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Anti-Evolution: A Reader's Guide to Writings Before and After Darwin

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McIver's bibliography is exceptionally comprehensive with thoughtful annotations. This book is a useful entrance to the anti-evolution literature. (Number's (1992) book "The Creationists" tells the fascinating story.) The bulk of the references are from the late 20th century (to 1986-87), reflecting the fact that this is an especially recent phenomenon, but it is also quite comprehensive for the earlier literature. Some literature that is relevant but not anti-evolution or religious is included. The bibliography by James L. Hayward (1998) "The Creation/Evolution Controversy" is also excellent, treating the literature since 1981, including both theistic and non-theistic authors.

I read an earlier edition of this book; I believe it has not been updated much. McIver gives a brief description of more than 1,300 books and pamphlets, summarizing their main points, and extracting some choice quotations. Personally, I find the creationist quotes pretty funny. The first edition included a huge number of references to creationist sources from the 1600's to the mid-1980's; one of the last books listed was Ken Ham's "The Lie: Evolution."

Because this book is highly complete up to the mid-1980's, it's an excellent source for scholars studying the history of creationism. It's also funny; whether McIver intended it or not. For example, the "Nimrod" trope. The most famous creationist of all time, Henry Morris, said that the theory of evolution started at the Tower of Babel under the guidance of evil King Nimrod and Satan. "The answer is Satan!"

Where did Henry Morris get that idea? Well, years before Morris, creationists who were racist said evil King Nimrod was black. Creationists who were anti-Catholic (Alexander Hislop, Jack Chick the comic book guy) said that the Catholic religion originated under evil Catholic King Nimrod at the Tower of Babel. So, Henry Morris took lies and bigotry against blacks and Catholics and adapted them to the hatred of scientists.

However, because this book is a bibliography, such stories are not told all in one place, chronologically. But there are excellent indexes, allowing you to flip back and forth to put the stories together yourself, and see how ideas evolve. The references are not arranged chronologically, nor by subject, but alphabetically, by author's name, but the indexes are a great help. It's great for scholars. If you have a long attention span, this book is pretty funny. For the ordinary, everyday reader, it's not for you.

This book can also be used to refute the common creationist argument that evolutionary scientists invented racism. The book has references to many racist, hysterically anti-Semitic and conspiratorial creationists, including prominent American fundamentalists who were pro-Nazi before WWII. Even after WWII, American's most prominent neo-Nazis were anti-evolutionists. At every point in history, creationists were always more racist than evolutionists, though both have become less racist over time.

You can use this book to refute many such creationist arguments. If creationists say, "Hitler was a Darwinist!" you can not only look up Mein Kampf (of course it's better to read Mein Kampf yourself, you can read it online), but you can also look up pro-Nazi creationists, before and after WWII. Take that, Ken Ham!

Another example: William Jennings Bryan (Monkey trial lawyer) and Jimmy Swaggart (scandal-plagued preacher, serial patronizer of prostitutes, author of 3 anti-evolution books who warned us evolution would make society immoral) both say that evolution teaches that legs "evolved from warts." Now that's funny.

You can use this book to discover many such repeating tropes and memes of creationism. Some creationist ideas never change, such as the prediction that evolutionary theory is crumbling at this very moment, or it's already dead. That prediction goes way, way back, with some books in the 1880's saying evolution was crumbling, and other books like "At the Deathbed of Darwinism" (1905) and Henry Morris' "Twilight of Evolution" (1963) and D. James Kennedy's many books and pamphlets from the 1980's to the 2000's, all with the words "Crumbling" and "Collapse" in them. Go to the indexes and look up the words "Crumbling" and "Collapse" and such words to see how, for MORE THAN A CENTURY, creationists have predicted that evolutionary theory is near dead or already dead. (If you want a good online list of such quotes on the "Imminent Demise" of evolution, google the excellent list "The Longest Running Falsehood in Creationism" by ex-creationist Glenn Morton, whose "evolution is dead" quotes go back to the 1820's (!!).)

Another common trope is that we are living in the "Last Days." The famous "flood geologist" George MacCready Price said that we were living in the Last Days back in the 1920's, and this prediction has been made every decade, hell every year, since Price's time (actually John Calvin believed that too, back in the 1500's, though it's beyond the scope of this book.)

Other creationist ideas "evolve" over time to become more dishonest. For example: the fake story about "Joshua's Missing Day" in which evolutionist scientists discover that a day is missing from the calendar, and are shocked when they mathematically prove it originated with the sun standing still in the Book of Joshua. That story started out with bogus math by racist creationist Charles A.L. Totten, and was elaborated upon by outright lying by 1920's wannabe scientist Harry Rimmer, and was elaborated upon some more by outright lies invented by creationist Harold Hill, who changed the story about NASA computers discovering the missing day. You have to skip around to put the story together. These were not errors or mistakes, but outright invention.

McIver does not comment on the inaccuracies and dishonesty in these books, with very few exceptions. One, very rare, exception is D. James Kennedy, the preacher from Coral Ridge Ministries, FLA. (Among other lies, D. James Kennedy invented the fake quote in which evolutionist Julian Huxley says he and his friends believed in evolution because it freed them from sexual morality. That lie was twisted from an out-of-context quote from Aldous, not Julian, Huxley.) Kennedy's books are so dishonest, that McIver drops his aura of "just report what they say" and calls him out on it.

There are a few references to books by today's most prominent creationists, Ken Ham, Sarfati, Andrew Snelling, etc. Nothing from Kent Hovind, the jailbird. It's mostly pre-mid-1980's.

My one criticism is that there's not enough here on the very influential 1940's era, Seventh Day Adventist creationists and racists, Frank Lewis Marsh and Harold W. Clark. For more on them, you have to read Ronald Numbers' "The Creationists" or else dig up their original hard-to-find books, if you can get them.

Great stuff. McIver neatly reviews anti-evolution (in the broadest sense) before and after Darwin. Thought provoking in that is shows the mental tricks critics will turn to avoid contradicting the Genesis account and agreeing with Darwin.

It's a shame the revised edition wasn't updated. Still, highly useful.

As an aside, it's highly unlikely that the comment above attributed to McIver is true. McIver comes across as one who _always_ belived in evolution (see, for example, his articles in "Creation/Evolution" and "Skeptic") ... methinks I smell a hoax.

the quote attributed to the author is bogus. Please confirm this and remove it. You have been duped.

It is great that evolution is being proved wrong by science nowadays, as it will lead more people seeing the real world as it is. This book not only reviews some of the facts, but gives some of the details on Creationism and what Creationism really means, that the earth is 6000 years old and that evolution can be proved wrong by anatomy, astronomy, biology, geology, etc.