Creationism - National Center for Science Education
Creationism - National Center for Science Education
Creationism - National Center for Science Education
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“Each creation command in Genesis correlates with a cientific puzzle or gap.” Genesis<br />
contains a “step-by-step ccount of changes that God made in the geologic and biologic<br />
<strong>for</strong>ms on the earth” to fulfill God’s plan, but it does not describe how these changes<br />
occurred. Other than he specific acts of creation declared by Genesis, these hanges may<br />
have occurred via evolution.<br />
The question is not creation versus evolution. The real question, the truly vital issue is Creator versus nocreator.<br />
We owe our existence either to the creative acts of God or to random chance. [1983:13]<br />
<strong>Science</strong> is moving ever closer to the “unchanging biblical pattern,” Wiester says;<br />
the theory of punctuated equilibrium especially brings science “remarkably close to the<br />
biblical view.” His unashamed espousal of a God-of-the-gaps view is curious, since such<br />
a view is generally felt to be antamount to conceding the superiority of science over<br />
eligion. This bothers Wiester not at all. The truth of reation and of Christianity <strong>for</strong> him<br />
is “presuppositional” and thus not subject to falsification by science.<br />
Christianity presupposes God is true. Thus Christians should not expect science to prove God or to give<br />
answers to the meaning and purpose of life. To expect science to answer such questions would make God<br />
and phenemona subject to the limitations of the human mind. We should expect, however, that as science<br />
accurately explores the wondrous mysteries of God’s creation, ultimately the weight of evidence will be in<br />
harmony with Scripture. The results and phenomena of creation which are all around us will <strong>for</strong>ce us to<br />
face the reality of creation. [1983:36]<br />
<strong>Science</strong> does not support the “chance,” “mechanistic” origin of life, and the lack<br />
of transitional <strong>for</strong>ms in the fossil record (such as in the transition to multi-cellular <strong>for</strong>ms)<br />
refutes Darwinian evolution. The public is being “duped” by a “hominid hoax”: the<br />
claim, that is, that humans are descended from fossil hominids.<br />
NOMOTHETIC CREATION AND FINAL VS. SECONDARY CAUSATION<br />
George Fairholme, the Scriptural Geologist, had insisted in 1833 that<br />
contemporary geological theorists erred by addressing only “secondary causes,” and he<br />
criticized Lyell’s uni<strong>for</strong>mitarian theory as a prime example of this un<strong>for</strong>tunate obsession<br />
by theoretical scientists with secondary causes. This criticism illustrates a major<br />
difference in outlook between creationists and proponents of modern, positivist science. 23<br />
By Darwin’s time, many scientists, such as Lyell, were already “proto-positivists”who<br />
concentrated on secondary causes in their scientific explanations. Geology was the first<br />
science to largely abandon theologically-based explanations and rely on positivist<br />
explanations (except in theoretical works and works intended <strong>for</strong> the public) (Gillespie<br />
1979:11). Even Edward Hitchcock, the distinguished Amherst College geologist and<br />
harmonizer of the Bible with science, though he defended biblical special creation,<br />
explained that the geological record was the result of secondary causes (1851).<br />
Until Darwin’s time, science was based on a markedly religious conception, and<br />
this religious basis was inextricably woven into the fabric of science. Darwin, argues<br />
23 This is an aspect of Bacon not emulated by creationists. Bacon had argued that it was through study of<br />
these secondary causes that his new method of science could result in the mastery of nature <strong>for</strong> the benefit<br />
of man, rather than the medieval tradition of study of nature primarily <strong>for</strong> the moral lessons it was held to<br />
provide (Toulmin and Goodfield 1965:107-109).