Creationism - National Center for Science Education

oard of advisors includes Gunther Stent 33 of UC Berkeley and Mae-Wan Ho of The
Open University in England. Another vice-director is Atuhiro Sibatani, a Japanese
biologist who once criticized Imanishi’s views, but later converted to them.
LEADERS, FOLLOWERS, AND MID-LEVEL ACTIVISTS
Henry. Morris and Duane Gish (ICR president and chief theoretician, and ICR
vice president and chief debater, respectively) are very well known to friend and foe
alike; there are a few other creationists with national reputations, but none so widely
recognized. So prominent are Morris and Gish that many people, again on both sides, are
tempted to equate them with the creationist movement. Though they have been by far the
most effective leaders in the popularization and dramatic upsurge of creation-science,
they did not create it out of nothing. It is important to remember that if Morris and Gish
did not exist, there would still be many people ready to take up arms against evolution,
and a deep reservoir of anti-evolutionist sentiment among the public ready to be tapped
and exploited.
Also well known (at the other end of the spectrum) are various measurements of
the public’s acceptance of creationism and distrust of evolution. Two widely-reported
polls conducted during the California textbook controversies in the 1970s have already
been mentioned. The Seventh-day Adventists of Crescent City conducted one poll for the
Del Norte County Unified School District in the northwestern corner of the state in 1973.
To the question “Should evolution be taught in public schools?,” 58% responded Yes, and
34% said No. To the question “Should creation be taught in public schools?,” 89% said
Yes, and 8% said No. Another poll, in Cupertino Union School District near San Jose and
high-tech Silicon Valley, was conducted by the Citizens for Scientific Creation, who
surveyed 2,000 random households. 84.3% responded Yes to the question “Should
scientific evidence for creation be presented along with evolution?”; 7.8% said No. A
1981 AP/NBC poll indicated that 86% of the public nationwide favored the inclusion of
creationism in public schools. A 1982 Gallup poll showed that 44% of Americans
believed in recent creation. Other polls have fairly consistently confirmed that from
about 70% to well over 80% agree that creationism should be presented in schools as
well as evolution.
It seems clear from these results that not only do fundamentalist creationists
constitute a sizable segment of the population, but also that a great many other Americans
—a large majority, in fact—are impressed by the “equal time” or “balanced treatment”
arguments: that it is only “fair” to present the minority “scientific” view as well as the
established scientific theory. More recently, questionnaires were sent to 400 randomlyselected
biology teachers nationwide; of the 200 who responded, 30% said they would
teach divine creation rather than evolution if they had to choose, and 19% thought that
humans co-existed with dinosaurs (“Biology Teachers’ Responses Stun Pollsters,” 1988).
Without underrating the importance of highly visible leaders such as Morris and
Gish, and the obvious significance of the widespread acceptance of creationism among
the public, there is another level which is much less reported on or analyzed, yet of great
33 Stent opposes “hyper-evolutionism”—the insistence that all evolved features and traits must be the result
of natural selection. In “Scientific Creationism: Nemesis of Sociobiology” (1984), he expresses the hope
that creationism and sociobiology will wipe each other out.