The Creationists: From Scientific Creationism to Intelligent Design, Expanded Edition
by Ronald L. Numbers
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Description
Forty-seven percent of the American people, according to a 1991 Gallup Poll, believe that God made man - as man is now - in a single act of creation, and within the last ten thousand years. Ronald L. Numbers chronicles the astonishing resurgence of this belief since the 1960s, as well as the creationist movement's tangled religious roots in the theologies of late-nineteenth - and early twentieth century Baptists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Adventists, and other religious groups. Even more show more remarkable than Numbers's story of today's widespread rejection of the theory of evolution is the dramatic shift from acceptance of the earth's antiquity (even for William Jennings Bryan the biblical "days" of Genesis represented long geological ages) to the insistence of present-day scientific creationists that most fossils date back to Noah's flood and its aftermath, and that the earth itself is no more than ten thousand years old. The author focuses especially on the rise of this "flood geology," popularized in 1961 by John Whitcomb and Henry Morris's book, The Genesis Flood, which defended the theory that creation took place in six literal days, and updated the old arguments purporting to prove that a geologically significant worldwide flood actually took place. Numbers gives particular attention to the development of creation research institutes and societies, and to those creationists - including the half of the founders of the Creation Research Society with doctorates in biology - who possessed, or claimed to possess, scientific credentials. On the basis of dozens of interviews and scores of little-known manuscript collections, Numbers delineates the competing scientific and biblical interpretations, and reports on the debates between creationists and evolutionists - in courthouses, legislative halls, and on school boards - over the boundaries between science and religion. He traces the evolution of scientific creationism up to our own time and shows how the creationist movement challenges the very meaning of science. In giving The Creationists the Albert C. Outler Prize in Ecumenical Church History, the American Society of Church History has said, "This is a superb work of historical scholarship ... a landmark book." show lessTags
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"[The author] Ronald L. Numbers is William Coleman Professor of the History of Science and Medicine at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. [Anthony Grafton, reviewer for the 'New Republic,' said of this work] Numbers has meticulously reconstructed the careers and the relations of the heroes of creationism--men largely unknown in research universities but vastly influential in seminaries, study groups and Sunday schools around the United States." Source: The book's back cover.
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Author Information
36+ Works 1,536 Members
Ronald L. Numbers is Hilldale and William Coleman Professor of the History of Science and Medicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison
Awards and Honors
Common Knowledge
- Original publication date
- 1993
- People/Characters
- William Jennings Bryan; George McCready Price; Henry Morris
- Important events
- Scopes Trial (1925-07)
- Original language
- English
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 354
- Popularity
- 88,695
- Reviews
- 1
- Rating
- (4.17)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper
- ISBNs
- 3
- ASINs
- 1
