22
THE QUARTERLY REVIEW OF BIOLOGY
60
VOLUME
court would have made the Arkansas case auseful precedent for the Louisiana trial andany others. Hopes were raised when theLouisiana State Senate voted in May of 1984to repeal the law, which would have elimi-nated a costly trial had the House of Repre-sentatives followed suit. Unfortunately,strong lobbying by creationists resulted in alopsided vote of 41-26 against the repeal (Le-win,1984b). As part of the Arkansas deci-sion, the plaintiffs (anti-creationists) wereawarded close to $400,000, a sum that we as-sume would make most states cautious aboutbecoming involved in such trials. Crea-tionists, however, are confident they will suc-ceed in Louisiana, where "their" lawyers arearguing the case rather than an outsider, aswas the case in Arkansas.Even if we assume that the eventual Loui-siana trial will be another setback to the crea-tionist cause, by no means will this be the endof the controversy. Trial results unfavorableto the creationist cause will probably halt thetrickle of bills introduced into state legisla-tures, but even now the scientific creationismmovement is focusing on the local, ratherthan the state, level. Attempts are beingmade to convince local school boards to man-date the teaching of creationism. Even moredifficult to monitor are the attempts by in-dividual teachers to teach scientific crea-tionism on their own that are already occur-ring in many parts of the United States(Moyer, 1984).Scientific creationists are reluctant to havecreationism taught in social studies or com-parative religion classes, because this wouldreduce their fundamental Christian worldview to merely another of the world views ofmany religions and cultures. They insist thatcreationism belongs in the science classroom.Scientific creationism must have scientificbacking to be taught in science classes. Argu-ments that the creationist view is better sup-ported by scientific facts than is evolution isa major thrust of their campaign. In the In-stitute for Creation Research "Tenets ofCreationism" (Morris, 1980),
scientzfic
crea-tionism is distinguished from
Biblical
crea-tionism as having "no reliance upon Biblicalrevelation, utilizing
only scientzfic data
to sup-port and expound the creation model" (italicsin original).What is the nature of this body of scientificdata, and where can it be found? There is, ofcourse, a body of
scientzfic creationist
literaturethat presents "evidence" for the young earth,Noah's Flood, and Special Creation. Crea-tion Life Publishers (now Masterbooks) hasan extensive series of books, pamphlets,tapes, and video cassettes available for pur-chase, and also publishes the high school bi-ology textbook,
Bzolo~:
A
Search for Order inComplexity.
This is the publishing wing of theInstitute for Creation Research (ICR), a ma-jor distributor of information on creation"science" as well as advice for introducingcreationism into local schools. The ICR pub-lishes science research articles in the IM-PACT series, which accompanies their freemonthly newsletter
Acts and Facts.
The oldestjournal devoted strictly to the scientific evi-dence for creationism is the
Creation ResearchSociety Quarterly,
published by the CreationResearch Society (CRS). The Bible-ScienceAssociation (B-SA) publishes the
Bible ScienceNewsletter
and
CONTRAST,
which is theirequivalent of the ICR
IMPACT
series. TheB-SA also has a large list of pamphlets,books, tapes, and other educational materi-als. The Creation Social Science and Hu-manities Society publishes the
Creation SocialScience and Humanities Quarterly.
The Ameri-can Scientific Affiliate (ASA), an associationof Christian scientists, takes no official standon scientific creationism, and the
Journal oftheAmerican Scientific Affiliate
publishes articlesboth pro and con. Internationally, CreationScience in Australia publishes
Ex Nihilo,
which also has a U.S. office.Examination of publication affiliations,content, and editorial guidelines for authorsof these journals leads one to question theclaim that scientific creationism is indepen-dent of religion. Authors who publish in the
Creation Research Society Quarterly
subscribe inwriting to the belief that the Bible is the "writ-ten word of God and that all of its assertionsare historically and
scientijically
true" (empha-sis added). The
CRSQ
is not listed in
ScienceCitation Index,
but it appears in the
ChrzstianPeriodical Index.
The ASA also has a statementof belief that supports both religion andscience: God is the Creator, but there is nodogma as to how he created (Stipe, 1977).The major suppositions of creationism are
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