Dinosaurs in Paradise - The Rocks Don't Lie - page 151

decades to convince him to get some experience in field or laboratory work. Decades later,
students on a fossil-hunting trip were astonished to discover that the world's leading cre-
ationist could hardly tell one fossil from another.
The roots of modern creationism run directly back to Price. Honing arguments faithful to
White's teaching, Price convinced himself that it was the theories of geologists and not the
rocks themselves that opposed a literal reading of Genesis. He called his view of geology
the new catastrophism to distinguish it from earlier views of earth history involving mul-
tiple catastrophes.
Initially, Price made little headway among fundamentalists and he was careful not to
point out the incompatibility of his views with the widely accepted day-age and gap the-
ories. Most fundamentalists committed to scriptural inerrancy followed the conservative
Schofield Reference Bible , which endorsed the gap theory in explaining that the original
Creation in the first verse of Genesis “refers to the dateless past, and gives scope for all
the geological ages.” 3 Price was a lonely voice insisting on the literal truth of a global
flood that rearranged Earth's surface and deposited the whole fossil record along with all
the world's sedimentary rocks.
Geologists ridiculed his ideas mercilessly. Professors routinely assigned graduate stu-
dents the exercise of refuting them. Writing in Science in 1922, Arthur Miller, the head of
the geology department at the University of Kentucky, described Price as an “alleged geo-
logist… who, while a member of no scientific body and absolutely unknown in scientif-
ic circles… is hailed by the 'Fundamentalists' as their great champion—one who… has
brought into prominence the 'heretofore mute evidence of a mighty upheaval and a flood.'
” 4 Miller was amazed that Price had the audacity to accuse geologists of being biased when
Price's new catastrophism “turns out to be nothing more than the Old Catastrophism em-
bodied in the Noachian Deluge.” 5
When Price read Miller's disparaging remarks, he fired off an angry letter threatening to
sue if not given the chance for a rebuttal. The editor offered to correct any errors of fact but
declined to publish Price's geological views. In response, Price unleashed a furious retort
in the Sunday School Times .