The Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Creationism (2018)

scientific theories and a starting point for science, then Scripture is—or ought to be —data. This means that creationists and non- creationists do not use the same data. Creationists use—or ought to use —more data than the non-creationist. Price’s claim that everyone uses the same data suggests that Price does not actually use Scripture in scientific investigation. Price believes science cannot study any of God’s actual acts of creation. This is because (1) God created with processes not occurring at the present (Price 1917b, pp. 127-128), (2) God constructed the world full of cycles (Price 1934, pp. 135-136), and the mode and tempo of creation cannot be determined at any point in a cycle, and (3) since science only studies the physical world (Price 1902, p. 72), it cannot study ultimate cause (Price 1902, pp. 18-19). When it comes to God’s actual acts of creation, Price believes science can only ‘prove’ creation by showing the impossibility of any sort of naturalistic origin. 3. Price’s Science A. The Age of Things Although Price believes the Solar System was created during the Creation Week, he believes the universe other than the Solar System was created at some unknown, distant time before the Creation Week (Price 1941, pp. 10-12) [NOTE: This is not the gap theory, for Price believes the universe was created before Genesis 1:1.]. Since Price believes life was created six or seven thousand years ago (Price 1902, pp. 113-114), and Price believes in a 144-hour Creation Week ( e.g. the title of Price 1922) we deduce that Price believes that the Creation Week itself occurred six to seven thousand years ago. However, Price does not explain how he arrives at this age range. Although Price believes the archaeological evidence indicates humans had a recent origin (Price 1902, p. 124), he neither explains exactly what he means by that, nor does he quantify the calculation. It is most likely that Price is constrained to that age range by his understanding of Scripture. This age range puts an even greater constraint on the time of the Flood. And since Price believes that Scripture teaches a global Flood and an old-age interpretation of fossiliferous rocks is incompatible with a global Flood (Price 1917b, pp. 140-141), Price deduces that the old-age interpretation of fossiliferous rocks must be wrong. Thus, even though Price (1916, p. 210) believes that the earth looks old, he concludes that “…its many appearances of great age must all be deceptive.” (Price 1934, p. 44). B. The Non-Living Creation Price argues that the matter of this universe must have been created because matter cannot have arisen by any process known to us in the present. This is indicated by (1) the laws of conservation of energy and matter (energy and matter can neither be created nor destroyed) (Price 1913, p. 266), (2) the usable energy of the universe is decreasing (Price 1934, pp. 41-43)— i.e. the second law of thermodynamics, and (3) radioactive decay degenerates heavy elements into lighter elements (Price 1917b, pp. 23-26)—this last argument proposed before it was ever thought that heavy elements could be produced by fusion. Therefore, Price (1902, pp. 16, 72n) concludes that God created the matter of the universe. Given that Price is writing before the first publication of Precambrian bacterial fossils, Price believes many Precambrian rocks are completely void of fossils. Although he left it to others to determine which rocks were actually formed before the Flood, Price (1920a, p. 487) implies that many of these non-fossiliferous Precambrian rocks date from the ‘beginning’. Furthermore, Price does not specify what he means by the ‘beginning’. C. The Creation of Life Price argues that life must have been created by God because (1) (decades before genetic differences were discovered in cells and organisms) Price believes all cells are made of identical material, so the life and development of cells and organisms must be the result of God acting directly through the substance of the cell (Price 1902, pp. 58-60), (2) the law of biogenesis—that life can only come from life—requires something other than any modern process to produce life (Price 1902, pp. 115-119), (3) humans have never been able to create a living thing (Price 1917b, pp. 43- 44), (4) physical matter lacks the ability to create something non- physical, like life (Price 1902, pp. 43-48) or human consciousness (Price 1902, p. 123), and (5) only God can create the souls found in animals and humans (Price 1902, pp. 33-35). Price argues that life was created in the form of mature organisms in mature populations because (1) animals would need food ( e.g. plants) immediately (Price 1934, p. 134), (2) immature animals would need parents (Price 1934, p. 134), (3) biology depends so much on on-going cycles, that each stage of many of these cycles must have been created in place for organisms to survive (Price 1934, p. 135), (4) many organisms in communities require a variety of other organisms to survive (Price 1924, pp. 204, 213), (5) Gen. 1:11 indicates trees were already created bearing fruit (Price 1934, p. 134), and (6) if God had the ability and desire to create life, it is most reasonable to assume that He created many different types at the same time (Price 1902, pp. 119-120). Price (1924, p. 205) believes all conventional, biological, taxonomic groups are completely arbitrary. Price (1924, p. 94) believes the only non-arbitrary taxonomic group is the biblically- defined created kind (what Price calls a ‘natural species’ when he is being careful to distinguish this grouping from ‘species’)—a group of similar organisms surrounded by distinct differences from other organisms. Because Price believes that God commanded organisms to reproduce after their kind (Price 1916, p. 138), Price believes that the created kinds can be identified by hybridization (Price 1924, pp. 33, 96), with overall similarity used in a supplementary fashion (Price 1924, p. 149). According to the hybridization criterion, those organisms that can successfully reproduce with all the members of that group are of the same created kind. Using this hybridization criterion, Price believes that the created kind is more inclusive than the species (Price 1917b, pp. 71-76), and to be equated with “…at least the families, and in some cases the genera…” (Price 1924, p. 209). Price even proposes a few groups descended from common ancestors, and thus of the same created kind. These include the genus Bos (Price 1911, p. 57); the pigs (Price 1911, p. 57); the canids (Price 1911, p. 57); the ursids (Price 1917b, p. 71); the felids (Price 1917b, p. 71); the mammoth and living elephants (Price 1917b, p. 72); Drosophila similans and D. melanogaster (Price 1924, p. 40-41); and the equids (Price 1924, p. 97). Since Price also adopted the same hybridization criterion for Wise ◀ George McCready Price ▶ 2018 ICC 686