Creationism is evolving. Several new varieties of creationism have appeared recently and are competing to stake out a niche in the intellectual landscape. Someone who last looked in on the creationism debate in the 1980s would today still find much that is familiar but would also be struck by the significant changes the controversy has undergone. Creationism is no longer the simple notion it was once taken to be.
in the old days, creationist is characterized by beliefs close to the following: God dictated the Bible word for word and so we must take it as literally true. From the Book of Genesis we know He miraculously created the world and all life, including our original ancestors, Adam and Eve, during a six day work week just six thousand years ago. He subsequently destroyed the world in a global flood, allowing only Noah and his family to survive in a huge Ark into which they had herded pairs of every kind of animal. All current people and animals are descendants of those on the Ark. And, oh yes, evolution did not happen, and we definitely are not related to monkeys. Today, however, one may find self proclaimed creationists who modify or reject almost every element of this cluster. Moreover, there are other aspects of creationism that to date have received little attention.
For most of us, our knowledge of the history of the creationism controversy begins with the trial of John Scopes, a substitute biology teacher in the little town of Dayton, Tennessee, in 1925, who had been charged with violating a state law against the teaching of evolution.
A Brief History of Creationism
The Scopes trial had actually been provoked by the American Civil Liberties Union to challenge the Tennessee law as unconstitutional. As in many legal battles, the particular case that gets used to test a law is less important than the larger issues that it exemplifies, and in this instance even the major constitutional issue wound up taking a back seat to larger cultural issues. The "Monkey Trial" was widely seen as a clash between science and religion, with the largerthanlife attorneys—Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan.
Scopes lost the case; the Scopes trial was the first case that was really fought in the media. The national and international press covered the trial in great detail and the public followed the proceedings with the same fascination that it more recently followed the O. J. Simpson trial. Bryan was a wellknown politician who had run for President, and saw the trial in part as an opportunity to raise awareness about the immorality that he thought was bringing American society to ruin— moral decay that he blamed on scientific materialism in general and evolution in particular for making people question biblical authority. Bryan himself took the stand to defend the Genesis account, though he came to regret this hubris.
Having heard the evidence itself, the public mostly ignored the court's ruling and concluded on its own that evolution had triumphed. Though Fundamentalists were able to pass three more antievolution bills in other states in the four years following the Scopes trial, for the most part they abandoned their legislative efforts against the teaching of evolution. On the other hand, with the statute officially upheld, most textbook publishers chose to avoid potential problems by simply deleting mention of evolution or Darwin in new and revised editions of their science texts until nearly the end of the 1950s, so in fact the teaching of evolution in science classes lost further ground.
The Tennessee statute under which Scopes was convicted remained in force until 1967, when another science teacher, Gary Scott, who had been fired from his job for violating it, successfully challenged the law. By this time, largely because of the push to upgrade American science education that had begun following the Soviet Union's launch of Sputnik in 1957, evolution had finally begun to become integrated into the science curriculum, at least in the biology textbooks put together by the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study. In 1973, however, the Tennessee legislature passed a new law that required that any textbook that discussed the origins of man and the world had to give equal emphasis to the Genesis account. The explicit reference to Genesis made it a straightforward matter for the U.S. Court of Appeals to overrule the new law in 1975 as unconstitutionally giving preferential treatment to the biblical view of creation. But creationists were working to win back lost territory and, in the wake of the latest Tennessee defeat, they adopted a new strategy of introducing legislation (in some twenty states) that promoted creationism without making any explicit reference to the Bible. This led to a series of important cases that made their way in the 1980s through the U.S. courts, the most significant of which was the 1982 Rev. Bill McLean et al. v.
Arkansas Board of Education case. Creationist activists had gotten the State of Arkansas to pass Act 590, legislation that required public schools to give "balanced treatment" to what they called "creationscience" and "evolutionscience," and it was the constitutionality of this Act that was at issue in the case. The idea of creationscience had arisen at about the same time as the Sputnik launch, and can be dated from the publication in 1961 of The Genesis Flood, by John C. Whitcomb Jr., a Protestant theologian, and Henry M. Morris, who held a doctorate in engineering from the University of Minnesota and who subsequently went on to found the Institute for Creation Research (ICR), which remains the largest and most influential creationist organization. It is no exaggeration to credit this book as the impetus for the revival of the movement and the contemporary image of the wildtype creationist. We will see more of the details of the position shortly, but the basic thrust of creationscience was (and is) that creationism qualified as an alternative model to evolution and that it is verifiable—and indeed verified—scientifically. Act 590 legislated that the public schools incorporate creationscience into the biology curriculum alongside evolution and treat the two models on a par. The McLean case challenged that law.
The plaintiffs called upon scientific luminaries such as Francisco Ayala and Stephen Jay Gould as expert witnesses on evolution and the fossil record, Harold Morowitz on the second law of thermodynamics, and G. Brent Dalrymple on radiometric and other methods of geological dating. Their combined testimony devastated the pseudoscientific arguments of creationscience. Reading the posttrial writeup in the journal Science, 3 one gets the impression that the case was won solely on the basis of the scientific testimony, but this assessment misunderstands a key feature of the case. It would not have been enough to show that creationscience was bad science, because the suit sought to overturn Act 590 on the grounds that creationscience was not a science but, rather, represented a disguised religious view of origins and thus still violated the Establishment Clause of the Constitution that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." To establish this conclusion, the more important testimony was that given by the witnesses whose expertise dealt with religion and philosophy of science. Among these were the Reverend Kenneth W. Hicks, Methodist bishop of Arkansas; Father Bruce Vawter, a De Paul University biblical scholar; George Marsden, a professor of American Religious History at Calvin College; Langdon Gilkey, professor of theology at University of Chicago Divinity School (who also was a consultant for the IRS, helping them determine whether particular groups qualified for religious tax exemptions); and Michael Ruse, philosopher of science from Guelph University
Judge William R. Overton's final opinion on the case makes little reference to the detailed scientific arguments refuting creationscience's claims but focuses more on the testimony that dealt with its status as religious or scientific.
"essential characteristics'' of science that he culled from Ruse's testimony, namely: 1.It is guided by natural law; 2.It has to be explanatory by reference to natural law; 3.It is testable against the empirical world; 4.Its conclusions are tentative, i.e., are not necessarily the final word; and 5.It is falsifiable. Judge Overton concluded that creationscience "fails to meet these essential characteristics" and thus "is not science." 4 Furthermore, based on the theological testimony, he concluded that creationscience was religious and thus that Act 590 did indeed violate the Establishment Clause
Cases that followed McLean v. Arkansas in the 1980s dealt with creationists' subsequent attempts to find a crack in its ruling to push creationism through. Louisiana's Act for Balanced Treatment of CreationScience and Evolution, for example, did not require teaching creationscience, but simply prohibited the teaching of evolution in public schools except when it was accompanied by instruction in creationscience. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Act unconstitutional in the 1987 Edwards v. Aguillard case, on the grounds that the Act impermissibly promoted religion by advancing the view that a supernatural being created humankind, and that comprehensive science education would be undermined if schools were forbidden to teach evolution.
the new creationists
Entering the last decade of the millennium, a new generation of creationists began to reevaluate the old approach and to recast themselves in order to try new avenues of attack upon evolution. The textbook Of Pandas and People, 6 for example, looks as though it was handtailored to try to slip between the lines of the law as drawn in the cases mentioned above. Also, at this time, some creationists began to avoid using the term "creationscience" altogether in favor of one or another euphemism, such as "abrupt appearance theory" or "initial complexity theory." The Pandas textbook was put together by the most significant group of new creationists, and the term that they use is "intelligentdesign theory," or sometimes "theistic science.''
Henry Morris turned over the reins to his son John Morris in the mid1990s and stepped back to concentrate on writing. The present is a critical period for the ICR's leaders: Although they continue to expand their operations and seem more successful than ever, they find that new creationist groups with different theological commitments are challenging their leadership of the movement. There is a struggle going on in the Creationist Tower, and this is what has sparked the interest of creationism watchers.
struggles over interpretation and which version of creationism is true
Factions within the Tower
serious theological differences among themselves that outsiders may find inconsequential or even indistinguishable. As far I can, I will try to describe people's views using the terms as they themselves
lical inerrancy." YoungEarth Creationism
Current literalist creationists usually retain the 6,000 year figure but accept that there may be a margin of error in this interpretation of the Genesis chronology, and so they concede that the universe could perhaps be up to 10,000 years old
The Answers in Genesis (AIG) organization with headquarters in Florence, Kentucky, was founded by Ken Ham and Dr. Gary Parker. Describing itself as "a nonprofit, nondenominational evangelical organization dedicated to the urgent task of spreading the creation message," AIG holds seminars and publishes the Creation Technical Journal which includes papers by "leading creation scientists" and Creation ex nihilo
Ohio is the Creation Research Society (CRS) that publishes the journal Creation Research Society Quarterly, and was founded to give a "complete reevaluation of science from the theistic viewpoint.'' The United States is the home to by far the largest number of creationist groups and creationism for the most part remains a distinctly American phenomenon. However, one does find a growing number of creationists in other countries, including Australia and New Zealand, as the Fundamentalist movement continues to spread beyond its historic roots in the rural American Bible Belt. One of the most wellestablished overseas groups is the Biblical Creation Society (BCS) in Great Britain. It used to publish the journal Biblical Creation, but in 1987, beginning a trend, BCS changed the name of its periodical to the less obviously religioussounding Origins.
The Center for Scientific Creation (CSC), located in Phoenix, Arizona, was founded by Air Force colonel Dr. Walt Brown, upon his retirement from the service.
For YECs like Davis and Frair the brief chronology that they believe is divinely revealed in the Bible takes precedence over the wealth of geological evidence supporting continental drift and the standard geologic timescale.
OldEarth Creationism
Heeren supports the scientific Big Bang theory and the view that the universe is around fifteen billion years old. Heeren explains that he used to be a YEC until he looked at the evidence for the Big Bang and saw that it proved that there was a beginning to the universe, and that the finetuning of the laws of the universe was a good argument for God. One of the main points of commonality among creationists is a shared desire that science be seen as providing scientific evidence of the Creator as depicted in the Bible. Youngearth creationscientists do this by arguing that science supports the revealed claims of plain Scripture, and thereby proves that the Bible had it exactly right all along.
Each "day" is like an age on a human scale, and each may have been millions or even billions of years long. For theological justification this "dayage interpretation"
On this reading we need not think that the six "days" of Creation would be short or even that they be the same length as each other. Perhaps they could even overlap one another.
these days can be cycles of cosmos, millions of years each and so on
According to this reading of the "gappists," there is a timegap of indeterminate length between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2. All of geological history including the ages of the dinosaurs may be fit into these "preEdenic" times.
Until the rise to dominance of the youngearth creationists beginning in the 1960s, the dayage and gap interpretations represented the standard creationist understanding of Genesis
Another recently promoted view holds that the days of Genesis 1 are actual days, but that they are not consecutive. Rather, they are days, separated perhaps by millions of years, on which God proclaimed the next phase of creative activity. This "days of proclamation interpretation" is defended by Glenn Morton in his Foundation, Fall and Flood. 20 Morton is a geologist who had been a youngearth creationist until the overwhelming evidence for an old earth he encountered in his work in petroleum geology forced him to reject that view and to make an agonizing reassessment of his Christian faith. He reports that this new interpretation has allowed many other YECs to become open to the scientific view.
The Battle between YECs and OECs
When different factions do confront one another, each side quotes its favored biblical passages and marshals its exegetical forces to show that its view is the correct Christian position, and attacks the opposing side as being ignorant, misguided or damaging to the Faith.
Hugh Ross old earth creationism
Mark Van Bebber and Paul Taylor, who are both directors of the youngearth creationist company Films for Christ, have written a book with the same main title as Ross's book, Creation and Time, that attacks Ross's brand of oldearth creationism point for point. They say they believe that Ross is a saved Christian, and they praise his opposition to evolution, and his desire to evangelize, as well as "his ability to remain relatively cool and selfcontrolled under pressure." 26 Nevertheless, they believe that his oldearth teachings "are leading people down a wrong and dangerous path—a trail trod by many in the past that has repeatedly led ultimately to even more serious theological problems and loss of faith in God's word."
The first lesson to be learned is that creationism is not a single conceptual species but has significant distinguishable varieties and subvarieties.
Progressive Creation vs. Theistic Evolutionism
Progressive creationism accepts much of the scientific picture of the development of the universe, assuming that for the most part it developed according to natural laws. However, especially with regard to life on earth, PCs hold that God intervened supernaturally at strategic points along the way. On their view, Creation was not a single sixday event but occurred in stages over millions of years.
The PC view tends to overlap with other views, particularly with oldearth creationism. Hugh Ross is a progressive creationist and is attacked by YECs for that view as much as for his view regarding the age of the earth.
Because theistic evolutionists do not reject evolutionary theory, they may not enter the Tower itself, and even though they believe in God they regularly find themselves under attack by creationists. It is in the debates between creationists and evangelical TEs that the arguments become most vitriolic. Creationists accuse TEs of collaborating with the enemy, and TEs accuse creationists of giving Christianity a bad name; though both sides may begin with charitable intentions the debates often degenerate into a verbal slugfest
members of every faction regularly charge advocates of others with being "deceitful," "naïve," or "unchristian.'' , hiding something not saying the full story, or anything else
Intelligent Design Creationism
The OECs' battle against the YECs and the other factional disputes are important developments, but such infighting is only one aspect of the evolution of the new creationism. Now we come to what may be the most significant recent development in the conceptual evolution of creationism.
clear whom to list among its leaders. Walter Bradley, Jon Buell, William Lane Craig, Percival Davis, Michael Denton, Mark Hartwig, J. P. Moreland, Hugh Ross, and Charles B. Thaxton are important figures. Another is John Angus Campbell, a University of Memphis rhetorician, and he mentions Nancy Pearcey, Del Ratzsch, Tom Woodward, John Mark Reynolds, Walter ReMine, and Robert Koons (who is a colleague of mine in the philosophy department at The University of Texas at Austin), as being among the "key players" of "our movement." 37 Among the more wellknown names to sign on to the crusade are Michael Behe (Lehigh University) and Dean Kenyon (San Francisco State University) on the scientific side, and Alvin Plantinga and Peter van Inwagen (both of Notre Dame) on the philosophical side. Perhaps more significant, however, are the younger members of the group—William Dembski, Paul Nelson, Stephen C. Meyer, and Jonathan Wells. These "four horsemen" have dedicated their lives to the creationist cause and have been collecting multiple graduate degrees (Dembski in mathematics, philosophy and theology; Meyer and Nelson in philosophy; and Wells in religious studies and molecular and cellular biology)
The most influential new creationist and unofficial general of this elite force is Phillip Johnson, of the University of California at Berkeley. Johnson is neither a scientist nor a philosopher nor a theologian, but is a professor of criminal law at Berkeley Law School
Princeton Apologetics Seminar, William Dembski drew the line clearly in the sand: Design theorists are no friends of theistic evolution. As far as design theorists are concerned, theistic evolution is American evangelicalism's illconceived accommodation to Darwinism. 42 Emphasis in original
New Fields of Battle
In 1997, I attended a public hearing held by the Texas State Board of Education on their proposed curriculum standards for the state schools, and I listened in amazement as creationists stood in turn to testify against inclusion of evolutionary terminology in the science curriculum. They claimed that biologists were abandoning the theory and that, in any case, it was "not that important in biology" and so students should not waste their time on it. If evolution had to be included, then at least teachers should be instructed to present the scientific evidence against it as well. Religious conservatives on the Board spoke in strong support of these proposals and urged that evolutionary concepts be omitted or put in "neutral language." Another proposal they recommended was to include discussion of "alternative theories" such as "design." This same scenario is played out in public hearings around the country and, with too few scientists taking creationism seriously enough to pay close attention, state boards of education have often compromised or given in to creationists' demands. In Alabama, the proposed curriculum was amended to water down statements on evolution. For example, a science requirement to "Explain how fossils provide evidence that life has changed over time'' was changed to "Examine fossil evidence for change." Other states have included evolution "disclaimers." In Clayton County, Georgia, the school board directed science teachers to paste into biology textbooks a disclaimer that began as follows: This textbook may discuss evolution, a controversial theory some scientists present as a scientific explanation for the origin of living things, such as plants, animals and humans.... No human was present when life first appeared on earth. Therefore, any statement about life's origins should be considered as theory, not fact. 48
The Iowa Republican Party included a plank in their 1996 platform that stated: We believe the theory of Creation Science should be taught in public schools along with other theories ... [and] support the stocking of Creationist produced resources in all taxfunded public and school libraries. [Emphasis in original] A study of twentytwo party platforms by People for the American Way found these as well as similar procreationist planks in Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas. Creationism even appeared as an issue at the national political level when presidential candidate Pat Buchanan included it prominently in his campaign. He put his position this way: Look, my view is, I believe that God created Heaven and earth.... I think this: What ought to be taught as fact is what is known as fact. I don't believe it is demonstrably true that we have descended from apes. I don't believe it. I do not believe all that.
The Nature of the Controversy
Although there is no scientific controversy about creationism within biology, there is certainly a conflict in the sense that biology must deal with the regular attacks from without. In this sense, however, the scientific "controversy" goes well beyond evolutionary biology. As we will see, creationism calls into question not only the conclusions of biology, but also of many other specific sciences. More significant still, especially from my point of view as a philosopher of science, is that the new creationism also calls into question scientific methodology itself. Going beyond the classic "creation science" that simply proposed that the content of evolutionary science was wrong, the new creationists' call for a "theistic science" is far more radical in that it would replace not only the content but also the methodological foundations of science.
A Religious Controversy?
Because almost all of the conflict that reaches the level of public debate involves creationists attacking evolution and scientists defending the same, most people have the erroneous, though understandable, view that this is just a battle between Fundamentalist Evangelicals and scientists, and do not recognize that many mainstream Christian theologians are equally involved in opposing creationism.
Many mainline religions and Christian denominations have explicitly declared that they find no conflict with evolution. In Voices for Evolution (1995), Molleen Matsumura compiled statements supporting evolution from a wide range of religious groups
A Philosophical Controversy?
The Bible is either inerrant or worthless Christianity or Atheism Certainty or Skepticism Absolute Morality or Subjectivism (Relativism) Readers will have to decide for themselves whether they agree that the conceptual choices are really so stark as creationists portray them. This allornothingatall view is overly simplistic, and I will try to point out intermediate positions that are available
A Political Controversy?
But even when the controversy is considered in this "external" political mode there is still an important sense in which events will be determined by ideas. This takes us back to the original battle scene and the analogy of evolution in the intellectual landscape. The new creationists may or may not succeed in taking over the Tower, and in their struggle a speciation event may or may not take place. Whatever happens within the Tower, however, we can be sure that the new creationists will continue to press the war upon evolution.