Creationism - National Center for Science Education

then converted to Christianity [i.e. fundamentalism] after reading Wilder-Smith’s 1975
book. I have also heard that the student upheavals of the 1960s affected Kenyon’s
conversion.)
Thaxton, Bradley and Olsen do not question the accepted age of the earth and the
succession of life-forms over the ages, but argue that origin of life by random, purely
naturalistic processes is fundamentally implausible and “probably wrong.” In their
“Epilogue,” they urge consideration of supernatural causes in scientific explanation.
Alternatives they consider are “special creation by a Creator within the cosmos” (Hoyle
and Wickramasinghe’s position), and—the position they favor Themselves—“special
creation by a Creator beyond the cosmos.” They argue for a sharp distinction between
what they call “operation science,” which is the testing of normal, recurrent phenomena,
and “origin science,” which deals with singular and non-repeatable events, such as the
origin of life. The “God Hypothesis,” they claim, is illegitimate in “operation science”
but is perhaps necessary for origin science.
Jim Brooks, an oil explorationist with Britoil in Glasgow, Scotland and a vicepresident
of the Geological Society, supports a form of old-earth creationism in his book
Origins of Life (1985). He fully accepts—indeed he emphasizes—the geological ages
and the standard chronology of the fossil record in this handsomely illustrated book and
scientifically knowledgeable book, but also insists that the Bible “gives a true account of
God’s creation of the Universe, of the Earth, of living things and of mankind in his place
among them” (1985:148). Brooks supports the Big Bang theory, but cautions that it
cannot be used as proof of God and Creation. Such attempts he criticizes as a “God-ofthe-gaps”
approach: assertions that God must be the explanation in areas where scientific
knowledge can provide no other explanation. This God-of-the-gaps approach is a “wrong
and pathetic substitute for the infinite, all-powerful God of the Bible,” he insists
(1985:40). Brooks seems to prefer a revelatory or framework interpretation of
creationism.
Glenn Morton, the geophysicist who has worked many years in the petroleum
industry, has written many articles for the Creation Research Society, and was ghostwriter
for the evolution sections in McDowell and Stewart’s book Why Skeptics Ought to
Consider Christianity (1981). Morton describes himself as a “middle-earth” creationist:
he wants the earth to be as young as possible for biblical reasons, but his experience in
petroleum geology has convinced him that it must be more than several thousand years
old, and that Flood Geology and the Water Canopy theory are wrong. In The Geology of
the Flood (1986), Morton, who insists that “If evolution is true, then the Bible is wrong,”
attempts to reconcile geology with the Bible by proposing a single miracle: at the time of
the Flood, God increased the “permittivity” of free space. This caused atoms to move
apart, some expanding more than others. Earth’s radius doubled, and the land masses
split apart (this, rather than plate tectonics, explains the continents). Differential
expansion of various materials accounts for geological features such as earthquake zones
and thrust faulting (Howe 1987). Creation occurred about 125,000 years ago. The Flood
began some 30,000 years ago; Noah’s Ark landed after a year, but effects of the Flood
lasted about 5,000 years. Most of the paleontological record is the result of these
thousands of years of post-Flood re-inundations and other adjustments. These account
for fossil sequences not adequately explained by standard Flood Geology. As he explains
in another paper (1986a:141):