The Creationists: From Scientific Creationism to Intelligent Design is a history of the origins of anti-evolutionism by Ronald Numbers. First published in 1992 as The Creationists: The Evolution of Scientific Creationism, a revised and expanded edition was published under the current title in 2006.
The book has been described as "probably the most definitive history of anti-evolutionism".[1] It has received generally favorable reviews from both the academic and the religious community.[2]
It then chronicles the growth of creationist organisations in the mid 20th century, such as the Religion and Science Association, the Deluge Geology Society, the Evolution Protest Movement (in the United Kingdom), and the American Scientific Affiliation (ASA), the latter moving almost immediately in the direction of theistic evolution.
The book then describes the influence of creationism in churches and in countries outside the United States, and the rise of the intelligent design movement, before concluding with a chapter on creationism's global impact.
In the ecumenical journal First Things, historian of Christianity Mark A. Noll describes its 1992 edition as a "thorough, patient, even-handed, and exhaustively researched" chronicle of twentieth century creationism.[3]
Former archbishop of YorkJohn Habgood described the expanded edition, in an article in The Times, as a "massively well-documented history" that "must surely be the definitive study of the rise and growth of a cluster of well-meaning, but irrational, theories over a period of some 160 years."[4]
Editions
1992 - New York: Knopf (as The Creationists: The Evolution of Scientific Creationism)
2006 - expanded edition, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press (newly subtitled: The Creationists: From Scientific Creationism to Intelligent Design), ISBN0-674-02339-0
James A. Mathisen, "Review, The Creationists and When Time Shall Be No More", Sociology of Religion, v.55, n.1, "Religious Experience" (Spring 1994), pp. 94–97.