The purpose of such a convention should 
not be to provide a forum where various 
creationists get together to present papers 
arguing for their own particular inter- 
pretations on details of science or Scrip- 
ture. Rather, it should seek to reach as 
large and general an audience as possible 
with carefully chosen papers (and other 
activities) by qualified speakers who will 
make the greatest impact for the cre- 
ationist cause in general. 
The newsletter went on to list ac- 
ceptable and unacceptable topics. The 
former included refutations of evolu- 
tionism; legal, political, and educa- 
tional aspects of teaching creation in 
schools; scientific evidence for a re- 
cent creation of the earth and uni- 
verse; and “flood geology,” which 
attributes a wide range of fossil-bear- 
ing geologic deposits to a single cata- 
strophic global event, the Noachian 
deluge. Unacceptable topics included 
plate tectonics and continental drift 
(listed among others as areas of ques- 
tionable or peripheral significance to 
creationism) and all “highly technical 
and specialized treatments of individ- 
ual problems.” 
Field or laboratory research repre- 
sents a very minor charge of scientific 
creationists. Most efforts are directed 
toward rewriting the discoveries and 
interpretations of evolutionists. In this 
endeavor, numerous evolutionists are 
portrayed as scientists who have all 
the evidence to disprove evolution 
(and support creation) at their fin- 
gertips, but who are either too stub- 
born or too deeply indoctrinated in 
evolutionary dogma to appreciate it. 
Arguments of anthropologists, biolo- 
gists, chemists, geologists, astrono- 
mers, physicists, and engineers are re- 
interpreted or taken out of context. 
In this way, as I will show below, 
creationists manage, among other 
things, to convert arguments about the 
pattern and process of evolutionary 
change into arguments about the ex- 
istence of change. 
The primary tactic of the scientific 
creationists is to find controversy, dis- 
agreement, and weakness in evolution- 
ary theory — by no means a difficult 
task. Having demonstrated problems 
with various aspects of evolutionary 
theory (some fabricated, some real), 
the creationists then conclude that we 
must accept the Judeo-Christian bib- 
lical account of creation as the only 
possible, logical alternative. Thus sci- 
entific creationism proceeds by con- 
structing an artificial dichotomy be- 
tween two models — evolution and cre- 
ation — both incorrectly represented as 
monolithic. 
Actually, various evolutionary ex- 
planations are possible, and numerous 
models, both Darwinian and non-Dar- 
winian, have been posed. They have 
in common the notion that the earth’s 
life forms are related by common an- 
cestry, whether or not they have since 
achieved reproductive isolation. Evo- 
lutionists agree that the evidence sup- 
ports this premise of genetic continu- 
ity although, as scientists, they do not 
rule out the logical possibility that 
life could have arisen independently 
on more than one occasion on the earth 
or in the universe. 
Creationism, on the other hand, is 
based on the idea that reproductive 
isolation usually signals the absence 
of common ancestry. Given genetic 
discontinuity, numerous creation- 
based explanations are nevertheless 
possible: witness the global diversity 
of creation myths. Ignoring this di- 
versity, however, scientific creationists 
begin with one specific and detailed 
explanation of the universe and re- 
quire its acceptance on faith as a pre- 
requisite of membership in their var- 
ious research organizations. The 
Statement of Belief of the Creation 
WHEN YOU WRITE TO 
NATURAL HISTORY 
about a change of address, renewal of sub- 
scription, billing, or any kind of adjustment, 
send the present address label from the mag- 
azine wrapper 
Moving? Please notify 6 weeks in ad- 
vance. You can use this form to tell us about 
a move or order a subscription 
Change of address — Attach your address 
label in the dotted area and fill in your new 
address below, clip and mail to Natural History 
Membership Services, P O Box 4300, Ber- 
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a 
Nl 
Research Society begins: “The Bible 
is the written Word of God, and be- 
cause we believe it to be inspired 
throughout, all of its assertions are 
historically and scientifically true in 
all of the original autographs.” The 
scientific creationists do not pose and 
test alternative creation models. Doing 
science is not the business of scientific 
creationists; destroying the public 
credibility of evolution is their real 
goal. “New evidence,” the press is 
told, reveals “major weaknesses” in 
evolution. Oddly, the creationist tactic 
of discovering controversies within ev- 
olutionary biology amounts to discov- 
ering that evolutionary biologists are 
guilty of doing science — posing, test- 
ing, and debating alternative expla- 
nations. 
One scientific debate in particular, 
that between the neocatastrophists (or 
punctuationalists) and the phyletic 
gradualists, has fueled the fires of sci- 
entific creationism. In 1972 Niles El- 
dredge of the American Museum of 
Natural History and Harvard pale- 
ontologist Stephen Jay Gould 
launched their new theory of evolution 
by “punctuated equilibria.” Evolu- 
tion, they claimed, proceeds by rapid 
fits and starts, punctuating long pe- 
riods of relative stasis. Drawing from 
the work of other paleontologists and 
neontologists, Eldredge, Gould, and 
later, Steven Stanley of Johns Hopkins 
developed the implications of a punc- 
tuational model of evolutionary 
change. In so doing, they challenged 
the assumption that most evolutionary 
change occurs as a byproduct of slow, 
ceaseless natural selection acting on 
variation in well-established popula- 
tions. 
While they have not abandoned the 
concept of natural selection as an im- 
portant evolutionary process, the 
punctuationalists have reinterpreted 
its role. Central to their argument is 
the view that most evolutionary 
change occurs in association with spe- 
ciation, that is, the formation of in- 
dependent species by the splitting of 
lineages into reproductively isolated 
populations. They argue that speci- 
ation may be achieved rapidly in 
small, geographically isolated popu- 
lations and that, in such populations, 
chance (as well as natural selection) 
can exert much greater influence on 
genetic change in form than is oth- 
erwise possible. They further argue 
that rapid or dramatic evolutionary 
changes cannot occur in the absence 
of speciation. The mechanisms and im- 
6 
