From: Ted Davis <tdavis@messiah.edu>
> The claim that YEC as we know it today is derivative from SDA prophetess
> Ellen White, via Canadian schoolteacher and self-proclaimed "geologist"
> George McCready Price, is very well supported by the evidence--pulled
> together by former SDA scholar Ronald Numbers in The Creationists, with
> additional comments in several other Numbers writings. I've had numerous
> conversations with Ron over the years and, if memory serves me
correctly--I
> trust Ron's scholarship better than my memory--his particular point can be
> expressed like this: the *combination of* "flood geology" (the idea that
> most or all fossiliferous rocks were produced by the biblical flood,
roughly
> 4300 years ago) and "young earth" (the living things on the earth were
> created separately, in a literal creation week, about 6000 years ago, do
> derive from SDA sources. Some comments are in order, and I invite Allen
Roy
> and others to comment further.
>
> First, Price himself (I don't know enough about White to bring her in
also)
> was not bothered by an "old" universe; what concerned him was the age of
> living things on the earth, and the solar system itself, both of which had
> to be confined to the traditional biblical chronology. Contemporary YECs
> are, of course, greatly disturbed by the idea of any physical object
having
> an actual age more than 5 days older than Adam, though they share entirely
> with Price the view that the earth and all it contains is younger than
> 10,000 years.
While Numbers is an extremely biased "historian," he is correct that the
idea of Flood Catastrphism and a Creation Week some 6000 years ago as
promoted by Ellen and Price, has been one of the primary sources for YEC
ideas today. HOWEVER, The concept of YEC today includes the idea, probably
from Henry Morris, that the entire Universe was created only "6000" years
ago. I pointed out that Ellen has never supported such an idea. And so she
(nor Price) would not be considered a strict YEC today. I know, because I
hold similar ideas and am nearly considered a heritic on CRSnet.
Allen
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