Creationism - National Center for Science Education

manprints as an example of facts which are excluded because they do not fit the
evolutionist paradigm.
ICR evangelist Ken Ham argues that everyone holds some bias, some religious
position based on faith. Evolutionists are biased against God and creationism. But
creationism is the “best” bias to have, as it is based on infallible divine revelation (1987).
ICR biologist Gary Parker, a former evolutionist who converted to creationism after
teaching evolution in college, emphasizes that evolution was a “very emotional
experience for him”; it was a “faith and heart commitment, a complete world-and-life
view; in other words, a religion.”
Leo Van Dolson, in Our Real Roots: Scientific Support for Creationism, stresses
the importance of presuppositions in the creation/evolution controversy:
There is just not enough available data on either side to prove one position or the other scientifically and
conclusively. Thus presuppositions are all important. The big question is, what basic assumptions does
one begin with? Here, I believe, the creationist has the advantage. He begins with what he views as
inspired sources. The Bible story of the origin of life comes from the Creator Himself. Since the scientific
data when viewed objectively fits just as well, if not better, into the creationist framework, it seems obvious
that the added weight of revelation makes this position the most tenable. [1979:7]
Though many creationists emphasize the effect of Presuppositions—either
Christian or materialist-atheist—on our interpretations of origins, Christian
Reconstructionists such as Rushdoony, who are in a direct theological line of descent
from Kuyper and Van Til, differ from ICR-type “creation-scientists” in insisting that the
frankly religious basis of Christian presuppositions must always be acknowledged, and
that attempts to prove that creationism can be “scientific” without also being religiouslybased
are deceptive and false. Thus, they oppose the attempts by creation-scientists to
convince the American legal and educational system that creationism can be taught as a
completely non-religious scientific model, divorced from its biblical roots. If these roots,
these presuppositions, are ignored, say the Reconstructionists, even as a matter of legal
strategy in order to get creationism into the schools, then so-called “scientific”
creationism has surrendered to the non-Christian enemy.
Given the “presuppositional” or axiomatic truth of biblical inerrancy, which is
therefore not subject to criticism or examination, the most bizarre hypotheses may be
accepted in defense of creationism. Though exceedingly unlikely by ordinary scientific
standards (which the creation-scientist may in fact be familiar with), they become
acceptable, to the creationist, precisely because they preserve the cardinal principle of
inerrancy. George McCready Price had argued that Flood Geology was true even if it
seemed scientifically absurd:
It is no answer to my criticism of the grotesque logic offered for the gel ogical ages to say that my
hypothesis of a great world-catastrophe as the cause of much (if not most) of the fossiliferous deposits is
incredible and absurd. Perhaps it is. [1931:10]
He declared that his scientific discoveries had forever refuted the geological ages of
evolutionary theory, and therefore the biblical account, however absurd on the surface,
must necessarily be true.
In upholding biblical inerrancy in matters where the plainest—the most factual
and literal—interpretation of the Bible clearly conficts with modern science, creationscientists
can go in either of two directions. They can either twist and stretch science to