George McCready Price

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George McCready Price (born August 26, 1870 in Havelock , New Brunswick , Canada , † January 24, 1963 in Loma Linda , California , USA ) was a Canadian creationist . He has written a large number of creationist works, particularly on the field of " flood geology ". He was thus an important pioneer of creationist " creation science ", which is rejected by science (mainly as a pseudoscience ). After his death, Henry M. Morris and John Whitcomb took up his views.

Life

Price was born in Havelock , New Brunswick. His father died in 1882. His mother joined the Seventh-day Adventist Church . He married a member of that church in 1887.

Price became a teacher and taught at Adventist Battle Creek College (now Andrews University ) from 1891 to 1893 , and then at various other schools. He met Alfred Corbett Smith , who made fun of Price's fundamentalist attitude and introduced him to scientific literature. Price, who believed the earth was young , concluded that the geologists must have misinterpreted their data. In 1902 Price self- published his first book Outlines of Modern Christianity and Modern Science . Illogical Geology followed in 1906 .

His resistance to the theory of evolution

In 1923 he wrote his major work The New Geology , a 726-page textbook that contained a large number of arguments which, in his opinion, refuted Darwin's theory of evolution . Several of these arguments are still popular in creationist circles today.

One of its main arguments is that the theory of evolution is based on erroneous dating. Price suggested that fossils were dated according to the age of the geological layers in which they were found, and that the rock layers were in turn given their ages according to the fossils they contained. Price believed that all evolutionary arguments based on the ancient age of fossils were deceptive and that they were circular . Price suggested that all fossils were the same age and that they were deposited in the Flood .

The influence of his ideas

Price's defense of creation science and his attacks on evolution first came to prominence in 1925 when William Jennings Bryan used his hypotheses and arguments in the famous Scopes ("Monkey Trial ") trial .

His ideas were then taken up by Henry M. Morris and John Whitcomb in their book The Genesis Flood in the 1960s . This book had a formative influence on the development of creationist " creation science ". The science journalist and skeptic Martin Gardner described it as "the most significant attack on evolution since the Scopes process".

Fonts

literature

  • Martin Gardner: George McCready Price. The New Age: Notes of a Fringe-Watcher . Prometheus Books, Buffalo NY 1991.
  • RL Numbers: The Creationists: The Evolution of Scientific Creationism . University of California Press, 1992.
  • Harold W. Clark: Crusader for Creation, the Life and Work of George McCready Price . Pacific Press Publishing Company, 1966.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Price, George McCready
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Canadian creationist
DATE OF BIRTH August 26, 1870
PLACE OF BIRTH Havelock , New Brunswick , Canada
DATE OF DEATH January 24, 1963
Place of death Loma Linda , California , USA