A Sample Creationist Argument

I've been sketching out some of the broader issues in the creation/evolution debates as a means of highlighting some general tendencies within conservative evangelicalism. Specifically, I'm fascinated by the possibility that an aversion to doubt and uncertainty serves as a more or less accurate rule of thumb evangelical faith. Evangelicals know the Truth. They are without doubt or nuance about the exclusivity of Christ for salvation, the inerrant literalism of the Bible as history, the trans-historical-objective status of moral standards, and a host of other points.

As evangelicalism comes into increasing contact with disciplines that repudiate such absolute and metaphysical certainty--science, for instance--evangelicalism has little choice but to alter those disciplines to fit its needs or attack them as enemies of faith. Anti-evolution creationism has, over the course of its 150+ years, done both. Darwinism is wrong; it's atheism in a trumped-up costume of fossils and family trees. Or: Darwinism--methodological naturalism in general--is bad science; excluding the possibility of divine agency in the origins or development of the universe is itself a kind of fundamentalism, blinkering scientists' gaze from the full (true) view of nature.

Of late, however, the most visible strains of creationism (apart, perhaps from the Intelligent Design movement) have adopted a different tactic. Groups like Ken Ham's Answers in Genesis or the Australia-based Creation Ministries International (CMI)seem initially to be little more than the latest variety of creation science data warrior, blasting shotgun barrages of factoids and doesn't-this-seem-unlikely's at various aspects of "old-earth" science and evolution.

I listened, for example to a recent sermon by one Dr. Jonathan Sarfati, a CMI spokesperson. His talk certainly contained a great deal of evolution-is-shoddy-science discussion. The tactic, well worn but still a favorite, goes something like this. Dr. Sarfati relates (generally with out clear attribution) a number of scientific finds regarding, say, fossils. He explains that "science textbooks" (a favorite foe of creationists) explain fossilization one way (ex: a fish dies, sinks to the bottom of a body of water, becomes covered in sediment, and over time fossilizes). Then, in his charmingly calm and reasonable New Zealand accent, he proceeds to offer some "common sense" problems with this view. Fish don't sink when they die, he claims (showing a picture, I gather, of a dead goldfish floating in an aquarium). Everyone knows they float. Thus the only way that fish could be covered in sediment is from some undersea tidal wave of rock and debris--exactly the sort of even that would happen during a global catastrophic flood.

He follows this with examples of several other fossils from around the world that seem to show an organism very much in the process of living before being caught in a seemingly sudden and total burial (i.e., giving birth, eating, etc.). These, too, he says, give evidence to a global flood catastrophe. Yet evolutionists (or "atheists"--he uses the terms almost interchangeably) never so much as admit that a global flood might account for the plain evidence. They have to go and make up "millions of years" to account for what the Genesis flood as recorded literally in scripture clearly explains.

Of course, Dr. Safarti is speaking to a congregation of believers at the front of a sanctuary, granting him a friendly audience basically eager to hear how science really at the end of the day "proves" scripture. His tone is patient, lightly humorous, and authoritative without seeming elitist or intimidating. His accent (and I wonder sometimes whether his talks change when speaking to other Kiwis), practiced presentation, and legato baritone lend an air of charming competence that smooths over what might otherwise be seen as gaps in logic.

And, let there be no mistake, his reasoning contains plenty of gaps. Any first-year student of rhetoric could spot a number of tricks he uses to make scientific consensus about the age of the earth seem flimsy and ridiculous. By setting himself up as teacher (highlighting his academic credentials--a PhD in Physical Chemistry), adopting an educational voice ("here's how this works, now..."), and peppering his presentation with evidence both numerical and visual, Sarfati justifies the fact that all information about fossilization, evolution, and the age of the earth--the very notions he's attacking--come from him. He can present the evolutionary case as he wishes, making the straw man of Darwinism he eventually erects seem fair.

Of course, he leaves out important facts about fossils, such as the fact that fossilization happens in a number of ways, many of which do in fact involve sudden inundation by sediment. He neglects to mention, also, that fish don't necessarily float when dead. He masks the fact that his samples come from wholly different sources dated at wholly different times. Basically, like most data war creationism, he never asserts that the present evidence positively proves the mechanism of the Genesis flood as the sole or primary agent of fossilization. The positive case for young-earth creationism never really gets made. He merely pokes holes in his vastly over-simplified version of evolution and suggests that his vastly decontextualized examples make a general kind of sense in the Genesis flood narrative.

From a scientific point of view, Sarfati's lack of positive proof for his alternative dooms his case. Despite his and other creationists' claims, young-earth creationism is not a natural or viable alternative to evolutionary theory. Even if evolution were somehow completely falsified (finding, as one scientist quipped, fossilized rabbits in Precambrian-era rock), it does not follow that Genesis wins by default. The case for Genesis has to be made--and it never really is. For a side who I see as relying on a rhetoric of certainty and final truth, this would seem to be a damning failure.

But making the certain scientific case for Genesis isn't really Sarfati's goal, and here, I argue, is the new tactic for creationism.

More tomorrow,

JF