IMPACT No. 296 February 1998
by Henry M. Morris, Ph.D.
Institute for Creation Research


Creationism is being fitted for new clothes today by a number of
very articulate writers and speakers, and it is hoped by many that
this will help it gain acceptance in the elite company of academics
who have heretofore opposed it. One leader of the opposition to any
form of creationism, Dr. Eugenie C. Scott, Executive Director of the
National Center for Science Education, calls this development
neocreationism.

Phrases like "intelligent design theory," "abrupt appearance
theory," "evidence against evolution," and the like, have sprung
up, although the content of many of the arguments is familiar.
This view can be called "neocreationism."1

Scott notes that the arguments for neocreationism are the same
arguments that have been used by traditional creationists for many
years. The new clothing is not so much what has been added, but what
has been taken off.

Neocreationists are by no means identical to their predecessors,
however.... Neither biblical creationists nor theistic
evolutionists.... Most of them are "progressive creationists."2

This new creationism is really not very new, except perhaps for the
terminology. Progressive creationists, as well as traditional
creationists, have been documenting intelligent design (that is, the
magnificently organized complexity of every living creature) and
"abrupt appearance" (that is, the complete absence of any true
transitional forms in the fossil record) for well over 150 years.
But note what is missing. The neocreationists are not "Biblical
creationists," Scott says. They may believe that the Bible is the
word of God, but they assume its testimony is irrelevant to their
arguments. As Nancy Pearcey says:

Design theory is also redefining the public school debate. At
issue is not the details of evolution versus the details of
Genesis; it's the stark, fundamental claim that life is the
product of impersonal forces over against the claim that it is the
creation of an intelligent agent.3

Now, this approach is not really new, either. During the past
quarter century, ICR scientists have participated in well over 300
creation/evolution debates with university professors on college and
university campuses, and each debate is intentionally framed to deal
only with the scientific evidences, never with "the details of
Genesis." Other creation lectures have been given on hundreds of
campuses and scientific meetings with the same format, dealing only
with science.

In fact, ICR has also published a number of books4 that present the
case for creation strictly from a scientific perspective with no
reference to religion. These debates and books have been successful
in winning many individual scientists and others to belief in
creation and frequently as a tool in winning them eventually to
saving faith in Christ.

But what it will not do is displace evolutionism as the reigning
paradigm in the intellectual community. One form or another of
evolutionism, either atheistic or pantheistic, has been the reigning
paradigm in every age since the beginning of human history (with one
exception), and the prophetic Scriptures indicate that it will still
be so when the Lord Jesus Christ returns at the end of this age to
set up His own eternal kingdom.5 That one exception consists of
those small communities in many different nations and times who have
believed in a personal Creator God who created all things, and who
has revealed His purposes in creation and redemption through His
written word, the Holy Scriptures.

In more modern times, William Paley popularized the design argument
with his great book, Natural Theology, first published in 1802,
profoundly influencing the English speaking world of his dayeven
including Charles Darwin! The book began with a detailed description
of the "irreducible complexity" of a functioning watch, noting that
even the most rabid skeptic would acknowledge that the watchor at
least its prototypemust have been designed and made by a skilled
watchmaker. Just so, he argued persuasively, the much more complex
universe required a universe-maker. These themes of intelligent
design are compellingly developed at great length in Paley's
402-page book.

Darwin, however, wanted to find a way to escape Paley's conclusion,
not for scientific reasons, but because he refused to accept a God
who would condemn unbelievers like his father to hell.6 Many modern
Darwinians now follow him in maintaining that what appear to be
evidences of design can also be explained by natural selection.
Richard Dawkins, Professor of Zoology at Oxford University, is the
most articulate present-day advocate of neo-Darwinism, which
maintains that evolution proceeds gradually through the preservation
of small beneficial mutations by natural selection. Dawkins, a
doctrinaire atheist, has published an influential book called The
Blind Watchmaker. Dawkins comes down hard on "fundamentalist
creationists" but even harder on modern anti-Darwinists who try to
insert God somehow into the "science" of origins.

I suppose it is gratifying to have the Pope as an ally in the
struggle against fundamentalist creationism. It is certainly amusing
to see the rug pulled out from under the feet of Catholic
creationists such as Michael Behe. Even so, given a choice between
honest to goodness fundamentalism on the one hand, and the
obscurantist, disingenuous doublethink of the Roman Catholic Church
on the other, I know which I prefer.7

Dawkins is gloating over the fact that the Pope is an evolutionist,8
but he is also impatient with the Pope's insistence that the human
soul has been "created." Everything, according to Dawkins and the
modern neo-Darwinians, is attributable solely to the action of time
and chance on matter, so that what appears to be evidence of design
is really evidence of the creative power of random mutation and
natural selection. Although Dawkins calls Behe a creationist, Behe
himself claims to be an anti-Darwinian evolutionist.

More and more evolutionary biologists these days, in fact, are
rejecting neo-Darwinism, acknowledging that the gaps in the fossil
record (which have repeatedly been emphasized by creationists ever
since Darwin's day, especially by the scientists representing the
creation revival of the past four decades) make gradual evolution
very hard to defend. Very few of these (if any) are becoming
creationists, howevernot even neo-creationists. The evidence of
"abrupt appearance" is interpreted by them as "punctuations" in the
"equilibrium" of the natural world. The increasing complexity of
organisms in so-called evolutionary history is not interpreted as
coming from intelligent design but as order emerging from chaos,
probably by the mechanism of so-called "dissipative structures."9
Other evolutionists recognize that there is, indeed, evidence of
intelligent design in the world, but they take it as evidence of
Gaia (the Greek Earth goddess, or Mother Nature) or of some "cosmic
consciousness." This New Age movement is essentially a return to
ancient evolutionary pantheism, a complex of religions now growing
with amazing rapidity all over the world. Thus Darwinians interpret
the evidence of design in nature as natural selection,
punctuationists interpret it as order through the chaos of
dissipative structures, and New Age evolutionists interpret it as
the intelligence of Mother Earth.

Getting people to believe in "intelligent design" is, therefore,
neither new nor sufficient. People of almost every religion (except
atheism) already believe in it. The only ones who do not, the
atheists, have rejected it in full awareness of all the innumerable
evidences of design in the world. These cannot be won by
intellectual argument, no matter how compelling. As Isaac Asimov
said:

Emotionally, I am an atheist. I don't have the evidence to prove
that God doesn't exist, but I so strongly suspect he doesn't that
I don't want to waste my time.10

King David, by divine inspiration, had a comment on the attitude of
such atheists: "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God"
(Psalm 14:1; also Psalm 53:1). Similarly, in Romans 1:21,22, the
apostle Paul, discussing such people, said: "When they knew God,
they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful; but became
vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.
Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools."
This is strong language, and "design theorists" might recoil from
using it, especially concerning their own academic colleagues, but
it was God who said it! And intellectual fools are not won by
intellectual arguments; if they are changed at all, it will be
through some traumatic experience brought about by the Holy Spirit
in answer to prayer.

Such Scriptures are speaking of those who are atheists "in their
hearts." Like Asimov (and Dawkins, et al.), they are "emotional"
atheists who have tried to ignore or subvert the real evidence with
the pseudo-science of evolutionary speculation. There are, on the
other hand, many "reluctant atheists"those who have been so
influenced by the doctrinaire atheists among their teachers and
other intellectuals, that they feel they cannot believe in the God
of the Bible even though, in their hearts, they would like to
believe.

People like this can be reached by sound evidence and reasoning. In
our debates, for example, we know from many personal testimonies
that a good number of students and young professionals in the
audiences who had felt they had no choice but atheistic
evolutionism, have indeed been won to solid creationism and soon to
saving faith in Christ, at least in part by the scientific evidence.
We hope this will be the experience of those who are now stressing
"intelligent design," just as has often been true in the past.
But it will not be so if they stop with just the evidence for design
and leave the Designerthe God of the Bibleout of it. Even though
we intentionally limit our debates (and some of our books) to the
scientific evidence, everyone in the audience and among our readers
is well aware that we are really undergirding Biblical creationism
(including recent Creation and the global Flood), because that is
our clearly stated position.

But modern "intelligent design theorists" intentionally emphasize
that, while they oppose materialism and Darwinian evolutionism, they
are not arguing for Biblical creationism. At a conference on what
was called "Mere Creation," held at Biola University in November
1996, the main speaker, Phillip E. Johnson, said in his concluding
remarks:

For the present, I recommend that we also put the Biblical issues
to one side. The last thing we should want to do, or seem to want
to do, is to threaten the freedom of scientific inquiry. Bringing
the Bible anywhere near this issue ... closes minds instead of
opening them.11

In a widely reprinted article, a New York Times writer said:
These new creationists avoid one pitfall of their predecessors by
not positing, at least publicly, the identity of the creator. "My
decision is simply to put it off," Mr. Johnson said, "and I
recommend that to others."12

Now that may be all right as a temporary agreed-on constraint for a
particular discussionas in one of our scientific debates. But that
cannot be the goal, and we need to be honest about this if we really
believe the Bible to be the word of God. The innumerable evidences
of intelligent design in nature really do not point to theistic
evolution or dissipative structures or Gaia, but if we stop our
program without arriving at the true God of the Bible as the Creator
of all things, then many converts to "design" will gravitate to one
of these other beliefs and never come to know Jesus Christ as their
Savior.

As faith without works is dead, so is design without the Designer!

References

1 Eugenie C. Scott, "Creationists and the Pope's Statement,"
Quarterly Review of Biology (vol. 72, December 1997), p. 403.
2 Ibid.
3 Nancy Pearcey, "Debunking Darwin," World (vol. 11, March 1,
1997), p. 14.
4 The most recent of these is Science and Creation, Volume II in
The Modern Creation Trilogy, by Henry M. Morris and John D. Morris
(Green Forest, Arkansas: Master Books, 1996), 343 pp.
5 For documented evidence of the age-long, worldwide dominance of
evolutionism, see The Long War Against God, by Henry M. Morris
(Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1989), 344 pp.
6 Charles Darwin, Autobiography. Edited by Nora Barlow (New York:
Norton, 1969), p. 87.
7 Richard Dawkins, "Obscurantism to the Rescue," Quarterly Review
of Biology (vol. 72, December 1997), p. 399.
8 Ever since the publication of Pope John Paul II's October 1996
message on evolution, there has been controversy over what he
actually said. The actual official English translation of his
speech appeared in the October 30 edition of L'Osservatore Romano,
and it does indeed affirm that he said that "the theory of
evolution is more than a hypothesis" (Catholic News Service,
November 19, 1996). He also spoke of "several theories of
evolution," but by this he was referring mainly to the
"materialist, reductionist, and spiritualist interpretations."
9 See my article, "Can Order Come Out of Chaos?" "Back to Genesis"
No. 102, ICR Acts & Facts, June 1997, 4 pp.
10 Isaac Asimov, Interview by Paul Kurtz: "An Interview with Isaac
Asimov on Science and the Bible," Free Inquiry (vol. 2, Spring
1982), p. 9.
11 Phillip E. Johnson, "Separating Materialist Philosophy from
Science," The Real Issue (vol. 15, November/December 1996). The
"Mere Creation" conference involved over a hundred participants,
practically all of whom were either theistic evolutionists or
progressive creationists. According to Eugenie Scott, "most of
them have appointments at secular institutions" (op cit., p. 403).
12 Laurie Goodstein, "New Light for Creationism," New York Times,
December 21, 1997.

Dr. Morris is Founder and President Emeritus of ICR.