This article is from
Journal of Creation 16(2):46–53, August 2002

Browse our latest digital issue Subscribe

The portrayal of creationists by their evolutionist detractors

123rf.com

by Philip Bell

The statements of evolutionists are a clear demonstration of their unjustified bias against the straightforward young-Earth creationist (hereafter, creationist) view, as taught in Genesis. Indeed, evolutionists are often willing to resort to all manner of arguments, tactics and schemes, all of which are expressly designed to ridicule the views of Bible-believing Christians. The quotations that follow, from the recent writings of well-known and influential evolutionists, have been categorized according to the main line of argument that is being used to discredit the creationist position. They should serve as a useful resource for those engaged in the Creation/evolution debate.

What evolutionists say about creationists/creation

“Creationists are bigoted fundamentalists”

People who adhere to a fundamental belief in Genesis as God’s infallible Word are variously castigated as a fanatical, bigoted, even dangerous, religious minority. They are disparaged as being those who cling to outmoded ideas in the face of the supposedly overwhelming weight of evidence for evolution. The writings of Daniel Dennett, a philosopher, ultra-Darwinist and committed atheist, epitomize this attitude:

“But hasn’t there been a tremendous rebirth of fundamentalist faith in all these creeds? Yes, unfortunately there has been, and I think that there are no forces on this planet more dangerous to us all than the fanaticisms of fundamentalism….”¹

Steven Rose, a neuroscientist, is a self-professing materialist but a vocal critic of ultra-Darwinism and reductionism. Nevertheless, he is careful to distance himself from their main opponents:

“In attacking ultra-Darwinism in this way I want to make it absolutely clear that I have no intention of departing from a materialist view of life, nor of giving any ground at all to anti-Darwinian fundamentalists, creationists or New Age mystics of any shape or hue.”²

The intended impression is that fundamental, Biblical views equate to bigotry because of their insistence on ‘unwarranted’ interpretation of Genesis (or believing the Bible at all). Furthermore, this has the effect of blinding this deviant minority to the ‘factual’ support for evolution from biology and paleontology. Richard Fortey is a senior paleontologist at the Natural History Museum, London, and the author of several books. He concurs:

“The great battles which palaeontology fought in the nineteenth century (and sadly continues to fight in some quarters) have been against an over-literal reading of biblical history.”³

Creationists, it is asserted, not only have a blind faith in the Bible but are equally blind to the ‘truth’ of evolution that is staring them in the face. Until his death in 1997, Brian Silver was Professor of Physical Chemistry at the Technion—Israel Institute of Technology. His last book states:

“And if these phenomena exist [i.e. the existence of mutations and the mixing of genes due to sexual reproduction], then there is a mechanism for the creation of new species from old. A reasoned refutation of evolution has become so difficult that the opposition is now largely confined to fundamentalists, those who believe in the literal truth of the Bible, and specifically in Gen. 1:27: “And God created man in His image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” This leaves little room for argument. Genesis is a powerful and brilliantly imaginative myth. As an account of the origin of the Earth and the creatures living on it, it is wildly improbable….”⁴

Some theistic evolutionists are prepared to go even further, claiming that such fundamentalists are guilty of putting a stumbling block in the way of those who might otherwise come to Christian faith. Russell Stannard is a professor of physics at the Open University in the United Kingdom and the author of several popular children’s science books. Although a professing Christian however (who denies the Virginal Conception and many miracles of Christ), he writes:

“Literalist, fundamentalist Christians have always bothered me. On the one hand, they clearly have a deep respect and love for the Bible, which I unreservedly applaud. But theirs is an approach that appears to fly in the face of the scientific evidence…the creationist movement remains powerful, especially in the USA. Sadly, its activities lead to a significant number of scientists becoming contemptuous of all religion.”⁵

“Creationists are not real scientists”

Not only are Creation-believers allegedly bigoted in regard to their Biblical views, those who are practising scientists are invariably stated to be non-scientific, pseudoscientific or ‘scientific’. Clearly, to describe people as ‘creation scientists’—i.e. to add the quotation marks—is to subtly undermine their academic credentials, with the deliberate intention of denying their authority in scientific matters. As with any ploy that attempts to relegate the status of creationists from that of true scientists to ‘quacks’, the writer hopes that the creationists’ scientific pronouncements will then not be seriously considered. Dennett is characteristically blunt, whilst seemingly un­aware that his own undisguised bigotry smacks of hypocrisy:

“[Darwin’s theory] has been pilloried in caricature by opponents, some of whom would have it compete in our children’s schools with “creation science”, a pathetic hodge-podge of pious pseudo-science.”¹

Other authors follow a similar tack in their put-downs of creationists, as the follow­ing quotations show, from books by Stannard, Fortey and Silver respectively:

“I have always found it puzzling that physicists seem more inclined to be religious than biologists. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that biologists are continu­ally being forced to defend their ideas on evolution against non-scientifically-minded creationists.”⁵

“The narrative of life requires a scale of thousands to millions of years, acting over a drama of more than 3,000 million years. Geologists are insouciant in the face of these figures. Creation ‘scientists’ simply do not believe them.”³

“Unfortunately, pseudoscientific babble from a variety of sources has suggested that science is on the side of the creationists, since the second law [of thermodynam­ics] supposedly precludes the spontaneous formation of organized systems. Ergo, life required a supernatural hand.”⁴

To describe creationists as non-scientific is to redefine science. Real science deals with such things as hypotheses, predictions, repeat­able experiments and hard facts. In the light of this, such caricatures of creationists are often a case of the ‘pot calling the kettle black’, as demonstrated by the following admis­sion by Fortey in his most recent book:

“In most rock sections…we assume that every trilobite novelty that appears was an evolutionary innovation even when the rocks themselves often provide no details of its origin…. This rather mundane truth has been misappropriated by creation “scientists” as evidence that “fossils don’t provide support for evolution”—which is not the same thing at all.” [emphasis added]⁶

Fortey wants readers to believe that the confessed absence of fossil evidence for trilobites’ evolutionary origin (i.e. lack of undisputed transitional forms) does not prevent trilobite phylogeny from being traced from their fossils.

So, the discontinuity of trilobite morphologies—whilst confirming Creation to the unprejudiced mind—is asserted to be evidence for evolution, the truth of which was as­sumed a priori. Such absolute belief in evolution prevents its falsification because, as here, contradictions are simply re-interpreted as evidence!

“Creationists are deliberate misinformers”

A particularly serious misrepresentation of creation­ists is that they are liars, intent on indoctrinating the next generation with false teaching. Predictably, Dennett pulls no punches:

“Save the Baptists! Yes, of course, but not by all means. Not if it means tolerating the deliberate misinforming of children about the natural world. According to a recent poll, 48 percent of the people in the United States today believe that the book of Genesis is literally true. And 70 percent believe that “creation science” should be taught in school alongside evolution…. Misinforming a child is a terrible offence.’¹

‘If you insist on teaching your children false­hoods—that the Earth is flat, that “Man” is not a product of evolution by natural selection—then you must expect, at the very least, that those of us who have freedom of speech will feel free to describe your teachings as the spreading of falsehoods, and will attempt to demonstrate this to your children at our earliest opportunity.”¹

morgueFile

It is deeply ironical that Dennett believes in freedom of speech for the minority in the United States who wish to indoctrinate the children of the majority about evolution. Yet he would deny this same freedom to the majority on the grounds that they would be committing a ‘terrible offence’. Although it might be argued that his views repre­sent a minority of evolutionists, he is certainly, and rather disturbingly, not a lone voice. Dennett describes the Cre­ation-believer’s denial of human evolution as a falsehood whereas teaching people that they are the product of blind evolution is, in truth, perhaps the most destructive false­hood of our day. A verse of Scripture seems particularly pertinent here:

“Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who put darkness for light, and light for darkness; who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!” (Isa. 5:20)

“Creationists are of questionable intellect”

‘No normal person could really believe that!’ ‘Only a fool could accept these ideas!’ This kind of ‘intellectual bullying’ is common. The aim is clearly to paint a picture of your opponent as someone verging on the insane, or at least, whose ideas are simplistic and naive. Dennett uses this particular tactic liberally:

“The kindly God who fashioned each and every one of us (all creatures great and small) and sprinkled the sky with shining stars for our delight—that God is, like Santa Claus, a myth of childhood, not anything a sane, undeluded adult could literally believe in.”¹

“To put it bluntly but fairly, anyone today who doubts that the variety of life on this planet was produced by a process of evolution is simply ignorant—inexcusably ignorant, in a world where three out of four people have learned to read and write.”¹

Theistic evolutionist, Professor R.J. (Sam) Berry is geneticist at University College, London and past President of Christians in Science. In an interview with Russell Stan­nard he gave the following opinion of creation science:

“It’s a very over-simplistic viewpoint…. What we are told [in the Bible] has to be reinterpreted in every generation…I am an ape. I am an ape made in the image of God, and I’ve got to bring these to­gether. This doesn’t mean watering down either in any way…. So many Christians have a half-baked faith; for them, its faith or science. But it isn’t that, it’s faith and science.”⁵

Berry believes that the fallible opinions of mere men can be reconciled with the God’s inerrant Word without diluting either. He fails to see the contradiction that his own words contain, namely that this bringing together of evolution and the Bible necessitates that one view be ‘rein­terpreted’; no prizes for guessing which one! Nevertheless, he readily describes those who opt for a more literalist view of Creation as having an inferior faith and would no doubt agree with Silver’s comment that:

“Science does not disprove the creationist thesis, but it does not support it either. It just makes it look infantile.”⁴

Ernst Mayr (1904–2005) is a famous evolutionary biolo­gist and atheist, author of some of the 20^th century’s most influential volumes on evolution including What Evolution Is this year; he was also Professor Emeritus of Zoology at Harvard University. He sums up the consensus of opinion among evolutionists, and indeed of the average layperson, when he says:

“No educated person any longer questions the validity of the so-called theory of evolution, which we now know to be a simple fact.”⁷

“Creationists believe … ”—the use of ‘straw man’ arguments

Straw man arguments are quite commonly found in the evolutionist literature. So is the relating of creationist be­liefs that are so outdated that hardly any bona fide creationist holds the position today. Such misrepresentation of Bible-believing scientists is a sad commentary on the supposed objectivity of scientists. Stephen J. Gould (1941-2002) was a palaeontologist and prolific science writer at the popular level. To the lay person, he was probably the USA’s most famous evolutionist. Certainly, he should have known bet­ter than to write the following:

“…every time I collect fossils in Paleozoic rocks…I predict that I will not find fossil mammals—for mammals evolved in the subsequent Triassic period (while young-earth creationists, claiming that God made life in six days of twenty-four hours, should expect to encounter mammals in all strata).”⁸

Informed creationists do not use such simplistic reasoning; the absence of mammalian fossils from much of the geological record does not contradict their expectations. Briefly, the fossil record speaks of rapid burial and death, contrary to God’s creation of life, but a specific prediction of the global Flood of Noah’s day (see Genesis 7:19–23).

Many creationists interpret the general fossil succes­sion as broadly representative of different, antediluvial ecological zones (with their peculiar assemblage of organ­isms), which were successively inundated by the waters of Noah’s Flood and, maybe, subsequent, more localised catastrophes.

Rose should know better than to make the following faux pas, or is it a deliberate ‘straw man’?

“According to biblical myth, life on Earth began during the seven days [sic] of Genesis, when God individually created the progenitor pair of each spe­cies. These proliferated until the days of Noah’s flood, when breeding pairs of all the world’s species boarded the Ark and were thus spared to begin the process of repopulating the Earth once the floodwa­ters had subsided.”²

It is inexcusable for an informed evolutionist to still be trotting out the old chestnut that God created each species of organism, with which we are familiar today, and that two of each species had to be taken on the Ark. Creationists believe that God created each kind of animal and that pairs of each kind of land vertebrates went on board Noah’s Ark; kinds do not necessarily equate to the taxonomic species.

The following, extreme example of the use of a ‘straw man’ argument, illustrates the lengths to which some will go, in order to discredit their creationist opponents:

“Fundamentalists have found ingenious ways to discount the scientific evidence for evolution. The classic example is the suggestion that fossils were deliberately concocted and placed in the Earth by Satan himself in order to deceive man, and that one can even detect a devilish whiff of sulfur at the sites of fossil remains. In fairness to the proponents of such views, it must be conceded that they cannot be disproved, either by reason or by observation. They are just staggeringly improbable, which is why I ignore them.”⁴

When creationists are more accurately represented

The following quotations from evolutionists give a fairer description of what creationists believe. In fact, some writers seem to be more informed about creationist views than they are usually prepared to let on. If this is true, their ‘strategies’ for misrepresenting creationists are all the more inexcusable. However, while creationist views are more accurately stated, a fallacious rebuttal of their posi­tion invariably follows. Creationists agree with the logic expressed by those whom Dennett describes here:

“Many people apparently think that ethics is in deep trouble if it turns out that human beings aren’t, as the Bible tells us, just a little below the angels.”¹

Gould, obviously aware that creationists believe evolution to be religious in nature, is nevertheless quick to try and sidestep this by fact:

“Our creationist detractors charge that evolution is an unproved and unprovable charade—a secular religion masquerading as science. They claim, above all, that evolution generates no predictions, never exposes itself to test, and therefore stands as a dogma rather than disprovable science. This claim is nonsense. We make and test risky predictions all the time; our success is not dogma, but a highly probable indication of evolution’s basic truth….”⁸

Richard Dawkins was at one time Professor of the Public Under­standing of Science at Oxford University. He is an ultra-Darwinist and atheist, the author of a number of influential books advocating neo-Darwinism, and famous for his op­position to creationism. For once, creationists will endorse some of what he says when he states that:

“Any Designer capable of constructing the dazzling array of living things would have to be intelligent and complicated beyond all imagining. And complicated is just another word for improbable—and therefore demanding of explanation…. [A simple God] would be too simple to be capable of designing the universe (to say nothing of forgiving sins, answering prayers, blessing unions, transubstantiating wine, and the various other achievements variously expected of him).”⁹

His commitment to naturalism demands that all things should, in theory, be explainable; he would ‘put God in a box’, if he could. His writings are largely an attempt, so it would seem, to counter the authority of God’s Word; i.e. a critique of Rom. 1:20.

It is evolution that is improbable, but Dawkins’ believes he can explain how it happened.¹⁰ Belief in Creation also requires faith but it is eminently reasonable, because it accepts the role of the omnipotent, all-Wise Creator. Silver disagrees, but finishes his sentence with a statement that accurately represents what many creationists do believe to be true of evolution:

“As an account of the origin of the Earth and the creatures living on it, [Genesis] is wildly improbable, but creationists believe that the theory of evolution is ‘simply the continuation of Satan’s long war against God’.”⁴

It is very rare indeed for the specific research of creationists to receive so much as a mention in popular-level science books and magazines, as this would require a detailed and well-reasoned rebuttal, rather than the sort of ‘hand-waving’ we have seen. In light of this fact, the more widely that creationist literature can be disseminated the better. As God-honouring ministries, such as Creation Ministries International, the Institute for Creation Research (and others), spread the truth about the straightforward Bible teaching with respect to origins, it should become increasingly difficult for this sort of mis­representation to have its intended negative impact.

Statements about the Creator or biblical origins

Claims made without supporting reasons

The following quotations are examples of bald assertions about matters of origins and, since reasons for the statements being made are not given, these claims effectively express the evolutionist’s faith; i.e. assurance of the statement’s truth in spite of contrary/missing evidence. Richard Leakey is a well-known palaeoanthropologist and author of numerous books on human origins. He believes that:

“While we may be special in many ways, special explanations of our origin and of our place in the universe are not necessary.”¹¹

Dawkins baldly asserts:

“No sane creator, setting out from scratch to design a flat-fish [talking here specifically of plaice, sole and flounders], would have conceived on his drawing board the absurd distortion of the head needed to bring both eyes round to one side.”⁹

But, what special knowledge does Dawkins possess, entitling him to make pronouncements about how and what the Creator should or should not have done? Elsewhere, his faith in naturalism as the ultimate truth explains his arrogance:

“But if an engineer looks at an animal or organ and sees that it is well designed to perform some task, then I will stand up and assert that natural selection is responsible for the goodness of apparent design.”⁹

Silver would be quite at home with the latter view­point, concluding that evolutionary biology is inexorably leading to a diminishing of the uniqueness of human be­ings:

“The unwillingness to include man in a determin­istic universe, the hope that free will really operates is one of the drives behind creationism. Unfor­tunately, the more we learn of biology, the more it seems that man is just a particularly complicated example of organized matter.”⁴

Sadly, many readers of science books, at the lay person’s level, get so caught up in the arguments being used to bolster evolution that they imbibe these kinds of polemical statements too. Yet, they amount to nothing more than thinly disguised question-begging; i.e. they assume as true the very thing they purport to be trying to prove.

The outright rejection of Scripture

"Daniel Dennett 2" by Dmitry Rozhkov - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Commons.

This section deals with plain statements of the Bible (e.g. in regard to the nature/existence of the Creator) that are mentioned and summarily denied, sometimes with a frank admission of the person’s own, contrary beliefs. For instance, Daniel Dennett begins his book, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, with song lyrics about human love in response to God’s creative handiwork, but in the last few pages, he muses:

“I began this book with a song which I myself cherish…I hope my grandson learns it and passes it on to his grandson, but at the same time I do not myself believe, and do not really want my grand­son to believe, the doctrines that are so movingly expressed in that song. They are too simple. They are, in a word—wrong…the song is a beautiful, comforting falsehood.”¹

As a result of his rabid atheism, Dennett appears to wrestle with paradoxes of his own making:

“I love the King James Version of the Bible. My own spirit recoils from a God Who is He or She [sic] in the same way my heart sinks when I see a lion pacing neurotically back and forth in a small zoo cage. I know, I know, the lion is beautiful but dangerous; if you let the lion roam free, it would kill me; safety demands that it be put in a cage. Safety demands that religions be put in cages too—when absolutely necessary.”¹

These are poignant remarks indeed. There is a hint of the inner contradictions that the atheist must live with by not allowing himself to ponder the real issues too much. Something in the human spirit, even of fallen man, wit­nesses to the truth of Scriptural statements about the nature of our Creator God and a person denies it at their peril:

“For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and God­head [divine nature], so that they are without excuse.” (Rom. 1:20)

“The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God’.” (Psa. 14:1)

“The foolishness of a man twists his way, and his heart frets against the Lord.” (Prov. 19:3).

An incident that Dawkins relates is particularly sad:

“I asked [my daughter Juliet] what she thought wild flowers were for. She gave a rather thought­ful answer. ‘Two things’, she said. ‘To make the world pretty, and to help the bees make honey for us.’ I was touched by this and sorry I had to tell her that it wasn’t true…. It has long been widely believed that brute creation is here for our benefit.” The first chapter of Genesis is explicit. Man has “dominion” over all living things, and the animals and plants are there for our delight and our use [emphasis added].⁹

The inherent purposes and attributes of God in Cre­ation are ‘clearly seen’ (Rom. 1:20), even to the child of an ardent atheist. Yet, of the likes of Dawkins, Scripture declares, “Professing to be wise, they became fools…” (Rom. 1:22).

The following is from a conversation between Stannard (a theistic evolutionist) and Dawkins:

“One of the things about Richard [Dawkins] that has always provoked my curiosity is what drives him. Why is he so militantly atheist…? ‘…the reason why I’m driven is probably more to do with the fact that I have such a strong feeling for the Uni­verse…. It’s such a richly rewarding experience to share in that understanding that I feel desperately sad that people are deprived of that experience by being fed what I see as inadequate—medieval, in many cases—substitutes for it. Most people who are influenced by religion are, I believe, impoverished rather than enriched by it. Without it, they would have a vision of the Universe, of life, and of their place in it which is bigger, more dignified, more uplifting.’”⁵

If Stannard is prepared to subjugate the Genesis ac­count of Adam and Eve (and Gospel miracle accounts) to a contemporary, evolutionary interpretation, his position (like that of his fellow theistic evolutionists) does away with the theological basis for believing that man is, in any way, spe­cial. As is often the case, it is non-Christian scientists who appreciate this fact most clearly. The physicist and popular science writer, Paul Davies, considers that extra-terrestrial life is very likely to exist and thinks its discovery would be very significant. He told Stannard, in an interview:

“I think the discovery of even a humble bac­terium somewhere else in the Universe (if we could be sure it had evolved independently of life on Earth) would be momentous. Those people who cling to the idea that humanity is the pinnacle of creation, or that somehow we were made in the image of God, would I think receive a rude shock….”⁵

That evolutionary belief destroys the logical basis for mankind’s special place in the universe, is clearly ap­preciated by Rose:

“For biologists, humans are not the product of special creation by an all-wise and all-powerful deity, but the more or less accidental product of evolutionary forces working over almost unimagin­able aeons of time.”²

Mayr unashamedly preaches ‘another gospel’; namely that evolutionary belief serves to liberate people from having to accept God as Creator, thereby allowing them spiritual freedom:

“The theory of evolution by natural selection explains the adaptedness and diversity of the world solely materialistically. It no longer requires God as creator or designer … Eliminating God from science made room for strictly scientific explanations of all natural phenomena; it gave rise to positivism; it produced a powerful intellectual and spiritual revolu­tion, the effects of which have lasted to this day.”⁷

We see from these men’s writings just how fatal the doctrine of evolution is to the Christian worldview. They are perfectly aware that Gen. 1-11 teaches a history that is fundamentally at odds with evolutionary history. Under­mine the Bible’s history—as they are intent on doing—and you eliminate the legitimacy of the Bible’s teaching that God is Lawgiver, Judge and Saviour (see Isa. 33:22).

Perceptive comments with which creationists can agree

It is a significant and sad indictment of the Christian church today, that proponents of humanism have a keen understanding of the wider implications of evolutionary belief, while many Christian leaders seem content to adopt compromise positions (e.g. theistic evolution). The quota­tions in this section reveal that atheists and humanists agree with creationists about the foundational nature of the book of Genesis to all aspects of Christianity. For example, one can endorse Dennett here:

“Now if you believe the Bible…is literally the word of God … , then you do indeed have grounds for believing that the ethical precepts found in the Bible have a special warrant that no other writings could have. If, on the other hand, you believe that the Bible…is really a nonmiraculous product of hu­man culture, issuing from some one or more human authors, then you will grant it no authority beyond tradition and whatever its arguments generate by their own cogency.”¹

Dawkins made the following, very revealing com­ments in an interview with Russell Stannard:

“Richard Dawkins…sees no need at all to bring in the idea of a creator god. ‘I call it explanatory overkill. It’s putting two explanations in where one will do. The theory of evolution by natural selection is on its own sufficient to explain life. It may be that God on his own is sufficient to explain life. If I were God I wouldn’t do it by evolution! I would do it directly. By invoking the idea of evolution by natural selection as God’s way of doing it, you are in effect invoking the one way which makes it look as though God isn’t there. So if God chose that way of doing it, then he deliberately chose a way which totally covered his tracks.’ ‘If he was there, and this was in fact the way he did it,’ I persisted, ‘would you say that the nature of this particular process casts some light on the kind of God he would be?’ ‘I think it would show him to be totally indifferent . . The consequence of natural selection is suffering on an enormous scale all over the world. It’s not that nature is malevolent…. It’s just that misery of this kind is precisely what you’d expect if nature is totally indifferent to suffering” [emphasis added].¹²

The prominent biologist and atheist, Will Provine, has been actively engaged in the Creation versus evolu­tion debate for some time and told Stannard his views on creationists:

“I think creation scientists are intellectually hon­est in their beliefs. If evolution is true, then none of the things that deeply religious people want to be true are in fact true. No God. No life after death. No free will. No ultimate meaning in life and no ultimate foundation for ethics. All of these things are taken away, and I believe creationists have a keen apprecia­tion of this fact. So I sympathize with their general point of view. In other words, they say evolution cannot have occurred. I understand the sentiment. I just believe they’re wrong. If modern evolutionary biology is true, then the traditional foundations for religion are gone [emphasis added].”⁵

Paul Davies expressed similar sentiments when Stannard interviewed him about alien life:

“Christianity, in particular, has difficulties with regard to the very special role that Jesus Christ plays.

The Church should give a lot of attention to exactly how it wishes to regard possible alien beings. If they wish to retain Jesus Christ as the saviour, is he the saviour of mankind only, or of all sentient beings throughout the Universe? Or will each community have its own saviour? Doesn’t it all start to become a little bit ludicrous?”⁵

Wikipedia: Lock & Whitfield

Since the time of Darwin’s contemporary, Thomas Henry Huxley (the popularizer of modern scientific human­ism), professing atheists have tacitly admitted that the whole Christian basis for ethics and morality, the nature of God and the very Gospel of Jesus Christ depend on the historicity of Genesis.¹³ In a day when even evangelical theologians are increasingly capitulating to contemporary views of origins, it is vital that the foundations be restored—i.e. a high view of the book of Genesis as God’s inspired and non-negotiable Word.

Conclusions

We have reviewed the manner in which creationists are portrayed by prominent evolutionists, who are writing at the level of the intelligent lay person. Some of the depic­tions of creationists are the disparaging remarks that one might expect from those whose view of life’s origins are so poorly supported by science, logic, common sense and Scripture. However, with some categories of remarks there almost seems to be a premeditated attempt to undermine the authority of creation scientists; i.e. those who conduct their scientific endeavours on the basis of the plain statements of Gen. 1-11. This is to say that the remarks bear the telltale signs of scheming, expressly designed to discredit those who adhere to Biblical Creation.

For those who are very familiar with the secular lit­erature, this may be stating the obvious, for we are aware of the intrinsic bias that exists, not only towards creation­ists, but also towards hard, factual evidence that does not complement the prevailing evolutionary, long-ages para­digm. However, the onus on those who are in a position to educate others—be they school children, college students or adults—is to teach them to identify bias also. What questions should be asked when reading what evolutionists have written in books, magazine articles or the specialist scientific journals? What biases should be borne in mind? After all, bald-faced lies are usually fairly easy to spot. It is arguments that mix truths (that Christians accept) with inaccurate or unsubstantiated statements that are more subtle and insidious.¹⁴

Related Media

Evolution and pop culture