Bolton Davidheiser

Bolton Davidheiser (died August 2007) was a creationist zoologist widely known for his book Evolution and Christian Faith (1969), in which he exposed many of the deficiencies and contradictions in the theory of evolution. He was a trained and once-convinced evolutionist whose doubts about evolution grew from painstaking research into its teachings. Although he attended church as a child, his conversion to Christ and to belief in creation occurred after he earned his doctorate.

Dr. Davidheiser graduated from Swarthmore College, where he earned his A.B. degree, and Johns Hopkins University, where he earned his Ph.D. in zoology with an emphasis on genetics. He served as Professor of Biology at Westmont College, Santa Barbara, California, and as Professor of Biology at Biola College at La Mirada, California.

In his personal testimony published in Evolution and Christian Faith, he said:

"One evening in the spring of 1944 in North Dakota I attended a church service. The pastor was not gifted, and everything he said I had heard many times before. He preached a simple gospel message of salvation by grace, and that evening I found myself saying, 'I believe that,' to everything he said. ... It was not just a mental assent—the acceptance of a point of view I had previously rejected—it was a transforming experience. The Bible calls it a second birth."

When he later worked in cancer research in Baltimore, he spent much spare time in the library reading articles on evolution. "I was surprised to find," he said, "that the things which I had taken as assured were not so sure after all." The more he read, the more amazed he became at the slender evidence behind the theory of evolution. He said he wrote Evolution and Christian Faith because "evolution had been the great stumblingblock in my life," so he felt a need to help others who had the same problem.

Publications

• Evolution and Christian Faith, Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1969 book
• Science and the Bible, Baker Book House, 1971 book
• Creation, Time & Dr. Hugh Ross, self-published 1998 booklet
• Beginning of the world: Creation, evolution and modern science, Creation-Science Center, 1971 book
• To be as God: The goals of modern science, Presbyterian and Reformed, 1972 Chalcedon paper
• The quest of the Ctenophive: (Ctenophive phourphifty L.) Not closely related to the Ctenophores. A description of anguish in three convulsions, being a ... (an agony in eight fits) by Lewis Carroll, self-published, 1949 book by Bolton Davidheiser
• "The Scopes Trial," from A Symposium on Creation (Vol. III), Baker Book House, 1971, pp. 103-120 symposium paper included in book
• "Gregor Mendel," from A Symposium on Creation (Vol. V), Baker Book House, 1975, pp. 103-120 symposium paper included in book
• "Louis Agassiz," from A Symposium on Creation (Vol. VI), Pacific Meridian Publishing Co., 1977, pp. 117-135 symposium paper included in book
• "Darwin, Man, and Monkeys — An Open Letter to Professor Stephen Jay Gould," The Baptist Challenge, March 1996 article
• "A statement concerning the ministry of Dr. Hugh Ross" position statement

References

• Tribute to Dr. Bolton Davidheiser by Answers in Genesis