Creationism - National Center for Science Education

Materialists have been repeating over and over that Christians want to introduce supernatural forces into
science. But it is really the materialists who want to introduce spirits and animism into science under the
guise of creative forces hiding in dead molecules. [1981:iv]
Verbrugge expanded on this theme that materialistic evolution requires animistic
belief in Alive: An Enquiry into the Origin and Meaning of Life (1984), which was
published by a press affiliated with Rushdoony’s Chalcedon Foundation, and has a
Foreword by Rushdoony. Those who reject God always substitute other gods, Verbrugge
says. Since the humanist Renaissance, scientists have continued to invent animistic
spirits, reverting to the pagan animism of the ancient Greeks, who invented various spirit
forces to explain life. Verbrugge argues that Christians must adhere to Dooyeweerd’s
“cosmonomic” view of creation, and stresses Dooyeweerd’s distinction between
‘function’ and ‘functor.’ Those who reject the Creator constantly confuse these, and
endow mere capacities with animistic powers. God-rejecting science, concludes
Verbrugge, is a mass of circular reasoning and contradictions.
Hebden Taylor, a pastor and author of books on Christian law and politics who
later taught at Dordt College, presented “A Study of the Biological Thought” of
Dooyeweerd and De Wit in his book Evolution and the Reformation of Biology (1967),
published by Craig Press. Taylor urges biblical creationism rather than the “apostate
humanist theory” of origins by chance, and praises Dooyeweerd’s Cosmonomic
approach. “Only by accepting God’s Word as the ordering principle in scientific study
can we make sense of the data of science.”
The Reformed scientific approach to modern biology is the only one which can effectively answer the
modern apostate evolution. The facts of science can be interpreted in either of two frames of reference: (1)
evolutionary naturalism, or (2) the Biblical account of creation. As a result the Christian believes that the
universe derives its existence from Almighty God who created it for His own glory out of nothing. It
follows that scientific thought and research are fundamentally a religious activity.
Taylor advocates Flood Geology: “the Great Deluge alone offers a plausible solution to
the enigma of the fossil record,” and argues that genetics and mutations do not allow for
the continuous progressive variation required by evolution. He also, revealingly,
disagrees with Ernst Mayr’s rejection of typological thinking in biology (1967:55ff).
(Mayr emphasized this Popperian theme recently in his 1982 Growth of Biological
Thought.)
Samuel Wolfe presented Dooyeweerd’s Cosmonomic philosophy in A Key to
Dooyeweerd (1978), a book published by Presbyterian and Reformed. Discussing each
of Dooyeweerd’s “spheres” of law, Wolfe points out that Dooyeweerd did not deal with
‘faith’ as a sphere—a shortcoming which Wolfe tries to rectify, adding it as a final
sphere. Wolfe says that Dordt College in Iowa, a Calvinist institution, has been the
center of the Cosmonomic Movement in this country, and that Vanguard magazine is a
leading promoter of it in Toronto. (See Maatman 1970, 1978; Maatman is a Dordt
College science professor.) Wolfe also urges that the Cosmonomic and creation-science
movements join forces against evolution. He discusses attempts by himself and by
George Howe, science professor at Los Angeles Baptist College and Board member of
the Creation Research Society, to arouse interest in Dooyeweerd and the Cosmonomic
movement in this country. Howe, he says (1978:27), corresponded with De Wit on the