George McCready Price
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.
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. In
1906, he self-published
Illogical Geology.
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.
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.
Price's defense of creation science (and attacks on evolution) first achieved notability in
1925 when his theories and arguments were utilized heavily by
William Jennings Bryan in the famous
Scopes Trial. 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".
* Gardner, Martin. "George McCready Price."
The New Age: Notes of a Fringe-Watcher. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1991.
* 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.
*
Free ebook of George McCready Price at
Project Gutenberg* http://www.counterbalance.net/history/floodgeo-frame.html
* http://www.geocities.com/lclane2/geoprice.html
*
GOD'S TWO BOOKS; or, Plain facts about evolution, geology, and the Bible, by George McCready Price, 1911 (1920ed). (a searchable facsimile at the University of Georgia Libraries;
DjVu &
layered PDF format)
