George McCready Price

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George McCready Price (1870 — 1963) was a Canadian creationist. He produced a string of anti-evolution, or creationist works, particularly on the subject of "flood geology". However, not until after his death did his views become common amongst creationists, the "creation science" movement starting in the 1960s.

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[edit] Early years

Price was born in Havelock, New Brunswick, Canada. His father died in 1882 and his mother joined the Seventh-day Adventist Church. In 1887, he married another follower of the church.

Price then became a schoolteacher, teaching as a missionary at Battle Creek College (now Andrews University) between 1891 and 1893 at another school in 1896, and at a high school in Tracadie, a Francophone fishing village, between 1897 and 1899.

He met Alfred Corbett Smith socially, who, amused by Price's fundamentalism, introduced him to literature on science. Since his faith held that the Earth was young, Price concluded that geologists had misinterpreted their data.

In 1902, Price self-published Outlines of Modern Christianity and Modern Science. After failing as a preacher, and then as a writer in New York, Price helped build the then Seventh-day Adventist headquarters in Maryland and a school in California.

He took a job as a secondary teacher with the Adventists but then took the year of 1921 off to write his most important work, The New Geology. In 1924, Price was sent to Stanborough Missionary College, in Watford, London, United Kingdom.

[edit] His opposition to evolution

In 1906, he self-published "Illogical Geology: The Weakest Point in the Evolution Theory" while working as a handyman at an Adventist sanitarium in Southern California. In this 1906 book, Price offered 1000$ "to any one who will, in the face of the facts here presented, show me how to prove that one kind of fossil is older than another." Price wrote another 6 books from 1906 to 1921.[1]

Price's most notable work, The New Geology (1923), a 726 page college textbook, contains numerous arguments that allegedly refute key elements of Darwin's theory of evolution. Several of these arguments remain popular in creationist circles today.

One of the most popular is the argument that evolutionary theory rests on faulty dating techniques. Price alleges that fossils are dated according to the age of the geological strata that they are found in, and that the rocks themselves are assigned probable dates based on the estimated age of the fossils found in them. In short, Price believes that all evolutionary claims based on the dates of fossils are in fact fallacious, based on a fairly straightforward circular argument. Price contends that all fossils are of the same age--that is, that the fossils were all laid down during the flood of Noah described in Genesis.

[edit] The effect of Price's ideas

Fossil fish authority David Starr Jordan, president of Stanford University, wrote a review of Price's Illogical Geology, in which he stated that Price should not expect "any geologist to take [his work] seriously."[2]

Price's 1923 book The New Geology introduced his "Great Law of Conformable Stratigraphic Sequences" which he claimed was "the most important law ever formulated with reference to the order in which the strata occur." Price's "Great Law stated that "any kind of fossiliferous beds whatever, 'young' or 'old,' may be found occurring conformably on any other fossiliferous beds, 'older' or 'younger.'"[1] Yale geologist Schuchert's review of The New Geology for the magazine Science stated that Price was "harboring a geological nightmare".[3] However, the creationists welcomed the new book. Harry Rimmer claimed that it was "a masterpiece of REAL science [that] explodes in a convincing manner some of the ancient fallacies of science 'falsely so called'"[4] Within a couple of years, Price appeared prominently in several conservative religious periodicals. A Science editor described him as "the principal scientific authority of the Fundamentalists".[5]

Price's defense of creation science (and attacks on evolution) first achieved wide notability in 1925 when his theories and arguments were utilized heavily by William Jennings Bryan in the famous Scopes Trial. Bryan had appealed to Price for assistance, but Price was busy teaching in England. Price advised Bryan to avoid science during the trial if possible.[6] During the trial, defense counsel Clarence Darrow, sneared "You mentioned Price because he is the only human being in the world so far as you know that signs his name as a geologist that believes like you do . . . every scientist in this country knows [he] is a mountebank and a pretender and not a geologist at all."[6]

Price's ideas were borrowed again in the early 1960s by Henry M. Morris and John Whitcomb in their book The Genesis Flood, a work that skeptic Martin Gardner calls "the most significant attack on evolution...since the Scopes trial". Morris, in his 1984 book History of Modern Creationism, spoke glowingly of Price's logic and writing style, and referred to reading The New Geology as "a life-changing experience for me".

[edit] Comments on other creationists

Price was far more extreme in his views than his fellow creationists such as William Jennings Bryan, Harry Rimmer or William Bell Riley. Contrary to Bryan, Rimmer and Riley, Price rejected the idea of a local flood and insisted on a pure literal 6 day creation consisting of six 24 hour days. He felt that Riley's day-age creationist views were " the devil's counterfeit".[7] Price was equally dismissive of Rimmer, and his strange type of gap creationist for most of his career.[1][8]

, who cared not a whit about the opinion of geologists, insisted on nothing less than a single recent creation in six literal days and a worldwide deluge. He regarded Riley's day-age theory as ' the devil's counterfeit (31) and Rimmer's gap theory as only slightly more acceptable (32).

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ a b c The Creationists: From Scientific Creationism to Intelligent Design, expanded edition, Ronald L. Numbers, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England, 2006 ISBN-10: 0-674-02339-0
  2. ^ D. S. Jordan to G. M. Price, 28 August 1906 (Price Papers, Andrews University, Berrien Springs, Mich.).
  3. ^ C. Schuchert, Science 59, 486 (1924)
  4. ^ H. Rimmer, Modern Science, Noah's Ark and the Deluge (Research Science Bureau, Los Angeles, 1925), p. 28.
  5. ^ Science 63, 259 (1926)
  6. ^ a b R. L. Numbers, Spectrum 9, 22 (January 1979).
  7. ^ G. M. Price. The Story of the Fossils (Pacific Press, Mountain View. Calif., 1954), p 39.
  8. ^ G. M. Price Outlines of Modern Christianity and Modern Science (Pactfic Press. Oakland, Calif. 1902), pp. 125-127.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  • Gardner, Martin. "George McCready Price." The New Age: Notes of a Fringe-Watcher. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1991.

[edit] Bibliography

  • Q. E. D., or New Light on the Doctrine of Creation Gutenberg
  • The Predicament of Evolution (1925) online
  • Numbers, R. L. (1992). The Creationists: The Evolution of Scientific Creationism. University of California Press.
  • Clark, Harold W. (1966) Crusader for Creation, the Life and Work of George McCready Price. Pacific Press Publishing Company.

[edit] External links

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