Harry Rimmer
Encyclopedia
Harry Rimmer was an American creationist, evangelist and writer of anti-evolution pamphlets. He is most prominent as an early pioneer in the creationist movement in the United States.
. He was forced to quit school before completion of the third grade, and thereafter worked in a range of manual labour
ing roles, whilst receiving some informal education from a mining engineer, heavily slanted towards the sciences. At 19, he joined the US Army, serving in the artillery and gaining some fame as a boxer. After the military, he spent two terms at a small homeopathic medical school, supporting himself as a prizefighter
, before being forced to drop out before completing the third term (and gaining a qualification), due to lack of financial resources. It was here that he obtained much of his understanding of science, of which he bragged that he had accumulated a vocabulary of "doublejointed, twelve cylinder, knee-action words".
ity by a street preacher, and retreated to the Lake County woods with a Bible to master the tenets of his new faith. Thereafter Rimmer went to the Bible College of San Francisco (where he met his wife), and then in 1915, to southern California, where he studied briefly at Whittier College
and at the Bible College of Los Angeles (now Biola University
) and served as pastor of a Quaker church. In the early 1920s, Rimmer abandoned the Quakers for Presbyterianism
and worked as an itinerant speaker for the YMCA. He took advantage of this contact with young men to evangelize and proselytize. He often spoke at churches, secular and religious colleges, military installations and Bible conferences.
During this period he became interested in evolution and constructed a workshop, which he called his laboratory, which he used to take pictures of microscopic organisms and other objects to illustrate his lectures and books, though rarely for actual experiments. Rimmer enrolled in a correspondence course in geology
(at the University of Colorado
, while on a speaking tour in the Rocky Mountains
region) and started collecting fossils. Thereafter his lectures increasingly featured evolution and he acquired a reputation among fundamentalists as a qualified critic of evolution, with a fundamentalist journalist declaring:
By the time he had achieved this prominence Rimmer had founded, on paper, the Research Science Bureau, which "existed primarily, if not exclusively, to underwrite Rimmer's ministry and occasional field trips." In return members received copies of Rimmer's pamphlets and, for a short period in 1927, a monthly newsletter. However with the Great Depression
, funding for the Bureau dried up, and it went into abeyance until the early 1940s, with Rimmer's creationist efforts instead being channeled through William Bell Riley
's World Christian Fundamentals Association
. In 1934, Rimmer became pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Duluth, Minnesota
, on the understanding that he would spend six months of the year writing and lecturing.
A writer for the Debunker, who attended one of Rimmer's lectures, described that his "scientific" method as:
He was awarded an honorary DSc by the Wheaton College
. He claimed to have visited 4000 high school assemblies in a 25 year period, or about one every two days. His principal theme was that "There are no scientific errors in the Bible."
He was the author of several books including Dead Men Tell Tales, Harmony of Science and Scripture, and Modern Science and the Genesis Record. His books sold well; some in the hundreds of thousands. However his books came under considerable scientific scrutiny and criticism. When the Christian American Scientific Affiliation
's publisher, Van Kampen Press, contemplated republishing them, the ASA performed an evaluation of a representative sample which was highly critical, with even recommending against publication. Edwin Y. Monsma (who would later become one of the co-founders of the Young Earth creationist Creation Research Society
) gave the opinion that Rimmer's The Theory of Evolution and the Facts of Science should not have been published in the first place, contained "inaccuracies and overstatements" and relied upon ridicule.
Rimmer simply loved to debate; he would debate anyone—atheists, religious scientists, college faculty, even fellow fundamentalists. In a famous instance, he debated another creationist, William Bell Riley
about the nature of the days in Genesis. He was apparently a colorful speaker and some called him the "noisiest evangelist in America".
" and one that is rejected by adherents of the Young Earth creationist view. Rimmer was particularly interested in the Noachian Flood and Joshua
's long day. Rimmer maintained that the Flood in Genesis was only a local flood, another view that is inconsistent with young-earth creationism.
He wrote that, "In all of our scientific progress we have not yet discovered one single fact that contradicts or refutes any statement in the Bible." He had a gift for producing unlikely explanations to protect the veracity of the biblical text. For example, Rimmer stated that Jonah
could live after being swallowed by a whale because Rimmer postulated that there is special cavity in the heads of whales which are the whales' "breathing tanks" for underwater breathing. Rimmer also insisted that the passage where rabbits chew their cuds is the result of a mistaken translation, and claimed that camels do not have cloven hooves.
Rimmer tried to use science to prove the veracity of the Bible. One of the sources he relied on was a speculative book by Joshua's Long Day and the Dial of Ahaz published by Charles Totten, an instructor in Military Science at Yale
. In 1890. Rimmer claimed that the Bible story
in which Joshua ordered the sun to stand still in the heavens had been definitely proved by a Yale Professor (Totten). A updated version of this claim has it that some NASA scientists discovered a missing period of 24 hours. He also promoted a version of the urban legend of James Bartley and a sperm whale, which he used to uphold a literal interpretation of Jonah.
On two occasions claimants took Rimmer to court. The first was in 1929 when a retired army colonel challenged the story of God feeding the children of Israel in the wilderness by sending so many quail that they were piled two cubits high for a days journey around the camp, which he calculated would require over 29x1012 quails (or over 12 million per Israelite). However the judge, apparently reasoning that Moses
was a more reliable witness than the colonel, ruled against him. In 1939, the Research Science Bureau upped the offer to $1000.
Floyd disclaimed interest in the money, describing his intent as "to convince fundamentalists, through court judgement[,] that there are such errors in the Bible."
During the trial, Rimmer defended the Bible with statements such as "You could get two of every species of insect on the hides of two good-sized elephants, and they would not, therefore, occupy any additional space in the ark" and "most all present-day scientists have completely discredited the theory of the record of the rocks." Rimmer said of his testimony, "I showed how God pushed the clouds further back and made what the aviators call a 'ceiling' between the clouds and the substance of the earth, and God called it a 'firmament' and men call this cloudy ceiling 'heaven'."
Rimmer won the case on a technicality: that the particular newspaper advertisement that Floyd responded to was not placed by Rimmer himself. Despite this, Rimmer claimed that the trial "ended in legally establishing the position of all who hold that the Word of God is inerrant".
Early life
Rimmer grew up in poverty in mining and lumber camps in northern CaliforniaCalifornia
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
. He was forced to quit school before completion of the third grade, and thereafter worked in a range of manual labour
Manual labour
Manual labour , manual or manual work is physical work done by people, most especially in contrast to that done by machines, and also to that done by working animals...
ing roles, whilst receiving some informal education from a mining engineer, heavily slanted towards the sciences. At 19, he joined the US Army, serving in the artillery and gaining some fame as a boxer. After the military, he spent two terms at a small homeopathic medical school, supporting himself as a prizefighter
Prizefighter
A prizefighter is a boxer.Prizefighter may also refer to:*Don King Presents: Prizefighter, a video game by 2k Sports released in 2008*Prize Fighter, a video game by Digital Pictures released in 1994 for the Sega CD...
, before being forced to drop out before completing the third term (and gaining a qualification), due to lack of financial resources. It was here that he obtained much of his understanding of science, of which he bragged that he had accumulated a vocabulary of "doublejointed, twelve cylinder, knee-action words".
Ministry
Prior to this point, Rimmer had shown little interest in religion. However, while returning from a prizefight he was converted to ChristianChristian
A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...
ity by a street preacher, and retreated to the Lake County woods with a Bible to master the tenets of his new faith. Thereafter Rimmer went to the Bible College of San Francisco (where he met his wife), and then in 1915, to southern California, where he studied briefly at Whittier College
Whittier College
Whittier College is a private liberal arts college in Whittier, California. As of January 2009, the college has approximately 1540 enrolled students.-Overview:...
and at the Bible College of Los Angeles (now Biola University
Biola University
Biola University is a private, evangelical Christian, liberal arts university located near Los Angeles. Biola's main campus is in La Mirada in Los Angeles County, California. In addition, the university has several satellite campuses in Chino Hills, Inglewood, San Diego, and Laguna Hills.-...
) and served as pastor of a Quaker church. In the early 1920s, Rimmer abandoned the Quakers for Presbyterianism
Presbyterianism
Presbyterianism refers to a number of Christian churches adhering to the Calvinist theological tradition within Protestantism, which are organized according to a characteristic Presbyterian polity. Presbyterian theology typically emphasizes the sovereignty of God, the authority of the Scriptures,...
and worked as an itinerant speaker for the YMCA. He took advantage of this contact with young men to evangelize and proselytize. He often spoke at churches, secular and religious colleges, military installations and Bible conferences.
During this period he became interested in evolution and constructed a workshop, which he called his laboratory, which he used to take pictures of microscopic organisms and other objects to illustrate his lectures and books, though rarely for actual experiments. Rimmer enrolled in a correspondence course in geology
Geology
Geology is the science comprising the study of solid Earth, the rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which it evolves. Geology gives insight into the history of the Earth, as it provides the primary evidence for plate tectonics, the evolutionary history of life, and past climates...
(at the University of Colorado
University of Colorado at Boulder
The University of Colorado Boulder is a public research university located in Boulder, Colorado...
, while on a speaking tour in the Rocky Mountains
Rocky Mountains
The Rocky Mountains are a major mountain range in western North America. The Rocky Mountains stretch more than from the northernmost part of British Columbia, in western Canada, to New Mexico, in the southwestern United States...
region) and started collecting fossils. Thereafter his lectures increasingly featured evolution and he acquired a reputation among fundamentalists as a qualified critic of evolution, with a fundamentalist journalist declaring:
By the time he had achieved this prominence Rimmer had founded, on paper, the Research Science Bureau, which "existed primarily, if not exclusively, to underwrite Rimmer's ministry and occasional field trips." In return members received copies of Rimmer's pamphlets and, for a short period in 1927, a monthly newsletter. However with the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
, funding for the Bureau dried up, and it went into abeyance until the early 1940s, with Rimmer's creationist efforts instead being channeled through William Bell Riley
William Bell Riley
William Bell Riley was known as "The Grand Old Man of Fundamentalism." After being educated at normal school in Valparaiso, Indiana, Riley received his teacher's certificate. After teaching in county schools, he attended college in Hanover, Indiana, where he received an A.B. degree in 1885...
's World Christian Fundamentals Association
World Christian Fundamentals Association
World Christian Fundamentals Association, was an interdenominational organization founded in 1919 by the Baptist minister William Bell Riley of the First Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota. It was originally formed to launch "a new Protestantism" based upon premillennial interpretations of...
. In 1934, Rimmer became pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Duluth, Minnesota
Duluth, Minnesota
Duluth is a port city in the U.S. state of Minnesota and is the county seat of Saint Louis County. The fourth largest city in Minnesota, Duluth had a total population of 86,265 in the 2010 census. Duluth is also the second largest city that is located on Lake Superior after Thunder Bay, Ontario,...
, on the understanding that he would spend six months of the year writing and lecturing.
A writer for the Debunker, who attended one of Rimmer's lectures, described that his "scientific" method as:
He was awarded an honorary DSc by the Wheaton College
Wheaton College (Illinois)
Wheaton College is a private, evangelical Protestant liberal arts college in Wheaton, Illinois, a suburb west of Chicago in the United States...
. He claimed to have visited 4000 high school assemblies in a 25 year period, or about one every two days. His principal theme was that "There are no scientific errors in the Bible."
He was the author of several books including Dead Men Tell Tales, Harmony of Science and Scripture, and Modern Science and the Genesis Record. His books sold well; some in the hundreds of thousands. However his books came under considerable scientific scrutiny and criticism. When the Christian American Scientific Affiliation
American Scientific Affiliation
The American Scientific Affiliation is a Christian religious organization of scientists and people in science-related disciplines. The stated purpose is "to investigate any area relating Christian faith and science." The organization publishes a journal, Perspectives of Science and Christian Faith...
's publisher, Van Kampen Press, contemplated republishing them, the ASA performed an evaluation of a representative sample which was highly critical, with even recommending against publication. Edwin Y. Monsma (who would later become one of the co-founders of the Young Earth creationist Creation Research Society
Creation Research Society
The Creation Research Society is a Christian research group that engages in creation science. The organization has produced various publications, including a journal and a creation-based biology textbook...
) gave the opinion that Rimmer's The Theory of Evolution and the Facts of Science should not have been published in the first place, contained "inaccuracies and overstatements" and relied upon ridicule.
Rimmer simply loved to debate; he would debate anyone—atheists, religious scientists, college faculty, even fellow fundamentalists. In a famous instance, he debated another creationist, William Bell Riley
William Bell Riley
William Bell Riley was known as "The Grand Old Man of Fundamentalism." After being educated at normal school in Valparaiso, Indiana, Riley received his teacher's certificate. After teaching in county schools, he attended college in Hanover, Indiana, where he received an A.B. degree in 1885...
about the nature of the days in Genesis. He was apparently a colorful speaker and some called him the "noisiest evangelist in America".
Views
Rimmer contended in some of his writings and lectures that there might have been several million years that could be squeezed between the first and third verses of the first chapter of Genesis, a position now described as "Gap CreationismGap Creationism
Gap creationism is a form of Old Earth creationism that posits that the six-day creation, as described in the Book of Genesis, involved literal 24-hour days, but that there was a gap of time between two distinct creations in the first and the second verses of Genesis, explaining...
" and one that is rejected by adherents of the Young Earth creationist view. Rimmer was particularly interested in the Noachian Flood and Joshua
Joshua
Joshua , is a minor figure in the Torah, being one of the spies for Israel and in few passages as Moses's assistant. He turns to be the central character in the Hebrew Bible's Book of Joshua...
's long day. Rimmer maintained that the Flood in Genesis was only a local flood, another view that is inconsistent with young-earth creationism.
He wrote that, "In all of our scientific progress we have not yet discovered one single fact that contradicts or refutes any statement in the Bible." He had a gift for producing unlikely explanations to protect the veracity of the biblical text. For example, Rimmer stated that Jonah
Jonah
Jonah is the name given in the Hebrew Bible to a prophet of the northern kingdom of Israel in about the 8th century BC, the eponymous central character in the Book of Jonah, famous for being swallowed by a fish or a whale, depending on translation...
could live after being swallowed by a whale because Rimmer postulated that there is special cavity in the heads of whales which are the whales' "breathing tanks" for underwater breathing. Rimmer also insisted that the passage where rabbits chew their cuds is the result of a mistaken translation, and claimed that camels do not have cloven hooves.
Rimmer tried to use science to prove the veracity of the Bible. One of the sources he relied on was a speculative book by Joshua's Long Day and the Dial of Ahaz published by Charles Totten, an instructor in Military Science at Yale
YALE
RapidMiner, formerly YALE , is an environment for machine learning, data mining, text mining, predictive analytics, and business analytics. It is used for research, education, training, rapid prototyping, application development, and industrial applications...
. In 1890. Rimmer claimed that the Bible story
Bible story
Bible stories, Judeo-Christian parables retelling some portions of the Bible, have been used in family religious worship, spiritual instruction and literature in Christian and Jewish societies....
in which Joshua ordered the sun to stand still in the heavens had been definitely proved by a Yale Professor (Totten). A updated version of this claim has it that some NASA scientists discovered a missing period of 24 hours. He also promoted a version of the urban legend of James Bartley and a sperm whale, which he used to uphold a literal interpretation of Jonah.
Offer and trials
In the mid 1920s Rimmer offered $100 to anybody who could prove that the Bible was not inerrant. Although he received an enormous number of responses, he accepted none as demonstrating a biblical error to his satisfaction.On two occasions claimants took Rimmer to court. The first was in 1929 when a retired army colonel challenged the story of God feeding the children of Israel in the wilderness by sending so many quail that they were piled two cubits high for a days journey around the camp, which he calculated would require over 29x1012 quails (or over 12 million per Israelite). However the judge, apparently reasoning that Moses
Moses
Moses was, according to the Hebrew Bible and Qur'an, a religious leader, lawgiver and prophet, to whom the authorship of the Torah is traditionally attributed...
was a more reliable witness than the colonel, ruled against him. In 1939, the Research Science Bureau upped the offer to $1000.
Floyd-Rimmer Trial
William Floyd, Editor of The Arbitrator, a New York atheist magazine, sued Rimmer on the grounds that he had discovered five scientific errors in the Bible:- the six-day creation story;
- contradictions between Genesis 1 and 2;
- the record of Noah's ArkNoah's ArkNoah's Ark is a vessel appearing in the Book of Genesis and the Quran . These narratives describe the construction of the ark by Noah at God's command to save himself, his family, and the world's animals from the worldwide deluge of the Great Flood.In the narrative of the ark, God sees the...
; - the alleged number of quail; and
- descriptions of the camel, the coney and the hare in LeviticusLeviticusThe Book of Leviticus is the third book of the Hebrew Bible, and the third of five books of the Torah ....
11:4-6.
Floyd disclaimed interest in the money, describing his intent as "to convince fundamentalists, through court judgement[,] that there are such errors in the Bible."
During the trial, Rimmer defended the Bible with statements such as "You could get two of every species of insect on the hides of two good-sized elephants, and they would not, therefore, occupy any additional space in the ark" and "most all present-day scientists have completely discredited the theory of the record of the rocks." Rimmer said of his testimony, "I showed how God pushed the clouds further back and made what the aviators call a 'ceiling' between the clouds and the substance of the earth, and God called it a 'firmament' and men call this cloudy ceiling 'heaven'."
Rimmer won the case on a technicality: that the particular newspaper advertisement that Floyd responded to was not placed by Rimmer himself. Despite this, Rimmer claimed that the trial "ended in legally establishing the position of all who hold that the Word of God is inerrant".