The Creationists

The Evolution of Scientific Creationism

Ronald Numbers

Ronald Numbers earned a bachelor's degree in Mathematics and Physics, and then an MA in history from FSU and a PhD in history from Berkeley.

p ix Introduction

p 3 Ch 1 Creationism in the Age of Darwin

p 258 Ch 13 Deception and Discrimination

p277 Very interesting review of the experience of Davis Young, geologist and author with Ralph Stearly of "The Bible, Rocks and Time", author of "Christianity and the Age of the Earth" and "Creation and the Flood".

His experience included:

Born 1941, son of eminent Old Testament scholar E.J. Young (1907-1968)
Entered Princeton late 1950s to study geological engineering
Father's colleague Cornelius van Til (father of Presuppositionalism) influenced him toward a position of presuppositional authority of the Bible.
Princeton degree 1962, moved to Penn State for Masters in minerology.
Came powerfully under the influence of "The Genesis Flood" by Morris and Whitcomb and wrote admiringly to Whitcomb affirming his positive response to the book.
- This positive response to "The Genesis Flood" was at almost exactly the same time that Ron Jones, Clayton Teague and I looked at the book and were absolutely apalled by it. We had lengthy debates on it with Robert Gentry, a staunch YEC from his Seventh-Day Adventist convictions. Having looked at the major physics errors in the book, we thought it would never amount to anything, but we were dramatically wrong about that. I still feel very guilty that I didn't mount a more vigorous opposition to "The Genesis Flood" in those early days after its publication in 1961, the year I entered physics graduate school.
Entered geological sciences PhD program at Brown in 1965 and his enthusiasm for flood geology began to wane.
Invited by Morris to join CRS in 1969, but declined because "on the basis of scriptural considerations, I can no longer accept it [The Genesis Flood]."
Young remained a staunch inerrantist about the Bible in contrast to the evolutionary leanings of his major professor and others.
Finished his PhD and joined faculty of New York University. This raised the hopes of Morris that their movement might have gained a high-level university advocate.
- Morris wrote to him "I have been hoping that you were one whom the Lord was raising up to take the lead in this return to true Biblical science."
In 1977 wrote a book "Creation and the Flood, an Alternative to Flood Geology and Theistic Evolution" in which he argued against both of those positions, trying to lead Christians to a middle ground.
- Morris' disappointment turned to anger. "To his way of thinking, this 'strategy of compromise' served as little more than a 'halfway house' on the road to theistic evolution."
In 1978 Young moved to Christian Reformed Calvin College, "a hotbed of anti-Morris sentiment since the early 1960s, when the flood geologist accused the faculty of heresy."
- "Young kept up a steady attack on Flood Geology."
- "proposed in 1987 that evangelicals 'stop treating Genesis 1 and the flood story as scientific and historic reports.'" That's moving a long way from his early van Til sympathies!
"Morris could not resist drawing parallels between Young's intellectual journey and that of Darwiin over a century earlier. 'Starting out as a strict creationist, he converted to progressive creation in graduate school, then to theistic evolution,' wrote Morris with scarcely concealed contempt. 'Now, finding that no such compromise really works or is acceptable to the secular evolutionists from whom he longs for appproval, Young proposes to give up Genesis altogether, so far as any actual scientific relevance is concerned.'"

R Nave