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