Is Creationism Religion?

• Bergman J.

  Author

The recurring charge that creationism is “religion” while evolution is “science” assumes that the two can be cleanly separated by the definition of religion itself. This paper argues that the assumption fails on its own terms. Drawing on admissions from within the evolutionary establishment, including the philosopher of biology Michael Ruse, the biologist and first Director General of UNESCO Julian Huxley, the moral philosopher Mary Midgley, the geneticist Richard Lewontin, and the sociobiologist E. O. Wilson, it shows that leading evolutionists have themselves described evolution as functioning as a secular religion, a myth, or an a priori metaphysical commitment. It then situates that concession against the legal record, in which the United States Supreme Court has recognized Secular Humanism among non-theistic religions (Torcaso v. Watkins, 1961) yet has struck down every attempt to teach the theistic account of origins in public science classrooms while protecting the naturalistic account (Epperson, 1968; McLean, 1982; Edwards, 1987; Kitzmiller, 2005). The result is an asymmetry: one worldview is mandated and the other is prohibited. Following the ornithologist and evolutionist turned creationist Douglas Dewar, the paper concludes that what is presented to the public as settled science actually carries the freight of what Dewar called the Transformist Illusion. A closing section anticipates the strongest objections to this thesis and answers them.

1. Bergman J.

   Jerry Bergman has taught biology, genetics, chemistry, biochemistry, anthropology, geology, and microbiology at Northwest State College in Archbold OH for over 25 years. He has 9 degrees, including 7 graduate (= ‘post-graduate’ in some non-US systems) degrees. Dr Bergman is a graduate of Medical College of Ohio, Wayne State University in Detroit, The University of Toledo, and Bowling Green State University. He has over 800 publications in 12 languages and 20 books and monographs. He has also taught at the Medical College of Ohio where he was a research associate in the department of experimental pathology, and he also taught 6 years at the University of Toledo, and 7 years at Bowling Green State University.

   Among his books is a monograph on peer evaluation published by the College Student Journal Press, a Fastback on the creation-evolution controversy published by Phi Delta Kappa, a book on vestigial organs with Dr George Howe (‘Vestigial Organs’ are Fully Functional), a book on psychology and religious cults, a book on religious discrimination published by Onesimus Press, and a book on mental health published by Claudius Verlag in München. He has also published a college textbook on evaluation (Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co.), and has contributed to dozens of other textbooks. He was also a consultant for over 20 science text books, mostly biology and biochemistry.

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