George McCready Price
| George McCready Price | |
|---|---|
| Born | 26 August 1870 Havelock, New Brunswick, Canada. |
| Died | 24 January 1963 Loma Linda, California |
| Occupation | Creationist author |
| Known for | Flood geology |
| Influenced | Harold W. Clark, Frank Lewis Marsh, Henry M. Morris |
| Denomination | Seventh-day Adventist Church |
George McCready Price (26 August 1870 – 24 January 1963)[1][2] was a Canadian creationist. He produced several anti-evolution and creationist works, particularly on the subject of flood geology. However, his views did not become common amongst creationists until after his death, particularly with the modern creation science movement starting in the 1960s.
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[edit] Biography
Price was born in Havelock, New Brunswick, Canada. His father died in 1882, and his mother joined the Seventh-day Adventist Church. In 1887, she married another member, and for several years thereafter, the couple worked as itinerant sellers of Seventh-day Adventist co-founder Ellen G. White's books in the Maritime Provinces of Eastern Canada. Price then became a student at Battle Creek College (now Andrews University) between 1891 and 1893, before returning to selling books. In 1896, he enrolled in a one-year teacher training course at the Provincial Normal School of New Brunswick (now the University of New Brunswick), where he took some elementary courses in some of the natural sciences, including some mineralogy, which was Price's sole formal training in science.[3]
Price taught at a series of small-town schools from 1897 onwards, including at a high school in Tracadie between 1899 and 1902. Here he socially met Alfred Corbett Smith (head of the medical department at a local leprosarium), who loaned him scientific literature in his possession. Since his faith held that the Earth was young, Price concluded that geologists had misinterpreted their data. In 1902, Price completed the manuscript Outlines of Modern Christianity and Modern Science before leaving Tracadie to serve brief and unsuccessful stints as an Adventist evangelist on Prince Edward Island, and head of a new Adventist boarding academy in Nova Scotia. He briefly returned to book-selling in 1904, and then moved to New York in an unsuccessful attempt to become a magazine and newspaper writer.[3]
In a response to a plea from his wife, the Adventist church first employed Price as a construction worker in Maryland. He then was, for a short time, principal of a small Adventist school in Oakland, California, before moving again and becoming a construction worker and handyman at a newly purchased Adventist sanitarium in Loma Linda, where he self-published Illogical Geology: The Weakest Point in the Evolution Theory in 1906.[3] In Illogical Geology, 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."[4]
From 1907 to 1912, Price taught at the Seventh-day Adventist-run College of Medical Evangelists, now known as Loma Linda University, in Loma Linda, California, which awarded him a B.A., based partially on his authorship and independent study. From 1912 to 1914, he taught at the Fernando Academy in San Fernando, California, and from 1914-1916 at Lodi Academy, Lodi, California.[5]
Beginning in 1920, Price taught at Pacific Union College, Angwin, California,[5] where he was awarded an M.A. (described by Ronald L. Numbers as a "gift").[6] From 1924 to 1928, Price taught at Stanborough Missionary College in Watford, England, where he served as president from 1927 to 1928. He then taught at Emmanual Mission College (now Andrews University) in Berrien Springs, Michigan from 1929 to 1933, and Walla Walla College near Walla Walla, Washington from 1933 to 1938.[5]
Whilst Price liked to claim that his book-selling travels gave him invaluable "firsthand knowledge of field geology", his "familiarity with the outside world" remained rudimentary, with even his own students noting that he could "barely tell one fossil from another" on a field trip shortly before he retired.[6]
In 1943, he moved to Loma Linda, California, where he died 20 years later at the age of 92.[7]
[edit] Reception
David Starr Jordan, president of Stanford University, and a leading American expert on fossil fishes, wrote a review of Price's Illogical Geology, in which he stated that Price should not expect "any geologist to take [his work] seriously."[8] This led to a correspondence over the next twenty years in which Price once promised "to become an evolutionist within twenty-four hours" if "the foremost ichthyologist in the world" could prove that one fossil was older than another, and Jordan attempted to enlighten Price that his views were:
| “ | based on scattering mistakes, omissions, and exceptions against general truths that anybody familiar with the facts in a general way can not possibly dispute.[9] | ” |
Jordan also unsuccessfully urged Price to "undertake some constructive work in Paleontology in the field and in laboratories."[9]
Price's 1913 book The Fundamentals of Geology, an expanded version of Illogical Geology, presented his "Law of Conformable Stratigraphic Sequences" which states "any kind of fossiliferous rock may occur conformably on any other kind of fossiliferous rock, old or young." This law he claimed "is by all odds the most important law ever formulated with reference to the order in which the strata occur."[10]
Yale geologist Schuchert's review of The New Geology for the magazine Science stated that Price was "harboring a geological nightmare".[11] 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'".[12] 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".[13]
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.[14] During the trial, defense counsel Clarence Darrow, sneered "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."[14]
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] Bibliography
- Illogical Geology. George McCready Price. 1906. http://books.google.com/books?id=d4oNAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false.
- God's Two Books: Plain facts about evolution, geology, and the Bible. Washington, Review and Herald. 1911. pp. 183. http://books.google.com/books?id=SDMSAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA71&dq=george+mccready+price+the+new+geology#v=onepage&q=george%20mccready%20price%20the%20new%20geology&f=false. (text, acrobat and djvu)
- Q. E. D., or New Light on the Doctrine of Creation. Fleming H. Revell. 1917. OCLC 287264452. http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/13370.
- Poisoning Democracy: A Study of the Moral and Religious Aspects of Socialism. Fleming H. Revell. 1921. OCLC 2156114. http://www.archive.org/details/poisoningdemocra00pricuoft.
- The New Geology. Pacific Press. 1923.
- The Predicament of Evolution (1925) online
- Evolutionary Geology and the New Catastrophism. Pacific Press. 1926.
[edit] See also
[edit] Notes
- ^ "Who was who in America", Marquis-Who's Who, 1968, p 766
- ^ Garraty, John Arthur; James, Edward T.; Jackson, Kenneth T.; Markoe, Karen; Markoe, Arnie; Wagley, Stephen (1973). Dictionary of American biography: supplement. New York: Scribner. pp. 631. ISBN 0-684-16794-8.
- ^ a b c Numbers(2006), p90-95
- ^ God and Nature: Historical Essays on the Encounter between Christianity and Science, p400, David C. Lindberg, Ronald L. Numbers
- ^ a b c Numbers(2006) fn22, p465
- ^ a b Numbers(2006) p106-107
- ^ Register of George McCready Price Papers (Collection 2) Adventist Heritage Center, p3
- ^ D. S. Jordan to G. M. Price, 28 August 1906 (Price Papers, Andrews University, Berrien Springs, Mich.).
- ^ a b Numbers(2006), p106
- ^ Numbers(2006) p 97
- ^ C. Schuchert, Science 59, 486 (1924)
- ^ H. Rimmer, Modern Science, Noah's Ark and the Deluge (Research Science Bureau, Los Angeles, 1925), p. 28.
- ^ Science 63, 259 (1926)
- ^ a b R. L. Numbers, Spectrum 9, 22 (January 1979).
[edit] References
- Gardner, Martin. "George McCready Price." The New Age: Notes of a Fringe-Watcher. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1991.
- Numbers, Ronald (November 30, 2006). The Creationists: From Scientific Creationism to Intelligent Design, Expanded Edition. Harvard University Press. ISBN 0674023390.
[edit] Further reading
- Clark, Harold Willard (1966). Crusader for creation: the life and writings of George McCready Price. Pacific Press Pub. Association.
