criticism. I agree on Numbers’ book being outstanding, and his contributions in this field unworthy of the criticism AiG is directing his way.

Thanks for pointing out your reference to Warren Johns’s article. I hadn’t seen his name in your article, and though I clicked on some of the links in your article (referencing Ham’s original comments, for example), I didn’t click on the one that linked to Johns’s article, so failed to see that you had already read it.

Thanks for your comments on Johns’s article. I’ll add a couple more comments here–one on Johns’s article and then one on Price. On p. 330 of his article, Johns wrote:

What is of interest to this study is that Price never resorted to the theory of the exchange of the land surface and ocean bottoms as did the SGs, but instead he has proposed that oceans have made numerous incursions (called transgressions) over the land, and this he listed as fact 6 (Price 1923, 656–657). [emphasis added]

I haven’t read everything Price wrote, and wasn’t taking note of this aspect at the time of my reading, but thought that he did in fact refer to this idea, which I’ve seen in other sources, of the oceanbeds rising and the dry land sinking, thus exchanging places (so to speak). Half of that (sinking land), at least, is directly expressed by Price on p. 156 of Modern Christianity and Modern Science (1902), and the other half (rising oceans) is implied by his reference to the oceanbeds etc. losing their equilibrium. Quoting:

The skies, which never before had condensed into falling drops, now grew black with universal cloudbursts, and the beds of the ocean, and the interior reservoirs of the earth, lost their equilibrium, and vomited forth their waters upon the sinking land.

I guess the lesson is to “never say ‘never’”!

The other comment I wish to make is in response to your comment (following Numbers) that Whitcomb and Morris intentionally suppressed references to Price to avoid prejudicing their (anti-SDA) readers. While not denying that at all, I do find it deliciously ironic because Price himself seems to have done the same thing with respect to his inspiration, the SDA prophet Ellen G. White. Price acknowledges sources throughout his books, but often not when the source was White. Was this for the same reason as W&M? i.e., to avoid prejudicing non-SDA readers? I share an example below:

Ellen G. White, Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 44 (pub. 1890):

As the earth came forth from the hand of its Maker, it was exceedingly beautiful. Its surface was diversified with mountains, hills, and plains, interspersed with noble rivers and lovely lakes; but the hills and mountains were not abrupt and rugged, abounding in terrific steeps and frightful chasms, as they now do; the sharp, ragged edges of earth’s rocky framework were buried beneath the fruitful soil, which everywhere produced a luxuriant growth of verdure. There were no loathsome swamps or barren deserts. Graceful shrubs and delicate flowers greeted the eye at every turn.

George E. McCready Price, Outlines of Modern Science and Modern Christianity, p. 154 (pub. 1902):

The earth, as Adam first saw it, was supremely beautiful. No bare, rocky cliffs towered up between him and the sunlight, frowning destruction upon his feeble steps; no wide, dreary swamps breathed pestilential vapors into his Eden home; no pathless deserts intervened between him and distant lands. Flower and fruit and seed were produced in limitless profusion, and in almost endless variety.

The literary dependence–key words, themes, and sequence–is obvious, even if Price did embellish his version with additional adjectives. This literary dependence is doubly sweetly ironic because Ellen White herself failed to acknowledge sources in many of her works. Incidentally, both books were published by the SDA publisher, Pacific Press Pub. Assn.

I have considerable respect for the breadth of literature Warren Johns has consulted in several of his publications over the past decades. It would be interesting to see him put his bibliographic skills to work on the literary sources of Ellen White’s statements about Creation and the Flood. Maybe that would complete his link back to the SG’s!