Bruce Sterling - Essays. FSF Columns

deep canyon were in fact all deposited at the same time and that

conventional radiometric methods are, to say the least, gravely

flawed. A second I.C.R. effort should demonstrate that certain ice-

cores from Greenland, which purport to show 160 thousand years of

undisturbed annual snow layers, are in fact only two thousand years

old and have been misinterpreted by mainstream scientists.

Mr. Hoesch expressed some amazement that his Institute's

efforts are poorly and privately funded, while mainstream geologists

and biologists often receive comparatively enormous federal funding.

In his opinion, if the Institute for Creation Research were to receive

equivalent funding with their rivals in uniformitarian and

evolutionary so-called science, then creation-scientists would soon be

making valuable contributions to the nation's research effort.

Other creation scientists have held that the search for oil, gas,

and mineral deposits has been confounded for years by mistaken

scientific orthodoxies. They have suggested that successful flood-

geology study would revolutionize our search for mineral resources

of all kinds.

Orthodox scientists are blinded by their naturalistic prejudices.

Carl Sagan, whom Mr. Hoesch described as a "great hypocrite," is a

case in point. Carl Sagan is helping to carry out a well-funded

search for extraterrestrial life in outer space, despite the fact that

there is no scientific evidence whatsoever for extraterrestrial

intelligence, and there is certainly no mention in the Bible of any

rival covenant with another intelligent species. Worse yet, Sagan

boasts that he could detect an ordered, intelligent signal from space

from the noise and static of mere cosmic debris. But here on earth

we have the massively ordered and intelligently designed "signal"

called DNA, and yet Sagan publicly pretends that DNA is the result of

random processes! If Sagan used the same criteria to distinguish

intelligence from chance in the study of Earth life, as he does in his

search for extraterrestrial life, then he would have to become a

Creationist!

I asked Mr Hoesch what he considered the single most

important argument that his group had to make about scientific

creationism.

"Creation versus evolution is not science versus religion," he

told me. "It's the science of one religion versus the science of

another religion."

The first religion is Christianity; the second, the so-called

religion of Secular Humanism. Creation scientists consider this

message the single most important point they can make; far more

important than so-called physical evidence or the so-called scientific

facts. Creation scientists consider themselves soldiers and moral

entrepreneurs in a battle of world-views. It is no accident, to their

mind, that American schools teach "scientific" doctrines that are

inimical to fundamentalist, Bible-centered Christianity. It is not a

question of value-neutral facts that all citizens in our society should

quietly accept; it is a question of good versus evil, of faith versus

nihilism, of decency versus animal self-indulgence, and of discipline

versus anarchy. Evolution degrades human beings from immortal

souls created in God's Image to bipedal mammals of no more moral

consequence than other apes. People who do not properly value

themselves or others will soon lose their dignity, and then their

freedom.

Science education, for its part, degrades the American school

system from a localized, community-responsible, democratic

institution teaching community values, to an amoral indoctrination-

machine run by remote and uncaring elitist mandarins from Big

Government and Big Science.

Most people in America today are creationists of a sort. Most

people in America today care little if at all about the issue of creation

and evolution. Most people don't really care much if the world is six

billion years old, or six thousand years old, because it doesn't

impinge on their daily lives. Even radical creation-scientists have

done very little to combat the teaching of evolution in higher

education -- university level or above. They are willing to let Big

Science entertain its own arcane nonsense -- as long as they and

their children are left in peace.

But when world-views collide directly, there is no peace. The

first genuine counter-attack against evolution came in the 1920s,

when high-school education suddenly became far more widely

spread. Christian parents were shocked to hear their children

openly contradicting God's Word and they felt they were losing

control of the values taught their youth. Many state legislatures in

the USA outlawed the teaching of evolution in the 1920s.

In 1925, a Dayton, Tennessee high school teacher named John

Scopes deliberately disobeyed the law and taught evolution to his

science class. Scopes was accused of a crime and tried for it, and his

case became a national cause celebre. Many people think the

"Scopes Monkey Trial" was a triumph for science education, and it

was a moral victory in a sense, for the pro-evolution side

successfully made their opponents into objects of national ridicule.

Scopes was found guilty, however, and fined. The teaching of

evolution was soft-pedalled in high-school biology and geology texts

for decades thereafter.

A second resurgence of creationist sentiment took place in the

1960s, when the advent of Sputnik forced a reassessment of

American science education. Fearful of falling behind the Soviets in

science and technology, the federal National Science Foundation

commissioned the production of state-of-the-art biology texts in

1963. These texts were fiercely resisted by local religious groups

who considered them tantamount to state-supported promotion of

atheism.

The early 1980s saw a change of tactics as fundamentalist

activists sought equal time in the classroom for creation-science -- in

other words, a formal acknowledgement from the government that

their world-view was as legitimate as that of "secular humanism."

Fierce legal struggles in 1982, 1985 and 1987 saw the defeat of this

tactic in state courts and the Supreme Court.

This legal defeat has by no means put an end to creation-

science. Creation advocates have merely gone underground, no

longer challenging the scientific authorities directly on their own

ground, or the legal ground of the courts, but concentrating on grass-

roots organization. Creation scientists find their messages received

with attention and gratitude all over the Christian world.

Creation-science may seem bizarre, but it is no more irrational

than many other brands of cult archeology that find ready adherents

everywhere. All over the USA, people believe in ancient astronauts,

the lost continents of Mu, Lemuria or Atlantis, the shroud of Turin,

the curse of King Tut. They believe in pyramid power, Velikovskian

catastrophism, psychic archeology, and dowsing for relics. They

believe that America was the cradle of the human race, and that

PreColumbian America was visited by Celts, Phoenicians, Egyptians,

Romans, and various lost tribes of Israel. In the high-tech 1990s, in

the midst of headlong scientific advance, people believe in all sorts of

odd things. People believe in crystals and telepathy and astrology

and reincarnation, in ouija boards and the evil eye and UFOs.

People don't believe these things because they are reasonable.