Laurie R. Godfrey, ed. Scientists Confront Creationism. New York and London: W.W. Norton and Company, 1983.
Scientists Confront Creationism
contains essays by scientists, anthropologists, and others that attempt
to explain and critique young-earth creation science. I have seen this
book in libraries for years, but only recently did I decide to read
it. Because the book is from the 1980's, it has references to Ronald
Reagan, and the creationists who are criticized include Henry Morris and
Duane Gish.
I am not a science person, so I cannot claim to have
understood everything (or even most things) in this book. There were
cases in which the arguments of both creationists and evolutionists went
over my head. But, in contrast to my recent reading of Gabriel Vahanian's The Death of God (see my post about that experience here), I did not feel totally in the dark when reading Scientists Confront Creationism.
I could understand what was going on: creationists were appealing to
science to make certain claims, and evolutionists were attempting to
refute those claims by depicting the creationists' understanding of the
issues as limited or outdated.
I found the book to be a good resource in terms of addressing prominent creationist claims. One
creationist claim that I have heard, for example, is that the earth
must be young because the magnetic field has been decaying, and it would
be gone by now if the earth has been around for millions of years. The
response that this book gives to that argument is that the magnetic
field does not just decrease, but it also fluctuates, meaning that it has not experienced an inexorable decline over the years.
Another
creationist argument is that evolution contradicts the second law of
thermodynamics: whereas the second law supposedly states that nature
tends towards increasing disorder, evolution is an example of increasing order.
The response to this argument, if I understood it correctly, is that
such an understanding of the second law of thermodynamics is incomplete,
for there are cases of increasing order within nature. The
second law of thermodynamics does not exclude such a possibility, the
argument that I read was saying, for it allows for increasing order when
there is assistance from outside of the system, plus its claim is that
there has to be more movement towards disorder than movement towards
order, not that movement towards order cannot exist. John W. Patterson states on page 101: "As long as the downhill flows, off of which [the uphill flows] feed, exceed the build-up or construction processes, no violation of the second law is involved."
Yet
another creationist argument is that evolutionary explanations tend to
be circular: they argue that there is evolution on the basis of the
succession of animals in the geologic record, then they date the
succession in reference to evolution. A couple of the essays in the
book retorted that the succession of animals in the geologic record was
seen and acknowledged before Darwin's theory of evolution even existed. While
these essays said that there may be cases in which a newer layer is
underneath an older layer (when one would usually expect the opposite),
due to an earthquake, for example, they do not believe that this
overthrows scientists' argument that earlier species are deeper in the
ground than later species, for one can often identify when there are
exceptions to the rule and account for them.
A couple of
essays in the book seek to correct misconceptions about evolution, some
of them held by certain evolutionists themselves. Often, one
hears the argument that less complex animals are older and deeper in the
ground, whereas more complex animals are newer and higher. Some
creationists attempt to account for this alleged phenomenon through an
appeal to the flood of Noah: the more complex animals were able to reach
higher ground when the flood was occurring, and that's why they're
higher in the ground! Two of the essays in the book, however, dispute
the idea that more complex animals are necessarily later, while less
complex animals are necessarily earlier, for this is not always
the case. There are, for example, less complex animals that are
later. One essay, if I read it correctly, was disputing that evolution
consistently moves in the direction of complexity.
The essays in
the book maintained that creationism was inadequate and flawed. As on
the evolutionist web site talkorigins, there is a kind word said about
creationist Robert Gentry,
yet an essay goes on to note an example of Gentry having to retract one
of his articles. On creationism, one essay in the book argued that
creationism is nebulous about what a "kind" is. Genesis 1 presents God
creating "kinds" and commanding the animals to reproduce according to
their kind, and there are creationists who have argued that, while there
may be microevolution that occurs within a kind, there is no evidence
for macroevolution, in which an animal of one kind becomes an animal of
another kind. The problem, according to this one essay, is that
there are animals within the same species who cannot reproduce with
each other. Are these animals indeed part of the same kind, or did God
create them all separately, and all of them somehow fit onto Noah's ark?
But, to my surprise, there were also essays in
the book that struggled somewhat with evolution. It's not that they
denied its facticity, for they noted evidence for it:
fossils of animals that are different from what exists today, skeletons
that are human-like and also ape-like, and similarities between animals
that, when mapped out, are consistent with the evolutionist hierarchy
of development and taxonomy. But some of the essays puzzle over why
there are not too many fossils of intermediate species (they exist, but
even Darwin wondered why they didn't exist in greater number), or how
one can explain the sudden appearance of certain species. Punctuated
equilibrium and the rarity of fossilization are solutions that are
explored in this book.
Those are examples of the book's scientific
angle, and I hope that I expressed them accurately! The book also had a
decent humanities component. I enjoyed the essay about populism and
its relationship with anti-evolutionism. Populism was a leftist
movement, composed largely of farmers, and populist politician William
Jennings Bryant was a prominent opponent of teaching evolution in
schools. But the left changed as it came to accept the insights of
intellectuals, whereas the right-wing became the place where
anti-evolutionism tended to reside. One essay talked about the
controversial 1980's MACOS (Man: A Course of Study) curriculum in public
schools, which taught evolution and cultural relativism, inspiring
opposition from many on the right. The essay noted that the cultural
relativists were not as effective at mobilizing support for their
position, since they could understand where the right-wingers were
coming from, whereas dogmatism was what enabled the right-wing's
political success against MACOS. I guess that dogmatism sells!
Robert
J. Schadewald's chapter, "The Evolution of Bible-science," was
definitely worth reading. Schadewald compares young-earth creationism
with flat-earthism, and the part of the book about the contributors
states that Schadewald "has accumulated one of the world's most complete
flat-earth libraries." Both question scientific consensus with
religious motivations. Both offer money to anyone who can prove the
opposite of what they believe (i.e., evolution, a round earth). Both
engage in public debates with scientists, and they are effective in
that they attack, attack, and attack. (Schadewald notes an example in
which a panel declared the flat-earth proponent the winner of the
debate!) And there is even some intersection between the two
movements: When creationist Duane Gish denied that there were members of
the Flat Earth Society in the Creation Research Society, a flat-earther
member of the CRS stepped forward. Schadewald states that "Ironically,
Gish may have created a fact". for the flat-earther then quit from the
CRS!
I enjoyed the final essay, "Is It Really Fair to Give
Creationists Equal Time?", by Frederick Edwords. For one, as an ex-Armstrongite, I liked that
Edwords mentioned the Worldwide Church of God's support for the gap
theory in his discussion of which creationism should be taught if
creationism were to be in public schools! (Edwords' point is that
young-earth creationists only want for their own brand of creationism to
be taught alongside evolution, implying that they are as intolerant as they accuse
evolutionists of being.) Second, I appreciated Edwords' point that
there should be a class----outside of the science class----that explores
different beliefs about human origins. Overall, while I found this
book to be quite sarcastic in places, I did think that it maintained a
rather tolerant tone towards those who embrace religion. It was a far
cry from the new atheist rhetoric of people like Dawkins and Hitchens.
In
terms of criticisms I have of the book, there were some issues that I
wished it had explored further, such as how creationism went from being a
part of the political left to becoming a part of the political right. I
also think that the book could have been clearer, especially when
discussing the scientific evidence for evolution. But my main
criticism is that I wish that it had addressed another young-earth
creationist argument: that the universe must be young because there is
not much dust on the moon, and the moon would be buried in lots of dust
if the universe were old. The book addressed a creationist argument about the moon, but not that one!