Creationism - National Center for Science Education

I do not intend to try to resolve this debate, but I suspect that any meaningful and
valid religious system must be amenable to both the intellectualist and the symbolic
approaches. Before the development of science (and this sequence is perpetuated in each
individual’s development from infancy), the social order was assumed to be the model for
the “natural order” and for “law,” and explanatory theories, even when referring to the
non-social, natural aorld, were conceived in terms of social relations. It is thus to be
expected that the symbolic statements which characterize social behavior should be
extended in the effort to influence the natural world. The “symbolist” approach then
becomes employed in the pursuit of “intellectualist” goals. Perhaps fundamentalism
involves an emphasis on the intellectualist origins of religion and neglect of its symbolic
nature. Liberal dismissals of fundamentalism as wrongly mixing two totally different
categories—religion and science—may likewise fail to realize that religion was (and still
is, for fundamentalists) concerned with attempts to provide theoretical explanations of the
natural as well as the social world.
It may be relevant, in this regard, that strict fundamentalists (but not
Pentecostalists) tend to limit miracles to those expressly described in the Bible. They
insist on supernaturalism, of course, but only biblical supernaturalism (granted, though,
the assumption that Satan and his demons can act supernaturally, or quasi-supernaturally,
provides vast scope for incorporation of additional miraculous evidence). The strict
fundamentalist seeks first to explain natural phenomena in non-supernatural terms; only
when this is impossible does he resort to miracle, and only if this miracle is required, or
at least allowed, by the Bible (Barr 1981:238-239). Creation-science explanations of the
Flood and Noah’s Ark, for example, generally concede that the animals were
miraculously assembled, but most or all other aspects of the Flood and the Ark are
interpreted in terms of non-miraculous, “scientific” hypotheses. (The Flood itself of
course was divinely ordained, but it became manifest through secondary, natural causes:
e.g. rupture of hypothesized internal sources of water, and collapse of the hypothesized
pre-Flood water canopy surrounding the earth.)
In his detailed presentation of the water canopy theory, The Waters Above:
Earth’s Pre-Flood Vapor Canopy, creation-scientist Joseph Dillow says that his book
(which has a Foreword by Henry Morris) “assumes that the Bible is the inerrant,
authoritative Word of God; therefore, it provides a framework for scientific investigation
of the ancient earth” (1981:3).
For example, if Moses comments that there was a liquid ocean of water placed up above the atmosphere on
the second creative day, it is necessary to infer that this liquid was arranged by God into some form that
could be maintained by natural law. It would naturally turn to water vapor in view of low vapor pressure
and the solar radiation, unless God supernaturally intervened and prevented it from doing so. Hence, the
area of significance, cautiously applied, and with the assumption that present-day laws of nature applied
then, can give us a “scientific textbook” look at the world that used to be. [1981:37]
The Creation account in Genesis is clearly a straightforward historical narrative, says
Dillow; hence factual and scientific propositions can be derived from it, and scientific
predictions made on the basis of it. A straightforward, “normal” exegesis of Genesis
shows “that :he Bible teaches the existence of a literal ocean of waters above the pre-
Flood earth.”