Creationism - National Center for Science Education
Creationism - National Center for Science Education
Creationism - National Center for Science Education
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Design, according to fundamentalists, is also diametrically opposed to chance.<br />
The venerable Argument from Design remains the chief weapon in creationist<br />
apologetics. Creationists consider it self-evident and incontrovertible. Though the theory<br />
of evolutionary adaptation stood the design argument completely on its head, creationists<br />
continue to appeal to Design without even a trace of defensiveness. It is featured in<br />
virtually every book or article promoting creation-science. “Actually,” says John Morris<br />
(1989), Henry Morris’s son, “any living thing gives such strong evidence <strong>for</strong> design by an<br />
intelligent designer that only a willful ignorance of the data (II Peter 3:5) could lead one<br />
to assign such intricacy to chance.”<br />
“The most powerful evidence <strong>for</strong> creation and against evolution,” state Robert<br />
Kofahl and Kelly Segraves in The Creation Explanation, a widely-cited creation-science<br />
textbook, is “found in specific evidences of intelligent, purposeful design. This evidence<br />
is all around us and is something the layman as well as the scientist can appreciate”<br />
(1975:xii). ICR biologist Gary Parker features UC Santa Barbara evolutionist Garrett<br />
Hardin’s rhetorical question “Was Paley right?” (which Hardin posed in a biology<br />
textbook to stimulate discussion about adaptation) in his creationist primer Creation: The<br />
Facts of Life (1980:36-9; Parker’s book is also reprinted as the first half of What Is<br />
Creation <strong>Science</strong>? [1982] by Morris and Parker). To Parker, the answer to this rhetorical<br />
question is obvious: Yes. Wernher von Braun’s contribution to the 1972 Cali<strong>for</strong>nia<br />
textbook hearings was titled The Case <strong>for</strong> Design.<br />
The book Why We Believe in Creation Not in Evolution, by Fred John Meldau<br />
(1974), <strong>for</strong> instance, consists almost entirely of densely packed examples of “witnesses<br />
against evolution”: various wonders and designs of nature. Meldau describes hundreds of<br />
animal and plant adaptations, the design of earth’s physical properties and ecosystem, the<br />
social insects, marvels of the human body, and many more. R.E.D. Clark argues long<br />
and hard against chance in The Universe—Plan or Accident? (1961), describing the<br />
remarkable “fitness” of the universe <strong>for</strong> life as evidence <strong>for</strong> Creation. In the chapter<br />
“Nature—The First Inventor” Clark shows that many examples of design in nature utilize<br />
scientific and engineering principles only recently discovered by man. The theme of A.<br />
Cressy Morrison’s 1944 book Man Does Not Stand Alone (written in response to Julian<br />
Huxley’s evolutionist Man Stands Alone) is that the wonders and design of nature prove a<br />
Supreme Intelligence and purpose. Morrison, a <strong>for</strong>mer president of the New York<br />
Academy of <strong>Science</strong>s, admits the strength of Darwin’s theory, but maintains that Paley’s<br />
design argument has not been refuted.<br />
Norman Macbeth, a retired lawyer, claims in Darwin Retried: An Appeal to<br />
Reason (1973) that the design argument has not been defeated. (Macbeth, who became a<br />
regular and prominent attendee of the Systematics Group meetings at the American<br />
Museum of Natural History in New York, first made these accusations in a Yale Review<br />
article.) James E. Horigan, a Denver lawyer, wrote a book Chance or Design? (1979),<br />
arguing <strong>for</strong> Design in nature. Horigan unabashedly professes his admiration <strong>for</strong> Paley<br />
and the Bridgewater Treatises. The evidences of obvious intelligent design in the<br />
universe are “far too bewildering to attribute to chance.” Horigan notes laconically that<br />
“the biblical account of Genesis fits quite com<strong>for</strong>tably” with his interpretation.<br />
Wilder-Smith, the British-born triple doctorate living in Switzerland, has made a<br />
modernized version of the design argument the thesis of several creation-science books.<br />
His chief argument is that Intelligence—Logos—is necessary <strong>for</strong> the creation of life; that