Harry Rimmer

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Harry Rimmer (1890-1952) was a prominent American creationist, president of the Science Research Bureau which was located in Los Angeles, California and pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Duluth, Minnesota. He conducted studies aimed at discrediting the theory of evolution and conducted about 6 months of field research per year. He is most prominent as an early pioneer in the anti-evolution or creationist movement in the United States.

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[edit] Interests

Rimmer contended in some of his writings and lectures that there might have been several million years that could be squeezed into presumed gaps in between the two separate Genesis accounts, a position now described as "Gap Creationism". However during some of his career, Rimmer might be better identified as a Young Earth creationist, because of his insistence that the 2nd creation was 6 literal days.[1]

Rimmer was particularly interested in the Noachian Flood and Joshua's long day. Rimmer maintained that the Flood in Genesis was only a local flood.[1]

[edit] Lecturing and Writing

He was awarded an honorary DSc by an Evangelical college, Wheaton College in Illinois. He claimed to have visited 4000 high school assemblies in a 25 year period, or about one every two days. His principle theme was that "There are no scientific errors in the Bible."[2]

He was the author of several books including "Dead Men Tell Tales", "Harmony of Science and Scripture", and "Modern Science and the Genesis Record." His books sold well; some in the hundreds of thousands (Davis, 1995).[3]

[edit] Selected beliefs

He wrote that, "In all of our scientific progress we have not yet discovered one single fact that contradicts or refutes any statement in the Bible." He had a gift for producing unlikely explanations to protect the veracity of the biblical text. For example, Rimmer stated that Jonah could live after being swallowed by a whale because Rimmer postulated that there is special cavity in the heads of whales which are the whales' "breathing tanks" for underwater breathing. Rimmer also insisted that the passage where rabbits chew their cuds is the result of a mistaken translation, and claimed that camels do not have cloven hooves. [2]

Rimmer tried to use science to prove the veracity of the Bible. One of the sources he relied on was a speculative book by Joshua's Long Day and the Dial of Ahaz published by Charles Totten, an instructor in Military Science at Yale. In 1890. Rimmer claimed that the Bible story in which Joshua ordered the sun to stand still in the heavens had been definitely proved by a Yale Professor (Totten). A updated version of this claim has it that some NASA scientists discovered a missing period of 24 hours. [4]

[edit] Debate and trial

Rimmer took part in one of the famous creationist debates held between various creationists in the 1920s and 1930s. He debated another creationist, William Bell Riley about the nature of the days in Genesis. He was apparently a colorful speaker and some called him the "noisiest evangelist in America".[2]

He engaged in a notable court case relating to his views. After Rimmer placed an ad in a New York newspaper offering $1000 to anyone who could find an error in the Bible, William Floyd, the editor of an atheist magazine, took him up on his challenge. Some time later, Floyd and Rimmer found themselves in court. The trial in a New York court is described by defense attorney James E. Bennet in his book The Bible Defeats Atheism - A Story of the Famous Harry Rimmer Trial as told by Attorney for Defendant James E. Bennet (Bennet, 1941). During the trial, Rimmer supported the view that the earth was created in Oct. 25, 4004 B.C., and defended the Bible with statements such as "You could get two of every species of insect on the hides of two good-sized elephants, and they would not, therefore, occupy any additional space in the ark" and "most all present-day scientists have completely discredited the theory of the record of the rocks." Rimmmer said of his testimony, "I showed how God pushed the clouds further back and made what the aviators call a 'ceiling' between the clouds and the substance of the earth, and God called it a 'firmament' and men call this cloudy ceiling 'heaven'."

[edit] Early life

Rimmer had a troubled upbringing on the West coast, and was converted as a young man to Christianity by a street preacher. He was working at the time at the YMCA, and took advantage of the contact with young men to evangelize and proselytize. He often spoke at churches and colleges and Bible conferences. His original efforts were to attack those who criticized the Bible, but by the 1920s he had changed to attacks on evolution. He saw evolution as "a principal cause of unbelief in the Bible and the gospel message it conveyed" (Davis, 1995).[3] Rimmer's training in science was from spending one semester at a small homeopathic medical school. He bragged that he had accumulated a vocabulary of "doublejointed, twelve cylinder, knee-action words" there.[5] He also spent about a year at Whittier College and a year at the Bible Institute of Los Angeles before becoming a full-time evangelist. He moved to Los Angeles, California in 1919, and set up a small laboratory at the back of his house so he could conduct experiments in embryology and related sciences. After a couple of years he had founded the Research Science Bureau "to prove through findings in biology, paleontology, and anthropology that science and the literal Bible were not contradictory".[6]

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ a b 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. ^ a b c Essays of an Atheist, Woolsey Teller, The Truth Seeker Company, Inc, 1945, Chapter V: Froth and Fraud in Fundamentalism
  3. ^ a b Flesh for The Creationists' Bones, J. W. Haas, Jr., Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 45 (September 1995): 199.
  4. ^ Has NASA Discovered Joshua's “Lost Day"?, Bert Thompson, Apologetics Press :: Reason & Revelation, February 1999 - 19(2):14-15
  5. ^ H. Rimmer, The Harmony of Science and Scripture (Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, Mich., ed. 11 1945), p. 14.
  6. ^ W. D. Edmondson, "Fundamentalist sects of Los Angeles, 1900-1930," thesis, Claremont Graduate School (1969).

[edit] References

  • The Antievolution Pamphlets of Harry Rimmer (Creationism in Twentieth-Century America, Vol 6), Edward Davis, Routledge; first edition (March 1, 1995) ISBN-10: 0815318073
  • Lot's wife and the science of physics, Harry Rimmer, Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co (1947) ASIN: B0007EHCPK
  • Dead men tell tales, Harry Rimmer, Eerdmans; Thirteenth ed edition (1974), ISBN-10: 0802811671
  • Modern science and the Genesis record, Harry Rimmer, Eerdmans (1937), ASIN: B0007ELV7A
  • The harmony of science and scripture, Harry Rimmer, Eerdmans; 12th ed edition (1947), ASIN: B00088BO6I
  • Voices from the silent centuries, Harry Rimmer, Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co; 4th ed edition (1937), ASIN: B00086ZVIW
  • The crucible of Calvary, Harry Rimmer, Eerdmans; 3rd ed edition (1945) ASIN: B0007HHFAO
  • The theory of evolution and the facts of science, Harry Rimmer, Wm. B. Eerdmans; 7th ed edition (1944) ASIN: B0008C8FAM
  • The Coming War and the Rise of Russia (Shadows of Things to Come, 2), Hary Rimmer, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company; 2nd edition (1942) ASIN: B000AQO76C
  • The coming King, Harry Rimmer, Wm. B. Eerdmans; 2d ed edition (1943) ASIN: B0007I70XU
  • Internal evidence of inspiration, Harry Rimmer, Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub. Co; 7th ed edition (1946), ASIN: B00087HOWM
  • The Bible Defeats Atheism - A Story of the Famous Harry Rimmer Trial as told by Attorney for Defendant James E. Bennet, James E. Bennet, Zondervan; Frederick Naef, Printers, 1941.
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