Creationism - National Center for Science Education

which he presents Gap Theory creationism; in 1981 these were published in English as a
book, The Mystery of Creation. 32
One interesting sub-category of creationism is the theory that the written
characters of the Chinese language retain depictions of the story of Creation, Adam and
Eve, and the Flood of Genesis, based on the fundamentalist premise that all peoples and
nations are descended from Noah a few thousand years ago. This theory was first
elaborated in Genesis and the Chinese (1950) by Khang Kiat Tien. Khang was born a
Catholic in Singapore, but later became a Seventh-day Adventist missionary in China. In
his book (available in a 1985 reprint by an Adventist publisher), Khang analyzes many
Chinese characters related to the Genesis story and uncovers their original Christian
origins.
These ancient Chinese certainly seemed to know the creation story more thoroughly than we do, though we
have the Bible record. yet how few believe it! They choose rather to place credence in evolutionary
theories which certainly require more faith to believe than the Bible testimony. (Khang 1950:97]
Ethel Nelson, at the time a medical pathologist at a Massachusetts hospital who had
formerly lived in Thailand, continued Khang’s research (she spells his name “Kang”) in
The Discovery of Genesis: How the Truths of Genesis Were Found Hidden in the Chinese
Language (Kang and Nelson 1979), which has a Foreword by Lutheran creationist Paul
Zimmerman. Nelson’s technique is to select various characters from ancient oracular
bone inscriptions and bronzeware, later seal inscriptions, and more modern hieroglyphic
forms, and to show how these depict the elements of the story of Creation and the Flood.
Various radicals, for instance, are interpreted as depicting the Trinity, God creating man
out of the earth, the Garden of Eden, Noah’s Ark, the creation of Eve from Adam, etc.
Nelson further developed this idea in Mysteries Confucius Couldn’t Solve: Analysis of
Ancient Facts Shared with Hebrew Scripture (Nelson and Broadberry 1986), co-authored
with a medical lab specialist in Taiwan who is fluent in Chinese.
Kinji Imanishi, a Japanese biologist and also a renowned explorer, is Japan’s most
popular writer on evolution. “Indeed, it would not be unreasonable to say that in Japan
the average intelligent layman’s understanding of evolution stems in great measure from
the writings and innumerable interviews given by Imanishi” (Halstead 1985: 587).
Halstead says that many Japanese consider him as important as Darwin. In Imanishi’s
view, which self-consciously reflects Japanese culture, the group—not the individual—is
the important unit of evolution. He stresses the underlying harmony in nature rather than
struggle. Though an evolutionist, Imanishi is strongly anti-Darwinian. He maintains that
Darwinism is based on Western European culture and religion. He rejects any notion of
‘survival of the fittest.’ Not only is intraspecific competition non-existent, interspecific
competition does not exist either. Species “choose” to seek new habitats, and then
diverge. Halstead notes that the crude selectionism which Imanishi has always opposed
was also espoused by the militaristic and authoritarian rulers of Japan at the turn of the
century (1985:588).
Rivista di Biologia is an anti-Darwinian (though not creationist) Italian journal
edited by Giuseppe Sermonti. Søren Løvtrup, a macro-mutationist, is a vice-director; the
32 Nee founded the Local Church movement, now led by Witness Lee of Anaheim, California, with
130,000 members in Taiwan and the U.S.