Creation “scientists” have more need than most
of us to parade their degrees and qualifications, but it pays to
look closely at the institutions that awarded them and the subjects
in which they were taken. Those vaunted Ph.D.s tend to be in
subjects such as marine engineering or gas kinetics rather than in
relevant disciplines like zoology or geology. And often they are
earned not at real universities, but at little-known Bible colleges
deep in Bush country.
There are, however, a few shining exceptions.
Kurt Wise now makes his living at Bryan College (motto “Christ Above
All”) located in Dayton, Tennessee, home of the famed Scopes trial.
And yet, he originally obtained an authentic degree in geophysics
from the University of Chicago, followed by a Ph.D. in geology from
Harvard, no less, where he studied under (the name is milked for all
it is worth in creationist propaganda) Stephen Jay Gould.
Kurt Wise is a contributor to In Six Days: Why
50 Scientists Choose to Believe in Creation, a compendium edited
by John F. Ashton (Ph.D., of course). I recommend this book. It is a
revelation. I would not have believed such wishful thinking and
self-deception possible. At least some of the authors seem to be
sincere, and they don’t water down their beliefs. Much of their fire
is aimed at weaker brethren who think God works through evolution,
or who clutch at the feeble hope that one “day” in Genesis might
mean not twenty-four hours but a hundred million years. These are
hard-core “young earth creationists” who believe that the universe
and all of life came into existence within one week, less than
10,000 years ago. And Wise—flying valiantly in the face of reason,
evidence, and education—is among them. If there were a prize for
Virtuoso Believing (it is surely only a matter of time before the
Templeton Foundation awards one) Kurt Wise, B.A. (Chicago), Ph.D.
(Harvard), would have to be a prime candidate.
Wise stands out among young earth creationists
not only for his impeccable education, but because he displays a
modicum of scientific honesty and integrity. I have seen a published
letter in which he comments on alleged “human bones” in
Carboniferous coal deposits. If authenticated as human, these
“bones” would blow the theory of evolution out of the water
(incidentally giving lie to the canard that evolution is
unfalsifiable and therefore unscientific: J. B. S. Haldane, asked by
an overzealous Popperian what empirical finding might falsify
evolution, famously growled, “Fossil rabbits in the Precambrian!”).
Most creationists would not go out of their way to debunk a
promising story of human remains in the Pennsylvanian Coal Measures.
Yet Wise patiently and seriously examined the specimens as a trained
paleontologist, and concluded unequivocally that they were
“inorganically precipitated iron siderite nodules and not fossil
material at all.” Unusually among the motley denizens of the “big
tent” of creationism and intelligent design, he seems to accept that
God needs no help from false witness.
All the more interesting, then, to read his
personal testimony in In Six Days. It is actually quite
moving, in a pathetic kind of way. He begins with his childhood
ambition. Where other boys wanted to be astronauts or firemen, the
young Kurt touchingly dreamed of getting a Ph.D. from Harvard and
teaching science at a major university. He achieved the first part
of his goal, but became increasingly uneasy as his scientific
learning conflicted with his religious faith. When he could bear the
strain no longer, he clinched the matter with a Bible and a pair of
scissors. He went right through from Genesis 1 to Revelations 22,
literally cutting out every verse that would have to go if the
scientific worldview were true. At the end of this exercise, there
was so little left of his Bible that
. . . try as I might, and even with the benefit
of intact margins throughout the pages of Scripture, I found it
impossible to pick up the Bible without it being rent in two. I
had to make a decision between evolution and Scripture. Either the
Scripture was true and evolution was wrong or evolution was true
and I must toss out the Bible. . . . It was there that night that
I accepted the Word of God and rejected all that would ever
counter it, including evolution. With that, in great sorrow, I
tossed into the fire all my dreams and hopes in
science.
See what I mean about pathetic? Most revealing of
all is Wise’s concluding paragraph:
Although there are scientific reasons for
accepting a young earth, I am a young-age creationist because that
is my understanding of the Scripture. As I shared with my
professors years ago when I was in college, if all the evidence in
the universe turns against creationism, I would be the first to
admit it, but I would still be a creationist because that is what
the Word of God seems to indicate. Here I must
stand.
See what I mean about honest? Understandably
enough, creationists who aspire to be taken seriously as scientists
don’t go out of their way to admit that Scripture—a local origin
myth of a tribe of Middle-Eastern camel-herders—trumps evidence. The
great evolutionist John Maynard Smith, who once publicly wiped the
floor with Duane P. Gish (up until then a highly regarded
creationist debater), did it by going on the offensive right from
the outset and challenging him directly: “Do you seriously mean to
tell me you believe that all life was created within one week?”
Kurt Wise doesn’t need the challenge; he
volunteers that, even if all the evidence in the universe flatly
contradicted Scripture, and even if he had reached the point of
admitting this to himself, he would still take his stand on
Scripture and deny the evidence. This leaves me, as a scientist,
speechless. I cannot imagine what it must be like to have a mind
capable of such doublethink. It reminds me of Winston Smith in
1984 struggling to believe that two plus two equals five if
Big Brother said so. But that was fiction and, anyway, Winston was
tortured into submission. Kurt Wise—and presumably others like him
who are less candid—has suffered no such physical coercion. But, as
I hinted at the end of my previous column, I do wonder whether
childhood indoctrination could wreak a sufficiently powerful
brainwashing effect to account for this bizarre phenomenon.
Whatever the underlying explanation, this example
suggests a fascinating, if pessimistic, conclusion about human
psychology. It implies that there is no sensible limit to what the
human mind is capable of believing, against any amount of contrary
evidence. Depending upon how many Kurt Wises are out there, it could
mean that we are completely wasting our time arguing the case and
presenting the evidence for evolution. We have it on the authority
of a man who may well be creationism’s most highly qualified and
most intelligent scientist that no evidence, no matter how
overwhelming, no matter how all-embracing, no matter how
devastatingly convincing, can ever make any difference.
Can you imagine believing that and at the same
time accepting a salary, month after month, to teach science? Even
at Bryan College in Dayton, Tennessee? I’m not sure that I could
live with myself. And I think I would curse my God for leading me to
such a pass.
2001