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 Creationism" 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). An 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.
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