This must seem a strange title for an article on a creationist website. However, the issue here is not with the science, which is ever more strongly behind the existence of an intelligent Creator and a recent Creation, but with other factors that have far more impact on popular thinking. (If you are not convinced that evolution is fake science, please spend some time studying the science links in the Menu. Also two introductory articles on this site – see end of article.) There are at least five powerful reasons why Creation Science fails and will continue to do so.
1 The media consistently portrays evolution as an established scientific fact supported by ever-increasing amounts of “evidence”. If you were to watch TV solidly for ten years you would be exposed to thousands of positive references to evolution, but would probably not see even one fair reference to Creation.
2 The education system also teaches evolution as fact, which impacts children especially in the High School years. Only a tiny handful of pupils escape this through homeschooling or whatever, but even in those cases any creationist understanding they receive rarely survives the buffeting from mainstream evolutionism much beyond their teens.
3 The churches support evolution. Their support is perhaps the greatest asset the evolution promoters have. Intuitively, people feel that if there were even just a scrap of evidence somewhere that evolution were not true, the churches would be shouting it from the rooftops. The fact that one almost never hears churches objecting to evolution provides people with what is entirely lacking in the science: that is, evidence for evolution! The role of the churches in maintaining belief in evolution can never be overstated; the nearest churches ever get to Creation Science is normally Creation Silence.
4 People do not understand science. Even worse than simply not understanding it, they imagine that they do. This is partly because we live in a highly technological society, and people use technology every day. They think using technology makes them “scientific”; but the relationship between science and technology is essentially the same as that between a cow and its milk. You don’t have to understand biology or agriculture to drink milk; and you don’t have to understand science to use the technology it creates. All that most people have is an unfounded, and therefore self-deceiving, belief in their own scientific understanding. Further, when it comes to things like the Periodic Table or the Second Law of Thermodynamics, both of which are absolutely fundamental to any rounded understanding of how the Universe works, most people’s minds are a virtual blank. Further still, when it comes to understanding what does or does not constitute valid scientific evidence, the necessary knowledge, for the vast majority, is completely missing. This is not necessarily their fault; the fault lies primarily with the education system and those who run it. But whatever the reason, the result is that trying to change people’s minds with science is mostly a non-starter. They don’t understand the arguments and cannot retain them.
5 Most people have a deep internal bias in favour of evolution, because the obvious alternative is a Creator God to whom they would naturally owe some responsibility. “The fool says in his heart ‘There is no God’”. And there is no lack of foolishness out there. Whatever powers of reasoning people do actually possess, they don’t want to use them if that may lead to a conclusion they don’t like.
So, in summary, Creation Science faces all the barriers posed by people’s educational conditioning, the illusions spun by the media, the false witness of the churches, people’s lack of comprehension of science, and their unwillingness to accept the truth.
If this analysis does not make the impossibility of success clear, then it is well to consider some of the history. Firstly, Darwin’s famous book, “The Origin of Species”, is mainly a set of excuses for, and acknowledgements of, the lack of evidence for his theory. The fact that it was so rapidly adopted is proof that it has a perverse following wind, more accurately perhaps a following gale; something that Creation Science spectacularly lacks. That lack of any following wind for Creation is demonstrated by the fact that the Evolution Protest Movement, set up in the 1930’s, and presided over by none other than Sir Ambrose Fleming, the Father of modern electronics, made no progress. Also, it is now almost sixty years since the publication of Whitcomb and Morris’s tome “The Genesis Flood”. This book was and is scientifically streets ahead of Darwin’s convoluted reasoning; and every single church leader, every bible college lecturer, every allegedly Christian author active today, has lived his or her entire life of church leadership while that book has been available. Yet most people, be they atheists, churchgoers or anything else, have never even heard of it, or its evidence, or its conclusions. To call this a “lack of progress” would be charitable. It is actually decades of failure, with the same dynamics that caused such a failure still firmly in place today.
This is not a happy conclusion, but it’s the reality, and we are always better off facing the truth than pretending things are otherwise. The only possibility for progress is for Christians who understand Creation to do what they can personally. This means knowing some science themselves, and having some internet references to hand, which may convince a few. And it means using that information to draw people to the Gospel of Christ and a relationship with Him; not using it to draw people into any particular Church, or Calvinism, or Christian Zionism, or anything else. However, even with the best efforts and intentions, given the problems outlined above, any progress will be slow at best.
(Evolution articles on this site are Darwin Exposes Himself, Darwinian Evolution is Bunk and Geology: The Rocks Cry Out. Also see links to many other science sites here.)
