Abstract
The trouble with this definition is that almost none of the creationists discussed by Numbers believe much or even most of it. As Numbers states, "By the late nineteenth century even the most conservative Christian apologists readily conceded that the Bible allowed for an ancient earth and pre-Edenic life" (p. x). Even Henry Rimmer, the "flamboyant evangelist" and most conservative forerunner of the modern creation movement, did not accept much of this definition. Rimmer, who occupied center stage of the most fundamentalist wing of the creationist platform between the two world wars, "squeezed millions of years into the presumed gap in the Genesis narrative and drained the deluge story of all but local significance" (p. x). When the Creation Research Society (CRS) was formed, it was difficult to locate even creation scientists who accepted the young-earth/young-universe position, a point which Numbers emphasizes at length.