The movement called “scientific creationism” promotes the idea that a literal interpretation of the book of Genesis is scientifically demonstrable. Several organizations are attempting to have this view taught in American public school science classrooms. Rather than dealing with the general positions of the scientific creationists, I consider in this brochure some parts of the scientific creationist position dealing with the human fossil record and racial origins.

The Nature of Evolution

Anthropologists and other evolutionists accept the ample evidence that not only are plants and animals the products of evolution, but so also is Homo sapiens. By “evolution” we mean that living forms are ultimately related through shared ancestry and that they have changed from their ancestral forms. We do not assume that this change has necessarily led to greater complexity or “progress” — merely that change has taken place. The earth is billions of years old, but life has not existed for this whole period. Some change takes place rapidly, some slowly, and evidence exists for both types of evolution. Although modern science no longer questions the evidence that change through time (evolution) has taken place, the rate and mechanisms are vigorously debated. New discoveries from both the fossil record and the laboratory require the rethinking and possible replacement of old ideas. This of course is the essence of vigorous science: the challenging and reworking of hypotheses and theories in the light of new data.

In contrast to much evidence from biology, scientific creationists hold that plants and animals have not changed through time, but were created separately and in essentially their present forms. This separate or special creation occurred during 6 days of 24 hours each. Scientific creationists differ as to how long ago this creation event took place, but most place it within 6,000-20,000 years ago. References at the end of this brochure discuss the lack of evidence for this view; it is clearly a theological, not a scientific, position. The science classroom is not an appropriate place for the teaching of theology.

The Human Fossil Record

Paleoanthropologists (who study ancient human remains) are never satisfied with the available fossils — all want more. Nonetheless, even though more fossils are sought and details need to be worked out, the outline of human evolutionary history is fairly well understood. The human fossil record is discussed in detail in another NCSE brochure (Delson, “The Record of Human Evolution”).

To the scientific creationists, however, there are no human fossils — no evidence of forms intermediate between humans and other primates. To their way of thinking, all intermediate forms are either frauds/hoaxes perpetrated by deceitful evolutionists, or errors of interpretation; or the fossils can be dichotomized into “just apes” or “true man.”

“Just Apes” and “True Man”

It is essential to the scientific creationist viewpoint that modern humans lived before or at the same time as more primitive humans, and so they proclaim a number of fossils to be “modern,” even when the evidence refutes this view. Various fossils have been proclaimed modern, but they do not show the brain size or head and facial characteristics of modern humans. Others (such as the “Lucy” australopithecine) have been dismissed as “just apes,” when in reality the bones used for locomotion are very different from those of apes and are much more similar to those of humans. Peking Man, discussed below, is also dismissed as an ape and proclaimed a fraud. However, fossils of this same type, called Homo erectus, are found at many sites and could not possibly be mistaken for apes in brain size, teeth, skulls, or bones of the body. Ironically, some scientific creationists consider Homo erectus a “true man.” That creationists have trouble classifying intermediate forms only supports the status of these fossils as transitional.

Frauds and Hoaxes

Peking Man: A Fraud?

Peking Man

The Peking Man remains were found in China between 1927 and 1937 by a number of Western and Chinese scientists. They were measured, described, and photographed. Accurate plaster casts and drawings were made. The Peking remains, now technically referred to as Homo erectus, are clearly human, but primitive. These people walked upright, made stone tools, and were hunters of large game animals. They differed from modern humans in that they had smaller brains, larger brow ridges, and large teeth. Both culturally as well as biologically, they bridge the gap between early and late human fossils.

Because of the outbreak of World War II, the physical remains themselves were lost. Casts, photographs, measurements, and other descriptive material survived the war, however, and can be studied today. Creationists claim that the original remains were those of monkeys, not people. The casts, photographs, measurements, and other data are all manufactured to look more human than were the actual remains, according to scientific creationists.

The creationist claim is untenable. First, Chinese scholars in recent years have excavated at the original Peking Man site, as well as in other places in China, and have uncovered new remains that look just like the older finds. In fact, two skull pieces found in 1966 fit exactly onto two found in the 1930s and all are clearly part of a single skull. Why should modern Chinese scientists go to considerable trouble to continue a fraud perpetrated 50 years ago by western scientists? We have no reason to doubt the recent Chinese finds are genuine. Furthermore, remains of Homo erectus have been found in many parts of Eurasia and Africa by scientists of many different nationalities. The scientific creationist claim that Peking man is a forgery is strange indeed.

A Real Fraud: Piltdown Man.

The Piltdown fossil was discovered in 1912 and was hailed by almost all evolutionary scientists as a true “missing link.” Most workers accepted it as genuine because it showed characteristics predicted by the accepted evolutionary scheme of the day: the main characteristic distinguishing humans from other animals was thought to be mankind’s intelligence. Scientists therefore presumed that the first humans would have large brains, as had the only known human fossils of the time. But scientists of the time did not conceive of the earliest humans as being quite different from their descendants in brain size. Piltdown had a large, modern skull and primitive dentition: just what the hypothesis predicted. As it turned out, Piltdown was a forgery composed of the skull of a human and the jaw of an orangutan, with teeth carefully filed, and the whole specimen stained to give it an appearance of antiquity. Whoever forged it knew well the expectations of the scientific community, thus ensuring the immediate acceptance of the hoax as genuine.

This preliminary acceptance was not shared by all scientists of the time. R.M.S. Taylor criticized the find as not having a human pattern of tooth wear, and some other critics expressed skepticism as well. But most scientists accepted Piltdown because it fulfilled the correct working hypothesis: that the earliest humans would be distinguished from apes by having large brains. In 1924, a series of fossils began to be discovered in South Africa that in time caused a replacement of the “big brain” model of evolution. These fossils, called Australopithecus had small, ape-sized brains, but human-like teeth — exactly the opposite of Piltdown. As more of these two-legged early humans were discovered, a revision in the old view became necessary. Piltdown became more and more an anomaly, irreconcilable with increasingly abundant small-brained fossils. For a couple of decades Piltdown remained in limbo and was less and less frequently fit into evolutionary sequences — or done so with a “?” or other indication of confusion. Finally the matter was laid to rest in 1953 by J.S. Weiner and colleagues, who demonstrated chemically that the skull and jaw belonged to two different creatures.

Piltdown is therefore an excellent example of how science works: the constant interplay between evidence and interpretation. The discovery of new fossils caused a revision in the way scientists looked at human evolution. Fitting Piltdown into the overall scheme became more and more difficult. There was only one Piltdown, and much contrary evidence. Eventually the idea of Piltdown as a human ancestor was abandoned. Another important point is that it was evolutionists themselves who exposed Piltdown as a forgery, not scientific creationists, and in so doing demonstrated the self-correcting nature of science.

A Creationist Fraud?

Scientists have explored the region around the Paluxy River near Glen Rose, Texas, since the 1930s, finding hundreds of dinosaur tracks. The geology and paleontology of the area are well known. Scientific creationists claim human tracks are found among the dinosaur tracks, which if true would challenge the interpretations of evolutionists. Contrary to television and comic book portrayals of “cave men” with dinosaur neighbors, humans evolved millions of years after dinosaurs became extinct, and remains of dinosaurs and humans are never found together.

What about the Paluxy River “man tracks,” then? Some are, as one wag put it, carvings made by the hand of man, rather than his foot. This is admitted even by the creationists. Other tracks were made by feet, but not human feet: some alleged “man tracks” are modified or eroded dinosaur tracks. When a heavy animal withdraws its foot from soft mud, the mud will flow back along the sides of the track, making an oblong impression which can look superficially like a human footprint; some of the “man tracks” are formed in this fashion. A three-toed dinosaur places most of its weight on the center toe. In soft mud, the center toeprint will be deeper. In some of the “man tracks” presented in creationist books, faint traces of side toes can be seen, suggesting that these footprints are really just eroded dinosaur tracks. These tracks show claw marks at the “heel” of the “human” print, another indication that the track is a misinterpreted dinosaur track. Also, in at least one footprint sequence, dinosaur tracks and human footprints alternate. Either people evolved very quickly from dinosaurs and then back again, or the “human” tracks are just indistinct dinosaur tracks.

Spot the Dino!

These dinosaur prints lack the anatomy of human footprints, although some creationists claim to be able to see “big toes,” “balls,” and “arches” in eroded holes in the river bank. If the whole bank is surveyed, however, it can be seen that there are hundreds of erosion holes and washed-out places. The irregular shapes are like inkblot tests: one can imagine all kinds of figures. The “human” prints imagined from these erosional features are carefully selected examples that are best described as wishful projections of the hopes of scientific creationists to see what they want to see.

Other evidence also argues against the alleged human prints being genuine. Dinosaurs and humans are not the same size and weight, but both kinds of tracks are sunk to the same depth in the mud. Stride length is influenced by leg length, so dinosaurs and humans should not have had the same stride length. Yet when the distances between footfalls are measured, the human prints are spaced the same distance apart as are the dinosaur prints. Also, the creationist explanation for how human and dinosaur tracks came to lie together seems farfetched. Supposedly, the creatures who made the tracks were fleeing the rising waters of Noah’s Flood. However, creationists recognize that there are several thousand feet of water-deposited sedimentary rock beneath the footprints, and several thousand feet on top of them. Somehow, the Flood must have deposited the base rock, receded long enough for the dinosaurs and humans to run across the valley (leaving their tracks), and then covered the tracks with a tidal wave, sealing — but not destroying — the tracks with a layer of mud. This procedure would have had to occur numerous times, because the dinosaur and human tracks appear in several different layers. Many questions remain unanswered by such a scenario.

Dinosaurs became extinct about 63 million years ago; after this they do not appear in the fossil record. For over 150 million years before this date, however, they are quite abundant. If humans and dinosaurs coexisted, one would think that human remains would be found in all or at least some of the hundreds of dinosaur fossil sites that have been explored. Or, dinosaur bones should be found in the hundreds of human and mammal fossil sites that formed during the last 63 million years. The fraudulent Paluxy “man tracks” are offered as proof of dinosaur and human coexistence, but they are not convincing, being rather misinterpreted dinosaur tracks, erosional features, or out-and-out carvings.

The Origin of Races

People whose ancestors have been living in the same geographic area for a long time tend to show similarities in visible characteristics such as size and shape, skin color, and hair form, and also invisible characteristics such as blood groups. Some of these groups are large, as were native Americans before Europeans and Africans came to the New World. Some are small, as are neo-Hawaiians (the descendants of Europeans, Japanese, and Polynesians). Large groups can be subdivided, depending on the level of comparison being made: sub-Saharan Africans are more similar to one another than they are to Europeans, but within this groups there is considerable diversity, such as that between the brown-skinned Bushman-Hottentot people and Bantu-speaking (”black”) Africans.

Human “racial” diversity is a result of people in a geographic area intermarrying, being exposed to a number of biological processes, and adapting slowly to local environments. These biological processes include combining and recombining inherited genetic material over the generations, which produces offspring and descendants who differ from their parents and ancestors. The environment may favor certain characteristics, producing populations that are on the average taller, or darker, or more rugged than other populations from other geographic areas. Isolation and inbreeding of some populations may produce differences as well. These natural processes occur in humans as well as other animals and are the source of much study in biology and anthropology.

However, even if people in different geographic areas differ, it is impossible to draw sharp lines between racial groups. Few if any populations are cut off from others, and even if laws, culture, and/or religion prohibit it, mating does take place. Characteristics of people change gradually from one geographic area to another; where across Central Asia do European “whites” leave off and Asian “yellows” begin? Anthropologists see races as temporary, changing phenomena, products of genetic processes and natural selection. The races we see today are different from those of yesterday and will be different tomorrow.

Scientific creationists, however, have a simple, Scriptural explanation for human diversity. All people today are descendants of the sons of Noah. Shem founded the Hebrews; Japheth gave rise to the other Semites, Europeans, and the people of India (Indo-Europeans); and Ham was the father of the rest of humanity (the “colored” peoples, as one of the scientific creationist writers puts it.) The appearance of all these varieties of humanity occurred within a few thousand years after Noah’s Flood and before recorded history. The three brothers and their descendants moved to different parts of the world, where according to the scientific creationists, normal processes producing genetic variation produced the diversity of races and nations we see today. Both scientific creationists and evolutionists recognize the existence of these processes in producing human variation and agree on their importance. The two groups differ considerably on how these processes can operate, however.

Scientific evidence of either visible or invisible characteristics found in our species does not support the scientific creationist view of human variation. Although Homo sapiens has considerable genetic variation as a species, and each individual has many different genes, it is incomprehensible that differences as great as those seen between small, black, lightly built, kinky-haired Negritos of Melanesia and tall, copper, broad-shouldered, straight-haired Greenland Eskimos could occur in only a few thousand years. To derive this much diversity in such a short time from only three people — and these as closely related as brothers — would require rates of mutation, natural selection, and other processes of evolution so high as to most likely cause the extinction of the population.

Historical movements of people have been described for 4000-5000 years, far longer than the time claimed to exist after the recession of the Flood waters and the beginning of recorded history. Why are there no records of great changes in human variation during this period that are comparable to those described in scientific creationist literature? There are no accounts of people changing so rapidly during the past 5000 years. The evidence we have from history and archeology suggests the current major racial groups have been around for tens of thousands of years. The scientific creationist view cannot be reconciled with scientific fact.

A Word in Closing

Anthropologists study religions and world views of peoples in every part of the globe. We do so without declaring any one view “superior,” “advanced,” “better,” or “truer.” These latter judgments are matters of belief, not of science. It is not our function as anthropologists to evaluate whether the scientific creationist view is theologically superior to other religious views, whether Christian or non-Christian. However, as scientists we have a duty to speak out on the nature of science. Whatever its theological merits or demerits, scientific creationism is not scientifically valid and should not be accepted as an alternate scientific view. The American public needs to be aware of the difference between believing in scientific creationism (a theological explanation seeking empirical support) and accepting evolution as the best scientific explanation for a wealth of data from all natural sciences.

References for Further Reading

Eldredge, N. 1982. The Monkey Business. NY: Washington Square Press (Pocket Books).

Eve, R.A. & F.B. Harrold 1991. The Creationist Movement in Modern America. Boston: Twayne Publishers.

Futuyma, D.J. 1983. Science on Trial: The Case for Evolution. NY: Pantheon Books.

Frye, R.M. 1983. Is God a Creationist? The Religious Case Against Creation-Science. NY: Scribners.

Godfrey, L.R., Editor 1983. Scientists Confront Creationists. NY: W.W. Norton.

National Center for Science Education

The National Center for Science Education is a nonprofit organization, based in Oakland, California, dedicated to defending the teaching of evolution in the public schools.

As one with virtually the same education as Rev. Wells’ it is only fitting that I should examine his book “Icons of Evolution.”

No biologist worth her or his salt would deny that the fossil record is incomplete. At best, we have a sketchy idea. However, stating that an inaccuracy in general biology textbooks is proof that the modern theory of evolution must be wrong is beyond ludicrous. Yet this seems to be the reasoning of Rev. Jonathan Wells’ book “Icons of Evolution: Science or Myth.”

The real myth is that this book contains any real science, rather than the latest in a very long line of creationist propaganda disguised as real hard science. Call it creationism, intelligent design theory, whatever – it does not detract from the facts that modern science, especially that of the life sciences (biology; ecology) have hard evidential support. Those who would denounce evolution seem to consider these simple gaps in hard fact as if they had found a smoking gun..in the hands of God.

Rev. Wells is a member of “The Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture”: a group always pushing the creationist agenda, despite years, even centuries of proof to the contrary. He touts the idea that “scientists support his book”; however, they are also creationists, and hardly real scientists.

As one might expect this book is filled cover to cover with faulty reasoning. There are so many flaws that I do not have space to list them here. However, I will touch upon the most obvious ones in this short review.

For one, true science simply doesn’t work the way Rev. Wells apparently conceives it. Science starts with an idea, then moves forward in attempts to either a. show that it works, or b. find that it does not work, and adjust itself accordingly. Creationism begins with a belief i.e.: God is at the center of all things, and then works backward in an attempt to persuade the gullible of its truth. It does not change its ideology, nor it’s outcome-that has already been decided.

As one who claims to have earned a second Doctorate in order to better destroy Darwinism, at least that his claim. Let us not forget that his undergraduate training was in theology from Rev. Moon and the Unification church. Rev. Wells believes that real scientists are not being truthful about evolutionary theory, and has spent many years trying to fight and destroy science fact. He claims to be objective, however, in the preface he states “During my years as a physical science undergraduate and biology graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, I believed almost everything I read in my textbooks”.

Although one might suggest that many science popularizing books, from folks like Carl Sagan, Martin Rees and Michio Kaku are written to provide scientific explanations to “lay readers.” Rev. Well’s book seems to be popular with fundamentalist Creationist groups, however, this should hardly be surprising: the best selling book in history is the Bible. It does not mean it is an accurate depiction of history. But are Rev. Wells comments accurate? At least the old time Creationists offered some sort of Biblical creation scenario—but Wells, unable to ignore 3 billion-year-old bacteria, cannot make the claim that the world was created 7,000 years ago. Nor can he state that what we see in the fossil record is the result of a global flood.

All that is offered in “Icons of Evolution” is an attack on evolution; no alternative hypothesis mentioned (other than of course we humans being created with a purpose by an Intelligent Designer) is even considered until the last few pages.

“Icons” shows quite clearly that Wells believes in some sort of Intelligent Designer theory, and is nothing more than an attempt to bring back the Biblical view of the purposeful creation of life by an Intelligent Designer. The ultimate agenda of course being the teaching of mythology (Intelligent Design) in the public schools. This amounts to no more than the teaching of creationism, as if it were a real science.

Anyone who can slough their way through this obviously heavily biased book will come to one of two conclusions:

1. This is creationism, not science. So, don’t bother to read it.
2. This is creationism – and I agree with it. In which case, why bother?

It is not commonly known that Charles Darwin intended to become a clergyman when he studied at Cambridge, or that the Church of England honored him with burial in Westminster Abbey near Isaac Newton. Many scientists hold strong religious beliefs, but read the Genesis account of creation as did Isaac Newton in his 1681 letter to Thomas Burnett:

“As to Moses … he described realities in a language artificially adapted to ye sense of ye vulgar…. Where natural causes are at hand God uses them as instruments in his works, but I do not think them sufficient for ye creation …”

The ultra-literal fundamentalist interpretation of Genesis of the “scientific creationism” espoused by Dr. Duane Gish and others in the Institute for Creation Research seriously distorts both science and Christianity, and is opposed by leaders of both. In 1986, 72 Nobel laureates and 23 scientific societies representing tens of thousands of working scientists submitted an amicus curiae brief to the Supreme Court to oppose teaching Biblical literalism as science. In an earlier trial, the Arkansas bishops or principal officials of the United Methodist, Episcopal, Roman Catholic, African Methodist Episcopal, and Presbyterian Churches, the American Jewish Congress, and many other clergy and religious groups sued Arkansas to prevent the teaching of “scientific creationism” because such teaching promoted specific fundamentalist doctrines in the schools. In declaring the Arkansas law Unconstitutional, Judge William R. Overton wrote (January 5, 1982):

“It was simply and purely an effort to introduce the Biblical version of creation into the public school curricula.” [sect. II]

“The evidence establishes that the definition of `creation science´ contained in 4(a) has as its unmentioned reference the first 11 chapters of the Book of Genesis…. The concepts of 4(a) are the literal Fundamentalists’ view of Genesis.” [sect. III]

“The creationists’ methods do not take data, weigh it against the opposing scientific data, and thereafter reach the conclusions … Instead, they take the literal wording of the Book of Genesis and try to find scientific support for it.” [sect. IV(C)]

“The proof in support of creation science consisted almost entirely of efforts to discredit the theory of evolution through a rehash of data and theories that have been before the scientific community for decades. The arguments asserted by creationists are not based on new scientific evidence …” [sect. IV(D)]“

Scientific Decisions

It is helpful to look at some examples of why the scientific decision-making process has led scientists to accept evolution rather than “scientific creationism.”

Scientists approach a problem by first inventing a number of speculative hypotheses. Then a critical test case is chosen where each hypothesis predicts a different observation. The observation is made, and hypotheses making incorrect predictions abandoned or modified. Hypotheses that have been confirmed are used to formulate a theory, which is a higher-level explanation. Theories may change through time, even well-accepted ones. For example, Newton’s theory of motion was believed correct until it failed at high velocities and in strong gravitational fields. Einstein’s Theory of Relativity then superceded and subsumed it.

Predictions and observations are often indirect, as scientific theories often involve things that are microscopic, or far away in space or time. For example, the electron is too small to be observed directly, but the assumption that electrons exist allows correct prediction of the operation of electronic devices, etc. Similarly, history can’t be repeated, but the assumption that evolution has occurred allows correct prediction of innumerable fossil discoveries, biochemical structures, etc. Thus, there is residual uncertainty about the reality of both the electron and of evolution, but both are accepted beyond reasonable doubt.

“Creation Science” and Evolution Models

Evolution is not the study of everything, and does not consider the origin of the universe. Briefly, the theory of organic evolution holds that all organisms are related by common ancestry to one or a very few original cells. By a number of processes, including random variation followed by natural selection of successful variants, new forms arose and the number of species increased over an immense period of time. Creationists typically do not clearly state their scientific creationism “models”, but the standard view can be found summarized in the July, 1980 issue of the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) publication Acts and Facts. It is identical to one of the literal interpretations of Genesis.

Earth History: 4.5 Billion Years or 6000 Years?

The ICR view on the age of the earth is very clear: “The only way we can determine the true age of the earth is for God to tell us what it is. And since He has told us, very plainly, in the Holy Scriptures that it is several thousand years in age, and no more, that ought to settle all basic questions of terrestrial chronology” (H.M. Morris, The Remarkable Birth of Planet Earth, p. 94). To support this, they use numerous “dating” methods based on processes with known errors. For example, many are based on cyclic processes similar to the hour hand on a clock. The time indicated on the clock starts over every 12 hours, and so cannot serve as a calendar. Similarly, cyclic processes cannot be used to estimate the age of the earth.

There are many indications of an ancient earth. The Green River shales of western Wyoming consist of 6 million varves (alternating layers of marlstone and kerogen). The particles that form these layers are microscopic, and take many days to settle in perfectly still water. Similar varved sediments are forming today, and each cycle is known to represent 1 year. To form this one deposit in the global flood of Genesis would require the formation of about 1 layer per second! The whole 6,000 years of ICR earth history would require a rate of about 3 varves per day. And this deposit is but a thin layer in the total geology of the earth. Another indication is the presence of radioactive isotopes in rocks. That any are present indicates that the earth did have a beginning. However, of 48 isotopes with a half-life of 1,000 to 100 million years, which should still be around if the earth is a few thousand years old, only three that result from the decay of long-lived isotopes, five produced by cosmic rays, and one produced by neutrons released by uranium are found. All of the 23 radioactive isotopes with longer half-lives are present.

Because both varve formation and radioactive decay are well understood, they can be used for accurate, consistent dating. For example, P.E. Olsen (Science 234:842-848, 1986) studied sediments deposited over a period of 40 million years in the Newark Basin of New Jersey, and found excellent agreement between isotope dates and dates calibrated by varve layer counts. Remarkably, he was also able to relate regular variations in sediment layer thickness to the motions of the earth that define our calendar and clock. He found variations with periodicities of 25,000, 44,000, 100,000, 125,000, and 400,000 years. These match the Milankovich cycles of the irregularities in the earth’s motion around the sun (presently 21,000, 41,000, 95,000, 123,000, and 413,000 years, but subject to small variation caused by passing stars, etc.). The Milankovich cycles influence the amount of solar radiation reaching the earth. The change in solar radiation apparently produces corresponding changes in rainfall and sediment deposition.

Did a Global Flood Form the Fossil Record?

The first hypothesis considered by scientists was that the global flood described in Genesis accounted for the geological column and fossil record. Indeed, this explained the presence of fossil sea shells high in the Alps. However, as early as 1757, James Parsons and others attempted to deduce the season of the Flood from fossils. If spring, flowers and young fruit should predominate, mature fruit and nuts if fall. Alas, both were found. It was suggested that mature fruit had been mixed in from the tropics, but if so, then land and ocean animals should be mixed together as well. In fact, they are found in separate deposits, except for some land organisms that floated out to sea. These and other difficulties led scientists to accept the uniformitarian geology proposed by James Hutton (Theory of the Earth) and Charles Lyell (Principles of Geology).

The ICR model is simply the same old flood theory, and it, too, fails to explain basic facts. For example, if all species were created at one time before the flood, fossils deep in the geological record (early in the flood) should be identical to later forms. Extinctions might be allowed, but no new productions. Of course, the fossil record shows both extinctions and creations, with increasingly unfamiliar animals the deeper you go. The 19th century creationist geologist Georges Cuvier proposed a number of successive creation events to account for this. Henry Morris, director of the ICR, proposed that the appearance of progressive change was explained by (1) elevation of habitat, (2) resistance to gravitational settling in the flood waters, and (3) ability to flee the floodwaters (Morris, The Beginning of the World, p. 112). However, this predicts that porpoises and ichthyosaurs, both fully-aquatic air-breathing animals of the same size, shape, and density, living in the same habitat, should be found as fossils in the same strata. In fact, there is a series of transitional forms through Mesozoic deposits leading to ichthyosaurs, overlaid by Cenozoic deposits containing a series of forms leading to porpoises. Countless other specific tests are failed by the flood hypothesis, but passed by uniformitarian geology.

Gaps in the Fossil Record

The ICR´s chief debater, Duane Gish, claims that gaps in the fossil record (i.e. numerous instances where the origin of a particular species is not documented by a complete series of slightly varying intermediate forms) prove species are formed by a miraculous process. This interpretation of the fossil record assumes that the earth is ancient and new species originated through a series of widely spaced creation events. This is the progressive creation model, not the ICR model. It is odd that Gish uses this interpretation, because his boss, Henry Morris, says, “Thus, progressive creation, though presenting a better image than theistic evolution in its terminology, is even more objectionable to true creationists…” (The Remarkable Birth of Planet Earth, p. 76). Gish probably uses progressive creation here because of the obvious fatal flaws in the Flood Model of the ICR.

Gaps in the fossil record are not even a critical test of evolution vs. progressive creation, as evolution also predicts gaps. There are some 2 million described species of living animals, but only 200,000 described fossil species. Thus, it is impossible to provide a minutely detailed history for every living species. This is because, first, the fossil record has not been completely explored. It is pretty hard to overlook a dinosaur bone! Yet, though dinosaurs have been excavated for over 150 years, 40% of the known species were found in the last 20 years or so (Discover, March 1987, p. 46). It is likely many more dinosaur species remain to be found. Second, sedimentary rocks were formed locally in lakes, oceans, and river deltas, so many up land species were never fossilized. Third, many deposits that were formed have been lost to erosion. Thus, a complete record is impossible.

However, there is a critical test. Evolution predicts that some complete series should be found, while ICR or progressive creation predicts that none should ever be found. In fact, many excellent series exist. The evolution of the horse is known in exquisite detail from Hyracotherium (Eohippus) to the modern horse (G.G. Simpson, Horses, 2nd ed. Oxford, 1961). Scientific creationists have been forced to claim that the series is but allowed variation within a created “kind.” If so, then rhinoceroses, tapirs, and horses are all the same “kind,” as they can be traced to ancestors nearly identical to Hyracotherium! All of these fossils lie in the correct order by both stratigraphic and radioisotope dating.

Another critical test is Darwin’s prediction that “…our early ancestors lived on the African continent…” (The Descent of Man, p. 158). An excellent, detailed series of skulls and some nearly complete skeletons now connect modern man to African australopithecines. Some of the extinct australopithecines had brains about the size and shape of those of chimpanzees.

New Species Forming Today?

Another critical test for evolution vs. ICR, or evolution vs. progressive creation is that evolution predicts that new species are still evolving. Unlike the creationist “kind,” whose definition is changed as needed for the immediate argument, a species is easily recognized as a population which (1) brings forth fertile young similar to itself, (2) if it reproduces sexually, does not interbreed with other species and (3) usually looks distinctive. New plant species are produced routinely in agricultural work. A new genus with many new species, Triticosecale (Triticale) is now an important agricultural plant (A. Muntzing, Triticale Results and Problems. Parey: Berlin, 1979). A fly (Rhagoletis pomonella) that normally eats hawthorn fruit during its larval stage gave rise to a race that infests apples (apple maggot) about 170 years ago. This race originated in the Hudson River Valley, and then spread over the eastern and midwestern U.S. The apple and the original hawthorn races now mate and lay eggs at different times, and so interbreed only rarely. Clear genetic differences exist, and the apple maggot may now be on its way to becoming a new species (Nature 336:13-14, 61-67, 1988). Most people with pet dogs know about a new species of microorganism. Canine parvovirus, a lethal disease of dogs, evolved from feline parvovirus in the 1970s.

Real Gaps in the Fossil Record?

In Evolution — the Fossils Say No! (1979, p. 171-72), Gish quotes Stephen J. Gould of Harvard: ” little later he [Gould] states: `The fossil record with its abrupt transitions offers no support for gradual change…´.” What Dr. Gould actually wrote was, “The fossil record with its abrupt transitions offers no support for gradual change, and the principle of natural selection does not require it — selection can operate rapidly.” (Natural History 86:22, 1977) This is but one example of the ICR’s routine use of out-of-context quotes to “support” their positions. Always check the original source! They also like to use outdated sources or papers later found to be in error.

Gould´s real position fully supports evolution, and is fully supported by the examples of recently-evolved species, above. Fossil transitions between species generally appear abrupt because in the past, as now, new species evolve quickly in restricted are as. One must be very lucky to find continuous deposits from the area and time where a new species evolved. Nevertheless, the rapid, gradualist evolution of a number of new snail species over 5,000 to 50,000 years has been completely detailed (P.G. Williamson, Nature, 293:437-443, 1981). Again, both ICR and progressive creationism predict the total and complete absence of such transitional series.

The gaps between species are trivial in any event. For example, one supposed gap is the apparently abrupt replacement of Neanderthals by fully-modern humans in Europe. There is increasing evidence that both evolved from a common ancestor, and coexisted for tens of thousands of years as distinct, largely non-interbreeding groups that can be considered different species. Nevertheless, Neanderthals buried their dead with grave offerings of tools and flowers, suggesting religious beliefs. And if religion does not define humanity, what does?

Entropy

Gish claims that the Second Law of Thermodynamics makes evolution impossible. The argument is based on classical thermodynamics which only apply to closed systems which are near thermodynamic equilibrium. If you look at the entire system, energy goes from a form able to do work to low-temperature thermal energy unable to do work. This is very loosely associated with the idea that a closed system becomes more disorderly as time goes on. If this argument were true, life would be impossible! Consider an egg, which starts out as a simple mixture of liquid yolk and white, but which organizes itself into a chicken if kept at 100 degrees F for three weeks! The Second Law is obeyed throughout, and the chicken contains less useful (chemical) energy than did the yolk – the difference being the heat produced by the metabolism of the developing chick. The secret is that the egg is far from thermodynamic equilibrium, and only part of the system becomes organized — the part not converted to chick becomes very simple carbon dioxide gas and water vapor.

Similarly, open thermodynamic systems can be organized by importing energy. Your bedroom tends to get messy, but may become more organized if you import your energy and clean it up. The entropy in the room is decreased by your efforts, but by far less than the amount associated with the energy your body used during the cleanup. The Earth imports vast amounts of energy from the Sun, and a minuscule amount of this is used to produce biological order.

Ilya Prigogine received the 1977 Nobel Prize in Physics for showing that a thermodynamic system that can import energy, or one that is far from equilibrium (i.e. with lots of available energy) not only can, but often must, form organized structures. Only the usual laws of chemistry and physics are needed. Consider a drop of salt water evaporating due to imported heat. The salt changes from a liquid to a more-orderly solid. The net result is increased entropy, but the salt part has nevertheless become more organized. This is a direct consequence of the Second Law (Prigogine et al., Physics Today, Nov. 1972, p. 23ff, Dec. 1972, p. 38ff). The Second Law of Thermodynamics thus appears to be an instrument of creation.

Probability

Creationists claims that, even if not forbidden by the Second Law, the formation of even one functioning biological molecule (enzyme) is hopelessly improbable. A typical enzyme consists of 100 amino acids, and 20 different amino acids are available. Thus, 20 raised to the 100th power combinations are possible, and the probability of one particular sequence forming in one step by chance is about one in 10 followed by 130 zeros. Pretty impressive, but remember that a calculation is only as good as the assumptions that went into it. For many years, the best available aerodynamic theory proved that the bumblebee could not fly! Seems the bumblebee used a trick early aerodynamicists didn’t know about (T. Weis-Fogh, Scientific American 233(5):80-87, 1976).

Just as the bumblebee flew regardless of aerodynamic theory, new functional enzymes form all the time. Microorganisms have acquired new enzymes that allow them to metabolize toxic industrial wastes never occurring in nature (e.g. chlorinated and fluorinated hydrocarbons), and are an increasingly important method of pollution control (Ghosal et al., Science 228:135-142, 1985). Susumi Ohno (Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 81:2421-2425, 1984) found that one such new enzyme, nylon linear oligomer hydrolase, resulted from a frame-shift mutation. Frame-shift mutations scramble the entire structure of a protein, and so the enzyme is a random construct! As would be expected, this new enzyme is imperfect and has only 1% the efficiency of typical enzymes, but the important thing is that it works.

The error made by Gish is to require a specific sequence to form all at once and give a perfect result. He omits the gradual improvement of usable but imperfect enzymes by natural selection. Intermediate steps can be functional, because many amino acid sequences may give the same enzyme function. Two amino acid sequences, almost totally different except for the cystine bridge (2 amino acids) in the active site, yield the same enzyme, thioredoxin-S2 (Homgren, Ann. Rev. Biochem. 54:237-271, 1985).

Molecular Taxonomy

Because it makes no difference which amino acid is used at many sites within an enzyme, “silent” mutations that have no noticeable effect on function occur frequently. A family tree can be constructed by examining a specific enzyme, such as cytochrome-c (Fitch and Margoliash, Science 155:279-284, 1967). Species with enzymes differing by few amino acids are placed on nearby branches, while those with many differences are placed on distant branches. This routinely gives the same family tree as the fossil record! Such studies place humans and chimpanzees on adjacent branches. This is an excellent example of a prediction of Darwin’s theory being beautifully confirmed on the laboratory bench.

In July of 1982, Dr. Gish debated Dr. Russell Doolittle on Public TV. In response to the above argument, Gish claimed that some blood proteins were more similar between bullfrogs and man than between chimpanzees and man. His source was a story told by Garniss Curtis (UC-Berkeley) at the July, 1971 Wenner-Gren conference in Austria. It seems there was a rumor of a study comparing blood proteins of humans and bullfrogs that gave the above result (perhaps from the Transylvanian Academy of Sciences?). Curtis predicted (correctly) that the result would not be published or repeated, because it was a dreadful tragedy — the frog was actually an enchanted prince!

Gish defends himself by saying he thought Curtis was serious! I, for one, believe Gish — he has made a career out of going around telling jokes and calling them science, and I find it easy to believe he can’t tell the difference. This is another example of why you should always require and check the original source for claims made by the Institute for Creation Research. The results are often very interesting! For that matter, check out my sources as well.

National Center for Science Education

The National Center for Science Education is a nonprofit organization, based in Oakland, California, dedicated to defending the teaching of evolution in the public schools.

An Appeal

If you can think of any other research projects that would indisputably prove the recent creation of the Earth, or the simultaneous creation of all living and extinct species, or the validity of any other major creationist contention (such as the Flood), please email them to me! Remember, my creationist friends, you can’t prove a negative, so don’t dream up something to “prove” evolution isn’t real. Believe me, they’ve all been tried–to no avail except to make evolutionary theory all the stronger! Besides, proof that evolution is false would NOT be proof of Genesis-type creation. I’m looking for projects that, with positive results, would prove a major creationist belief that is in direct opposition to the “evolutionary” view of the world.

I have compiled a list of “Things Creationists Hate” which might also be of interest.

Define “Kinds”

OK, most of you folks have given up insisting that there were pairs or sevens of every single living and extinct species aboard the Ark. (Some of you are smart enough to give up on dinosaurs–they went extinct before the Flood and didn’t have to be aboard–but others aren’t. Hash that out among yourselves, but be warned–dinosaurs are only the tip of the ancient-extinct-animal iceberg!) So there were just representatives of each “kind” aboard. Then after the Flood, each “kind” rapidly evolved… oops, microevolved, or adapted, or whatever you want to call it, into all of today’s present species, races, varieties, etc.

Resolve the “Rib Question”

1. Decide as an authoritative group if men do have fewer ribs than women (talk about easy research!). If you find they don’t (no presuppositions here)…
2. TELL all your believers. Tell them vociferously and often, until they get it. It’s for their (and your) own good–so they’ll quit sounding like complete IDIOTS.
3. With that out of the way, do your biblical exegesis, or whatever it is you do, to determine if men, as a group, ever had fewer ribs than women.
4. If you decide they didn’t, repeat (B.) (above).
5. If you decide they did, here comes the fieldwork: Examine whatever skeletons you determine to be from the Pre-Rib-Replacement Era. Look through the hundreds of thousands that are filed away in museum back rooms. Dig up as many more as you please.
6. If you reach a positive result, I’m sure you’ll let the world know (and the heresy of human evolution, at least, will be dead in its tracks!). If you reach a negative result, repeat (B.) (above).

Find the Post-Flood Dispersal Trails

Since all the land animals, birds, insects, and myriads of other creepy-crawlies were aboard the Ark, and dispersed from there after the Flood, there is surely some fossil evidence. Find us a few distinctly South American or Australian species remains in southern Asia. Any zoologist could suggest a few bones that would be mighty hard to explain in Nepal, for instance, unless they were trekking home after the Flood. There are many possibilities, and the more you find, the more convincing the evidence will be. You might start off your list with koalas , platypuses, penguins, and sloths .

Live in Pre-Deluge Conditions

Determine with your colleagues (as above) if there was, in fact, some sort of “vapor canopy” over the Earth that contained enough water to produce the Flood. If you determine that there was not, then follow (B.) under “Rib Question” above. If you are biblically certain there was such a “canopy,” that never dropped rain for the first 600 years or so of Earth’s history, then work with planetary climatologists, computer climate modelers, etc. to determine the actual temperatures, pressures, light levels, etc. that would prevail under those circumstances. (Remember, if you “rescue” your results with a lot of “but God kept it cool” sort of cop-outs, you’re not going to convince anyone who’s not already a True Believer.) Once you’ve determined the pre-Deluge conditions on Earth, then demonstrate that human beings can live under those parameters. As a minimum, you could experiment with a hyperbaric chamber, but I would suggest going all-out and building a Biosphere-type environmental complex. Creationist volunteers will line up by the thousands for the privilege of living under those conditions, since it has been asserted by creation scientists that such conditions were responsible for the incredible longevity of pre-Deluge patriarchs.

Find the Ark!

Seriously, once and for all, indisputably, find it; excavate it; bring serious, competent archaeologists to examine and authenticate the material; and make the material available in museum or university settings to all credentialed investigators. DON’T make the mistakes of so many previous Ark “finders.” Don’t make a cheesy film about it and sell videos on a lecture tour of fundamentalist churches. Don’t publish your “results” in a mass-market paperback. Don’t reveal you findings to the public via supermarket tabloids. You’re supposed to be creation scientists , not sideshow hawkers.

Live Like Noah’s Family

This is a simple “prove it can be done” one (and I’ll even leave you lots of leeway for “fudges”). According to my creationist reference, Noah’s family (8 adults) were cooped up in the Ark for a full year. Construct a building with internal dimensions reasonably like the Ark’s. Use whatever modern materials you need to build it and fit it out with pens, cages, coops or whatever for all of the “kinds” Noah had aboard (see above). Then stock it with the appropriate number of animals and all the provender they’ll need for the full year. Make it easy: use easily-obtainable domestic and wild breeds to represent rare or hard-to-obtain species–the important thing is to have approximately the right number of animals, with the right distribution of body sizes (for instance, you might use 1325 pairs of gerbils [clean or unclean?] to represent all the species of the family Muridae). If the “kind” committee has determined that extinct “kinds” were also aboard, then allow (HUGE!) room for them, and again, represent them with modern animals (it’ll take a medium-sized herd of elephants to make up for your pair of brachiosaurs [any chance sauropods were "clean"?]) . One more big slide: water may be sent in from the outside (on the ridiculous assumption that the Flood waters were drinkable) .

Show Us What’s Literal!

Take an old, standard translation of the Bible (let’s go with King James’s), and print up a new batch that are color-coded. Mine already uses red for Jesus’ words, so let’s go with green–for all parts that are NOT actually literal (in the true sense of the word), but are “poetic,” or “figures of speech.” For instance, were there actually doors in the “firmament” that had to be opened to let rain through, or should that be greened? Was there really an actual mountain somewhere from which “all nations of the Earth” could be seen? Was Solomon writing literal erotic poetry, as Song of Songs seems, or was it something symbolic about Jesus-to-come, or the church, or the Holy Spirit, or anything besides its surface meaning? Does the Earth actually have four corners? Did Solomon’s “sea” actually violate the geometry of our space-time continuum (where circumference equals pi times diameter), or was there an approximation in there somewhere? Did St. John the Divine mean there would be an actual beast (non-human animal), with numerous heads, horns, crowns, etc., or was all that symbolic of something else (like the Catholic church maybe, hm?). Will the actual stars actually fall to Earth? Anything that takes any explaining probably should be green.

Build an actual Ark!

You should probably wait for the outcome of the Noah’s Family experiment above, but it would demonstrate your confidence in the veracity of the Bible if you forged ahead with this (surely there’s no doubt that it can be done, is there?). Here are some reasonable rules:

• Use only natural wood, but any type you want, unless you’re confident you know what “gopher” wood is.
• All wood must be obtained and dressed from timber felled by hand, using only such tools as would have been available in Noah’s day (no Husqvarna chainsaws–not even iron axes).
• All timber and other materials used in the Ark must be transported to the building site using only such means of transport as would have existed at the time (no deliveries by Home Depot) .
• Only such materials as would have been available to Noah may be used–consult with some archaeologists with serious credentials.
• After determining modern equivalents, build the Ark to the specifications given in Genesis.
• Use only tools and building methods appropriate to the time period (no CAD, etc.).
• The Ark may be built in drydock, or transported to a body of water using modern technology, since all Noah had to do was wait for the water to rise.
• Float the Ark, fill it with animals, people, food, etc. (as above) and run the experiment for the full year.

Drown a lot of animals

Brian Lallatin also suggest: “Any experiment involving large amounts of water, mud and animals where the animals drown and come to rest at different levels in the mud. Since I hate cruelty to animals, I would even accept mock-ups, or computer other simulations, in which big lizards and big mammals come to rest at different levels, but big and small mammals rest at the same level. If they can get this to happen, in their and other’s computers, they can then explain what sort of criteria they programmed into the software to make the results come out this way, and justify this hedging by producing experiments that support it.

Roland Zwick’s Project

Since Genesis tells us that the sun was created a day after plants, have creationists gather all the plants they can find and put them into a freezer set at -460 degrees Fahrenheit (Absolute Zero) and see how many of them survive for twenty-four hours (or even twenty-four seconds). I assume that that would be the approximate temperature of a sunless Earth, so even palm trees and orchids would have to have endured those conditions for a full day.

Come up with a testable theory

That’s all there is to it, so, creationists, do it.
(Thanks to Andrew Arensburger)

In October and November 2001, the Discovery Institute (DI), a Seattle-based public policy institute, placed advertisements in at least three periodicals, including The New York Review of Books, The New Republic, and The Weekly Standard.

The advertisement in The New York Review of Books appeared under the headline “A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism” followed by this text:

“Public TV programs, educational policy statements, and science textbooks have asserted that Darwin’s theory of evolution fully explains the complexity of living things. The public has been assured, most recently by spokespersons for PBS’s Evolution series, that “all known scientific evidence supports [Darwinian] evolution” as does “virtually every reputable scientist in the world.” The following scientists dispute the first claim and stand as living testimony in contradiction to the second. There is scientific dissent to Darwinism. It deserves to be heard. “

“We are skeptical of the claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged. “

The Quote

On October 31, 2001, Mark Edwards of the DI responded to an e-mail request for the source of the quote. He stated that he did not know offhand the source of the quotation in the first paragraph but would make an effort to track it down. As of this writing, he has not supplied that information.

Personnel from public television station WGBH, the coproducer of the PBS Evolution series, were unable to find the exact quotation in any of their published literature. An internal memorandum providing background information on the Evolution series to PBS stations nationwide contains an almost identical sentence: “All known scientific evidence supports evolution.” – without the word “Darwinian”.

Let us assume that this internal memorandum (described on the DI web page ) is the source of the quote used in the advertisement. If the word “Darwinian” does not occur in the original quote, why was it added here? In the rest of the paragraph from which the quote was evidently taken there is a discussion of “new discoveries over the past 150 years”, including much of the fossil record, DNA, and the process of genetic replication. The paragraph goes on to state that any of these discoveries could have potentially discredited evolution, but they did not. In fact, they have provided even more evidence for descent with modification and common ancestry. The paragraph concludes by acknowledging that there certainly are things about evolution we do not yet know, just as with “all comprehensive scientific theories, from the theory of gravity to quantum mechanics.”

We believe that the Discovery Institute intentionally modified the sentence and thereby changed its meaning. The original PBS sentence focused on evolution – the thesis that living things have common ancestors. It would not be equivalent to say that “all known scientific evidence supports Darwinian evolution”; by adding “Darwinian”, the meaning of the quotation is changed. Is there healthy scientific debate about the role natural selection plays in evolution? Absolutely, and this is widely recognized. The discoveries of genetics have led to a better understanding of the sources for variation, and the latter half of the 20th century has witnessed a vigorous debate about the roles of proposed additional mechanisms – including genetic drift, gene flow, and developmental processes. These are some of the most interesting topics in modern evolutionary science. But arguments within the scientific community about how evolution occurs should not be confused with arguments – conspicuously absent from the scientific community – about whether evolution occurred.

The Statement

The signatories appear to attest to a statement about the ability of natural selection to “account for the complexity of life” – in other words, a statement about how evolution takes place. Given the anti-evolutionary tone of the introductory paragraphs, a layperson reading the advertisement might well assume that the signatories objected to evolution itself, rather than to the universality of natural selection as its mechanism. But did the scientists themselves object to evolution? Any of them? All of them? Or were some of them only questioning the importance of natural selection? Many scientists – including many associated with NCSE – could in good conscience sign a statement attesting to natural selection’s not fully explaining the complexity of life!

The Signatories

The list consists of 41 biologists (over half of whom are biochemists), 16 chemists, 4 engineers, 2 geologists/geophysicists, 8 mathematicians, 10 medical professionals, 4 social scientists, 15 from physics or astronomy, and 3 whose specialties we were unable to determine. Few were from biological subfields associated with organismic and population-level biology – the divisions of biology most closely associated with the study of evolution. None was recognizable as a prominent contributor to the scientific literature debating the role of natural selection in evolution. (The list published on the review evolution web site , which we analyzed, originally contained 103 names. The ads published in the print media contained 105 names, with the addition of the Center for Renewal of Science and Culture, the creationist arm of the DI, President Stephen Meyer and Fellow Paul Nelson, both of whom hold PhDs in philosophy.)

NCSE contacted a sample of the signatories and asked them specific questions about their attitudes concerning evolution, namely whether or not they accepted “evidence for common ancestry, meaning that different species today shared common ancestors in the past,” and whether or not they were convinced “that humans and chimps both share a common ancestor.”

We anticipated that signatories working for Christian anti-evolution ministries – especially those who are young-earth creationists, such as David A Dewitt, PhD, an adjunct faculty member at the Institute for Creation Research – would answer in the negative, but responses from some of the other signatories were quite revealing. One signatory responded to each of the two questions with “I don’t have a problem with this,” then went on to elaborate that his “dissent mainly concerns the origin of life.” But, of course, evolution is not a theory of the origin of life, nor was “Darwinism” in any of its forms; evolution concerns what happens after life appears.

Although another signatory responded that “the definition of species is very troublesome,” he added that “I certainly do accept that SOME (perhaps most) modern species shared at least a recent common ancestor.” On the question of whether chimps and humans share a common ancestor, he said, “I believe the genetic evidence is overwhelming for the morphology.” Another signatory has elsewhere written, “I am not a creationist and have no reason to doubt common descent.”

Therefore, although the signatories represent a diverse range of opinions about the role of natural selection in evolution, the list is nothing more than careful word play – what is known as “spin.” Should one draw the conclusion from the advertisement that there is a growing movement of scientists who doubt evolution? Hardly; many of the names on the list are not new to anti-evolutionary activity. Ironically, if one were to conduct a survey of scientists who accepted evolution, the size of that list would swamp by tens of thousands this list assembled by the Discovery Institute!

It is regrettable that the public is likely to be confused by these advertisements and be misled into thinking that all of these scientists reject evolution, or that there is a groundswell of scientists rejecting evolution. Neither is true.

National Center for Science Education

The National Center for Science Education is a nonprofit organization, based in Oakland, California, dedicated to defending the teaching of evolution in the public schools.

In 1983, The National Center for Science Education (NCSE) was founded to promote excellence in science education, improve public understanding of evolution, and defend evolution education from sectarian attacks. In 1987, when the Supreme Court struck down a Louisiana anti-evolution law, many observers thought the “creation science” controversy had been put to an end. Instead, it returned to the local level, where new strategies appeared in countless communities; eventually, the problem re-appeared at the state level as well. More and more parents, teachers, and citizens are looking for guidance in coping with the evolution/creation controversy in their communities.

Here are descriptions of strategies that are commonly used in attempts to force “creation science” into public schools, and suggestions on how to respond:

In 1987, the Supreme Court ruled in Edwards v Aguillard that it was unconstitutional for the state of Louisiana to require that “creation science” must be taught whenever evolution was taught. By avoiding the term “creation science” and calling instead for “alternatives to evolution”, anti-evolutionists hope to avoid legal entanglements.

Response: These phrases are code words for an attempt to bring non-scientific, religious views into the science curriculum; no matter what it’s called, it is illegal for public schools to advocate religious views of any kind. Districts that do so are risking expensive law suits that would divert funds from important educational programs. Different members of the public will respond to different kinds of information.

Use many approaches, including:

• Inviting local scientists to explain why “arguments against evolution” (by any name) are not scientific (NCSE can help);
• calling upon local clergy to expose the underlying religious motivations of this approach;
• reminding Boards of Education to obtain legal advice when considering such policies;
• providing Board members and administrators with information about the applicable laws (NCSE can provide a flyer summarizing relevant Court decisions, and local law libraries or the NCSE can provide copies of complete texts of decisions);
• using authoritative statements by scientific, educational, religious, and civil liberties organizations, whose position papers have been compiled in Voices for Evolution ( available here. ).

Response: Discuss what does constitute a scientific theory. The goals are both to make sure that the public and policy makers understand the issues, and to assure that correct definitions appear in curriculum and policy statements. The California State Board of Education Policy on the Teaching of Natural Sciences quotes this good, concise definition from the 1986 edition of the Hammond Barnhart Dictionary of Science: “Theory… an explanation or model based on observation, experimentation, and reasoning, especially one that has been tested and confirmed as a general principle helping to explain and predict natural phenomena….”

More information, including a flyer discussing “What’s Wrong with ´Theory, Not Fact´ Policies on Teaching Evolution?” is available from NCSE.

Response: Point out that “fairness” has different requirements in different contexts. In our election process, we expect our news media to insure fairness by representing all viewpoints. Elections are fairer when voters can cast secret ballots.

In court, fairness is guaranteed by an undemocratic process: attorneys on both sides and all the jurors must obey rules of evidence enforced by the judge. In the same way, science is a fair process, but not democratic: Scientists don’t decide what is valid by taking votes, but by presenting and examining evidence. The process is fair because a variety of views may be presented — but that does not mean they are all accepted. Only those theories (explanations) that work are accepted. In addition, explanations that have been proven wrong — such as the notion that disease is caused by demonic possession, or that the known universe suddenly appeared all at once — are not given space in scientific journals and conferences.

A fair science curriculum is one that teaches children the most up-to-date, accurate information that is accepted in the scientific community — not one that is determined by pressure groups. A good curriculum also requires science teachers and students to use scientific standards of evidence and inference in classroom discussions, rather than dogma and unsupported opinions.

Response: Teaching critical thinking doesn’t mean presenting irrelevant and ill-founded “alternatives” to basic knowledge that we want all students to understand. Students learning basic concepts about chemistry and physics aren’t taught “alternative theories of matter” such as the medieval four elements. Also, while students discuss alternative interpretations of evidence in many contexts (for example, how to interpret the motivations of characters in a novel), we still don’t “balance” valid knowledge with unsupported claims or poor evidence (for example, teaching students in a European history class “evidence that the Holocaust never happened”). In the context of science education, it would be appropriate to discuss genuine disagreements within the scientific community — for example, scientific discussions about the pace at which evolution occurred.

Another problem is that teachers discussing “evidence against evolution” would logically be expected to discuss evidence against “scientific creationism.” Yet it is impossible to do so without criticizing religious beliefs, which they should not do.

Response: It is unconstitutional to exclude any topic from the curriculum solely to avoid religious objections. Point out that it is illegal to single out evolution for special treatment, and also that evolution isn’t scientifically controversial. When school boards or administrators are being pressured to take action (for example, by a parental complaint), they may simply need support in continuing to teach good curricula or use good materials. Many problems can be avoided if the district develops a broad policy statement on how teachers should handle a whole range of controversial issues. Such a statement should be written separately from curricula; it should apply to a variety of issues, not singling out evolution; it should not take the form of “disclaimers” to be read aloud or pasted in textbooks. Such statements should be developed with staff participation and appropriate review procedures. NCSE can provide examples.

Response: It is dangerous to set a precedent of permitting “opting out” and alternative assignments on a case-by-case basis; too many excusals undermine the practical task of providing an education, since many, many topics and texts could become grounds for complaint, fragmenting what is taught in the classroom. Teachers and administrators need to make responses that don’t undermine curriculum goals. The first step is always to study applicable laws and policies. Different states have different regulations — California’s Education Code, for example, severely restricts alternate assignments and released time.

In addition, every school district needs a general review procedure for curriculum complaints. Part of the review procedure should be to determine whether “objectionable” material has simply been misinterpreted. The community should be made aware that teachers can present information neutrally, students can learn it and, if necessary, their parents and religious communities can help them put the information in perspective. (For example: In a history class, teachers and textbooks can describe the historical significance of the Crusades without asserting that either side was “right”. In science classes, teachers can discuss the genetic basis of blood-typing without denigrating religious objections to transfusions, and describe human anatomy without criticizing religious objections to autopsies.)

Response: Cite Federal and Supreme Court decisions that clearly differentiate science (including evolution) from religion. Other decisions specifically uphold school districts’ right to require the teaching of evolution. If necessary, give copies of these decisions to school administrators or school board members. (Both summaries and complete texts of these decisions are available from NCSE.)

Suggestions to change specific “sensitive” terms in curriculum standards: For example “adaptation,” “natural selection” and “evolution,” terms which have specific scientific meanings, are sometimes targeted as “controversial.” Eliminating them or substituting “more neutral” phrasing makes terminology inaccurate and can weaken the presentation of crucial concepts.

Response: Point out that substitute terminology reduces clarity and still may not defuse controversy. For example, words like “change,” “change over time,” or “how organisms change” in place of “evolution” could mean “how individual organisms change,” or could refer to short time frames. They don’t tell teachers whether they should present topics like the change of hormone levels during the “fight or flight” response, or the relation between environmental changes and natural selection. While key terms like “evolution” do not have to be used every time the underlying concepts are discussed, make sure they are included in curriculum documents, and that the underlying concepts are presented clearly and accurately.

Response: Given the limitations on library and classroom space, books offered as gifts should meet the same criteria as books that would be purchased. Contact NCSE for scientific evaluations of the proposed books and if they are sub-standard, follow your district’s procedures for requesting a review of curriculum materials. You can distribute copies of scientific evaluations to the reviewers and, if necessary, obtain additional help from NCSE.

National Center for Science Education

The National Center for Science Education is a nonprofit organization, based in Oakland, California, dedicated to defending the teaching of evolution in the public schools.

Scientific literacy is in short supply among American students. This problem makes controversial proposals to teach creationism in science classes, along with astronomy, geology, and the theory of evolution, all the more disturbing. The most important questions in this debate are: “What are the differences between science and religion?” “Is creationism science?” and, “Does fairness require that creationism should be taught alongside the theory of evolution?”

Defining Science and Religion

Science and religion are different. Scientific explanations are based on human observations of natural processes; these explanations may be changed or abandoned as additional facts are discovered. Science does not claim that God does not exist. However, whether or not scientists believe in God, by the very definition of science, they cannot offer God´s intervention as the explanation for whatever they seek to explain.

Scientists who investigate the past must proceed in the same way that detectives work when solving crimes without witnesses. In such cases, detectives must assume that no supernatural forces were involved. Suppose you are accused of a murder and you have overwhelming evidence to prove that you were 3,000 miles away from the scene of the crime when the murder was committed.

But the prosecutor ignores this rational evidence, and claims that you made yourself invisible, flew at the speed of light to commit the murder 3,000 miles away, and returned an instant later. How could you defend yourself? Could you prove that you did not have these powers? No — it is impossible to prove or disprove something outside the realm of rational investigation.

Any judge who heard a prosecutor accuse a defendant of using supernatural powers to commit a crime, would immediately rule that the accusation is inadmissible in court. In just the same way, the explanation of material facts by supernatural forces is not admissible in science.

Religious explanations of the universe, in contrast to science, are based upon belief in certain forces that are beyond the realm of human understanding. Many religions also depend on a faith that certain documents are infallible.

Is Creationism Science?

“Creationists” are fundamentalist Christians who believe that the account of creation in the Book of Genesis is literally true. According to creationists, the Earth is only about 6,000 years old, Adam and Eve were the actual ancestors of all living people, and Noah´s flood occurred exactly as described in the Bible.

Creationists ignore the basic premises of science. For example, the public school edition of Henry Morris´ textbook, Scientific Creationism, published by Creation-Life Publishers, states: “It is precisely because Biblical revelation is absolutely authoritative and perspicuous that the scientific facts, rightly interpreted, will give the same testimony as that of Scripture. There is not the slightest possibility that the facts of science can contradict the Bible.” This principle directly contradicts the requirement that scientific explanations must be modified when new facts are discovered.

Similarly, the textbook Earth Science for Christian Schools, published by Bob Jones University Press, states: “For the Christian, earth science is a study of God´s creation. As such, it is subject to God´s infallible Word, the Bible. The final authority of the Christian is not man´s observation but God´s revelation.” Yet scientific explanations depend on human observation of natural processes, not on supernatural revelation.

These statements are objectionable from the scientific and religious points of view. Who knows who has the correct interpretation of the Bible? Many Christians accept the theory of evolution, but these statements imply that the only true Christians are those who interpret the Bible in exactly the same way as their authors do. They also imply that the fundamental scientific procedure — human observation — is wrong and useless when it contradicts the creationist interpretation of the Bible. These and many other creationist statements unmask creationism for what it is: not a science, but a narrow-minded religious belief, immune to evidence or potential correction.

“Only a theory”

Creationists often insist that since evolution is a “theory”, it is only a guess, no better than any other. But in science, a theory is a statement of general principles that explain many facts by means of natural processes. The proposition that the planets revolve around the sun (Copernican theory) explains a great many astronomical facts and also is considered true beyond a reasonable doubt. In the same way, geological examination of rocks demonstrates beyond a reasonable doubt that the earth is extremely old. The theory of evolution explains a tremendous number of biological and paleontological facts, and it, too, is true beyond a reasonable doubt. Nevertheless, all these theories could be altered or replaced if new observations yielded new scientific evidence that contradicted predictions of these theories. Creationism, on the other hand, is not even a theory because its proponents have decided in advance that no amount of evidence will change their beliefs.

Fairness and the Facts

Does fairness demand that creationism should be taught alongside evolution? Creationists argue that, “You can´t prove that evolution is true (you weren´t there, it´s just a theory) and you can´t prove that creationism is false, so it´s only fair to teach both.” By this argument, astrology, which is based on supernatural forces, should be taught alongside astronomy. And witch doctors, who use supernatural forces to explain disease, should be taught in our medical schools. This is a mistaken notion of fairness.

The fact is, our students are taught science so they can learn to accurately observe facts and to understand how scientific theories are developed. Bringing in religious creeds and supernatural explanations can only impair their ability to understand how science works. Our children deserve to gain scientific literacy so they can solve the scientific and technological challenges of the 21st century.

It´s only fair.

National Center for Science Education

The National Center for Science Education is a nonprofit organization, based in Oakland, California, dedicated to defending the teaching of evolution in the public schools.

Kent Hovind is one of America’s leading young-earth Creationists. He offers a $250,000 award to anyone who is able to prove (to his satisfaction) that Evolution occurs. You can find more information about him at www.drdino.com . At www.biblebelievers.com they have a fifteen hour long video seminar featuring Kent Hovind. After watching the video series, I thought to myself, “People actually believe this?!?” So I took it upon myself to write rebuttals for each one. This is a work in progress and hopefully I will write a full rebuttal to each of his seminars by the year 2050! But since I don’t see anyone else debunking this hog wash, I took the liberty to do just that.

As a reference, you can view every single one of Kent Hovind’s video seminars here .

The Age of the Earth Video, Part 1A

Mr. Hovind starts off by saying,

“There are four great questions that man tries to answer in this life. These are called the four great philosophical worldview questions. Every religion in the world, including Atheism, which is a religion, every religion tries to answer these four questions.”

Atheism is a religion the same way not collecting stamps is a hobby…

Now throughout this whole seminar Kent uses the word “religion” very openly, and claims that Atheism and Evolution are both religions. The definition of the word religion is, “Belief in and reverence for a supernatural power or powers regarded as creator and governor of the universe.” Atheism is exactly the opposite of this definition because it doesn’t believe in any supernatural power or creator. So I wonder why he claims that Atheism is a religion. Also, Evolution doesn’t have anything to do with a creator or supernatural power, it does not encourage nor discourage the belief in such. It’s neutral to the subject, and thus can’t be regarded as a religion like you will hear Kent claiming all throughout this seminar. Anyway, the four questions are as follows:

1. Who am I? (What am I worth?)
2. Where did I come from?
3. Why am I here?
4. Where am I going when I die?

“There are two ways to look at this earth. Some people look at this world and say, ‘You know it’s amazing! A ‘Big Bang’ made this from nothing!’ That’s the Humanist worldview which says, ‘Man is god.’ Other people look at the world and say, ‘You know its incredible design! There must be a smart designer.’ That’s the Creationist worldview which says, ‘God is God.’”

In giving the Evolutionist perspective of the first question (Who am I and what am I worth?), Kent says,

“Well if Evolution is true, you’re just a bit of protoplasm that washed up on the beach. Matter of fact, you’re part of the problem because you’re one of the polluters of the environment and the more of you we can get rid of, the better. And by the way folks, if Evolution is true, that is normal thinking. Get rid of humanity because we’re the problem. But if Creation is true, we’re the purpose of this creation. God did it for us.”

“Second question: If Evolution is true, how would you answer the question, ‘where did I come from?’ Well if Evolution is true, you came from a cosmic burp about twenty biiiillion [emphasis on billion] years ago. (audience chuckles)Why are we here? What is the purpose of life? Well if Evolution is true, there is no purpose to life. So we might as well have fun. If it feels good, do it. Where am I going when I die? Well if Evolution is true, you’re just going to the grave and you’re going to get recycled into a worm or a plant. But the Bible says, ‘In the beginning, God created the heaven and the Earth.’ Now if that’s true, that puts a whole different set of answers to those questions.”

Mr. Hovind then makes remarks that imply that all doubters are the devil.

“The devil came to Eve in Genesis chapter three, ‘The serpent said unto the woman, ‘Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?” First sentence out of the devils mouth was a question to make Eve doubt Gods word. He always does that by the way. He’s always going to make you try to doubt Gods word. The second thing he said to the woman was, ‘Ye shall not surely die:’ Now he’s calling God a liar. The third thing he said to the woman was, ‘Hey, if you eat off that tree, ye shall be as gods.’ And right there is where the whole idea of Evolution got started. It didn’t start with Charly Darwin. It started with Satan in the Garden of Eden. He wants you to think you can become like gods. Yes boys and girls, we are evolving. We started off like an ameba and we’re getting bigger and better and stronger and smarter and in some day we’re going to sail around the universe and discover new life forms like ‘Star Trek.’”

Mr. Hovind then quotes a few elementary school text books in which it says that the Earth is billions of years old. He questions the books references for when it says billions of years.

Of course there aren’t going to be any references to the statement of the Earth being billions of years old. It’s a book for children! Going into evidence of why the Earth is billions of years old doesn’t start at elementary school. If Kent really has a problem with public school textbooks saying that the Earth is billions of years old, then he should attack the evidence we have for our conclusion rather than just assert that all the evidence we have for such a statement is inside of a children’s science book.

After quoting a few more textbooks, Mr. Hovind says,

“We aught’ to be teachen’ the kids some real science instead. Like the First Law of Thermodynamics which tells us, ‘Matter (and/or energy) cannot be created or destroyed.’ Well everything’s made out of matter. You’re made out of matter. So if matter cannot be created or destroyed, how did the world get here? We’re here, you know. So that leaves only two choices. Somebody made the world or the world made itself. There’s no other choice. . . So either somebody made the world or the world made itself. Now the devil does not want you to believe in the beginning God created the heaven and the Earth. He sure does not want you to believe that. So the devil had to think up a way for the world to make itself. So he thought he thought he thought he thought, and finally he came up with the ‘Big Bang Theory.’ Now how many of you have ever heard of the ‘Big Bang Theory’ before?”

Propaganda Techniques

Mr. Hovind then talks about a story of him traveling on an airplane with a professor. He has a conversation with him about Creation and Evolution. Mr. Hovind asks the professor what his take is on the origins of the universe and then Mr. Hovind remarks,

“Yes you see boys and girls, you see we came from a dot and that dot came from nothing. Now they call that Science and put it in a Science book? I’d call that a fairy tale and put it in the garbage.”

Mr. Hovind then asked the professor:

“‘Where’d all this dirt come from? Who made matter? I mean there’s an awful lot of matter in the universe. Who made it?’ He said, ‘Well we don’t know that for sure.’ (audience gasps)I say, ‘Now hold on sir, just a minute. If I tell you that I believe about six thousand years ago, God created the heaven and the Earth, you’re going to say, ‘Where did God come from?’ and I don’t know. But you said twenty biiiillion years ago there was a big bang and you don’t know where the dirt came from. So basically I believe in the beginning God, and you believe in the beginning dirt.’ (audience laughs)Don’t tell me my theory is religious and yours is scientific. Oh no sir, they’re both religious.”

After Mr. Hovind makes his fictitious remarks about Evolution being a religion (since Evolution and the Big Bang Theory are, of course, the same thing, or so Mr. Hovind implies), Mr. Hovind then argues that Evolution is a tax supported religion.

Since I’ve already shown that Evolution isn’t a religion, I have no need to comment.

Evolution is Atheistic?

Mr. Hovind then remarks,

“So you can get thousands of people together for a church on Sunday. You cannot get thousands of Humanists together, at their own expense, for any kind of service. Run an add in the biggest newspaper you could find. ‘Atheist Meeting tomorrow night.’ four people will show up.”

Mr. Hovind then says,

“If somebody says, ‘Oh Evolution is not a religion. It’s a part of Science.’ Well, I’ve had a long time standing offer. For about ten years now, I’ve been offering ten thousand dollars to anybody with any scientific evidence for Evolution.”

Well the offer is now $250,000. Why hasn’t anyone claimed it? There’s a catch. You have to prove that Evolution occurs to his satisfaction in order to get the $250,000! However, it sure does make a good impression on all of the Creationists that Evolution isn’t real. Well offer a nonbiased challenge and you won’t hold onto that money for a day. Evolution has already won the battle in the courts and all other forums except public. Why? Because the majority of people are uninformed enough to confuse Creationist propaganda with real science.

Mr. Hovind then comes back to his conversation with the professor and brings up the Law of Conservation of Angular Momentum. Basically, the law says that if you are on something that’s spinning clockwise, and you jump off of it, you will be spinning clockwise as well until another force stops you, like the ground. He asks the professor, “‘If our universe began as a swirling dot, shouldn’t everything be spinning the same way?’ He said, ‘Yes.’ ‘Well it’s not. We have two planets for sure, possibly three, we don’t know about Pluto, but two for sure spin backwards. Why?’ He said, ‘That’s interesting.’ (audience laughs) I said, ‘No sir, that’s more than interesting. That’s pretty hard on your Big Bang Theory.’ I said, ‘Not only that. At least six moons spin backwards in our solar system. Why?’ He said, ‘I don’t know. Why do you think they’re going backwards?’ I said, ‘Well sir it’s very simple. I believe that in the beginning, God created the heaven and the Earth and he did it that way on purpose just to make the Big Bang Theory look stupid.’”

That would have been a good point by Kent, if only planets were the direct result of the Big Bang, and if only we knew for sure that the point of singularity was spinning, and if only we knew that angular momentum applied to the laws of physics back then. But the Big Bang didn’t just turn into spinning planets. So what can make up for some of the planets and moons in our solar system that are spinning backwards? Rogue planets that get in orbit with another celestial body is a perfect explanation. You think that all of our planets were just remnants of our stars leftover matter that wasn’t consumed? Also, a great impact by another celestial body can definitely change its rotation. Shouldn’t Kent know this after teaching 15 years of high school science?

Mr. Hovind moves on saying,

“Now the Second Law of Thermodynamics tells us everything tends toward disorder. Everything is falling apart. Nothing gets better by itself. You leave things alone for a while and they rot, rust, break down, die, they fall apart. Nothing gets better automatically. The Bible teaches that in Hebrews chapter one ‘the heavens are the works of the hands: They shall perish:’ Nothing gets better without work. Input, energy, input. Ah, but the textbook says, boys and girls, we are getting better. ‘Humans probably evolved from bacteria that lived more than four biiiillion years ago.’”

A Society Gone to Hell

Mr. Hovind then accuses Evolution of being responsible for society deteriorating.

“You know we’ve been teachen’ the kids that they’re nothing but animals and today a lot of them act like animals.”

Before Mr. Hovind illustrates his next point, he confirms that it’s perfectly OK to teach Creationism in public schools and quotes Supreme Court decisions to back up his claims.

No, the Supreme Court found that it was OK to teach the Bible in public schools as long as it is taught in a secular manner. But Creationism is anything but secular, and isn’t looking to be taught in theology classes. In fact, there have been repeated rulings by the Supreme Court declaring it illegal to teach Creationism in public schools. Try to see the difference between Creationism and the Bible. Creationism is a religion and the Bible is a book.

“Folks it can be done. What’s happened, though, the ACLU wants teachers to believe they cannot teach Creation in the public schools. That just is a lie. By the way, encase you don’t know, ACLU stands for the America Communist Lawyers Union. The stated purpose of the founder was to advance communism. That’s the purpose of the ACLU. Now maybe all the lawyers involved don’t know that. But that is the stated purpose of that organization. They want to advance communism around the world.”

The Year When Everything Went Downhill

“1963 is when prayer and Bible reading was taken out of the American school system. Anybody remember that? Madalyn Murray O’Hair? Her son, by the way, became a preacher. His mom used him to get prayer taken out. But in 1963, sexually transmitted diseases began to climb. This is for kids 10 to 14 years of age. 1963 is when divorce rates began to go up. By the way, premarital sex and divorce go hand and hand. If you don’t trust ‘em before you’re married, you won’t trust ‘em after you’re married. 1963 is when violent crimes began to increase. There’s been nearly a 1000% increase in violent crimes. 1963 is when unwed birthrates began to incline. 100% increase for girls 10 to 14. By the way, pregnancies have increased 553%. SAT scores have dropped off incredibly since 1963. 1963 is when we saw an incredible rise of married couples living together in adultery. Teen suicide rate has gone crazy.”

All of these things didn’t start at exactly after the Bible was taken out of schools, you can’t be that specific with statistics. They all started to happen around the early 1960’s. The early 60’s were a time of great Revolution and change for our society. A time in which great speakers like Martin Luther King, Jr. strived for racial equality. A time in which the National Organization of Woman strived for gender equality. By the way, Kent neglected to mention that 1963 was the year that President Kennedy was assassinated sending a shockwave throughout America. 1962 was when we had the Cuban missile crisis. The early 60’s were a time of Cold War tension and the U.S. and U.S.S.R. were a button away from wiping out the human race. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize what’s responsible for the great changes of statistics that Kent gives. This is even going under the assumption that the statistics are accurate! Oh, and one more thing, I doubt that the result of keeping or taking out the Bible from schools would have any effect on the divorce rate! Primarily because I doubt that many married couples attend high school!

But let’s take a closer look at the statistics that Kent presents. For the sexually transmitted diseases beginning to incline: First of all, the 60’s were the sexual rEvolution as well. Also, they began to rise before 1963. Kent neglects to mention that the birth control pill was invented in 1960. It sent a message to all of the young females that they could have all of the sex they wanted and never have a baby. It’s quite obvious that the effect of the invention of the birth control pill is responsible for the rise in STD’s.

For divorce rates going up in 1963: I can’t understand how keeping or taking out the Bible from schools would affect divorce rates so quickly since most senior high school students in 1963 won’t get married until many years afterwards. Anyway, the divorce rate only began to start to rise above normal in the late 60’s. It only rose slightly in 1963. This is all according to his statistic.

But let’s look at other countries. In 1996, our divorce rate was 49%. Canada close behind at 43%. The United Kingdom at 53%. That’s according to the Human Development report, 1999, United Nations. What does this tell us? It tells us that the cause of our divorce rate being almost 50% is from an international source because all other western countries are roughly around 50% as well. The Bible being taken out of our countries public schools have absolutely no effect on our divorce rate and absolutely no effect on other countries divorce rates. Thus, the Bible being taken out of schools must be eliminated as a possible cause.

For violent crimes beginning to increase in 1963: assuming that violent crimes began to increase in the early 60’s, if his statistic is accurate, this would be expected from all of the 60’s Revolutions taking place. For unwed birth rates beginning to climb in 1963: Actually if you take a closer look at the statistic, unwed birth rates were actually at a low in 1963! Lower than years before it! It gained a slow and steady increase afterwards, according to Kent statistic. But according to the Center for Disease Control, National Center for Health Statistics, National Vital Statistics Reports, vol. 49, no. 10, Sept. 25th 2001, “Teenage childbearing has been on a long-term decline in the United States since the late 1950s, except for a brief, but steep, upward climb in the late 1980s through 1991. The 2000 rate (49 births per 1,000) is about half the peak rate recorded in 1957 (96 per 1,000).” That’s right, birth rates are actually declining.

As with SAT scores dropping dramatically since 1963, the statistics that I have say somewhat of the contrary. According to the U.S. Dept. of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Digest of Education Statistics 2001, in 1966-1967, the average SAT verbal score was 543 with 200 being the minimum and 800 being the maximum. In 2000-2001, the average SAT verbal score was 506. A decrease, but not at all an incredible drop off since 1963 as Kent puts it. But in 1966-1967, the average SAT mathematical score was 516. In 2000-2001, the average SAT mathematical score was 514. Not at all a dramatic decrease. This wouldn’t even amount to a 1% decrease.

And last but not least, Kent makes the claim that teen suicide rates have gone crazy. Well, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics, from Health, United States, 2002, the average suicide rate was 12.5 in 1960 and 10.6 in 2000. Again, decreasing and not increasing. I’m not sure where Kent is getting his statistics from, but they seem to have quite a few contradictions with the statistics I’m finding.

Ribbit, ribbit…

Mr. Hovind then claims that Evolution says that we evolved from frogs.

No, Kent, at least educate yourself about the opposition before attacking it. You’d think if Evolution really is wrong that you wouldn’t need to spread lies about it just to make people think that it sounds ludicrous. Evolution is a tree with an infinity of branches. Although present species may have all had a common ancestor at one time or another, humans did not evolve from any present-day species.

Mr. Hovind ends seminar 1A claiming that it is impossible to know that the Earth is billions of years old. It is only possible to believe that it is.

Postlude

I’ll get around to this subject in later seminars. Until then, suffice it to say any credible evidence Mr. Hovind has presented for his case so far complete contradicts what is found when doing a little research.

Jacob Spinney

As I write this very sentence, there are those, climbing the mountains of Iraq and Armenia, searching for the ark of Noah.

The standard creationist model is a literal interpretation of the flood story in Genesis. The ark is the boat built by the Biblical character Noah as a command from God. Noah was to build a boat that could accommodate his extended family, somewhere around 50,000-75,000 species of birds and animals, and nearly one million species of insects. The ship, we are told, would be constructed to survive an upcoming universal flood aimed at destroying every other person and animal on earth (even those within the sea were said to have been destroyed – which makes one wonder where Noah put the whales).

There are those who have no difficulty believing the “fact” of this event. However, before we can try to figure the logistics of such an enterprise, there arise some obvious and troubling questions. Why would God destroy, with few exceptions, all the descendants of all of the creatures he had created? The Bible explains that God is displeased with humanity (except for Noah and his family). However, what had the animals, plants, and insects, etc. done? What would we do if we found ourselves at the mercy of some malicious and willful act of a conscious being? Would this not add a modicum of rage to the feelings of devastation? I suppose one could argue that it is God’s world; he created it, so he can destroy it if he feels like it. But such an attitude seems a bit childish, malicious, and very inappropriate for an infinitely loving God (the annihilation of those who have displeased him is a familiar tactic of many gods). God allows Noah and his family, and all the friendly animals to ride out the storm, which we are told lasted for forty days and nights (a lot of things seem to happen for forty days in the Bible – but that’s another story). God then shows them a great rainbow (which, as my Old Testament professor in Seminary stated was a misrepresentation of the word for “War bow”; meaning basically god said “I give”), and they all live together happily ever after.

Searching, not finding

According to the story told in Genesis, Noah, his family, and the animals lived together for more than six months before the flood deposits them on a mountaintop. As preposterous as this story seems, there are people in the twentieth century who claim they have actually found evidence of Noah’s ark. According to these creationists, when the flood receded, the animals dispersed to the far habitats they now inhabit on their own. (How they managed to cross-immense areas of ocean, and where the whales came from we are not told). Still, none of this deters these “believers” from accepting this tale as “God’s truth.”

During the late 1970’s, a documentary titled “In Search of Noah’s Ark” was aired. It was hardly what any scientist would call a documentary as it was filled with conjecture, speculation and few, if any, facts. Then, in 1993, a so-called special television event, titled “The Incredible Discovery of Noah’s Ark,” was aired. While the first documentary was a work of pure fiction disguised as science, the second was an admitted hoax. The man behind it claimed he had only wanted to expose religious frauds. During his show, the producer exhibited what he called “sacred wood” from the ark, which he later admitted was wood taken from railroad tracks in Long Beach, California. He also confessed that he had never even been to Turkey! It might be of interest to note that this program was produced by Sun International Pictures, based in Salt Lake City. Sun International Pictures are also responsible for other films on subjects as diverse as the Bermuda Triangle, the Shroud of Turin, and the UFO phenomena.

No Animal Went Hungry?

If we are unwilling, at least for the moment, to toss aside logic and common sense, and grant that Noah was able to collect all the birds and mammals, reptiles and amphibians, and a couple of million insects that he is said to have gathered together on his boat, there still exists the problem of keeping the animals from eating one another. Some claim that the “lion lay down with the lamb” just as they did in Eden (prior to the fruit and snake incident). Perhaps the carnivores become herbivores during the flood? If so, how did they store enough feed for the voyage? Perhaps, like tales of space voyagers, the animals were somehow put in cryogenic sleep. However, as modern science has yet to perfect this process, it is unlikely that Noah, regardless of his connections, could have pulled it off 5,000 years ago. But one might ask about the plethora of birds. Darwin’s discoveries alone would demand several hundred varieties of finches, let alone the other species. Why didn’t they eat the insects? Perhaps, the ark was stocked with plant foods for all the animals, but if so stocked where did Noah put it all? Anyone could quickly contemplate that the vast amount of food for this many animals, even on a six month voyage, would be incredible! We are told in Genesis that Noah was not sure how long the voyage would last, so we should figure he would have taken no chances with life and over stocked. If we take it as a given, that it all really happened, that Noah somehow found a place for the whales, and had plenty of food for all, how could such a small crew feed all these animals? The daily rounds, with just Noah, his wife, their three sons and three daughters-in-law would take well over fifteen months. I won’t even get into the waste removal system needed. In short, anyone the least skeptical about religious history will not need any further convincing, and those who desire to believe cannot accept the many reasons a global flood could not happen. To this latter group, the story of Noah and his family are all the proof they demand. As the reader can easily see, the request for one to take at face value – without even the smallest modicum of truth, let alone common sense – is ridiculous. But there are explanations in the Holy Books of many events that would make the story of Noah and his little ship seem quite reasonable. There are those, claiming to be objective scientists who have come up with incredible hypotheses to explain Noah and his flood. Perhaps the most incredible, with the exception of the “40 days and nights” rainstorm in Genesis, is known as the Hydro Plate Theory.

The Hydro Plate Theory

According to the Hydro Plate Theory, our planets crust once floated upon a thin layer of water, under immense pressure. Then, for some reason that is not actually surmised, the crust began to crack allowing the water to come to the surface. Of course, this water was under immense pressure, and once the crust was fractured, it shot up forty days and forty nights. According to the theory’s main proponent, Walter T. Brown, the original fissure spread very quickly, buckling the crust where today we find the mid-Atlantic ridge. Brown claims the shape of this ridge bears the specific outlines of the continents edges – which it does, but not for the reasons he claims. After the resulting flood, all the water eventually settled down to where it is today in the oceans and lakes of the world. This theory, according to Brown, along with the stories of a global flood, explain the origin of the historical events that have taken place on our planet, but which Brown does not accept science’s explanation for. These include ice ages, frozen mammoths, the mid-Atlantic ridge, submarine canyons, coal and oil formation, ocean trenches, mountains, the Grand Canyon, strata, salt domes, and volcanoes. How a global flood can account for these geological events, let alone in less than two months, is never thoroughly addressed. All of these events are indeed explained by modern science, despite what Brown and his followers would have us believe.

On the other side of the argument, the Hydro Plate Theory fails to explain a great many features which are explained by modern plate tectonics, such as the data gathered by measuring the magnetic fields of the rocks and crust of the ocean floor, by sampling core measurements the overlying sediments, and the nearly continuous resurfacing of our planet by lava flows, evident from these same mid-ocean ridges that Brown points to as his proof. When these science-based investigations are compared with radioisotope dates (dating the decay of known isotopes, such as carbon), the Hydro Plate Theory soon falls apart. In addition, a global flood scenario is simply unable to account for such things as the Arctic ice layers, trilobite fossils, the early Earth’s reducing atmosphere in which anaerobic life began, or middans. It really can’t account for much except to agree somewhat with the Biblical story of Noah and his ark. Brown and those who follow his theory call themselves “creation scientists.” This is no more than a conflict of terms, however it is one that many are happy to turn a blind eye to.

The scientific creationists see the universe, our planet and all life, as the central aspect of their belief system that is no more than several thousand years old. Even rudimentary geology shows clearly that it takes thousands of millions of years for the continents to move to their current positions. Furthermore, the current speed of movement has been deciphered to be at least .05 mm/year and no more than 3 cm/year, depending on the plate in question. In Brown’s scenario, the continents must be moving much faster in order to rest in their current position after only six or seven thousand years. According to the Hydro Plate Theory, the Earth would have been unlivable for hundreds of years, due to tremendous earthquakes and volcanic activity. What does this mean to Noah? How could he have landed less than a year after departure? It would seem that once all the water trapped under the crust was let out, the continents must have slowed down considerably (perhaps swooshed aside by the water). As one can easily see, there are many obvious facts that strain the credibility of Brown’s theory. Yet, if we want to believe what the “Good Book” tells us, are we willing to ignore science and a great deal of common sense? This theory, sounding technical and scientific, can be accepted as “proof” of the global flood – hence there is proof in the Bible. The problem lies in that Brown and his followers deluded their reasoning in order to feel good about life, and perhaps to find some sense of direction. Yet as the late Carl Sagan so aptly put it we must “accept cold hard fact over our fondest delusions.”

One final note

By my calculations, it would have had to be at least twice the size the Bible claims-just to hold the beetles.