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Scientific Case for Creation

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The title says it all. Morris's introduction to the science behind creation is brief, simple, easy to read, and understandable with a little bit of a science background. Morris is concise with his strong points, and although the book was written in the 70s and new evidence is certainly out there, his points seem eternal and really make the case of evolution seem doubtful.

Amazon lists over two dozen books on Creationism by Henry M. Morris III, Ph.D. Since there is also an Amazon listing for APPLIED HYDRAULICS IN ENGINEERING, one surmises that the Good Doctor is an engineer. And, of course, that the Good Doctor is an engineer presumably establishes his face-validity as an expert witness for the plaintiff in the case Creationism vs. Theory of Evolution. Surely if one seeks incontestable evidence of Morris' expertise, one need look no further than his declaration some years ago that the moon's craters are surface scars produced during a battle between the respective armies of Satan and the archangel Michael (cf. Morris, THE REMARKABLE BIRTH OF PLANET EARTH [Creation-Life Publishers, 1978]). Well, maybe Morris' lunar hypothesis DOESN'T quite cinch the matter. Indeed, if THE SCIENTIFIC CASE FOR CREATION is representative of the advocacy in Morris' other books, his own personal hydraulics are symptomatic of water on the brain.

Morris' book teems with examples of crack-brained scientific distortion. Chapter 3, for example, presents a venerable chestnut of Creation Science: the purported demolition of secular Science's cosmogony by the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Morris, on page 13, quotes Isaac Asimov: "As far as we know, ALL CHANGES [emphasis added] are in the direction of increasing entropy, of increasing disorder, of increasing randomness, of running down" (Asimov, "Can Decreasing Entropy Exist in the Universe?", SCIENCE DIGEST, May, 1973, p. 76). Despite the many layers of technish piled like Pelion upon Ossa, the Second-Law-of-Thermodynamics maneuver isn't immediately convincing. There are too many apparent counterexamples. What about, for instance, the ontogeny of biological organisms (say, the development of an apple seed into an apple tree), which seems to be an example decreasing entropy? If it's NOT an example, some explanation is certainly in order, but you won't find one in Morris' book. Curious about how the Second Law of Thermodynamics REALLY works? Try out P. W. Atkins, THE SECOND LAW (Scientific American Books - W. H. Freeman and Co., 1984).

Chapter 4 contains the regulation Creationist attack on the fossil record. Morris declares on p. 29: "The Creation Model...postulates that all the basic kinds...of plants and animals were specially created and did not evolve from other kinds at all. Consequently the Creationist predicts that no transitional sequences (except within the KIND) will ever be found, either in the present array of organisms or in the fossil record." Notice the emphasis on transitional sequences "within the KIND". This constitutes nothing less than a forensic land mine. No matter what example of a purported transitional organism one produces, one will draw the retort: "To what KIND does this organism belong? If it belongs to the 'original' species, then it's actually PRE-transitional and, thus, NOT transitional at all! If it doesn't belong to the 'original' species, then it must belong to a 'new' species; in which case it's POST-transitional and, hence, again, NOT transitional at all! Either the organism belongs to the 'original' species, or it doesn't. But in either case, it's NOT transitional. Therefore, it's not transitional, period!" Yep: you're damned if you do; you're damned if you don't; therefore, you're damned. Get it? The glitch involved in this reasoning is closely allied to the fallacy involved in Acervus arguments, such as the one purporting to show that no child ever matures into an adult. Paleontology, in fact, HAS come up with numerous examples of transitional forms from the fossil record (consider the famous cases of Archaeopteryx lithographica and, more recently, Tiktaalik rosea). Once again, you'd think that the Creationist has some explaining to do. But not a peep out of Morris about any of the putative transitional forms cited by evolutionary biologists.

The Good Doctor's real tour de force occurs in Chapter 5, where he attacks secular Science's estimate of the Earth's age. Pages 48 - 51 offer a sequence of 10 equations which are supposed to embody the orthodox attempt at geochronometry. Morris dismisses these equations as sheer gibberish, the mathematical equivalent of word salad, and promptly rejects everything secular Science has to say about the Earth's age. Now, it's a fair guess that few of Morris' readers will exert any effort to comprehend the mathematics he presents. They won't get very far, no matter how hard they try. Equation (2), for example, involves the definite integral of r, where r, in turn, is given by equation (3) as r = f(A0, B0, t, ----). Nowhere is one told what function "f" expresses. Yes, the mathematics IS incomprehensible, but one can't lay blame at the door of secular Science. One must take Morris' word for it that secular Science ever advanced the ten equations in the first place, and even if Science did do so, Morris' exposition is atrocious. The Good Doctor, in short, is guilty of flogging a STRAW MAN. Morris is completely out of his depths. As a critic of the biological Theory of Evolution, he's a non-starter.

Popularization of scientific theories frequently requires fudging technicalities that are 'way beyond the easy comprehension of the layman. Take the Theory of Relativity. One often encounters the bowling-ball-on-a-rubber-sheet analogy as an illustration of how the curvature of space-time is supposed to render unnecessary an appeal to gravitational force. But the analogy really isn't very apt. A literal-minded layman can demand to know: "If there's NO gravitation force, then why does the bowling ball SINK into the rubber sheet at all? And if it DOES sink, then why doesn't it CONTINUE to do so ad infinitum?" These sorts of straight-from-the-guts intuitive challenges often exasperate the specialist, who's trying his/her best to convey crucial concepts without losing the audience completely. You can't blame the layman for being confused by the rubber-sheet analogy, but, as it happens, the official account of space-time's curvature is anchored in tensor calculus, a subject that's completely inaccessible to non-specialists. Once things get technical, the layman is out of the discussion. Try explaining ultraproducts or pseudometrics to somebody with no mathematical background beyond high school algebra. On the other hand, the specialist shouldn't underestimate the layman's own exasperation: many's the time that the layman takes his incomprehension as evidence AGAINST the theory at hand. Similar considerations apply to the biological Theory of Evolution.

Morris' book is entitled THE SCIENTIFIC CASE FOR CREATION. The title is a misnomer. Morris at no point makes a scientific case FOR creation. All of his energy is expended on attempts to make a scientific case AGAINST evolution. No surprise here. There IS NO scientific evidence whatever for creation. Nothing in nature bears a manufacturer's label, "Made by God in the Dominican Republic". The affirmative arguments for Creationism, without any exceptions at all, are variants on the age-old Argument From Design. No matter how these these arguments are packaged rhetorically, they invariably reduce to the maneuver: "Surely THIS can't have come about by random processes or blind forces of Nature; therefore, it's the work of an intelligent Creator!" And whatever else may be said for it, the Argument From Design isn't SCIENTIFIC.

Henry M. Morris III, Ph.D.'s, THE SCIENTIFIC CASE FOR CREATION has been stuffed with just enough technical gobbledygook to lose completely its readership of presumed scientific illiterates while still leaving an impression that "this guy sure knows what he's talking about". Bad news: the Good Doctor does NOT know what he's talking about. Worse news: the more you read his books, the less YOU'LL know what he's talking about, too.