Creationism - National Center for Science Education

INTRODUCTION
This is a study of the creationist movement emphasizing creationism as a belief
system. I present and examine many of the ideas and theories of the creationists in an
attempt to understand how these beliefs fit together with other aspects of religious
fundamentalism, and to understand the reasons why evolution is so strongly opposed. In
doing so I assume that these beliefs follow some sort of logic and form a more or less
coherent and understandable system. The actual fundamentalist religious beliefs, and
their origins, must be taken into account in order to understand the intellectual
background of creationist belief.
In the first chapter I examine some of these beliefs and show how they
contributed to the rise of fundamentalist opposition to evolution. In the second chapter I
discuss the nature of early twentieth-century creationism, before, during, and after the
heyday of fundamentalist activity in the 1920s. The third chapter is a description of the
modern creationist movement. The fourth chapter discusses some theoretical issues
involving various fundamentalist attitudes regarding the relationship of science and
religion. The last two chapters emphasize the diversity of creationist belief: religious,
national, and social diversity, plus the varying degrees of literalism (chapter five); and
finally the various different major types of creationism (chapter six).
My own research has been of two main types: “participant observation” and
extensive study of creationist literature. My “participant observation” has included
graduate-level courses and field trips at the Institute for Creation Research, which is
generally acknowledged as the leading “creation-science” institution. I have described a
week-long field trip to the Grand Canyon, which was offered as a graduate-level biology/
geology ICR field study course, in a separate article (McIver 1987a). Also, I have taken
a graduate-level science education course at ICR, attended several ICR Summer
Institutes, and have spent much time reading and studying in the ICR Library, the ICR
Museum, and elsewhere on campus. Besides this considerable time at ICR, I have
attended several National (and International) Creation Conferences (Cleveland,
Pittsburgh, Seattle), plus many meetings of local creationist groups, and a variety of other
creationist activities.
My other primary source of information has been a very wide-ranging study of
creationist literature. In fact, almost as soon as I began spending time at the ICR Library,
which has an extensive collection of creationist materials (very likely the best and most
comprehensive collection anywhere), I realized that this kind of material merited far
more attention. Analyses of creationism have overwhelmingly tended to focus on an
extremely narrow range of creationist thought and literature—usually just a few books by
ICR members or a few other prominent creation-science leaders. These are certainly the
most important: they have had by far the greatest effect on the public. They are also quite
widely known now. But my attention was drawn to the seemingly limitless numbers of
other, lesser known works attacking evolution. These, I felt, were significant in part
because of their sheer number, and because of the fascinating (and usually little-known)
diversity they exhibited. The older literature (some of it readily available; much of it not)
shed light on the background of the contemporary creation-science movement—the
origins of the ideas which make up creationist theory. The newer literature demonstrates
the myriad forms opposition to evolution can take, and expresses the often surprising and