Creationism - National Center for Science Education

Lubenow and said, “You’re a Christian!” This man (not indentified in Lubenow’s book)
was David McQueen, then a graduate student in Michigan. McQueen later joined the
ICR faculty. Prior to joining ICR full-time, he gave a deposition for the Arkansas
creation-science trial, but was not called as a witness at the trial itself. (No ICR members
were witnesses at the trial.)
Following its administrative separation from CHC, ICR began offering graduate
courses. In 1981 the California Private Postsecondary Education Division approved
ICR’s M.S. degree programs in astro/geophysics, biology, geology, and science
education. (“Approval” is not the same as accreditation. The ICR Graduate School has
never sought state accreditation, knowing that its outspoken commitment to
fundamentalist creationism would preclude this. “Approval” by the PPED means that
California officially recognizes graduate degrees as legitimate, though non-accredited.
Renewal of this approval is now being contested.) 20
M.S. theses have included Theories of Origins: Do They Persist Despite Contrary
Evidence? (Brazo 1983; biology), A Critique of Molecular Homology (Knaub 1983;
biology), Scale Time Versus Geologic Time in Radioisotope Age Determination (R.L.N.
Mandock 1983), Theoretical Thermal Calculations for Heat Distributions with Spherical
Symmetry (Mandock 1983), A Rationale for the Christian College Biology Curriculum: A
Case Study at Christian Heritage College (M.J. Nutting 1983), Origin of Bedded Salt
Deposits: A Critique of Evaporative Models (D. Nutting 1984), A Determination of the
Time of the Flood from the Geologic Ages of River Deltas (Rasmussen 1984), A
Reevaluation of the English Peppered Moth’s Use as an Example of Evolution in
Progress (Osborne 1985), and A Pilot Study on the Validity of Using an Inquiry
Approach in a Video Format for Origins: Two Models, Evolution-Creation in Christian
Schools (Townley 1985). I took an ICR graduate level course in Science Education
taught by Richard Bliss on the two-model approach. (I did not take it for graduate credit,
so officially I was auditing.)
ICR Summer Institutes have also been held each year since 1972, both at ICR and
at various locations around the country. These are five-day programs on creation-science
and biblical creationism (I attended two such Summer Institutes at ICR), which can be
taken for undergraduate or graduate credit (the last requiring an additional paper). Of the
187 registered attendees at one of these Summer Institutes, in 1984, the following
occupations were represented:
Teachers: 43
College: 11
20 In 1988 this PPED approval was due for renewal. A five-man evaluating committee voted 3 to 2 for
renewal, but later, after meeting with State Superintendent of Public Instruction Bill Honig, one member
switched his vote to deny approval. The two who voted for approval were George Howe of The Master’s
College and the Creation Research Society, and G. Edwin Miller, former president of Morris’s (and ICR’s)
Christian Heritage College. Miller has also been executive secretary of TRACS, a private fundamentalist
and creationist accrediting agency founded by Morris. TRACS has accredited Christian Heritage College,
Criswell Center for Bible Studies in Texas, and Falwell’s Liberty Baptist College (now University). ICR
Graduate School is an associate member of TRACS.
ICR has thus far avoided withdrawal of approval by negotiating with the Dept. of Education, promising to
keep the “religious” aspects of its creationist teachings separate from its “science” instruction. Meanwhile,
in 1989 a new committee was chosen by PPED to re-evaluate ICR’s graduate school approval and to check
its compliance with the negotiated conditions. This new committee includes UCLA paleontologist Everett
Olson and UCLA molecular biologist Richard Dickerson.