lew@ihuxr.UUCP (Lew Mammel, Jr.) (03/23/84)
I think there's a general consensus that Henry Morris's SCIENTIFIC CREATIONISM outlines the standard creationist postition. It is labelled "Public School Edition", and has been a frontpiece in the battle for "equal time" in the schools. It is not a student textbook, but a teacher handbook, intended to "outline the scientific evidence supporting the creation model of origins as an alternative to the evolution model" according to the blurb on the back cover. Most of the book is taken up with criticizing conventional geology and materialistic philosophy, but there is a section which gives the Flood model. In his effort to keep the book "scientific", Morris refrains from explicit reference to the Bible. However, references cited for further explanation bear such titles as THE GENESIS FLOOD. Furthermore, with his appeals to arbitrary acts by the "Creator" he adheres so closely to the Genesis account, that no one can reasonably doubt that this is nothing but Biblical literalism. Examples: "In the creation model, the various tribes and languages all stemmed from one ancestral population that had developed from a remnant that survived the worldwide flood, which is an integral part of the creation-cataclysm model of earth history. They had been forced to break into a number of small sub-populations by the Creator's direct creative restructuring of their common language into many languages." (pp 187-188) ... and a little further on: "The origin of civilization would be located somewhere in the Middle East, near the site of Mount Ararat (where historical tradition indicates the survivors of the antediluvian population emerged from the great cataclysm) or near Babylon (where tradition indicates the confusion of languages took place). This region is located near the geographical center of the post-cataclysm land areas and so would be the natural location for the Creator of mankind, who had providentially preserved a remnant through the Flood, to arrange for the post-diluvian dispersion to begin." I think this is as near as he comes to explicitly mentioning Noah's Ark. I recently realized that in the midst of all his argumentation about radioactive dating and geological strata, Morris has neglected to account for the presence of post-diluvian animal life. Of course, he has Noah waiting in the wings, but I guess it seemed too "unscientific" to include in this treatise. The result is that we have the Flood, during which, "Sooner or later all land animals would perish." (pg. 117) Yet we glide over this universal extinction to consider (as above) the reestablishment of human culture. I think this illustrates as well as anything the impossible task creationists have given themselves in representing Genesis as a scientific theory. Lew Mammel, Jr. ihnp4!ihuxr!lew