For the Rock Record: Geologists on Intelligent Design

two · Creationist Perspectiveson Geology

21 t w o · Creationist Perspectives on Geology timothy h. heaton Probably no scientific discipline has been more contentious among creationists than geology. At the time Darwin published his Origin of Species, the concept of an old Earth with a complex history had been widely accepted among Christians. The threat that this alternate theory of origins posed to theism did not spill over quickly into geology, and even many antievolution preachers supported a harmony between the book of Genesis and long geological ages. Two prominent, competing reconciliations were popular: that the “days of creation” in Genesis were actually long geological periods (the Day-Age Theory) and that there were multiple creations and destructions of life left unrecorded between the first two verses of Genesis (the Gap Theory). In his books on the history of creationism in America, historian Ronald Numbers (1992, 1998, 2006) documents the transition during the twentieth century from these old-Earth creationists to the remarkable rise of young-Earth creationism. Today we see a different shift in the geological arguments being used by creationists . Proponents of intelligent design (ID) have dropped the demand for a young Earth and focused solely on evidence for a designer. This move is in part a political strategy, used to avoid the legal failures of young-Earth creationists, but many prominent ID creationists are convinced that the evidence for an old Earth is overwhelming and should be embraced. Even before the rise of the ID movement , a group loosely called Progressive Creationists continued to accept the evidence for an old Earth while remaining skeptical about evolution. One such 22 · t i m o t h y h . h e a t o n advocate, Hugh Ross, maintains an active ministry and has only peripherally aligned himself with the ID movement. Still other Christians, called Theistic Evolutionists, have fully accepted the case for evolution and hold views on Earth history that are indistinguishable from those of secular geologists (Van Till 1999; Van Till et al. 1990). The current mix of creationists has created an identity crisis for the overall creation movement, with members of the various camps working in concert on some projects (Dembski 1998b; Meyer et al. 2003; Moreland 1994) while being opponents on other occasions (Hagopian 2001; Moreland and Reynolds 1999; Ross 2004). This chapter reviews the geologic claims of modern young-Earth creationists , progressive creationists, and ID advocates and shows how they contrast with secular geology and with one another on their geological perspectives. YOUNG-EARTH CREATIONISM While most other creationists have accepted secular wisdom about geologic history and the age of the Earth, young-Earth creationists have defied this wisdom and attempted to develop an alternative geology that can be accommodated within the few thousand years recorded in the Bible. In light of biblical consistency this approach to geology makes sense. The book of Genesis outlines a history of the Earth from the creation of the world through the origin and cultural history of humans, while it leaves the origin of species and other aspects of biology more open to interpretation. George McCready Price, the father of modern young-Earth creationism, argued that geology, with its long ages, provided the strongest arguments for evolution and therefore demanded a reinterpretation. In spite of his lack of scientific training, Price (1902, 1916, 1923, 1935) wrote numerous books on geology and developed a strategy that set the stage for the young-Earth creation movement. He attempted to fit a broad array of geologic events into the catastrophic events described in the Bible—particularly the worldwide Flood in the days of Noah. This same strategy was employed by John Whitcomb and Henry Morris in The Genesis Flood: The Biblical Record and Its Scientific Implications (1961), the book that converted much of mainstream Protestantism to the young-Earth view. The problems involved in interpreting Earth history within a few thousand years are staggering. Nineteenth-century geologists recognized many lines of evidence suggesting that the Earth is ancient. For example, most sedimentary rocks are composed of fine-grained minerals and resemble layers forming today in quiet c r e a t i o n i s t p e r s p e c t i v e s o n g e o l o g y · 23 coastal seas. Most of these mineral grains are the result of slow weathering processes on land and are fed to...