DWISE1'S EARLY-BIRD PRESENTATION

Each Sunday before services, our church, the Unitarian Universalist Church of South County (since renamed to Tapestry), would have "early bird" sessions in which a member would give a presentation on a variety of subjects of interest. On 14 March 1999, I gave a presentation on creation science. The following is the handout I used:

Creation Science

Introduction:

My name is David Wise. We have been members of this church since 1992. My creation/evolution web pages start at http://cre-ev.dwise1.net/.

What's happening:

Creationists claim that they have scientific evidence that supports Genesis and disproves evolution. This body of evidence is part of "creation science."
Creationists are using these claims to try to have evolution removed from the classroom or else have it "balanced" by having creation science taught as well, or else have the evidence against evolution taught, or else have a disclaimer read, or else have other alternatives taught.
Creationists are pursuing their goals by pressuring textbook publishers, school boards, or individual teachers; and by lobbying state legislatures for creationists laws.
The "Dark Side" of creation science is becoming increasingly apparent as more and more Christians report of their faith having been either severely shaken or destroyed by creation science.
My qualifications:

I have been following the creation/evolution issue since 1981:

A creationist presentation came to the local university in 1981. I had duty that night and could not attend. I had originally heard creationist claims around 1969, but had dismissed them out-of-hand then as being spurious. Now seeing that they were still around 12 years later and going strong, I thought that there might be something to their claims after all. So I decided to find out what their claims were and to check them out.
That year, I saw my first creationist in action on CBN, when I caught the last 15 minutes of a televised debate. I watched as the "evolutionist" demonstrated that a hominid pelvis has both ape and human characteristics, whereupon the creationist kept avoiding and ignoring the human characteristics and pronounced it "100% ape; nothing human about it!" Then the show’s host concluded by reading the standard creationist misrepresentation of punctuated equilibria (i.e., of a snake laying an egg, out of which a bird hatches), after which he declared yet another creationist victory. That show made a lasting impression on me.
That same year saw the trial of the Arkansas "Balanced Treatment" law.

I have been a member of the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) since I first heard of it in 1984.
From the mid-80’s to 1991, I was very involved with the on-line creation/evolution discussions on CompuServe’s Religious Issues Forum (Religion and Science Section) and Science Forum (Biology Section). A number of my files should still be in their libraries [72747,3317].
From May 1996 to August 1998, I engaged in an email correspondence with local creation science activist, Bill Morgan. This correspondence was terminated unilaterally when he cancelled his AOL account. His web page is currently at http://www.fishdontwalk.com/ .
I browse the Web regularly for creation science topics.
When friends succumbed to the "Jesus Freak" movement of the late 60’s, I observed Christian Fundamentalism and its teachings up close as a kind of "fellow traveler." As a result, I feel that I can be a bit more aware of and understanding of the religious aspects and implications of creation science.

So what is "creation science"?

Creation science is not the same thing as creationism. There are many different forms of creationism, of which creation science is only one. Many of creation science’s staunchest opponents call themselves "creationist" and a number of them are even evangelical Christians.

Creationism is a general term for belief in a divine creator, which can take on many different forms depending on the individual group's religious beliefs and traditions, most of which are non-Judeo-Christian. Creationism is a religious belief.

Creation science is an attempt to claim the existence of scientific evidence supporting one very specific form of creationism, called "young-earth creationism" (YEC). More specifically, creation science is a campaign to sway public opinion in favor of one particular sect's narrow set of beliefs with the goal of "killing evolution." Creation science is a political ploy in support of a specific religious belief.

Disclaimer: it is all too easy to get sloppy and lazy and use the term "creationist" to refer specifically to believers in creation science. That is what I have done here. Unless specifically indicated otherwise, in this document the term "creationist" will be used to refer specifically to the leaders of creation science and to their followers.

Creation Science is a branch of fundamentalist Christian apologetics:

Fundamentalist Christian doctrine requires that Scripture cannot contain any errors. One principal function of apologetics is to harmonize Christian Scripture and doctrine with internal contradictions (e.g., one verse contradicting another) and with external contradictions (e.g., a verse appearing contrary to "real world" facts). This harmonization is usually accomplished by showing through re-interpretation of either Scripture or of the conflicting facts or of both, that the contradiction does not really exist and is just apparent.
This function of apologetics serves two basic purposes:

Preserving the faith of believers by reassuring them that their beliefs are not contradicted by Scripture or by real-world evidence.
Aiding in proselytizing non-believers by showing them that the new beliefs they are to convert to are reasonable and are actually supported by the evidence.

Creation science’s role in apologetics is to serve both basic functions. Both believers and non-believers would view much of modern science as contradicting a literal interpretation of Genesis. Creation science is used to demonstrate to the faithful and non-believers alike that science actually supports a literal interpretation of Genesis. It is used in proselytizing to show that the scientific evidence does not support, and even disproves, the only other alternative, "Godless evolutionism," so it only makes sense to choose creation.
Creation science’s methodology for harmonizing science and Scripture consists mainly of misrepresenting science and of selectively ignoring much of the evidence, claiming that it does not exist.

Because literalist Christian doctrine requires that Scripture must be literally true in its entirety and cannot contain any error, creation science also teaches that certain scientific evidence cannot exist if Scripture is to have any meaning; e.g., "If the earth is more than 10,000 years old then Scripture has no meaning." (John Morris, current President of the Institution for Creation Research (ICR)). In their theology, to say that Scripture has no meaning is tantamount to saying that their entire religion is false and that there is no God.

The creationists’ own definitions of creation science derive directly from their apologetics and drive creationist strategy and tactics and the nature of their claims:

Arkansas Act 590 (1981), Section 4, defined it thus:

(a) ``Creation-science'' means the scientific evidences for creation and inferences from those scientific evidences. Creation-science includes the scientific evidences and related inferences that indicate:

Sudden creation of the universe, energy, and life from nothing;

The insufficiency of mutation and natural selection in bringing about development of all living kinds from a single organism;

Changes only within fixed limits of originally created kinds of plants and animals;

Separate ancestry for man and apes;

Explanation of the earth's geology by catastrophism, including the occurrence of a worldwide flood; and

A relatively recent inception of the earth and living kinds.

Creation science employs and promotes the Two-Model Approach (TMA), which forms the basis of their "balanced treatment" strategy for getting into the public schools.
- The TMA sets up an either-or dichotomy which lumps all explanations of origins into two basic "models": the "creation model" and the "evolution model." As Dr. Henry Morris, former President of the Institution for Creation Research (ICR) wrote to me:
- The creationists use the TMA to keep from ever having to present or defend the creation model. They maintain that by disproving evolution, they automatically prove creation. But given the way that they "define" the evolution model, it is clearly impossible to disprove it, since it includes so many supernaturalistic explanations.
- The TMA is based on a false dichotomy. They maintain that there are only the two extremes: young-earth creationism and atheistic materialistic evolutionism. For one thing, there are several forms of creationism:
In response to "evolutionists" debunking the creation model, lawyer Wendell R. Bird, then associated with the ICR, attempted to differentiate between the two "different and distinct" creation models: the Scientific Creation Model and the Biblical Creation Model. He then claimed that the creationists were trying to raise the real issues with the Scientific Creation Model, which the "evolutionists" were ignoring as they only attacked the Biblical Creation Model. In support of this attempt, he published the following table:

THE TWO CREATION MODELS OF WENDELL R. BIRD

As Taken From the December 1978 Issue of Acts & Facts

Scientific Creation Model:

Biblical Creation Model:

I

Special creation of the universe and earth (by a Creator), on the basis of scientific evidence.

I

Divine creation of the heaven, Stars, and earth by God, on the basis of Genesis.

II

Application of the entropy law to produce deterioration in the earth and life, on the basis of scientific evidence.

II

Application of the curse, pronounced by God after Adam's fall, to produce deterioration in the earth and life, on the basis of Genesis.

III

Special creation of life (by a Creator), on the basis of scientific evidence.

III

Divine creation of plant and animal life, Adam the first man, and Eve from Adam's side by God, on the basis of Genesis.

IV

Fixity of original plant and Animal kinds, on the basis of scientific evidence.

IV

Fixity of original plant and animal kinds, determined by God, on the basis of Genesis.

V

Distinct ancestry of man and apes, on the basis of scientific evidence.

V

Distinct ancestry of Adam and apes, on the basis of Genesis.

VI

Explanation of much of the earth's geology by a worldwide deluge, on the basis of scientific evidence.

VI

Explanation of the earth's geology by a world-wide flood in which only Noah, his family, and animal pairs were preserved in an ark, on the basis of Genesis.

VII

Relatively recent origin of the earth and living kinds (in comparison with several billion years), on the basis of scientific evidence.

[Note: "relatively recent" here means within the past 10,000 years]

VII

Approximately six thousand year time span since creation of the earth, life, and Adam, on the basis of Genesis.

From the definitions of "creation science" and "creation model" that the creationists offer us, we would conclude that creation science is indeed based squarely upon a literalist interpretation of Genesis. The dichotomy proposed by the Two Model Approach is artificial and contrived, with the "evolution model" violating its own definition of being "naturalistic concepts" by including the vast majority of supernaturalistic concepts that have existed throughout human history and prehistory. The attempt to differentiate between the "scientific" and the "biblical" creation models instead demonstrates that the two are virtually identical, point for point, with the sole exception of superficial changes of wording. Bird’s table demonstrates that the "Scientific Creation Model" is nothing but a game of "Hide the Bible."

A Short History of Creation Science:

Why should the creationists feel it necessary to play "Hide the Bible"? The answer lies in the history of creation science.

First, an account of what happened in science:

In the West before the 19^th century, it would be safe to say that most people were naïve Biblical literalists, especially regarding the age of the earth. Circa 1650, Archbishop James Ussher of Ireland calculated from Scriptural evidence that the earth had been created in 4004 BC.
Around the beginning of the 19^th century, the new science of geology started accumulating more and more evidence that the earth was a lot older than 6000 years and that it has had a long and eventful history. Harmonizing Scripture with the findings of geology was the first modern challenge for apologetics and it was accomplished well enough.
At the same time, the precursors of Darwin were doing their work:

Carl Linné (1707 – 1778) was a Swedish botanist who developed the Linnaeus binomial system of classification and renamed himself with the Latinization, Carolus Linnaeus. The system calls for naming each species by its genus and species name; e.g., Homo sapiens and Homo erectus. He further organized the geni into their own larger grouping, families, and so on. From that we have developed our taxological system of Kingdom-Phylum-Class-Order-Family-Genus-Species ("Kids pour catsup on fat green spiders"). Linnaeus not only brought order to biology, but his system made apparent a hierarchical order of life which made it possible to ask where that order came from and so paved the way for evolution. Even Linnaeus may have started on this path; his earlier works emphasized the fixity of life, whereas later editions omitted those references.
Comte de Buffon (1707 – 1788) wrote a 44-volume encyclopedia of natural history, his Histoire Naturelle, Générale et Particulaire. In it, he conjectured that the earth was old, at least 140,000 years, and that the species were not fixed, but rather were descended from common ancestors, forming a Great Chain of Being in which all life was linked together in some kind of Divine Master Plan. He even foreshadowed Darwin and Malthus by noting variations within the individuals of a species and a struggle for the limited resources for survival. He came close, but he never quite put these ideas together into a mechanism for evolution. He also immediately recanted his work when he was threatened with charges of heresy.
Jean Baptiste Lamarck (1744 – 1829) was a botanist who had been hired by Buffon to tutor his son, Buffonet, and ended up being taught himself by Buffon. His major scientific contribution was as a classifier of marine invertebrates, which prepared him to work with the rich fossil record of marine invertebrates, in which he started to see patterns of change. He pushed the age of the earth even further back and realized that life would have had to change to meet the changing conditions on the earth. He replaced the Great Chain of Being with a Ladder of Life, in which there was a constant upward progression of forms, with Man at the Top, of course. To explain this change, he developed his theory of acquired characteristics, for which Lamarckian evolution is best known. Interestingly, Erasmus Darwin, Charles’ grandfather, hit on the idea of acquired characteristics at the same time as Lamarck.

Charles Darwin:

Son of wealthy English gentry.
His father sent him to Edinburgh to study medicine, but he failed due to an honest lack of interest in the subject and to a horror of surgery. His stomach was very queasy and throughout his life he was unusually sensitive to pain and suffering, both definite liabilities for a physician before the discovery of anesthesia.
Plan B: send young Charles to Cambridge to study for the clergy. He was devout, but uninterested in religion. While keeping his father happy enough, he pursued his real interest: the natural sciences.
In 1831, just after his graduation, Darwin was recommended for the post of naturalist on the HMS Beagle for a two-year voyage of discovery. He was miserably seasick throughout the voyage, but carried out his specimen collecting duties nonetheless. When he was too sick for that, he read Lyell’s Principles of Geology, which prepared him for his geological discoveries in South America. Sailing along the coast of South America, he witnessed ring species, which gradually changed from one species to another as you moved geographically.
October 1836, the HMS Beagle returned to England and Darwin later published his Zoology of the Voyage of the HMS Beagle. In the meantime, he developed his ideas about the mutability of species, in secret.
Darwin was knocked out of his secret musings in 1855 by another naturalist, Alfred Russel Wallace, who was developing the same ideas and was going to publish them. Darwin’s friends urged him to write up his notes and publish his theory, lest Wallace take all the credit. Darwin and his friends prepared a summary of his notes and presented it and Wallace’s paper jointly at the Linnaean Society. The papers were received mutely and without comprehension; the president of the society later reported that that year had not "been marked by any of those striking discoveries which at once revolutionize, so to speak, the department of science on which they bear."
On 24 November 1859, Darwin published 1250 copies of On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. The first edition sold out on the first day. There followed outrage by the clergy, general scoffing and lampooning by the press and public, and mixed reception from the scientific community. By the end of the century, Darwinian evolution was generally accepted by most scientists, with a few notable exceptions (e.g., Lord Kelvin).
Darwin continued to work on his research. One problem that perplexed him the most was inheritance. Eventually, he reverted back to Lamarckism with his "pangenic" theory. Ironically, the answer to his problem was to be found on his bookshelf in a monograph written by Gregor Mendel.

At first, the rediscovery of Mendelian genetics in 1900 was heralded as refuting Darwinian evolution, mainly because it replaced Darwin’s flawed "pangenic" theory with a far more accurate account of inheritance. A couple decades later, Haldane and Fischer were able to demonstrate through the Grand Synthesis that Mendelian genetics actually complemented Darwinism.

Now an account of what was happening in America:

Before 1859, American science was practiced in the colleges, which were mainly sectarian liberal arts schools which only provided an undergraduate program.

Religion was central and religion and science co-existed peacefully, with science in a subordinate role.

American science generally lagged behind European science by several decades.

The prevailing philosophical approach to science was based on Scottish Common Sense Realism and is still known as Baconian science, after Francis Bacon. In this approach, science centered on the painstaking collection of facts about the natural world; after having collected enough of the facts, the scientific conclusions would come naturally and self-evidently. Words like "theory" and "hypothesis" were distrusted, being associated with mere speculation without real study of the real world.

In the second half of the 19^th century, American academia started to modernize:

Scientists and academics became professionals. American universities began to develop post-graduate programs patterned after the German model. PhD’s were almost unknown before 1860, but grew to 198 in 1871 and 5,568 in 1900. These PhD’s typically became professors, but their primary job was no longer to teach but rather to produce new knowledge.
Academia became more secularized. Academics began to espouse academic freedom, arguing that the criterion for deciding whether to teach an idea should be its truth and usefulness, not its religious correctness.
Modern ideas began to be imported from Europe, such as the higher criticism from Germany and Darwinism from England. These modern ideas exemplified a moving away from Baconian science towards a modern approach in which hypotheses and theories were explanations of nature that were to be tested against nature. After the initial furor over Darwinism, it became generally accepted among biologists, such that by 1880 an antievolution editor could only find two naturalists working in the United States who opposed it.

The religious opposition to Darwinism was particularly fierce. They opposed it because:

It was scientifically incorrect according the Baconian tradition.
They believed that it would destroy faith and morality. According to doctrinal moralism, an idea or theory should not be adopted if it would have bad moral effects.

The religious attack on evolution was particularly fierce from the 1860s to the 1880s. Several professors at denominational institutions were fired for refusing to recant Darwinism or for maintaining that evolution and Christianity were compatible.

Finally, thanks in part to the higher criticism, most of the clergy made their peace with science, maintaining that religion and science were two different kinds of knowledge; evolution was not a religious or moral idea, any more than the Bible was a science textbook. Genesis only tells us that God created and sustains the universe, but it doesn’t tell us how.

Even the fundamentalists of the day were not overly harsh in their treatment of evolution, accepting an ancient age for the earth and limited forms of evolution.

The general public did not participate much in the debate. Most laymen simply did not hear enough about Darwinism to feel threatened by it. Most people neither knew nor cared about evolution, intellectual circles were very small in America, and public education was not widely available.

In the 1920s, there appeared a powerful antievolution movement which resulted in the passage of the "Monkey Laws" and in the Scopes Trial.

Factors leading to the creation of the 1920s antievolution movement:

The growth of public education, especially of the high schools, such that for the first time many working-class and middle-class parents were sending their children to secondary school:

Year

Number of High School Students

% of 14-17 Age Group

1890

360,000

6.7 %

1910

1,100,000

15.4 %

1920

2,500,000

32.3 %

1930

4,800,000

51.4 %

The acceptance of evolution by biologists, such that the textbooks had become thoroughly evolutionist.
The wide promotion by professional textbooks and journals and by the National Education Association (in 1916) of the teaching of evolution in biology courses.
Parents were shocked to discover that their own tax dollars were being used to teach their children ideas that seemed to contradict their religious beliefs. For the first time, they were coming face-to-face with evolution.
Conservative Christians of the time saw the country in a cultural crisis:

Social attitudes towards immoral behavior (e.g., drinking, dancing, gambling) were becoming more tolerant.
Most Protestant denominations had shifted towards more modernist positions that promoted acceptance of the higher criticism and of evolution.
High levels of immigrations brought in large and highly visible numbers of Catholics and Jews, making the Protestants feel that they were becoming a minority whose once-dominant viewpoint was being crowded out.
The horrors of the Great War turned their thoughts towards the decline of civilization, the End Times, and fear of God’s retribution.

They saw Darwinism as the source of much of the social evils that existed. They had suffered through robber-baron capitalists’ invoking of Social Darwinism. They saw the Germans’ acceptance of Darwinism as the source of the German militarism which they blamed for having caused the Great War. They saw Darwinism as the cause of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russian, which helped fuel the Red Scare going on in America.

Around 1920, a coalition of conservative evangelical Protestants formed to combat modernism.

Their most important leader was William Jennings Bryan, a Presbyterian and a Progressive.
Progressives wanted a just and humane society and they believed that legislation could reform or prevent bad behavior.
Progressives feared that Darwinism would ruin the moral development of the children and "replace the Golden Rule with the law of the jungle."
The populist element of the movement believed that the people should decide what is taught in the public schools, not some intellectual elite; "… the hand that writes the check book rules the school."
As a result of their efforts, antievolution bills were introduced into twenty state legislatures during the 1920s:

Between 1923 and 1928, the bills became law in Arkansas, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Tennessee.
The Florida legislature passed a non-binding resolution condemning the teaching of evolution as "improper and subversive."
State educational bodies banned evolution from public school textbooks in Texas, North Carolina, and Louisiana.
The California Board of Education ordered that evolution be presented "as a theory only."

Elsewhere, pressure was put on the local level. Teachers were forbidden to teach or discuss evolution and some were fired for doing so.

In 1941, one-third of the teachers polled expressed fear of accepting evolution publicly.
In 1942, fewer than half the secondary biology teachers polled taught anything about evolution to their students.

The antievolutionists' case was built on doctrinal moralism and populism rather than on science. They did not want to convince scientists that they were wrong, only to make them irrelevant in determining what was to be taught in public schools. They just wanted to stop evolution.

The Scopes Trial:

After Tennessee passed its antievolution law, the ACLU convinced John Scopes of Dayton to create a test case, with the approval of city hall. The ACLU hoped to carry the appeal of the case up to the US Supreme Court.
The trial was held in 1925. William Jennings Bryan helped the prosecution while Clarence Darrow helped the defense. It drew national attention and is still followed today. It has been fictionalized in the play, Inherit the Wind.
The outcome:

Scopes was found guilty and fined $100.
The Tennessee Supreme Court upheld the law. However, they threw out the conviction on a technicality, since the fine had been improperly levied by the judge instead of by the jury.
The ACLU never had a chance to appeal to the US Supreme Court.
The press made William Jennings Bryan look foolish, especially in his cross-examination as an expert on the Bible. In fact, they made the entire movement look foolish, which seemed to embarrass some supporters into silence.

When Bryan died a few days later, the movement lost much of its momentum.
Both sides tried to claim victory, but in truth a kind of truce existed which favored the antievolutionists.

The antievolution movement was no longer visibly active.
The "monkey laws" remained on the books until the end of the 1960s.
Textbook publishers exercised a form of self-censorship in which they removed evolution from their own books.
University teaching of evolution was never threatened and academia paid little attention to what was happening in the high schools. High school textbooks were not written by scientists.
High school students were not being taught about evolution.

The Gestation of Creation Science

One word – Sputnik.On 4 October 1957, the Soviet Union demonstrated its prowess in rocketry by launching Sputnik, which caught us completely by surprise.

In the subsequent rush to increase and improve the level of science education ("closing the science gap"), the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study (BSCS) developed a series of new high school biology textbooks, written by professional biologists. These books presented evolution as the cornerstone of modern biology and in a prominent and straightforward way.

The BSCS books appeared in 1963 and were widely adopted. Students were again being taught evolution and a new generation of parents found their concerns rising. History was about to repeat itself.

Epperson vs Arkansas

In 1928, Arkansas passed its "monkey law" by popular referendum.

In 1965, the BSCS books were adopted in Little Rock, Arkansas. Biology teacher Susan Epperson and the Arkansas Education Association filed suit against the 1928 law:

"The Arkansas law makes it unlawful for a teacher in any state-supported school or university "to teach the [393 U.S. 97, 99] theory or doctrine that mankind ascended or descended from a lower order of animals," or "to adopt or use in any such institution a textbook that teaches" this theory. Violation is a misdemeanor and subjects the violator to dismissal from his position."

The court overturned the law and the Arkansas Supreme Court upheld it.

In 1968, the case went before the US Supreme Court, which ruled that the law unconstitutionally served a sectarian religious purpose by prohibiting the teaching of evolution.

By 1970, all other "monkey laws" had been voided or repealed.

The Birth of Creation Science

The antievolutionists had lost two-fold:

Evolution was back in the schools.
The laws protecting their children were gone and they were forbidden to have them reinstated.

"Hide the Bible"

The litmus test in Epperson vs Arkansas was the "sectarian religious purpose."
A law having a "non-religious" purpose for prohibiting the teaching of evolution should be constitutional.
Therefore, all they needed to do was to provide that "non-religious" purpose.
They already had decades of antievolution arguments. They just needed to clean them up a bit and remove all overt religious references.
They already had decades of science studies "proving" the historicity of Noah’s Flood and of the earth only being 6000 years old. They just needed to clean them up a bit and remove all overt religious references.
They had some old stories that they could just modernize and redistribute. Like that one from 1890 that they changed to a NASA computer finding Joshua’s Lost Day.
In other words, let’s play "Hide the Bible"!

Several creationist organizations formed to develop and promulgate the creation science that was being created.
- Two of the leading organizations are the Creation Research Society and the Institute for Creation Research (ICR).
- The ICR has been especially successful. Their web site is at http://www.icr.org/ .
- Dr. Henry Morris and Dr. Duane Gish founded it.
- It was housed on the campus of Christian Heritage College in El Cajon, Calif, until the mid 80s, when it moved to its own facilities in Santee, Calif.
- It offers a graduate program in science.
- The ICR is the foremost producer of "public school edition" educational materials for teaching creation science.
- They practically wrote the book on creation science and on debating. Dr. Henry Morris is considered the Father of Flood Geology, having literally co-written the book, The Genesis Flood, in 1961.
- They are most definitely young-earth creationists.

The Debates

The primary tool for "getting the word out" has been the creation/evolution debate.
The creationists are absolute masters of the art. They just chew their opponents to pieces; creation triumphs over evolution every time. And their newsletters report these victories to their readers nationwide.
Through the 70s, the creationist debaters build a reputation for being unstoppable.
How a debate works:

A local creationist group organizes the event. They secure a place, place the ads, and find a local teacher or scientist to take the "evolutionist" side. The creationist debater is a professional from the ICR or a similar organization.
Each side gets a fixed amount of time to present their arguments and then a shorter amount of time to rebut their opponent’s arguments.
What usually happens:

The "evolutionist" is not familiar with creation science nor with his opponent’s arguments. The poor slob thinks he’s out there to present the scientific position and instead he get clobbered with one absurd claim after another with no chance to respond effectively. This is how the creationist debaters got their reputation for being invincible.
Did you know … :

That protein comparisons don’t really support evolution at all. If you look at certain proteins, then rattlesnake is more closely related to humans than to any other animal. Or humans and bullfrogs are more closely related.
That radiocarbon dating does not work. When living mollusks were radio-carbon dated, they were shown to be 10,000 years old. Living mollusks!
That the speed of light has been slowing down exponentially. This means that light had traveled much faster form the distant stars than they do today. One effect of this slowing down has is to upset radioactive decay rates, so that radio-dating techniques give a much older date than they should.
That the sun is shrinking at such a rate, that if the earth were really billions of years of, then it would have been inside the sun.
That the earth’s geo-magnetic field is decaying at an exponential rate, so that if the earth were really billions of years old, then the magnetic field would have been impossibly intense and would have burned the earth to cinder.
That at the rate at which meteoric dust is settling on the moon, that if it were really 4.5 billion years old, then it should be covered with a layer of dust 284.8 feet thick. And yet Neil Armstrong did not sink out of sight! This come straight out of a 1976 NASA publication; well into the space age!
That at the rate that the human population grows, the entire world population could be accounted for by two humans starting about 6000 years ago. If humans had really been around for millions of years, then the current world population would be impossibly huge, packing the entire solar system with people out to the orbit of Jupiter.

The organizers perform a bait-and-switch. The "evolutionist" is familiar with creation science and agrees to debate a local creationist. At virtually the last moment, they suddenly tell him that he will be debating Duane Gish. If he backs down, then the creationists will exploit his "cowardice."
If the "evolutionist" does succeed against the creationist, then the news will never make it out of town and the creationists will again boast of their invincibility in the next town, like snake-oil salesmen. The creationist newsletters report their victories and either do not report the failures or report the failures as victories:

E.g., Tampa Florida, 19 September 1981. The local schools had just mandated the teaching of creationism and were preparing the curriculum. Dr. Henry Morris of the ICR arrived to debate Dr. Ken Miller. When Miller had debated Morris before at Brown University, he had won, but the ICR’s newsletter, Acts & Facts, only reported "he was the most effective evolutionist debater Dr. Morris has encountered to date." In the Tampa debate, Miller beat Morris so bad, that the school board permanently shelved its creationist curriculum. Despite that, Acts & Facts reported that the outcome "seemed to materially strengthen the creationist position in the Tampa Area."

The moderator sides with the creationist.
The creationists pack the audience with their supporters.

At a debate in Redlands, the "evolutionists" took a count of the cars with fish stickers and of Christian school buses and estimated that 90% of the audience was pro-creationist. At the end of the debate, the organizers took a vote in which 66% of the audience voted in favor of the creationist. The creationists declared yet another victory, even though it looks like they had lost 24% of the audience.

The creationists are very skilled speakers and their presentations are very polished and well-rehearsed; remember, they’ve been doing this on a regular basis for years.

Creationist rhetoric is not aimed at the scientists, but rather at the lay public.

They seek to reach the evangelicals and other conservative Christians seeking solace from perceived threats to their faith.
They also seek those outsiders who have no particular stake in the issue, but who can be persuaded that the creationists do have a scientific case. This "bystander public" could be persuaded to support "equal time". They make sure to never boor their audiences.

Content analysis of their presentations show that creationists use such forensic techniques as:

Card Stacking – the highly selective use of logic and data to achieve an effect
Testimonial – introducing as evidence a respected person’s endorsement or criticism of an idea.
Glittering Generality – associating an idea with an esteemed concept such as family values or fairness.
Asking the audience to come to its own conclusions.
Swaying the audience with sentiment, rather than with facts.
Appealing to our American populist, anti-intellectualist, and anti-elitist tendencies.
Describing scientific errors in order to appeal to negative stereotypes of "eggheads" who lack common sense.

The Committees of Correspondence.

Because of the trouncing they had received at the debates that they had been suckered into, many "evolutionists" started studying creation science and researching the creationist claims. Then they got in touch with each other and started sharing ideas, research, and experiences. These informal networks developed into state-wide networks, which the called the Committees of Correspondence after the cells in the Revolutionary War.
Then the next time a creationist came into town, his opponent was better prepared to debate him effectively. Plus, the truth about the outcomes of the debates became more widely known. Creationists found to their dismay that the same slides and answers started following them from town to town, because the Committees shared their materials. Of course, they had learned that from the creationists.
Around 1980, the tide started to turn on the debate circuit. The creationists found themselves up against an organized and prepared opposition.
The National Center for Science Education (NCSE) formed as a national clearinghouse for the Committees of Correspondence. It is now the leading organization that tracks creationist activity. Their web site is at https://ncse.com/ .

The Present Game:
- In 1981, Arkansas and Louisiana passed "balanced-treatment" laws mandating the teaching of creation science whenever evolution is taught. Both laws were struck down as unconsitutional.
- As a result of the legal recognition of creation science as being religious in nature, the creationists have changed the game to one of "Hide the Creation Science" by introducing new buzzwords like "abrupt appearance theory" and "intelligent design theory."
- A new generation of antievolutionists have appeared who claim to not be creationists. However, such "non-creationists" as Phillip Johnson and Michael Behe try to argue for including God in scientific explanations.

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First uploaded on 2000 December 29. Last updated on 2017 February 24.

THE TWO CREATION MODELS OF WENDELL R. BIRD As Taken From the December 1978 Issue of Acts & Facts
Scientific Creation Model:		Biblical Creation Model:
I	Special creation of the universe and earth (by a Creator), on the basis of scientific evidence.	I	Divine creation of the heaven, Stars, and earth by God, on the basis of Genesis.
II	Application of the entropy law to produce deterioration in the earth and life, on the basis of scientific evidence.	II	Application of the curse, pronounced by God after Adam's fall, to produce deterioration in the earth and life, on the basis of Genesis.
III	Special creation of life (by a Creator), on the basis of scientific evidence.	III	Divine creation of plant and animal life, Adam the first man, and Eve from Adam's side by God, on the basis of Genesis.
IV	Fixity of original plant and Animal kinds, on the basis of scientific evidence.	IV	Fixity of original plant and animal kinds, determined by God, on the basis of Genesis.
V	Distinct ancestry of man and apes, on the basis of scientific evidence.	V	Distinct ancestry of Adam and apes, on the basis of Genesis.
VI	Explanation of much of the earth's geology by a worldwide deluge, on the basis of scientific evidence.	VI	Explanation of the earth's geology by a world-wide flood in which only Noah, his family, and animal pairs were preserved in an ark, on the basis of Genesis.
VII	Relatively recent origin of the earth and living kinds (in comparison with several billion years), on the basis of scientific evidence. [Note: "relatively recent" here means within the past 10,000 years]	VII	Approximately six thousand year time span since creation of the earth, life, and Adam, on the basis of Genesis.

Year	Number of High School Students	% of 14-17 Age Group
1890	360,000	6.7 %
1910	1,100,000	15.4 %
1920	2,500,000	32.3 %
1930	4,800,000	51.4 %