The Prism and the Rainbow: A Christian Explains Why Evolution Is Not a Threat

8. What Is Creationism?

55 Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. isaiah 40:28 Biology, chemistry, astronomy, physics, and geology are only at odds with the Bible when the Bible is expected to speak with authority in the language of these topics, and its writings to confirm the discoveries and postulates of these sciences. If this test of science is applied to scripture, scripture will always fail. But having said that, we have said really nothing at all, for scripture does not pretend to be science any more than science pretends to be scripture. peter gomes, the good book a t its simplest, creationism is the view that the earth and everything in it was created by God and that nothing much has changed in the meantime. Many religions have creation stories, but most often when someone mentions creationism they are referring to the creationism of Christianity, based primarily on Genesis 1 and 2. The details vary according to which creationist is speaking or writing, and there is a surprisingly wide range of stances taken by creationist writers. Some believe in a very young earth (6,000 to 10,000 years old). Some still feel that the world is geocentric (that is, they believe the earth stands still while all else revolves around it). What Is Creationism? 8 the prism and the rainbow 56 We saw earlier that there have been some creationists who believed that the earth was flat. Others are more progressive, acknowledging that the planet really is as old as all the evidence indicates and that it orbits the sun, but who believe inerrantly or literally in other stories in Genesis, including the worldwide flood and the Genesis account of the creation of man and woman.1 The idea of evolutionary theory is particularly troubling to most creationists, because it seems to counter their literal or inerrant reading of the Genesis account of the creation of plants and animals in six days. Because of their belief in biblical inerrancy, creationists tie themselves into knots of reasoning when they try to reconcile biblical passages with what we have learned about the world around us over the past 200 years or so. Some creationists have written that the light from distant stars (which would contradict their view of a very young earth) was created “en route” to appear as if it came from stars millions of miles away (and thus millions of years ago). Some have written that fossils were made to look old and then intentionally planted to make the earth appear old, implying that God must be some kind of trickster or master of deception. A more common explanation among creationists is that fossils are genuine but are the result of Noah’s flood as described in Genesis. To support the flood hypothesis, some have written that the worldwide distribution and obvious sequence of animals in the fossil record can be explained because the more “advanced” species could run faster to escape the rising flood waters, and this is why they are found in the upper layers of the geologic record, “above” the more primitive animals that could not escape in this manner. If we believe this, we also must assume that deciduous trees, which are found only in higher (more-recent) layers, must have run faster than pines and other coniferous trees, which are found only in earlier (lower) fossil layers. Fishes, too, present a problem to this line of reasoning, as it is unclear why the flood waters would have wiped out only some. Some of the “young-earth creationists” have argued that dinosaurs (sometimes called “creation lizards” to imply that they were 57 What Is Creationism? created at the same time everything else was) walked with humans (they would have to have done so if the earth is only 6,000 years old). Because of this belief, there are a number of roadside creationist “museums” and playgrounds in the United States showing dinosaurs coexisting peacefully with humans.2 Some creationists have written that the tiny forearms of Tyrannosaurus rex are evidence that it was a fruit-eater (the small, two-fingered claws are claimed to be an adaptation for picking fruit off of trees), in order to explain why it could have coexisted peacefully with humans without, apparently, demanding too much attention. The amazing six-inch carnivorous teeth of T...