Salvo - Issue 4I think SALVO Magazine is a great publication and nothing I am about to say here changes that. I think it’s so great in fact that after subscribing for one year on the recommendation of a friend [thanks Rick], I purchased all the back issues I could get my hands on. I think the mag is worth every cent. But it is because of one particular issue of SALVO that I decided to spend some time clarifying a view that is often misrepresented, even by Christians. That view is creationism, particularly the “young-earth” kind. 

Introducing Issue #4 (Winter 2008) – dedicated to the topic of Intelligent Design. Understandably I had a great time reading this! It includes some great articles that address questions like; Why is ID so important? What is the argument for ID from DNA? What does ID have to say about Biochemistry? What does Information tell us about ID? How can ID help us understand Living Cells? Can ID contribute to our understanding of Genetics? and; How does observability evidence Design? 

Conversely it addresses questions such as; What exactly is the problem with Evolutionary Theory? and; What can Evolution really do? It also delves into the political with articles like; What do ID proponents want taught in Public Schools? Has ID been banned in Public Schools? and; What happens when you challenge a school’s Science Curriculum? 

All very thought provoking articles to be sure. But throughout the magazine I was disappointed at times to find what I believe is an inaccurate characterization of creationism. As a relatively well-versed creationist myself, I decided to do a survey of this issue for references to creationism to highlight the nuances of the view and the ways in which it is often misunderstood and misrepresented.[1] 

According to the definition on page 10, creationism is: 

“A literal belief in the account of creation provided by the bible. Creationists insist that each of the various animals present today on earth was created separately by God. They are thus opposed to the theory that humans and other species are descended from common ancestors. Creationism, which also assumes a young earth, should not be confused with the theory of intelligent design.” 

Creationists’ Clarification: 

  1. I accept for the sake of this review that the term “creationist” generally refers to “Young Earth Creationists” (YEC’s), although broadly speaking it can also refer to those who believe in an age of the earth and universe that is more synonymous with an evolutionary timescale (e.g. big bang cosmology). Nonetheless I do agree that when properly understood, creationism of any sort ought not be confused with ID. Quite contrary to the views of many anti-creationists who believe that ID is simply dressed-up creationism, the theory of ID makes no theological truth claims, although many of its advocates are indeed Christians – including some YEC’s. And despite this distinction I find much of the content produced by the ID movement to be quite useful in developing arguments for the Christian worldview.  
  2. Creationists are not biblical literalists and I am surprised (in the interest of informed reporting) that the editors of SALVO would allow this implication. Certainly when it comes to the creation account in Genesis, creationists understand it in the most straight-forward manner, but to say that they take it literally is probably not the best word for describing the hermeneutical principle that creationists apply to the Bible in general and to the early chapters of Genesis in particular. The Bible is written in many different literary styles and should be read accordingly, taking into account the various styles and the historical and literary context.[2] This is known as the historical-grammatical method of interpretation. So when creationists hold that God created in six normal days only thousands of years ago, it’s not because they are literalists, but because they are applying well-established hermeneutical principles to understand Scripture. They do not for example, believe that Jesus is a wooden rectangular structure that swings on vertical hinges – John 10:9. Yet they do believe that Joshua marched around Jericho over a period of seven ordinary days – Joshua 6.  
  3. While creationists are indeed “opposed to the theory that humans and other species are descended from common ancestors”, it’s not because they “insist that each of the various animals present today on earth was created separately by God”. This view, falsely ascribed to creationists, is known as fixity of species and is clearly rejected by modern-day creationists. Dr. Jonathan Sarfati explains the creationists position quite clearly with a series of cladograms in his book Refuting Evolution (see below)[3, 4]:
Cladograms

What is especially interesting about this particular misrepresentation doesn’t become apparent until you read further through the magazine. On page 55 there is a brief positively-written article on the increasing popularity of  a view to challenge the typical monophyletic Darwinian tree that we are so familiar with. From page 55: 

“Consequently, more and more scientistis [sic] are beginning to adopt a polyphyletic view of adaptation. In this scheme, the history of life resembles a grove of separate trees, each species featuring its own branching changes but with no connections between the species themselves.” [emphasis in original] 

Now read that description again while looking at figure 3 in the embedded image [click on it for a larger image] – remember figure 3 depicts the accepted view of informed Creationists. Take a close look. Do you notice any resemblance between figure 3 and the polyphyletic view being described in the SALVO article? I contend that if the polyphyletic model can get a notable mention, then the actual YEC model for adaptation deserves similar treatment. That is assuming of course, that people are aware of what creationists actually believe and are not involved in misrepresenting our position. 

Page 12 includes an excerpt of Michael Egnor’s comments at evolutionnews.com: 

“The conflation of methodological naturalism and philosophical naturalism – science and atheism – is no more acceptable pedagogy than the conflation of science and creationism. Atheism and creationism are philosophical inferences, and, irrespective of the truth of either faith, neither is consistent with the scientific method. The scientific method – methodological naturalism – is the data-driven study of nature. It’s based on natural, not supernatural, claims.” 

Creationism and atheism are philosophical inferences, I haven’t got any real problem with that as far as it goes. But to say that creationism is not consistent with the scientific method… I suspect creationists would disagree with that? Though science and creationism occupy different epistemological space, virtually everyone recognizes that it was only under Christianity that science originated and flourished, so they must be related on some level. For example, the relationship between an all knowing powerful God and an ordered universe at the physical and metaphysical level.

[Egnor's conveniently modern characterization of science allows him to declare it to be inconsistent with creationism by definition. - edited May 2, 2010]. I don’t want to get into a debate about the definition of science but I have it on good authority that in the 20th century alone the definition of science changed at least four times.[5, 6] In fact the first edition of Webster’s dictionary defined science this way: “‘Science,’ n. (Fr. from L. scientia, from scio, to know) 1. In a general sense, knowledge, or certain knowledge; the comprehension or understanding of truth or facts by the mind. The science of God must be perfect.”[7] Modern definitions of science though have prostituted this to mean naturalism or materialism and I think the term “methodological naturalism” blurs the line between experimental reproducibility (from which our data is derived and is used to gain knowledge, and which is perfectly consistent with creationism) and naturalism, which is essentially a religious form of uniformitarianism [and perhaps even, scientism?]

In exploring the history and nature of science, and reflecting on decisions made by its modern-day gate-keepers to limit “science” to an atheistic milieu, Creationism gets two more mentions on page 23: 

“Faced with young-earth creationists who were denying solid fossil evidence and arguing for a literal seven-day formation of the universe, scientists were no doubt looking for a quick and easy way of discrediting such people. The answer? Define “science” in a manner that automatically excludes the supernatural. … Consequently, the scientific community has been forced into the role formerly occupied by its creationist foes, that of denying undeniable facts in allegiance to a prior point of view.” 

Was the young-earth movement really so powerful as to force the philosophers of science to come up with a brand new definition of science? I find that hard to believe given that much of the writings of the scriptural geologists were virtually ignored by the secular geologists of the day. And in fact the scriptural geologists of the 17th and 18th centuries were not denying “solid fossil evidence” but the uniformitarian assumptions that were being used to interpret such evidence, as Dr. Terry Mortenson’s doctoral thesis work demonstrates[8]. 

Perhaps the more serious allegation though, is that creationists were (are) ”denying undeniable facts”. This is almost impossible to respond to without examples of such “facts”. However, the specific complaints that lie behind these common assertions usually reveal (upon closer examination) that it is not the facts that are being denied, but the interpretive system being used to make sense of such facts. (e.g. radioactive dating, big bang cosmological models, uniformitarian geological models, equivocation over “evolution”) 

And finally, while it bears very little on the issue, God created the universe and everything in it in six days… he rested on day seven! That’s meant to be the easiest part of the creationist view to understand, isn’t it? 

[I will complete my survey of creationism in SALVO Issue #4 in Part Two of this post] 

Footnotes: 

  1. Given the number of references to creationism in this issue and the lengths to which I have chosen to respond, I am posting this in two parts. The survey is by order of the page number in the magazine wherever possible, and I have tried to quote with as much context as is practical.
  2. See Russell Grigg’s article, Should Genesis be taken literally?
  3. J. Sarfati, Refuting Evolution, (Creation Ministries International, 2008), p.39. – Used with permission
  4. Also freely available online – http://creation.com/refuting-evolution-chapter-2-variation-and-natural-selection-versus-evolution
  5. Del Ratzsch, “Intelligent Design: What is Science Permitted to Think?” (MacLaurin Institute Lecture, University of Minnesota, December 6, 2004). A summary of the relevant part of this presentation is laid out by Dr. R C Metcalf @ http://www.thinkagain.us/resurrection2.html (see footnote 6)
  6. We need to realize that nobody truly has a completely defensible definition of science, even today.  According to Dr. Ratzsch the substantive definition of science has changed four or five times within just the last century. Definitions are a human construct, so if nature and the data conflict with our preconceived human definition of science, which should take precedence?  If science itself leads us to question our doubts about the reality of the supernatural, should we ignore the science? Both Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica (1687) and Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (1859) violated the reigning characterizations of science in their day.  In spite of opposition in some circles, not just religious, Darwin knew that in order for his theory to gain popular recognition, he had to alter the accepted wisdom regarding science’s fundamental definition. As Dr. Ratzsch went on to say, “If reality falls outside of [certain] imposed borders your science is either going to be woefully incomplete or its going to be wildly skewed.”
  7. Websters Dictionary (1828), as cited by Morris, H., The Biblical Basis for Modern Science (Masters Books, 2002) p.23
  8. While the link above will provide you with a good summary of articles by Dr. Mortenson on this topic I do not have a link to the actual doctoral work. However Dr. Mortenson summarizes the ideas well in a two-part talk entitled, “The Origin of Old Earth Geology and Christian Compromise in the Early 19th Century” (Answers in Genesis’ Creation Conference, 22-26 May 2003, West Harrison, Indiana, USA)

Other related Aristophrenium articles: