Science Friction_ Where the Known Meets the Unknown - Michael Shermer [114]
Gap Creationism. One of the better-known accommodations of religion to science was Gap or Restitution Creationism, which claimed that there was a large temporal gap between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2. Articulated from about the late eighteenth century on, Gap Creationism assumes a pre-Adamic creation that was destroyed before Genesis 1:2, when God re-created the world in six days, and created Adam and Eve. A time gap between two separate creations allows for an accommodation of the proof of the ancient age of the earth with Special Creationism.
Day-Age Creationism. This model accommodates science and religion by rendering each of the six days of creation as long periods of time—even thousands or millions of years instead of merely twenty-four hours long. Many literalists have found comfort in what they think is a rough parallel between organic evolution and Genesis, in which plants appear before animals, and human beings appear last.
Progressive Creationism (PC). The PC view blends Special Creationism with a fair amount of modern science. Progressive Creationists such as Dr. Hugh Ross, of Reasons to Believe ministries, have no problems with scientific data concerning the age of the earth, or the long period of time it has taken for the earth to come to its current form. PCs generally believe that God created “kinds” of animals sequentially; the fossil record is thus an accurate representation of history because different animals and plants appeared at different times rather than having been created all at once.
Intelligent Design Creationists (IDC). Intelligent Design Creationism is a lineal descendant of William Paley’s argument from design, which asserted that God’s existence could be proved by examining his works. The finding of order, purpose, and design in the world is proof of an omniscient designer.
Evolutionary Creationism (EC). God the Creator uses evolution to bring about the universe according to his plan. From a scientific point of view, evolutionary creationism is hardly distinguishable from Theistic Evolution, which follows it on the continuum. The differences between EC and Theistic Evolution lie not in science but in theology, with EC being held by more conservative (evangelical) Christians.
Theistic Evolution (TE). God creates through evolution. Astronomical, geological, and biological evolution are acceptable to TEs. They vary in whether and how much God is allowed to intervene. Other TEs see God as intervening at critical intervals during the history of life (especially in the origin of humans), and they in turn come closer to PCs. In one form or another, TE is the view of creation taught at mainline Protestant seminaries, and it is the official position of the Catholic Church.
The continuum diffuses the debate and forces the uninitiated into thinking through which of the many positions most appeals to them based on their religious beliefs. With so many mutually exclusive creationist doctrines all claiming infallibility and final truth, a logical default position to fall to is science because it never makes such absolutist truth claims. In science, all conclusions are provisional, subject to new evidence and better arguments, the very antithesis of religious faith.
10. Nonreligious Commitments. According to William Dembski, mathematician, philosopher, theologian, and author of Intelligent Design, No Free Lunch, Design Inference, and other works that form the canon of the New New Creationism: “Scientific creationism has prior religious commitments whereas intelligent design has not.”
Baloney. In the same book Dembski also wrote: “Christ is never an addendum to a scientific theory but always a completion.” This is what I call the farce of ID. The primary reason we are experiencing this peculiarly American phenomenon of evolution denial (the doppelgänger of Holocaust