Creationism - National Center for Science Education
Creationism - National Center for Science Education
Creationism - National Center for Science Education
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make it con<strong>for</strong>m to this straight<strong>for</strong>ward interpretation, or they can twist and stretch the<br />
biblical interpretation to make it allow <strong>for</strong> those conclusions of science which they accept<br />
as undeniable. (In practice it always involves a mixture of both.) Mainstream strict<br />
creationists such as Henry Morris tend to the <strong>for</strong>mer approach, positing fantastic<br />
scientific hyptheses to account <strong>for</strong> recent creation and the Flood, and other events and<br />
conditions described in Genesis, such as the pre-Flood Water Canopy. Other, usually<br />
more independent creationists, tend more to the latter approach. They reject less of the<br />
conclusions of standard modern science, but consequently are <strong>for</strong>ced to devise strange<br />
interpretations of certain Bible passages, and to posit extra-biblical notions and<br />
interpretations purely as ad hoc means of preserving what they know to be scientifically<br />
true while also preserving biblical inerrancy, in however strange a <strong>for</strong>m.<br />
Dudley Whitney, <strong>for</strong> example, proposed that there was a second creation after the<br />
Flood to account <strong>for</strong> the similarity of organisms on widely separated continents (he<br />
couldn’t allow <strong>for</strong> continental drift then): “if God created this world and the plants and<br />
animals upon it in the first place, He could replace destroyed plants and animals by a<br />
second creation, and the logical belief is that He did so, to some extent at least”<br />
(1961:36). There is of course no suggestion of this independently in the Bible, but<br />
Whitney feels that it is required by science and that it does not violate inerrancy. Harold<br />
Armstrong invoked a post-Flood creation in order to account <strong>for</strong> desert animals, as did<br />
Lammerts and Howe with reference to plants (Rice 1988:32). Creationists such as<br />
Morris, however, reject such suggestions as contrary to the clear meaning of the Genesis<br />
narrative.<br />
Glenn Morton, a creationist with oil exploration experience, realizes that all the<br />
sedimentary deposits of the geological record cannot be attributed to the Flood, as Morris<br />
and mainline strict creationists claim. His solution is to theorize that fossiliferous<br />
deposits were laid down primarily after the Flood during several hundred years of local<br />
catastrophes.<br />
While his theory is an improvement on the usual Flood geology, it provides a breathtaking amount of extrabiblical<br />
emendation: the Bible provides genealogies and an outline of historical events from Noah to<br />
Abraham and totally neglects to mention that Earth was still writhing and seething with local catastrophes<br />
on a scale many hundreds of times greater than today. Morton has filled in this major component of Earth<br />
history that the Bible writers <strong>for</strong>got to mention. [Rice 1988:31]<br />
Morton feels obliged to do this because he knows the Bible to be inerrant, yet he realizes<br />
that Morris’s Flood Geology is scientifically absurd.<br />
Bernard Northrup, a pastor in Redding, Cali<strong>for</strong>nia, is also sharply critical of<br />
standard Flood Geology as contradicted by scientific evidence. He has developed a<br />
theory that there were many catastrophes in earth history in addition to the Flood. The<br />
Paleozoic strata were laid down by the Flood itself, but the Mesozoic strata were<br />
deposited during the thousand years or so in which the Floodwaters gradually subsided.<br />
The continents were divided during this retreat of the Floodwaters (in the days of the<br />
biblical Peleg), and the accompanying vulcanism caused the Ice Age.<br />
All creation-scientists must distort both science and the intended meaning of the<br />
Bible to some extent, regardless of which they distort more. As Stanley Rice expressed it<br />
(1988:26):