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Jet in Carina WFC3 IR [Courtesy NASA] |
Nonetheless, some writers, principally of the "creationist" and "intelligent design" schools, are not content with these grand revelations, and argue instead for a worldview that is often at odds with modern science. Old-earth geology and biological evolution are key targets of their objections, although for mostly historical reasons rather than for any fundamental issue. After all, there is no comparable opposition movement to quantum physics, organic chemistry, cetacean biology or any of a host of other scientific theories.
Price's works were followed by Whitcomb and Morris' The Genesis Flood, which was first published in 1961 [Whitcomb1988]. These authors argued, as did Price, that since the scriptures clearly describe a universal flood, Christian believers have only two choices: reject God's inspired Word or reject the testimony of thousands of professional geologists. According to the authors, God created the entire universe and populated the earth with fully grown plants, animals, and human beings, all in six literal days, using methods and processes completely different from those now in operation in the universe. There was no death before the Fall, so consequently all fossils are the remains of animals that perished subsequent to the Fall. The authors rejected the conventional geologic ages as Price did, by attributing the apparent order of fossils to "hydrological sorting" of organisms in the flood waters and the superior mobility of vertebrates. They acknowledged that by some indications the earth and the universe appear to be very old, but an omnipotent Creator created them with the "appearance of age" [Whitcomb1988, pg. 233-238]. Three other books include Henry Morris's Scientific Creationism [Morris2000], and Duane Gish's Evolution: The Fossils Say No! [Gish1973] and Evolution: The Challenge of the Fossil Record [Gish1985].
Various creationist organizations, including Answers in Genesis, the Creation Research Society and the Institute for Creation Research, have for many years produced creationism-friendly instruction material to be used in parochial schools. They have also made numerous attempts to promote legislation to permit this type of material to be taught in public schools. Most of these attempts have subsequently been blocked by court rulings. For instance, in 1982 a U.S. District Court ruled that a 1981 Arkansas law requiring "balanced treatment" for "creation-science" was an impermissible violation of the separation between church and state. The judge further ruled that "creation science" is not science and is instead a religious notion. Similarly, in 1987 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against a Louisiana "creationism act" that prohibited the teaching of evolution in public schools unless accompanied by instruction in "creation science." More recently, in 2005 a U.S. district judge in Dover, Pennsylvania ruled against a local school district that had attempted to require "intelligent design" material to be presented as an alternative to evolution. For additional details on these cases, see Court cases.
In spite of these court rulings, creationist groups continue to press their cause to alter or block the teaching of evolution, big bang and related theories in public schools. In one recent case of this sort, creationists on a Texas state textbook panel questioned material on evolution in high school biology books, writing, "The fossil record can be interpreted in other ways than evolutionary with equal justification." [Rich2013]. The most common motivation for these efforts is the belief by creationists that the Bible must be regarded as inerrant, and that the Bible should be read as a scientific document. For example, many of these writers, even today, insist that the earth was created in six approximately 24-hour days [Ham2013]. However, the vast majority of biblical scholars sharply disagree with these premises. For additional details, see Bible-inerrant and Bible-science.
Another indication of the continuing (and perhaps growing) influence of creationism is the popularity of the new Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky (near Cincinnati, Ohio). This facility features a series of exhibits depicting, among other things, the creation in 4000 BC, a global flood in 2350 BC that deposited all fossil layers, and humans and dinosaurs living together. Murals contrast "human reason" with "God's Word." Since it opened in 2007, the museum has attracted over 3,000,000 visitors (as of May 2017). In July 2016 the Answers in Genesis organization, which operations the Creation Museum, opened an even larger museum devoted to Noah's Ark. The Ark Encounter, like the Creation Museum, presumes a highly literal reading of the Bible, and takes a hostile stance to modern science in general and to evolution in particular.
Groups supporting creationism and intelligent design are very active politically, pressing their case in the U.S. and internationally [Lebo2008; Lebo2010]. Some of these groups have now joined forces with opponents of environmental protection measures. Together they are promoting legislation to require that students be taught "all sides of evidence" on evolution and global warming [Kaufman2010; Zimmerman2010].
Along this line, a 2013 study by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found the surprising result that only 11% of Americans belong to religions that openly reject evolution. These results suggest that the main issue here is not between science and religion, but instead between religious movements that have made their peace with science and small fundamentalist groups who have not. Evidently many religious adherents who oppose evolution do not understand the official positions taken by their own denominations [Lee2013].
At this point in time, the conventional scientific picture of the earth as approximately 4.5 billion years old, with primitive bacteria in the distant past to flowering plants and vertebrates several hundred million years ago and ultimately to Homo sapiens within the past million years, is very well established. Geological dates are particularly well established, confirmed by numerous independent schemes that rely on fundamental processes such as radioactivity. As biologist Kenneth Miller has observed, "The consistency of the [radiometric] data ... is nothing short of stunning." [Miller1999, pg. 76]. This is discussed in more detail at Ages and Reliability.
In other words, the central tenet of creationism, namely that the earth is only a few thousand years, has been overwhelmingly refuted by modern scientific data. The only rational option for those creationists who still nonetheless hold to a young-earth paradigm is to accept the theory advanced by Whitcomb and Morris that an omnipotent Deity created the earth (or even the entire universe) a few thousand years ago, but meticulously designed it to have an "appearance of age" [Whitcomb1988, pg. 233-238; Morris2000, pg. 203]. In addition to the severe difficulties presented by the "God the Great Deceiver" theology implicit in this speculation, such a notion is non-falsifiable and thus unscientific -- one could just as well assert that the world was created two weeks ago, with everyone's memory intact, and no one could cite any empirical evidence to prove otherwise. This is discussed in more detail at Deceiver.
With regards to biological evolution, in recent years some powerful new tools have arisen to test and explore the details of evolutionary history. These new tools, based on comparisons of DNA and amino acid sequences, have confirmed the traditional taxonomy of the biological world, determined in earlier years solely by similarities of anatomy and function, and now permit scientists to estimate times to evolutionary branching events in the past. To cite but one well-known example, the 141-amino-acid-long human alpha globin molecule (a component of hemoglobin) is identical with that of chimpanzees, differs by one location in gorillas, by 18 in horses, by 25 in rabbits, and by approximately 100 locations in various fish species. This is discussed in more detail at DNA.
A summary of the huge body of studies that have analyzed evolutionary science and affirmed its central tenets is given at Evolution evidence.
This lack of peer-reviewed publications, or even serious attempts at submitting material for peer review, presents a severe obstacle to creationism being taken seriously in the scientific world. After all, if creationists (individually or collectively) believe that any of their technical issues have significant merit on purely scientific grounds, why do they not compose them into well-researched and well-analyzed articles and submit these articles to recognized peer-reviewed scientific journals? After all, as emphasized in a recent Science letter signed by numerous prominent scientists (after brief mention of the prevailing theories of geology, big bang cosmology and evolution), "Even as these are overwhelmingly accepted by the scientific community, fame still awaits anyone who could show these theories to be wrong." [Gleick2010]. For additional details, see Peer review and Conspiracy.
However, with regards to the technical arguments raised by the creationist community, the consensus of the vast majority of scientists who have examined these issues is that their arguments are overwhelmingly refuted by well-known evidence. Virtually all of these issues were settled long ago in the scientific literature. And the latest DNA sequence data (produced thanks to a dramatic drop in the cost of DNA sequencing technology) all but scream "common ancestry between species" -- there is no other reasonable way to interpret these data (see DNA), sharply contradicting the creationist view of separate creation of individual species.
In any event, the creationists' arguments have not been published in reputable peer-reviewed scientific journals, so they cannot be taken seriously by the scientific community. If any of these writers do believe that they have solid arguments that could stand peer review, they are welcome to write these arguments in a soberly written, well-organized technical paper, and submit it to a prominent journal. After all, the requirements for a good peer-reviewed article are well known -- see Peer review. If the resulting article has true merit, many journals would jump at the opportunity to herald a major challenge to some aspect of evolutionary theory. Some prominent journals in the field include The Journal of Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Journal of Geophysical Research, Science and Nature. Each of these websites include a facility for submitting papers.
One overriding difficulty with both the creationist and intelligent design movements is that invoking a Creator or Designer whenever one encounters a difficult question is a "thinking stopper." Such an approach places numerous grand questions of our existence off-limits to human investigation, buried in the inscrutable mind of a mysterious supreme Being: "Why was the earth (or the universe in general) designed the way it was?" "How did the design and creative processes proceed?" "What physical laws were employed?" "Why those particular laws?" "What prompted the creation?" "Have other earths or universes been designed or created?" "Where are they?" Surely there is a more fruitful avenue for finding a harmony between science and religion than just saying "God created and/or designed it that way" and then deeming it either unnecessary or inappropriate to inquire further.
It is ironic, in a way, that the creationist and intelligent design movements seek to "prove" the hand of God in creation by seeking scientific evidence that certain aspects of the creation could not possibly have occurred by natural processes. By placing God on the anvil of scientific verification or refutation, these writers are implicitly affirming the scientific materialist worldview of the atheistic critics who are their most implacable foes -- see Atheists and God hypothesis. Further, these movements inevitably lead to such theological disasters as "God the Great Deceiver" theology, wherein God is thought to have constructed the world with an appearance of ancient evolutionary development [to mislead diligent seekers of truth?] (see Deceiver), and "God of the gaps" theology, wherein God is sought in the ever-shrinking gaps of what is currently unexplained in science [tantamount to theological suicide?] (see God of the gaps).
For these reasons, neither creationism nor intelligent design can be recommended for those seeking rational harmony between science and religion, to say the least! Other approaches, which acknowledge basic scientific precepts, and do not attempt to "combat" the world of science, are recommended instead -- see Harmony for a high-level discussion of these issues.
For additional information, see
Ages,
Complexity,
Court cases,
Deceiver,
Design,
DNA,
English text,
Evolution analogues,
Evolution evidence,
Evolution progress,
Falsifiable,
Fast evolution,
Fossils,
God of the gaps,
Information theory,
Intelligent design,
Novelty,
Origin,
Peer review,
Prehuman fossils,
Probability,
Punctuated equilibrium,
Radiocarbon dating,
Radiometric dating,
Reliability,
Scientists evolution,
Speciation,
Theory,
Thermodynamics,
Time machine and
Uniformitarian.
References
[See Bibliography].