Many religions, but not all, have creation stories which tell about the origins of the world, of the plants and animals, and of the humans. In oral traditions, these stories are told as metaphors rather than as actual histories. As a metaphor, the story teller could alter the story slightly to meet the needs of the audience. With the invention of writing, however, these stories were written down and became unchanging, often evolving into religious dogma more than metaphor. There are some people who believe documents, such as the Christian Bible, are to be interpreted literally, not as metaphors but actual histories describing actual events. By the nineteenth century it was evident that the scientific findings from geology, physics, chemistry, astronomy, and biology did not agree with the literal interpretation of the Bible. The biblical literalists, therefore, felt that science was wrong, perhaps even a tool of Satan.
In an entry in The New Encyclopedia of Unbelief, biologist Richard Dawkins describes the conflict between the scientific theory of evolution and biblical literalism:
“A fierce religious war is systematically being waged against the values of scientific truth, and the frontline trenches—by the enemy’s choice—are in the field of biological education and specifically Darwinism. The reason is clear. Charles Darwin comprehensively destroyed the biological version of the argument from design, always by far the most popular argument for belief in a deity.”
Creationism
Creationism is a belief system in which all scientific findings and observations about the world which appear to disagree with a literal interpretation of the Christian Bible are rejected and held to be false. The preacher Billy Sunday puts it this way:
“When the word of God says one thing and scholarship says another, scholarship can go to hell.”
In his book Evolution: The Remarkable History of a Scientific Idea, Edward Larson writes:
“When Sunday peopled hell in his sermons, Charles Darwin inevitably flailed in the fiery flames.”
Billy Sunday preached:
“I don’t believe the old bastard theory of evolution…I believe I am just as God made me.”
There are two broad categories of creationism: young-earth creationism and the intelligent design movement. Within the young-earth creationists, there is a small group who still feels that the earth is flat. There is another group who feels that while the earth is not flat that it is the center of the universe. In an entry in The New Encyclopedia of Unbelief, evolutionary biologist Massimo Pigliucci writes:
“Young-earth creationism is a quintessential expression of anti-intellectualism, the preference for a folk understanding of the world over the one proposed by scientists and intellectuals.”
Creation Science
Biology is generally considered a science and evolution is one of the principle features of biology. This means that if public schools have a science curriculum which includes the teaching of biology, the basic concepts of evolution should be included. Creationists, however, are offended by the teaching of evolution and, calling evolution controversial, they put pressure on public schools to avoid teaching it. In his book The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, Carl Sagan writes:
“Under the guise of ‘creationism,’ a serious effort continues to be made to prevent evolutionary theory—the most powerful integrating idea in all of biology, and essential for other sciences ranging from astronomy to anthropology—from being taught in the schools.”
While the tactic of saying that evolution was just a theory (a clear indication that they had little idea of what a scientific theory was) and claiming that it was somehow controversial (it is not controversial in science, but only in some religions), the creationists were able to prevent the teaching of evolution in some public schools. Some creationists, however, realized that they needed a better approach, one that would not only prevent young minds from being exposed to evolution, but which would also present a Protestant Christian story of creation as though it were a scientific fact. With this idea in mind, Creation Science was born and presented as either a substitute for evolution or an alternative to it.
Henry M. Morris created what would become the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) in 1970. Edward Larson writes:
“Fundamentalists no longer merely denounced Darwinism as false; they offered a scientific-sounding alternative of their own, which they called either ‘scientific creationism’ (as distinct from religious creationism) or ‘creation science’ (as opposed to evolution science).”
The ICR biology textbooks soon dominated the home-school and Christian school markets. They also provided a model school board resolution showing that the teaching of Creation Science would not violate the Constitutional prohibition against the establishment of religion.
A.C. Grayling, in his book The God Argument: The Case Against Religion and for Humanism, writes:
“Creation science purports to show that the geological and fossil record is explicable as the outcome of two events: a single act of creation by a god, and a subsequent worldwide flood.”
The a priori requirement of a belief in a creator god puts creation science in the realm of religion rather than science. While geology shows numerous large floods around the world at various times, there is no evidence supporting the idea of a single world-wide flood. Edward Larson writes:
“Virtually no secular scientists accepted the doctrines of creation science; but that did not deter creation scientists from advancing scientific arguments for their position.”
Arkansas passed a law requiring the teaching of Creation Science in public schools. In 1981 the court concluded that the law was unconstitutional as the specific purpose of Creation Science was to advance a specific religion. In 1987, the Supreme Court ruled that the purpose of Creation Science was to provide a particular religious doctrine an advantage. From the viewpoint of the Court, Creation Science was religion, not science, and was therefore unconstitutional. Edward Larson writes:
“The Supreme Court’s decision effectively barred the teaching of creation science in American public schools, but it did little to wean theologically conservative Christians from creation science. If anything, it accelerated the growth of Christian schools, where an ever-larger number of students learn their biology from ICR textbooks.”
Intelligent Design
In the 1990s, as an attempt to get around the court rulings, creationist proponents created the idea of Intelligent Design Theory (ID). In an entry in The New Encyclopedia of Unbelief, physics professor Mark Perakh writes:
“A modern version of creationism, intelligent design theory is based on the assumption that the universe in general and biological life in particular are too complex and too highly specialized to have come into existence by chance and therefore must be purposeful action by an intelligent designer.”
While creationists view the designer as the god described in their version of the Christian Bible, in Intelligent Design Theory, the identity of the designer is left vague and undefined. In an essay in The Epic of Evolution: Science and Religion in Dialogue, Ronald Numbers writes:
“Intelligent design refers to the belief that the careful study of nature, especially at the microscopic level, reveals such complexity that only a ‘designer’ could account for it. Although the advocates of this view rarely refer to God by name, it’s clear that they identify the designer with God.”
With regard to Intelligent Design, A.C. Grayling writes:
“It does not invoke either of the two creation myths in Genesis directly, but tries to argue on putative scientific grounds that there is irreducible complexity in nature that can only be explained as the outcome of conscious and intelligent design.”
Proponents of Intelligent Design have attempted to argue that this is a scientific theory which is at least on a par with that of evolution. According to Grayling:
“What appears to underlie ID theory’s insistence that complex structures cannot be explained as outcomes of the accretion of simpler structures is that they do not know enough chemistry or biology to see how in fact it happens.”
Proponents of Intelligent Design make a distinction between microevolution and macroevolution. Macroevolution involves speciation, that is the evolution of a new species. While the Intelligent Design proponents are willing to accept the reality of microevolution, they deny macroevolution. Mark Perakh writes:
“Evolutionary biology denies any substantive differences between microevolution and macroevolution. Random mutations in the genome accompanied by natural selection (and/or by a number of other mechanisms studied by evolutionary biology) have no limits that would prevent the emergence of new species.”
In science, including evolutionary biology, scientists engage in programs of research and publish their findings in peer-reviewed journals. The advocates of Intelligent Design, most of whom have little or no background in scientific disciplines, do not conduct research nor publish papers in peer-reviewed science journals. Mark Perakh writes:
“They had suggested no research program based on intelligent design theory. From this, it was clear that intelligent design theory is scientifically futile and that its quasi-scientific mantle barely conceals its religious roots and motivations.”
Summary
Both Creation Science and Intelligent Design (ID) evolved out of Six Day Creationism which is based on a literal reading of the Bible. Both are based, therefore, on the creation stories of the Abrahamic religions. Both of these are considered to be religious rather than scientific approaches to describing the natural world, and they are intended to promote an evangelical fundamentalist Protestant Christian worldview.
Concerning evolution, Richard Dawkins writes:
“A well-established fact is a theory that has survived a bombardment of falsification attempts to the point where withholding the accolade ‘fact’ becomes pedantic sophistry. Such is the current status of the fact of evolution.”
In an entry in The New Encyclopedia of Unbelief, evolutionary biologist Massimo Pigliucci writes:
“…evolutionary theory has the same status in modern biology that quantum mechanics or relativity have in physics: While many issues remain open to further research (both fundamental physics and organismal biology are active fields of inquiry), few, if any, practitioners with the required expertise actually think any of these theories will be fundamentally challenged on scientific grounds anytime soon.”