The California Collection/TheCaliforniaCollection.cdr/his065/boxercre.arj/BOXERCRE.TXT

Text File | 1991-01-12 | 18KB | 395 lines

Boxer,   Sarah.   "Will  Creationism  Rise  Again?"
Discover 8 (10):  80-85,  October l987.  [Subtitle:
The  foes  of evolution arm themselvs  for  another
fight,  convinced  that  God  and  what  they  call
science are on their side.]

[Boxer is a staff writer for Discover.]

This   summer  the  United  States  Supreme   Court
squelched  the latest attck on biological evolution
by creationists, who believe that God created Earth
and  life  a  few thousand years  ago.   In  a  7-2
decision  the  justices  resoundingly  rejected   a
Louisiana  act requiring public schools that  teach
"evolution   science"   to  also  teach   "creation
science."

Justice  William  Brennan  wrote  in  the  majority
opinion that the state improperly sought to "employ
the symbolic and financial support of government to
achieve   a   religious   purpose."     Scientists,
educators,    and   civil   libertarians   cheered,
proclaiming an end to a war that had begun in 1925,
when  the  Scopes "Monkey Trial" led to  laws  that
forbade the teaching of evolution.

But are the celebrations premature?  Does the court
ruling  really  mean  that creationists  have  been
defeated?

"What    else   can   they   do?"   says    Harvard
paleontologist  Stephen  Jay  Gould,   a   longtime
champion  of  evolution and dogged foe of  creation
science.   For all intents and purposes,  he  says,
"it's all over."

But    creationists,     skilled    at    inventive
interpretation,  read victory in the defeat.   "The
decision  itself  was  a decision  against  forcing
teachers  to teach creationism in public  schools,"
says  Kenneth  Cumming,   a  prominent  voice   for
creation   science.    "The  opportunity  to  teach
creation  is  still  there,   it's  still   alive."
Wendell Bird, lead attorney for the creationists in
the  recent  court  case,  says that  the  decision
leaves  open  the  right of teachers  to  teach  "a
variety of scientific theories."  There is also  no
proscription  against pressing textbook  publishers
to  include creationist accounts of the origins  of
the  Earth  and biosphere.   In the  end,  Cummings
says, there will always be another way to bring the
question  back  before the  court--an  increasingly
conservative court at that.   The next development,
he predicts,  will be a legal challenge "just  like
the   Scopes  trial,"  but  in  reverse.    A  pro-
creationist  teacher  will teach creationism  in  a
public school--this in itself is perfectly  legal--
and someone, a fervent atheist perhaps, will try to
stop  him.   In  anticipation of such  a  fight,  a
Creation  Science Legal Defense Fund has even  been
established.   Ultimately  the case would wind  its
way  through  the courts and,  if Cummings and  his
colleagues  have their way,  give the  creationists
the last hurrah.

Such  optimism is based on a long-standing  history
of   survival   and   adaptability.    All   along,
creationists have been unusually adept at  altering
their course to suit the winds of political change.
The  Scopes  trial took place in a time  of  strong
antiscientific sentiment.  In 1935 the Religion and
Science  Association,  the first organized creation
science group, was formed.  Three years later there
was  a second group,  the  Creation-Deluge  Society
(also known as the Society for the Study of Natural
Science).  Despite the word science in their names,
these  organizations were avowedly  antiscientific.
They   portrayed   Scripture,    sprituality,   and
conservative values as the forces of good; science,
materialism, and modernism as the forces of evil.

Then,  in 1968, when the Supreme Court rejected the
precedent that had been set by the Scopes trial and
ruled  that  laws banishing evolution  from  public
schools  were  unconstitutional,  the  creationists
changed their tune.  They began to use not only the
word  science but also its grammar and  vocabulary.
Rather  than  argue  that  the  biblical  story  of
creation should be taught as the word of God,  they
said it should be taught as a science, as evolution
was.   Using  a  tried-and-true debater's  ploy  to
justify  this "balanced treatment," they didn't try
to  prove  that  creationism  was  scientific   but
instead  crafted  arguments to show that  evolution
was equally unscientific.   The creationists became
polished and slippery debunkers,  picking apart the
evolutionary  literature,  pointing  out  gaps  and
missteps.  They were, and still are, a tough lot.

Now,  once again,  "creation scientists"--there are
said to be between 700 and 6,000 people who fit the
bill--are  adapting their tactics to suit  changing
times.   The fundamental precepts remain the  same.
Strict  creationists  have never strayed  from  the
belief  that a few thousand years ago a Creator set
aside six days and in that time made the world  and
every  kind of animal and plant in it,  just as  is
written  in Genesis.   They still contend that  man
was always man,  dog dog,  and cat cat.  As for the
Earth's   mountains,   great  stratified   canyons,
petrified forests, beds of fossils, and deposits of
coal and oil,  these cannot be the work of billions
of  years because Genesis says the Earth is just  a
few  days older than life itself.   All the Earth's
features  were actually wrought by God's  worldwide
flood and other, more recent catastrophes.

The  new  creationists are affirming  their  roots,
proclaiming  that  the Bible is "the  true  truth."
Rather than lashing out at the opposition, they are
building  what they call a new kind of  science  to
buttress the Bible.  In reality, however, what they
do is not science at all.  The biblical truth comes
first;  the  science,  come hell or high water,  is
tortured to fit.

Nestled  in a small mall on a dusty  frontage  road
that   parallels   U.S.   Highway  67  in   Santee,
California,  is the unofficial nerve center of  the
creation   science  movement,   the  Institute  for
Creation Research (ICR),  an affiliate of Christian
Heritage  College.    ICR  has  a  library,  a  few
classrooms,  and a small museum,  but not much else
in the way of scientific accoutrements.  It is home
to creationists old and new.

The  older  generation  spend most  of  their  time
reading,  writing,  debating,  teaching, and making
missionary  voyages  to  such  places  as   Mexico,
Barbados,  and  South Korea.   This group  includes
ICR's founder, Henry Morris, who has a doctorate in
hydraulics  from the University of  Minnesota,  and
Duane Gish, its sharpest debater, who holds a Ph.D.
in  biochemistry from the University of  California
at  Berkeley.   They insist that science itself  is
responsible  for their creationist beliefs and that
if   the   scientific   evidence   pointed   toward
evolution, they would follow.

"If," says Gish,  "there were intermediate forms in
the fossil record [fossils that are bridges between
existing  types,  such as a creature that was  half
lizard,  half bird, or the long-sought missing link
between  man  and  ape],  then I'd have  to  be  an
evolutionist."

They  are  skilled  polemicists.   Ask  them  about
creationism  and they'll tell you about  evolution.
"We  interpret what others are doing.   We use  the
facts they produce to show that evolution is not  a
reasonable scientific conclusion," says Gish, whose
book is tellingly titled not Creation?  The Fossils
Say Yes!  but Evolution? The Fossils Say No!  Gish,
Morris,   and   their  colleagues  think  they  can
legitimize   their   beliefs   by   showing    that
evolutionary science is fallible.  And so they wait
for  the inevitable faltering step or admission  of
weakness  and then pounce.   It is an easy pastime,
because  science  is  a  history  of  missteps  and
revisions.

The new creationists, on the other hand, ignore the
evolutionists and strike out on their own, offering
convoluted  observations  of the natural  world  to
bolster biblical accounts.

Gerald Aardsma,  who earned a doctorate in  physics
at the University of Toronto and just joined ICR in
January,  sees  evidence  everywhere for  Adam  and
Eve's fall from grace.  "Why else," he asks, "would
the  world  contain repugnant things--a  queen  bee
that murders her sisters, baby fish born that won't
survive?"   And what,  asks Aardsma,  is the second
law  of thermodynamics,  which says closed  systems
tend  to become more disordered,  if  not  evidence
that  the world we live in is winding down,  as God
said  it  would?   "If we found that  everyone  was
perfect  and  we  could build  a  perpetual  motion
machine,  then  we  could say there was  no  Fall."
But, he adds, that's just not so.

Of  all biblical concepts,  none is more central to
the  new  creationists than the age of  the  Earth,
which  the Bible puts at about 6,000 years.   So  a
key  task  of  the new creation  scientists  is  to
explain away the best evidence for the earth's  old
age--its  canyons,  mountains,  and so  on--without
contradicting the Bible's contention that the Earth
is  young.   The job isn't easy.   The creationists
have to conjure up incredible catastrophes that can
do millennnia of work in a day.

The biblical flood,  of course,  is the catastrophe
of choice.   In one stroke this event accounts  for
mountains,   stratifed  canyons,   and  fossils  of
creatures  that  modern man has never  seen.   John
Morris,  son  of  the ICR founder and  a  biologist
trained at the University of Oklahoma, is searching
for evidence that the Flood occurred.  He regularly
leads field trips to Mount Ararat  to search for
Noah's  Ark  and to the Paluxy River  in  Texas  to
study  fossilized footprints that he believes prove
that man and dinosaur once coexisted.

At Mount St. Helens geologist Steve Austin, who has
a doctorate from Pennsylvania State University,  is
searching  for evidence of the Earth's youth  in  a
flood  that  occurred  there.    When  the  volcano
erupted in 1980,  part of the mountain slipped into
a  lake,  and  water  sloshed up  the  other  side,
washing hundreds of trees into the lake.   Soon the
bark slipped off the logs and they sank, forming an
organic  mat on the lake bottom.   Austin  believes
that  this  mat will turn into coal in just  a  few
years, not the 65 million years posited by even the
most  conservative  geologic  scenarios.   So  far,
though,  there's  no  coal to be found in the  lake
bed.

Austin is also trying to show that a flood can make
petrified forests.   Such forests are often observed
to be stacked vertically,  one on top of the other.
The best explanation,  paleontologists believe,  is
that as one forest was fossilized,  another  forest
grew over it and later turned it to stone.  But his
interpretation   poses   an  obvious  problem   for
creationists,  because such a succession would have
taken  more millenia than the Bible says the  Earth
has seen.

So when Austin saw the logs sinking near Mount  St.
Helens,  he  got  an idea:   while most  logs  sink
horizontally,  others,  ones with very heavy roots,
say,  might sink vertically and become petrified in
that  position.    If  this  could  happen,  Austin
suggests,  the layers of petrified forests could be
interpreted  as evidence not of an old Earth but of
a worldwide flood.

Like Austin,  Aardsma is trying to prove the  youth
of  the  Earth.   He says he can  demonstrate  that
radiocarbon dating, which shows life to be at least
tens  of thousands of years old,  is not  reliable.
His   argument   is  as  dazzlingly  coherent   and
inventive as the plot of a spy novel--and far  more
improbable.   First, he points out that even though
radiocarbon  dating  is supposed to go back  35,000
years,  its  accuracy has been checked only as  far
back as 3,000 B.C.,  through the independent dating
of mummy wrappings.  And this, says Aardsma, is the
first  clue that radiocarbon dating is not as  neat
as it seems.

All  living organisms contain carbon,  and a  known
proportion  of  it is rendered radioactive  by  the
bombardment of cosmic rays.  In radiocarbon dating,
the age of fossils is estimated by determining  how
much radiocarbon is left in them.  The fossils with
the least are the oldest.  This dating method works
because  the radioactive carbon continues to  decay
at a predictable rate long after the organisms die.

So  why  does Aardsma say it can't be  trusted  for
dates  before  3000 B.C.?   Before  the  Flood,  he
explains,  which  occurred  between 3500  and  2500
B.C.,  all the water that would innundate the Earth
to  a  depth of 30 feet was held in a vapor  canopy
above the atmosphere--this being the waters of  the
heavens, which God separated from the waters of the
Earth.   This  vapor canopy,  he says,  "would have
shielded  the  lower  atmosphere  from  the  cosmic
radiation  [that produces radioactive carbon] by  a
factor  of  three and thus reduced  the  amount  of
radioactive  carbon  found in creatures that  lived
before the Flood."

Given  this  argument,  fossils  with  very  little
radioactive  carbon  left may not be  old  at  all.
They may simply come from a time when the Earth was
shielded  from cosmic radiation.   So  radioacarbon
dating is completely unreliable.   This neat little
story  not  only sabotages radiocarbon  dating,  it
also  ties  together three  biblical  events:   the
recent creation of the Earth, the separation of the
waters of the Earth from the waters above,  and the
Flood.

Aardsma concedes that it will be hard to prove  the
presence  of an antediluvian vapor  canopy.   "It's
possible  that  the idea of a vapor canopy will  be
falsified," he says.   If it is,  though,  he's not
going  to toss out the Flood story.   In a  fashion
characteristic  of the  new  creationists,  Aardsma
says his conclusion would not be that the Bible was
wrong,  but  that  his  interpretation  of  it  was
flawed.  "I must be misunderstanding what's written
in   Genesis.    I've  not  made  the  plain  sense
interpretation of Scripture.   So I'll forsake that
path."  In other words,  any particular model of  a
universal  flood--a  vapor canopy falling from  the
sky,  say--may  be falsified,  but the idea of  the
Flood cannot be.

Kenneth  Cumming,  who has a doctorate  in  biology
from  Harvard,  is every bit as daring as  Aardsma,
but like debunkers Gish and Morris,  he delights in
pulling   out   the  well-worn  arguments   against
evolution when guests come.   Picking up a gigantic
replica  of a quarter that serves as a  paperweight
on his desk as ICR,  he Socratically offers his own
version of the classic argument from design.

"Who made this?" Cumming asks.   Man did.   "How do
you  know?"  Because it looks like  other  man-made
quarters.    "Are   you  more  complex  than   this
quarter?"   Yes,  of course.   "Then you must  have
been  made by something even more intelligent  than
man himself--God."  Q.E.D.  Maybe a heap of garbage
can be created by random processes,  he says.   Not
people, though, not even doubters.

Cumming    admits    he   lost    his    scientific
respectability  when  he  cast  his  lot  with  the
creationists.   And Aardsma, the epitome of the new
breed at ICR, says, "I don't care whether the whole
scientific  community  thinks I'm a fool."   As  he
sees  it,  establishment  scientists in the  United
States "will look just as silly" years from now  as
the  scientists  who once said there were  no  such
things  as  meteorites.   He believes that when  he
interprets Scripture correctly,  science will  bear
him  out.   "What  I'm asserting is that  you  will
never  find  science proving Scripture  wrong,"  he
says.

Scripture, says Aardsma, is like having the answers
to a set of math problems before you start to solve
them.  "You can work on a problem, but it's a great
consolation  having the answers in the back of  the
book."   Consider  the  Bible's claim that  man  is
responsible  for  his  sins  even  though  God   is
infinitely  sovereign.   This  statement  seems  to
contain  a  logical  contradiction.    But  Aardsma
thinks  the  paradox disappers if you  assume  it's
true  and use the mathematical concept of  infinity
to  help  you understand it.   In  mathematics,  he
explains,  if you substract any finite number  from
infinity,  you  are still left with infinity.   So,
"you can give man a finite amount of oontrol of his
life   and  that  doesn't  diminish  the   infinite
sovereignty of God."

The  new  creationists,   in  attempting  to   make
scientific  hypotheses based on Scripture,  seem to
take  some  awesome  leaps,  not of  faith  but  of
interpretation.     Events   that   are   described
concisely in the Bible--the six-day  Creation,  the
Fall,  and  the  Flood--beget strained and  twisted
scientific scenarios.   The Fall becomes the second
law   of  thermodynamics;   the  water  above   the
firmament becomes a vapor canopy; the Flood becomes
the vapor canopy falling to Earth.

Aardsma's own words,  however, show best that there
really is no science in creation science:  "I don't
build   my  world  model  on   current   scientific
consensus.  I am better off saying 'God has spoken'
and resting my faith there."


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