Creationism - National Center for Science Education

Kuyper, but depends on the introduction of a religious Christian foundation into philosophy. On this
principle rest the general theory of the modal law-spheres... [1953:v-vi]
Dooyeweerd called for a total reformulation of philosophy and science, and a
rejection of the non-Christian assumption of the autonomy of man’s thought and
recognition of man’s complete submission to God’s will. Dooyeweerd’s “Cosmonomic”
philosophy declares that the entire cosmos is governed by God’s law, and that this
cosmos is arranged in a hierarchy of increasing complexity. God has created a different
set of laws for each level, or “sphere,” in the hierarchy: time, space, motion and energy,
the biotic realm, the human sensorium, logic, the Genesis cultural mandate and the will
(psychology), semantics, social intercourse, economics, esthetics, and law
(jurisprudence). True freedom comes from recognition and acceptance of the limits set
by God with these laws. Similarly, each species (kind) of biological organism is
governed by a different set of laws. (One corollary is that we can’t understand man by
studying animals.) Dooyeweerd claims that the mechanist-vitalist debate can be resolved
by recognition of this hierarchy of God-given natural laws. Scientific facts can be
interpreted either from the evolutionary naturalistic frame of reference or from the
biblical creationist perspective. Science is thus a religious activity, since Christians must
accept the truth of the Bible (upon which their science is dependent) on faith, and
reductionist evolutionism is really animistic and dependent on miracles. Dooyeweerd
emphatically rejected evolution as unscientific as well as opposed to Christian
presuppositions, and apparently believed that the fossil record was best explained by the
Flood.
Dooyeweerd’s disciple J.J. Duyvene De Wit, a South African zoology professor
(formerly at the Free University of Amsterdam), was also staunchly creationist. De Wit
urged a reformation of biology and other sciences by examination of its philosophical and
theoretical basis, and reconstructed biology according to Christian presuppositions,
arguing, following Dooyeweerd, that the cytoplasm contained a higher level of
information than the DNA. He asserted that evolution was hopelessly unscientific. “No
fossil documentation whatsoever with respect to the assumed animal ancestors of man
has been found,” he said in a 1963 address to the Scientific Society of the University of
Orange Free State. Like Dooyeweerd, he considered evolutionist belief pure animism,
and maintained that God created different laws for each species. He also followed
Dooyeweerd in arguing against the primacy of DNA: his research showed that DNA was
responsible for intra-species variations only, and that the cytoplasm (outer cell layer)
accounted for differences between species.
De Wit hoped that American creationists would take notice of Dooyeweerd’s
“Cosmonomic” anti-evolutionist biology, though mainstream fundamentalist creationists
in the “evidentialist” apologetic tradition have considered Dooyeweerd’s radical
theoretical reconstruction of science rather alien. Magnus Verbrugge wrote a three-part
article in the Creation Research Society Quarterly, “The Legacy of Duyvene De Wit for
Creationist Biology,” similarly urging a merging of these two anti-evolutionist schools.
Verbrugge, a surgeon, is Dooyeweerd’s son-in-law, and lists his address as the
Dooyeweerd Foundation in La Jolla, California. He also wrote an article for ICR’s
“Impact” series (“Materialism, Animism, and Evolution”), in which he asserted that
materialism and denial of God as Creator results in animistic belief. Modern
evolutionists deny belief in vitalism, but attribute animistic powers to other forces.