From Skeptic vol. 2, no. 1, Spring 1993, pp. 86-88.
The following article is copyright © 1993 by the Skeptics Society,
P.O. Box 338, Altadena, CA 91001, (626) 794-3119. Permission
has been granted for noncommercial electronic circulation of these
articles in their entirety, including this notice.
WILL CREATIONISTS ABANDON CREATION-"SCIENCE"?
Scientific Malpractice: The Creation/Evolution Debate,
by Ivan L. Zabilka, 1992, Bristol Books, 160 pp.
By Jim Lippard
As Ronald L. Numbers' wonderful recent book, The Creationists: The
Evolution of Scientific Creationism (1992, Alfred A. Knopf), has
shown, the "scientific creationism" at the center of the current
public creation/evolution debate is relatively new; most of the
best-known "creationists" of the early twentieth century held views
which would jeopardize affiliation with organizations such as the
Institute for Creation Research or the Bible-Science Association. The
two weakest points of ICR-style creationism are (1) its commitment to
a young (i.e., less than 10,000-year-old) earth and (2) its reliance
on "flood geology," which attributes all fossils to a single
catastrophe, the Noachian deluge.
These two weak points will, I believe, ultimately lead to the
downfall of "scientific creationism" and its replacement in
evangelical and fundamentalist Christian circles by old-earth
creationism, progressive creationism, and, to some extent, theistic
evolution. While this may occur indirectly as a result of the
anti-creationist activities of organizations such as the National
Center for Science Education and the Skeptics Society, the direct cause
of the demise of young-earth/flood geology creationism is likely to be
popular Christian works which expose its origins and its scientific
and scriptural weaknesses. Several such works have already been
published: Davis Young's Christianity and the Age of the Earth
(1982, Zondervan), Alan Hayward's Creation and Evolution: The Facts and
Fallacies (1985, Triangle), Howard Van Till, Davis Young, and Carl
Menninga's Science Held Hostage (1988, InterVarsity Press), and Hugh
Ross's The Fingerprint of God (2nd edition, 1991, Promise Press) are
four examples (of which the first two are now out of print).
Ivan L. Zabilka's Scientific Malpractice: The
Creation/Evolution Debate, a slim paperback from Methodist
publisher Bristol House, appears at first glance to be a new
contribution to the popular Christian literature criticizing the
weaknesses of "scientific creationism." Despite the title, however,
only a single cursory chapter (the fourth, "The Scientific Arguments
of the Creationists") addresses the scientific aspects of creationism.
The other chapters introduce and define the subject matter of
creationism (chapters one and two) describe the social, political, and
legal history of creationism (chapters three and six), criticize
creationist Bible interpretation (chapter five), and argue that there
is still a role for belief in God and Christianity to play for those
who believe in evolution (chapters seven and eight).
The lack of emphasis on the scientific issues is no doubt at
least a partial explanation of the book's failure to mention any of
the above predecessor Christian works, except for a citation of Davis
Young's book in a footnote (page 155) as an example of someone wrongly
labeled a creationist by opponents of creationism. (Although Young's
views are probably best described as old-earth creationism, Young
himself concedes the name "creationist" to the young-earth flood
geologists on page 10 of his book.) I was still surprised to see no
mention of Langdon Gilkey's Creationism on Trial: Evolution and
God at Little Rock (1985, Winston Press) or to Roland Mushat
Frye's Is God a Creationist? (1983, Scribner's), both of
which would seem to me to be quite useful for a work such as
Zabilka's.
Despite these omissions, Zabilka, who has advanced degrees in
both the history of science and theology, has done a fairly good job
of succinctly describing the issues for the layman with only a passing
interest in the creation/evolution debate. It is not recommended for
anyone with greater interest, for it relies heavily on secondary
sources and there are much better books which address each of the
specific topics Zabilka covers. The book is at its best in its
historical chapters; at its weakest in its chapter on the scientific
issues. The main problem is superficiality; one simply cannot
adequately address the problem of "kinds," the fossil record, the
origin of life, the geological column, radiometric dating,
astronomical evidence for age, the second law of thermodynamics,
probability arguments, the Paluxy River footprints, and creationist
myths about Darwin's deathbed conversion and the "missing day" of
Joshua in a mere twenty- two pages. A cursory treatment of these
issues is bound to lead to the conclusion, as Zabilka is surely right
to note, that "it is very unlikely that any Creationists can be
persuaded to amend their thought patterns and processes by the
arguments presented here" (p. 142). Unfortunately, it is also
unlikely that this book will serve to prevent non-creationists from
being persuaded by, or even enable them to successfully argue with,
creationists with any degree of familiarity with the creationist
literature. For one example, Zabilka's response to the now-infamous
second law of thermodynamics argument is simply that "the Earth and
the biological subsystems upon it are not closed systems since there
is a constant influx of energy from the Sun. The second law simply
does not apply to evolution." While this is correct, it is not
sufficient to deal with creationist arguments involving the alleged
necessity of a "program" or a "power converter" to generate order
(e.g., Henry Morris, Scientific Creationism, 2nd edition,
1985, pp. 43-44).
There are some errors scattered throughout the book. One
problem is with names: Zabilka refers several times to Joel
"Craycraft" and "Nils" Eldredge in footnotes (pp. 150-151) and to
creationists "Garry" Parker, "W.L." Wysong, Jimmy "Swaggert," and
Wayne "Friar" (pp. 24, 79, 100) in the main body of the text. William
Jennings Bryan is branded a biblical literalist firmly in the
creationist camp (p. 46), despite the fact that Bryan was a day-ager
and not a biblical literalist (Numbers, The Creationists, p. 99).
Zabilka claims that the Creation Research Society "broke away" from
the American Scientific Affiliation and that the Creation Science
Research Center, in turn, split off from the CRS (pp. 24-25). While
several of the CRS's founders were members of the ASA, it never had
any affiliation with that group. The CSRC effectively split off from
the ICR, not the CRS. (See Numbers, pp. 222-229 and 284-285.)
Perhaps the two most serious errors are the statement on page
74 that "it is basically inappropriate to apply probability to
previous [i.e., past] events" and f.n. 27 on page 151 regarding
Karl Popper. The statement about probability is simply false. While
there is a sense in which past events all have probability 0 or 1
(depending upon whether or not they actually occurred), this is an
uninteresting sense of the word. One can quite sensibly ask what the
likelihood of particular past actual events was, in light of observed
frequencies of events of certain types and known physical laws.
(Chapter one of John Pollock, Nomic Probability and the Foundations of
Induction, 1990, Oxford University Press, discusses various theories
of probability.)
Zabilka's statement about Popper is this:
A favorite Creationist quotation is from Karl Popper, the philosopher
of science, who once wrote that evolution was not falsifiable in the
same manner as the other hard sciences. Creationists have quoted this
as meaning that evolution is not falsifiable, and therefore is not
science. They neglect the phrase "in the same manner." Popper stated
in an interview that he did not mean that evolution was not
falsifiable, only that the approach had to be different.
Zabilka cites no sources for this description, which is no surprise
since it is quite inaccurate. Popper never wrote that evolution was
not falsifiable; he stated that natural selection was not falsifiable.
The phrase "in the same manner" is Zabilka's quote, not Popper's.
Popper simply retracted his statement about natural selection
completely. (The relevant quotations from Popper may be found in
Frank J. Sonleitner, "What Did Karl Popper Really Say About
Evolution?" Creation/Evolution XVIII(Summer 1986):9-14.)
In the last two chapters of the book (especially the
penultimate chapter), Zabilka argues that scientists defending
evolution have occasionally engaged in excesses: using fallacious or
intemperate argument, engaging in metaphysical speculation while
claiming to be doing science, and improperly interpreting history to
draw conclusions about "warfare" between science and religion. While
many of his comments do hit the mark, the example he selects for more
criticisms than any other work is C. Leon Harris' Evolution:
Genesis and Revelations (1981, SUNY Press), a critique of
creationism I had previously been unaware of and which Zabilka himself
admits "is seldom cited by other authors opposed to Creationism"
(p. 154, footnote 3). Although Zabilka claims that "Some responses in
journals such as The Skeptical Inquirer and
Creation/Evolution are sarcastic, belittling, and
unprofessional," he gives no examples of such failings from either of
these publications. He argues in favor of the argument from design,
stating that its opponents have "simply dismissed this issue as 'the
old argument from design,' which does nothing to refute it" (p. 122).
While he elsewhere expresses familiarity with
Creation/Evolution, he here ignores the exchange between
Norman Geisler and Fred Edwords on this very subject in that journal
(issues 13 and 17), as well as the voluminous philosophical literature
criticizing the argument from design, from David Hume to J.L. Mackie
and Michael Martin. While I agree with Zabilka that science itself
cannot refute the existence of God, it can certainly provide
alternative explanations for many phenomena which have traditionally
been attributed to God. This has the effect of weakening purported
evidence for God's existence, while leaving a priori arguments
untouched--allowing philosophers of religion to continue debating the
issue.
I can recommend the book to readers of this journal only for
its coverage of historical issues and perhaps for its discussion of
biblical interpretation. The book as a whole can only be recommended
for those whose interest in the creation/evolution debate is as
superficial as the cursory coverage it offers of the central
scientific issues.