SNG,
Yes those articles were incredible (that's why I still remember them). But the trick was, of course, reducing "creationism" to the assertion of a 6.000 year-old universe (straw man), from which they distinguished themselves by defining the days of Genesis 1 as longer periods and by excepting the "creation of heavens/sky and earth" in Genesis 1:1, before the first day. The first article was obviously a bait for shortsighted "scientific minds".
Here are the articles in their entirety (it's worth reading):
Creationism—Is
It Scientific?THE controversy between those who expound an evolutionary origin for man and those who hold to the Biblical origin by creation has not ceased to simmer or boil for over a hundred years now. Last year it boiled up again in a federal court trial in Little Rock, Arkansas. The point at issue was a state law requiring that "creation science" be taught in the public schools along with evolution. The law was held to be unconstitutional, and the decision was widely hailed as a victory for evolution.
Scientists, theologians of various denominations, schoolteachers and the American Civil Liberties Union joined hands in assailing the law. It was defended by other scientists, theologians, schoolteachers and the state attorney general. The trial and the ensuing decision were widely publicized in the news media, attracting international attention.
The claims and counterclaims by witnesses ranged from established facts to absurd opinions. It is understandable that the average person might be left confused as to what the outcome means. Did the judge’s decision mean that evolution is now a fact? That the human race is millions of years old? That the Bible is wrong? That we should no longer teach children that God created man?
Before drawing any such conclusions, let us look into the issues involved. What is this "creation science" that was on trial? Is it scientifically based, or, as its detractors assert, is it a facade for sectarian religious dogma?
What Is Creation Science?
Supporters of creationism wrote a definition that was incorporated in the Arkansas law and inserted in the judicial opinion. It includes the scientific evidence that there are limits to the changes within the kinds of living things that were originally created, and that mutations and natural selection do not suffice to change one species into another. It also asserts that the earth and everything that lives on it are the result of a recent act of creation, and that all the geologic strata with their fossils resulted from a single worldwide Flood.
The framers of the law were careful to omit any reference to God or the Bible, in order to avoid constitutional bars against teaching religion in the schools. However, their writings and the testimony given at Little Rock revealed that the creation and the Flood referred to are those described in the Bible book of Genesis. Furthermore, although the time of creation was not spelled out in the law, they acknowledged that "recent" means perhaps 6,000, in any case not more than 10,000, years ago.
Evolution’s Faults Shielded
Unfortunately for the creationists, their efforts in the trial to expose the weak points of evolution were frustrated. Such shortcomings have long been apparent to open-minded students. We mention them only briefly here.
The evidence from experiments on mutations was not emphasized in the trial. Overwhelmingly, the results of such research are that mutations lead only to degeneration of the genetic pattern, producing defective specimens. They do not create new organs or new functions. They never lead to new species. The facts are contrary to the evolution theory and support the corollary principle of creation, stated in Genesis, that every kind of plant or animal can produce only its own kind. But this strong argument was neglected.
Furthermore, the geological record does not contain the continuous gradation of fossils from one species to another, which Darwin’s theory would require. Rather, it shows that new species appear suddenly, in the sedimentary column, without any connection to older forms. Even the evolutionists are currently embroiled in arguments about a new theory, called punctuated equilibrium, which admits that the long search for missing links has failed.
The sudden appearance of new species is really strong evidence for creation and against evolution. But it was not a factor in the trial. Why did the creationists not use it to advantage? They could not because they do not associate different geologic strata with different epochs of creation, but profess that they were all formed at the same time, when Noah’s Flood subsided. Being fettered by this non-Biblical doctrine, the creationists could use the fossil evidence only to tear down evolution. But they were reminded that it was not evolution that was on trial; it was creationism.
Creationism’s Faults Exposed
It was this aspect of the creationists’ thesis, tied to their doctrine of recent creation, that got the spotlight in the trial and in the news about it. Their teaching that the earth and even the universe are less than 10,000 years old contradicts all the findings of modern science. They are so far out of step that they invite ridicule from scientists.
Geologists can point to their measurements of geologic processes that extend far beyond that narrow time frame. Ocean sediments have accumulated over far more than 10,000 years. The time to build mountains and wear them down is measured in millions of years. For continents to drift apart and form oceans takes hundreds of millions of years. To say that all of this goes back only 10,000 years is simply absurd in the eyes of geologists.
Astronomers are equally outraged. They are accustomed to think not only of planetary cycles that take days or years but also of long aeons of time for stars and galaxies to form. They deal with such vast distances that even light, traveling at 186,000 miles (300,000 km) a second, takes billions of years to reach their telescopes. They estimate the distance to the Magellanic Clouds in the southern skies, our nearest neighboring galaxy, to be over 100,000 light-years. If this were created only 10,000 years ago, as the creationists hold, we would still be waiting 90,000 years for the first glimmer of light from it to reach us. In the northern hemisphere, on a dark night good eyes can make out the Andromeda nebula, the light of which takes 1,500,000 years to reach us. Obviously it must have been there longer than that. No wonder the American Astronomical Society went on record in January with a resolution applauding the Arkansas decision.
Physicists also protest that it is impossible to squeeze their studies into a time span of a mere 10,000 years. They point to radioactive elements like uranium and thorium that have lives measured in billions of years. The accumulation of distinctive isotopes of lead, which are the end products of radioactive decay, shows that some of the oldest rocks in the earth’s crust must have lain undisturbed for as much as 3 or 4 billion years. And their interpretation of the red-shifted light from distant galaxies, out at the edge of the visible universe, sets its beginning from 10 to 20 billion years ago.
Is This Science?
How can creationists reconcile such evidence with their dogma that everything started just a few thousand years ago? When God created the rocks with uranium in them, did he also put in the right amount of the special isotopes of lead that would make them look a billion years old? When he made the Andromeda galaxy, did he also fill the path to the earth with light waves, all along its 10 thousand million billion (10,000,000,000,000,000,000) miles, so we would not have to wait to see it in the sky? Would the God of truth purposely insert such illusions in his creation just to deceive us?
Such reasoning reminds one of the story told of the little old Fundamentalist lady who was being shown through the Dinosaur National Monument in Utah. She did not believe the park ranger’s speech about the huge reptiles that had once lived there and whose fossilized bones she was seeing. She offered another explanation for them: "The Lord put them there to fool you."
Speaking of dinosaurs, where do they fit into the creationists’ scheme of things? In their view, human beings and dinosaurs and every other kind of animal, extinct or extant, lived on earth at the same time before the Flood. They were all swept away together in a grand mélange by the Floodwaters. How, then, do they account for the orderly sequence of fossils in sedimentary rocks, starting with simple forms of life in the lower strata and followed by increasingly diverse and complex creatures in higher strata? They can only offer a set of implausible and contradictory theories as to how all kinds of plants and animals could have been sorted out of the potpourri of carcasses and laid down in separate layers.
Trying to defend their arbitrary structure of "creation science" with such weak, strained hypotheses, they were soundly rebutted by the scientists’ testimony at Little Rock. They were left without any credible claim to being scientific.
Creationism Discredited
The best-known scientist who testified for the creationists was Chandra Wickramasinghe, who was brought from Wales to appear at the trial. He and the British astronomer Fred Hoyle have advanced an unorthodox theory that rejects the doctrine that life evolved on earth. They say that life started in outer space and fell to earth on comets or meteorites. He testified that the complexity of genetic patterns makes it impossible for them to have formed by chance. So, he concludes, they must have been designed by an intelligent Creator. But his testimony boomeranged on the creationists when he said that no rational scientist could believe the earth is less than a million years old.
Based on the testimony given, both by the challengers and the defenders of the law, the judge could hardly do otherwise than find that creationism is not scientific. It was clearly exposed that its proponents do not arrive at conclusions by the scientific method of gathering all the evidence and then fitting it to a hypothesis. Instead, they start with a fixed sectarian interpretation of Genesis and seek evidence to support that. Contrary evidence they try to ignore, or, when they cannot, they invent unlikely explanations for the evident conflict with hard facts. The Arkansas law was an ill-advised effort to get their views of creation into the public-school curriculum.
Then does the failure of creationism mean that creation is only a fiction? Does it mean that the Bible is not true, or does it mean, rather, that a narrow, misguided interpretation of the Bible is wrong? We shall discuss the difference between creation and creationism in the next issue of Awake! in an article entitled "Evolution, Creation, or Creationism—Which Do You Believe?"
Evolution,
Creation, or Creationism—Which Do You Believe?CONFLICT between science and religion is an old story. Up till the 16th century the accepted religious dogma was that the sun and the planets all revolved around the earth. In 1543 Copernicus proposed a new system with the earth and the planets moving around the sun. This aroused strong religious antagonism at first. It took the better part of a hundred years and the support of Galileo’s telescopic observations and Kepler’s mathematical analysis of the planets’ movements to win general recognition.
Until the 18th century, Western religions held that the earth had been created a mere 6,000 years ago. Hutton in 1785 proposed the theory of uniformitarianism, which demanded far longer periods of time for geological changes. Again religious controversy was raised for some 50 years, but Lyell’s field work and systematization of geologic strata finally won common agreement to the idea of a much older earth.
Up till the mid-19th century the Biblical account of divine creation of man was commonly believed. Darwin’s theory of the origin of species by evolution was published in 1859, and quickly stirred intense religious objection. Evolutionists, well over a century later, might like to think that their doctrine had by now won universal acceptance. True, many church leaders have capitulated, but there yet remains vigorous and determined opposition to the theory of evolution. Darwin’s supporters are still awaiting their Galileo or Lyell. Meanwhile, many well-informed people are beginning to believe that evolution is not inevitably destined to repeat the triumphs of earlier revolutions in scientific thought.
An organized crusade is currently seen in efforts to downgrade the teaching of evolution in the public schools through laws requiring that creation be given equal time. In the most recent legal skirmish, a federal judge decided that "creation science" as defined in an Arkansas law did not qualify on an equal basis with evolution. This setback was disappointing to many who hold that evolution does not satisfactorily explain life’s origin. What went wrong?
Flaws in "Scientific Creationism"
From the testimony given in the trial, it is manifest that the scientific evidence for creation was not really presented in clear confrontation with evolution. Instead, it was lost to sight in clashes over side issues, particularly two tenets of creationism that had been written into the law:
1. That creation took place only a few thousand years ago.
2. That all geologic strata were formed by the Biblical Deluge.
Neither of these dogmas is really crucial to the central question of whether living things were created or not. They are merely doctrines held by the members of a few churches, notably the Seventh-Day Adventists, who form the core of the group that sponsored the law. When these sectarian beliefs were written into the law as something that must be taught in public schools, that law was foredoomed to be declared unconstitutional.
Creationist Doctrines Not Biblical
But does the legal defeat of scientific creationism, as this movement is known, reflect unfavorably on the Bible? Are the doctrines of recent creation and a diluvial origin of geologic strata found in God’s Word?
An informed Bible student would answer, No. While the Bible clearly states that the heavens and the earth and everything in them were created by God, it does not say when those things were created. Most of the defense witnesses were shackled by the religious dogma that the six creative days in Genesis were all encompassed in a period of 144 hours. This harks back to an erroneous fundamentalist teaching that was not challenged by the science of the 17th century, but that is no longer tenable in the light of present knowledge. The Bible itself does not set any such time limit on the days of creation.
The first verse of Genesis simply says, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." If we take this to mean the creation of the starry heavens, the galaxies, and the solar system of which the earth is a part, we are talking about events that preceded the first creative day. The description of the earth’s condition in verse 2 also precedes the first day. Not until verses 3 to 5 do we enter upon the activity of the first day of creation.
So no matter how long the days might prove to be, verses 1 and 2 describe things already accomplished, and they fall outside any time frame encompassing the creative days. If geologists want to say that the earth is 4 billion years old, or astronomers want to make the universe 20 billion years old, the Bible student has no quarrel with them. The Bible simply does not indicate the time of those events.
The next point to note is that the word "day" is used in many different senses in the Bible. It does not always mean a 24-hour period. Sometimes it means only the hours of sunlight, that is, 12, more or less. Sometimes it stands for a year. Sometimes it means the years during a certain generation. In several references a day is 1,000 years, and in some even longer. No doubt the days in Genesis chapter 1 were very much longer. But the Bible does not there say how long they were.
So all the argument in the Little Rock trial about the recency of creation and the attention it received in the news media were entirely extraneous to the question of whether man was created or evolved. The time of creation is not the same as the fact of creation. The two should not have been confused.
With the basic point established that the Bible text does not conflict with scientific theories about the age of the universe, we may also leave open the question of the age and origin of geologic strata. The Bible says nothing at all about the formation of sedimentary layers, whether at the time of the Flood or earlier. All the voluminous writings of creationists on this subject, which came under critical examination in the trial, have been motivated by the desire to reconcile the existence of the geologic column and its fossils, dinosaurs and all, with their claim for a 6- to 10-thousand-year age of the earth. If this claim is invalid, all the rest of the argument is beside the point.
Science Supports Creation
As readers of Awake! know, there is a wealth of scientific evidence for creation. The weight of such evidence has moved many leading scientists of the 20th century to speak publicly of creation and a Creator. Among these have been William T. Kelvin, Dmitri Mendeleev, Robert A. Millikan, Arthur H. Compton, Paul Dirac, George Gamov, Warren Weaver and Wernher von Braun, to name some.
Cosmological arguments for creation have been mustered by Robert Jastrow in his book God and the Astronomers. Speaking of the big bang theory of the origin of the universe, many scientists have freely used the word "creation." Even scientists whose personal predilections are against the idea of creation reluctantly confess that the convincing nature of the evidence leaves them wondering.
The Bible Versus Evolution
To get the issue between creation and evolution in clear focus, we must strip away the fuzzy shroud of dogma carried over from 17th-century religion. Then let us compare, point by point, what the Bible says with what evolutionists teach and see which agrees with established facts.
First, the Bible says that God is the source of life. (Ps. 36:9) Life did not arise and cannot arise spontaneously from lifeless material. This is in complete agreement with scientific laws and experimental tests. The laws of statistics, the law of entropy, calculations from thermodynamics and kinetics all converge on the conclusion that spontaneous generation of life cannot occur. Older reports of spontaneous generation are given no credence since the experiments of Pasteur. In controlled experiments, it just does not happen. Examination of soil from the moon and chemical tests on the surface of Mars verify that life has not arisen on those planets.
Secondly, the Bible says that every living thing brings forth its own kind of offspring. (Genesis 1:11, 21, 24) Neither the evidence from paleontology nor experiments in breeding or mutation have ever been shown to refute this principle. Fossil remains from ancient geologic strata of species that are still alive are identical with present-day forms. Wide diversity within a given kind may appear both in nature and in breeding experiments, but in no case does it ever pass beyond the limits to produce a new kind.
Thirdly, with respect to man the Bible discloses the time of his beginning, about 6,000 years ago. (Plants and animals have been here much longer.) With this date history and archaeology are in close agreement. Claims for older human fossils by evolutionists are subject to dispute and do not disprove the Bible record.
Truth of Creation Vindicated
What, then, is the Bible-based position in this controversy?
The fact of creation is clearly stated in the Bible. It is in harmony with scientific evidence found in astronomy, physics, chemistry, geology and biology.
The theory of evolution is directly contrary to the Bible. It has failed to give a satisfactory explanation of the facts of paleontology and biology.
The Bible does not set the time of creation of "the heavens and the earth." The creationists’ position on this is not supported by the Bible, and their theories conflict with the facts of astronomy, physics and geology.
The Christian’s faith in the Genesis account of creation stands firm, unperturbed by current religious-scientific squabbles. That faith is based on "the evident demonstration of realities though not beheld." (Hebrews 11:1) Above all, it is backed by the testimony of Jesus Christ: "Did you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female?" Further, in the revelation, which God gave him, we read: "You are worthy, Jehovah, even our God, to receive the glory and the honor and the power, because you created all things, and because of your will they existed and were created."—Matthew 19:4, 5; Revelation 4:11; 1:1.
