Creationism - National Center for Science Education

The basis of evolutionary theories is this anti-God position of apostate and fallen man. The convincing
thing about evolution is not that it proves man’s origins or even gives anything resembling a possible
theory but that it dispenses with God.
Evolution requires chance, whereas science rests on absolutely determined factors and on causality. The
doctrine of evolution is thus basically hostile to science.
Again, evolution is a theory which is radically hostile to biblical religion. The Bible clearly asserts that
God created heaven and earth, the whole created universe, in six days. If this statement be allegorized or
interpreted away, no meaning stands in Scripture. ... Every doctrine of Scripture is undermined when strict
creationism is undermined. Wherever strict creationism is set aside, the vital nerve of Christianity is cut,
and the Church begins to move in terms of humanistic and political power rather than the power of God.
[1967:48-49]
Evolutionists seek “total control over man”: it is an “inescapable fact that evolutionary
thinking requires totalitarianism. If the education of a people is dedicated to teaching
evolution, it will also teach socialism or communism” (1967:52). (Actually, Rushdoony
believes that all education, all government, is necessarily indoctrination and necessarily
totalitarian; this the theme of Rushdoony’s 1963 The Messianic Character of American
Education. The question is only whether it is to be totalitarian rule according to God’s
absolute and unchanging law, which is really freedom, or—the only lternative—
totalitarianism based on evolutionist indoctrination.)
Evolutionists, says Rushdoony, are “parasites”:
They are living off the unearned capital of Christian civilization, on the impetus, law, and order of centuries
of Christianity. Like all parasites, they are destroying the host body, Christendom, and its collapse will be
their death also. They are denying the eternal decree of God, His sovereign and omnipotent creative
counsel and decree, and as a result they are left with a world of chaos which is destructive of science. If
they were faithful to their philosophy, these scientists could have no science, because they would have to
say that the world is a world of brute factuality, without meaning, purpose, causality, or law. [1967:57]
The only way to prevent this devasting collapse of civilization is to return to biblical
Christianity and to strict creationism.
The very first issue (1974) of the Journal of Christian Reconstruction, a
publication of Rushdoony’s Chalcedon Foundation in Vallecito, California, was devoted
to defense of a literal recent six-day creation. 45 The Journal is “dedicated to the
fulfilment of the cultural mandate of Genesis 1:28 and 9:1—to subdue the earth to the
glory of God.” Charles Clough, one contributor, says in his article “Biblical
Presuppositions and Historical Geology: A Case Study”:
The issue is this: does Genesis present a view of early history that cannot be reconciled with the view of
modern historical science, and, if it does, should Christians loyally remain with Genesis and begin the long
arduous task of reconstructing historical science today? [1974:35]
Clough emphatically answers his own rhetorical questions: Genesis interpreted literally
does indeed conflict with modern science; attempted harmonizations inevitably
45 Not all contributors endorse Reconstructionism, however. Steven Austin, writing under the name “Stuart
Nevins,” later became a geology professor at ICR, which is officially pre-millennialist. Cornelius Van Til
himself, though his presuppositional apologetics is a key Reconstructionist doctrine, does not subscribe to
the Reconstructionist agenda. Robbins, incidentally (he is not a contributor to this volume), though a
strong presuppositionalist, dissociates himself from the Reconstructionist movement.