Why creationists are creationists

I have been outspoken at times in the past among my blog ring of friends in claiming that it’s not enough to argue the validity of mainstream science, or to incessantly drone, “Science and faith need not conflict

,” no matter how true those claims may be. The fact is that they do not persuade most evangelical and fundamentalist Christians. The problem is not with science vs. faith as categories, but between their perceived contradictory claims.

That seeking to identify the natural processes that explain the “origin of the species” is not inherently atheistic or inimical to the idea of a deity is obvious on its face. For one thing, the theory of evolution has nothing to say about the origin of life; that separate field of inquiry is called abiogenesis (life from non-life). Accepting evolutionary theory by no means whatsoever entails belief in non-miraculous abiogenesis or vice versa.¹ Although I personally disagree, it would not be at all inconsistent to argue that God miraculously and instantaneously created the universe, then sculpted the first cell by hand, and finally endued it with life and yet accept the scientific account of evolution, specifically that there is no evidence that God specially designed or interfered with the natural processes of evolution that played upon that first cell (no matter how it became alive) and eventually brought about humans. In short, when we emphatically insist that there is nothing even slightly “atheistic” about evolution, we are not just putting lipstick on a pig. It’s slanderous nonsense to bind the idea of descent with modification (evolution) to an “atheistic, materialistic worldview“. Who would associate the attempt to discover natural causes for universal gravitation or the weather system with any particular worldview?

But as I intimated above, I long ago recognized that this isn’t enough for most devout Christians devoted to the Bible and inherited doctrine. It is why I haven’t made it a point to recommend to Undeception readers very good books like Francis Collins’s The Language of God and why I prefaced a full exposition of my views on science with a long series on bibliology and hermeneutics: the problem starts and stops with the Bible. Nonetheless, until a recent conflagration among my local friends, I must say that I lost sight of this obvious fact. In that argument, it would not have mattered how many undeniable implications of common descent I demonstrated from comparative anatomy, the fossil record, or DNA (as it turns out, I’m not very good at arguing science anyway). It didn’t even matter when I clearly demonstrated inconsistencies in their interpretation of Scripture using their own hermeneutics. They explicitly told me that their minds were made up: their presupposition is 100% concord between science and their interpretation of Scripture. No view calling into question either strict inerrancy or their historiographic reading of Genesis (usually because a challenge on the latter is a challenge on the former) may be entertained for even a second, no matter how well supported by Christians who have looked into the scientific evidence; I was, in fact, told that those Christians must be either compromising the truth they know or deluding themselves.

So in the end, I finished the (at times heated) discussion newly convicted that my original diagnosis of the failure of science to penetrate mainstream American Christianity was correct. At least my friends were being honest about their root concern, which was their bibliology, despite the fact that they, as all creationists do, tried to bolster their theological presupposition with alternative “science”, courtesy of ICR and AIG.

In the same way that the conviction that the ground outside is wet follows from the belief that it has just rained, any doubts about mainstream science that their pursuits in creationist folk science have birthed in them are secondary to a theological presupposition and not vice versa. The single catalyst motivating the conservative Christian community to seek, develop, and defend a novel alternative science is how it assumes the Bible is to be interpreted. If Genesis 1-3 weren’t in the Bible and if Adam were not mentioned elsewhere, everyone knows that there would be no Christian counter-science movement as there is today.

This leads me to make the following exasperated plea to creationists and other ID advocates: be aware that your problem with mainstream science is not, as many think, fundamentally philosophical or scientific but theological. In reality, anti-evolutionists are unlikely to utilize either philosophical or scientific evidence for any purpose other than to lend credibility to their predetermined interpretations and theological constructs.

Face it: the only reason Christians try to detect God’s miraculous signature in biology rather than in the developmental process of the fetus (cf. Ps 139.13) or the source of rain (cf. Gen 7.11, 8.2), both of which are directly attributed to things other than natural processes in the Bible, is because of their interpretation of the Bible. All Christians (I do hope) recognize both scriptures I just cited as non-scientific descriptions of reality because we allow literary-generic principles and cultural context to influence our interpretation.

But the same is unfortunately not allowed to work for the creation stories in fundamentalist and evangelical circles. Those who interpret the stories as infallible history and especially those unwilling to reevaluate the majority’s interpretation of Pauline theology must naturally remain at odds with the scientific consensus, but even they usually realize it’s no good saying, “Your science is wrong because my holy book says so” without presenting an alternative model that appears to scientifically account for observable facts. And so they go on the hunt, creationists trying to debunk, modify, or replace existing scientific understanding, ID advocates exploiting any as yet underdeveloped part of evolutionary theory and insisting the entire system is a house of cards rather than what it is: surprisingly robust and still very much under development. Can anyone honestly tell me that this theologically motivated revisionism is science?

It is often objected, why would we reinterpret or call into question centuries of Christian dogma based on an ever changing, human-devised scientific consensus led by atheists? I frame it in very different terms: we’re asking why they are not consistent in calling into question human-devised interpretations of Scripture by using the observation and reason with which God endowed our species, tools they themselves already use to interpret so many passages of Scripture whose actual “plain meaning” would contradict observable facts. For instance, how can they conclude that expressions such as the sun “rising”, “setting”, or standing still (Josh 10.12-14) in Scripture are simply phenomenological and not scientific expressions if they were not already using scientific observation to determine the earth’s motion in relation to the sun? Biology, astronomy, and geology are in essence no different than less systematic forms of human observation; rather, indeed, science is merely a form of human observation consciously systematized to minimize prejudice and critically examine presuppositions. Observing the natural world and applying that empirically perceived knowledge in our interpretation of Scripture is the same exact principle that helps us to decide that since people haven’t been observed to sprout from one another and attach themselves to things using tendrils, then Jesus’ claim to be “the vine” cannot be construed as science.²

But I’m (re)learning my lesson: what is the use of arguing with special creationists who have chosen to remain insulated from criticism of their theology unless we have another prepackaged, gift-wrapped theological construct that will maintain their cherished doctrines wholly intact? A modified bibliology and hermeneutic set is the only chance these people have of jumping across the divide, but if they do not have a new, more-or-less fully formed theological system to latch onto, the tendency has been either to fall into atheism or to never jump and instead abjure the other side. Few are willing to leap and be caught by those already standing on the other side, gradually and humbly building a theology that makes sense of all observed facts. As far as I’m aware, there is no fully formed, ready-made theological system that handles all questions raised by evolution, and that is a major reason there are so few Christians who accept evolutionary theory and a Bible not absolutely concordant with science or history.

The other, more fundamental reason is that an admission of the Bible’s lack of concord with facts of science/history is considered to cast aspersion on the Bible’s authority to speak on spiritual matters. Until we find a way of addressing those concerns satisfactorily or someone somehow contrives an exegesis that doesn’t call the Bible’s complete concord with mainstream science into question but allows Christians to use science, our view stands no chance among the inerrantists.

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I realize this post might sound aggressive, cynical, and maybe even a little bitter, and for that I apologize. I have scoured it several times, looking for a way to qualify my blanket statements to make them more accurate, and frankly, I’m at a loss for a way to do so. I’ll appreciate your suggestions for mitigating my generalizations.

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¹ The last time I heard evolution described as an explanation for “the origin of life”, I shook my head, sighed, and corrected the person under my breath, muttering to myself, “It explains the diversity of life, not the origin.” Now, I have indeed heard such a statement as mine expressed before, but this time it struck me as an inadequate distinction. In actuality the diversity of life is fully explicable in terms of special (miraculous) creation; God just made different things in different ways. Rather, it’s the similarity of life that common descent explains so much better. The creationist will be tempted to throw out the old line, “Well, if God created everything, you would expect similarities (anatomical, genetic, etc.) between them, because God wouldn’t need to reinvent the wheel. Common Designer, common design.” But this simply doesn’t work when you go further inside the data. As Gordon Glover points out, the existence of nested hierarchies – shared, not differing characteristics – only makes sense under a common descent model. For a fuller explanation of this claim, see video number 12 from Gordon Glover’s “Science and Christian Education video series (also embedded below). [back to post above]

[zdvideo width="480" height="360"]http://www.beyondthefirmament.com/Lesson_12.flv[/zdvideo]

² Please don’t get distracted by this one analogy of mine: sure, there are other things that go into interpreting Jesus’ metaphor as metaphor, but it is certainly true that if the line between people and vines were not as clear as it is that we would certainly have something else to factor into our interpretation of John 15. My point: human observation is an indispensable tool for biblical hermeneutics, and it’s not invalidated when it’s the particular type of human observation called science (cf. the issues of “sunrise” or the heart as organ of thought, both ancient misunderstandings corrected by fairly modern science). [back to post above]

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