"Newsday" (New York, NY) March 12, 2002 Tuesday
March 12, 2002 Tuesday ALL EDITIONS

SECTION: HEALTH & DISCOVERY, Pg. D06
LENGTH: 3807 words
SERIES: Second of two parts

6 Days of Creation: The Search of Evidence;
A widening movement against evolutionary theory seeks scientific support

By Bryn Nelson; STAFF WRITER

Santee, Calif.

OUTSIDE THE Museum of Creation and Earth History in this San Diego suburb, 
the morning sun is continuing its climb while black lights frame 
illuminated planets and stars within. As he has done hundreds of times 
before, Bruce Wood is standing amid it all, explaining how God created 
life, the universe - and, well, everything - in six days sometime within 
the last 10,000 years.

Wood belongs to a segment of the anti- evolution movement known as 
"young-Earth creationism," which employs the biblical account of Genesis as 
a lens to explain natural observations. Within the literal history of this 
biblical creationist view, God created all matter and life over six days, 
and a worldwide flood formed much of the Earth's geography and buried the 
fossilized remains of its early denizens. Those that survived became 
forerunners of animal kinds today, so that a canine ancestor, for example, 
developed into all modern dog breeds.

Amid a string of legal defeats in public education over the past 30 years, 
young-Earth creationists have been forced to share the stage with newer 
anti-evolutionist views. Among the recent debutantes, modern "intelligent 
design" creationism contends that life is too complex to have arisen by 
chance and thus requires an unnamed intelligent force. By downplaying 
biblical connotations and instead attacking the scientific merits of 
evolution, the newcomer has received attention from the media and academics 
alike. Biblical creationism has remained a potent force in local school 
boards across the country, while intelligent design has made inroads in 
battles at the state and national levels.

But is either idea really science?

Indeed, the uneasy alliance has increasingly turned to the authority of 
science even as it tries to undermine evolution, which many scientists 
consider a cornerstone of their profession. As the movement strives to 
establish scientific legitimacy, however, its detractors point out that it 
has yet to produce credible supporting evidence - and that its religious 
roots are restricting the answers it seeks.

Wood says, for example, that if scientists are expecting to find life in 
space, they're wasting their time "because mathematical probability 
prohibits any form of life, period." Only God has overcome the statistical 
odds of forming life from nonliving matter, he says, with his unique 
creation on Earth.

Nevertheless, Wood concedes that even the institute's brand of science has 
its limits. "We don't have all the answers," he says. "That's why we're the 
Institute for Creation Research and not the Institute for We Know Everything."

Supporters are quick to point out that because there were no witnesses to 
the origins of life, the science of the present will never be able to 
pinpoint the exact mechanisms of the past. "No one can go back in time," 
says Institute for Creation Research president John Morris, a geological 
engineer who has taken the reins from his father and institute co-founder 
Henry Morris. The creationist view, he says, simply provides a better 
explanation.

Evolutionists see things much differently.

In its modern version, the theory of evolution holds that all inhabitants 
of the world - from bacteria to humans - have developed from much simpler 
life over billions of years. Through random genetic variation and a 
weeding-out process known as natural selection, advantageous mutations are 
retained while detrimental ones are discarded. British naturalist Charles 
Darwin first proposed the phenomenon, sometimes called "descent with 
modification," in his 1859 publication, "On the Origin of Species."

Scientists still debate how life first began on Earth and what main 
contributors have driven evolutionary change since then. And the portrait 
of evolution's family tree remains incomplete. But University of California 
at Irvine biologist Francisco Ayala says the disagreement over details 
doesn't mean the overall process is in doubt. He uses an example from 
geology to illustrate his point.

"We don't know precisely the history of the formation of the Sierra Nevada 
mountains, we don't know all details of the configuration of the mountains, 
and that's no reason whatsoever to doubt that the Sierra Nevada mountains 
exist," he told scientists and journalists in San Francisco last year at 
the annual conference of the American Association for the Advancement of 
Science.

Moreover, evolution's supporters say creationists who claim to be using 
science have actually turned the scientific method on its head. The method 
itself consists of posing a question and then initiating a search for the 
answer through repeated experiments and observation. As an example: James 
Watson and Francis Crick used the scientific method to determine the double 
helical structure of DNA.

The creationist method, many scientists argue, begins instead with an 
answer and searches for supporting evidence while discarding anything 
contradictory. In striking down a 1982 Arkansas law requiring equal time 
for evolution and creation, U.S. District Court Judge William R. Overton 
concurred.

"While anybody is free to approach a scientific inquiry in any fashion they 
choose," he wrote, "they cannot properly describe the methodology used as 
scientific, if they start with a conclusion and refuse to change it 
regardless of the evidence developed during the course of the investigation."

Creationists deny the charge of reinventing the scientific method or 
ignoring evidence, arguing that their scientific approach differs only in 
the interpretations attached to such evidence. Kelly Hollowell, founder of 
Richmond, Va.-based Science Ministries, says she and other creationists 
share a desire to pursue sound scientific investigations.

"I would say that bad science is an embarrassment, no matter who conducts 
it," she says.

The first chapter of the creation-evolution fight in the United States 
featured the high- profile Scopes "monkey trial" in 1925. John Scopes, a 
24-year-old science teacher in Dayton, Tenn., was eventually convicted and 
fined $100 for violating a state law banning the teaching of evolution in 
public schools.

Although his conviction was later overturned on a technicality, the 
Tennessee law would stand for more than 40 years, until the U.S. Supreme 
Court ruled in 1968 that a similar Arkansas ban was religious in nature and 
thus violated the constitutional division between church and state. The 
high court revisited the issue in 1987 when it struck down a Louisiana law 
requiring equal time for evolution and creation in public schools, though 
some scholars say the decision left wiggle room for creationist views.

Ronald Numbers, a science historian at the University of Wisconsin in 
Madison, says one of the biggest ideological shifts in the creationist 
movement commenced with the 1961 publication of "The Genesis Flood" by 
Henry Morris and biblical scholar John Whitcomb. The revision distinguished 
itself from prevailing creationist views by an appeal to the biblical story 
of Noah's Flood to account for the numerous fossils found buried in 
sedimentary layers around the world. The shift, Numbers says, was directed 
at those fundamentalist Christians who had accepted evidence suggesting the 
fossils dated back millions of years.

"The primary motivation behind that was to reverse the trend of letting 
science interpret the Bible," Numbers says. "Instead, you start with the 
Bible." The strategy, he says, has proven successful in attracting many new 
adherents.

Numbers contends the concept of "scientific creationism" - as an 
alternative scientific theory to evolution - arrived soon after the 1968 
Supreme Court ruling as another vital creationist strategy.

"You talk about a world that's 6,000 to 10,000 years old but you don't talk 
about Adam or Eve in the Garden of Eden," he says of the approach. "You 
talk about the universal deluge but you don't mention Noah. It's a cosmetic 
shift."

The Institute for Creation Research Web site issues the following 
statement: "A clear distinction is drawn between scientific creationism and 
biblical creationism, but it is the position of the Institute that the two 
are compatible and that all genuine facts of science support the Bible."

Larry Vardiman, an atmospheric scientist at the institute, explains that 
unlike the conventional scientific community, creationists rely on biblical 
Scripture as a major source of information.

"But the data itself is also telling us something, so the data need to be 
dealt with scientifically," he says. "And that's an interesting mix. We 
realize that has the potential for problems. But that's an important 
distinction of what we do."

The biblical Flood provides much of the historical information for the 
institute's geological investigations, some of which are highlighted in a 
museum room that at first glance resembles that of any other science 
museum. Within a model of a volcano, for instance, several panels explain 
how the eruption of Washington State's Mount St. Helens has provided 
evidence that sediments can be laid down quickly in the wake of a 
catastrophe. Creationists have expanded on that observation, however, in 
their attempts to show how similar sediments accumulated rapidly in the 
wake of the biblical Flood, accounting for the deep burial of fossils and 
the formation of distinct geography.

One such formation, the Grand Canyon, may have been carved in two weeks or 
less by the rapidly receding floodwaters, creationists say. Wood explains 
that fossilized seashells found on top of mountains demonstrate that 
everything was once underwater. Mainstream geologists more commonly 
attribute the observation to gradual upward thrusts of the Earth's crust, 
moving former marine layers to new heights.

The Creation Research Society, another young-Earth creationist group, has 
followed a similar course in establishing an experimental station called 
the Van Andel Creation Research Center in north-central Arizona, where the 
ages and origins of meteorites are being examined, along with plant 
characteristics that suggest an intelligent design and further evidence for 
the Flood.

In his tours, Wood is fond of leading guests through the institute's own 
studies showing how an estimated 42,000 animals, including dinosaurs, 
survived the Flood in Noah's 450-foot-long ark.

"They don't have to be full-grown, do they?" he asks rhetorically. Besides, 
most of the animals were birds or bugs, he says. "So when you look at the 
average size, from birdie to dino, the average size comes out to be that of 
a huge, gigantic ... Chihuahua."

Wood doesn't discount supernatural explanations for their survival, 
however, "because it says in Genesis that God closed the ark door and we 
believe that God could have put migration into the head of the animals to 
get who he wanted on board, you see."

To critics, the explanation exposes a fundamental flaw in creationism. They 
call it "God of the gaps."

"What's omnipotence for if you can't do anything you want?" asks Eugenie 
Scott, executive director of the Oakland, Calif.-based National Center for 
Science Education. "They simply walk out the door of what you can call 
science when they bring in a supernatural explanation. You simply can't 
test it."

Creationists have long complained of being shut out of peer-reviewed 
scientific journals, a gripe that has drawn little sympathy from 
evolutionists who retort that the studies have lacked credibility. 
Undeterred, creationists have established their own journals, such as Ex 
Nihilo Technical Journal published by Kentucky-based Answers in Genesis and 
the Creation Research Society Quarterly, which has published articles since 
the 1960s. Creationists say the articles are peer-reviewed by other 
scientists, but members of the latter society must subscribe to four 
statements of belief, including one declaring that "the account of origins 
in Genesis is a factual presentation of simple historical truths."

Answers in Genesis founder Ken Ham is more adamant. "Nothing will be found 
out there in observational science that contradicts what the Bible is 
teaching," he says.

Evolutionists say such statements reveal the rigidity of a movement in 
which religion trumps the scientific method. "If you believe the Bible is 
God's inspired work, and if you believe that you have figured out God's 
intended word, then there's not a great deal of flexibility," Numbers says.

Intelligent-design advocates have achieved recent success by couching their 
anti-evolution arguments in more academic terms. Most leading 
intelligent-design adherents are fellows of the Center for the Renewal of 
Science & Culture, a 6-year-old affiliate of a Seattle-based conservative 
think tank called the Discovery Institute.

Among the movement's chief backers, biochemist Michael Behe of Lehigh 
University, has championed the concept of "irreducible complexity" with his 
book, "Darwin's Black Box." As a favorite example, Behe points to the 
multicomponent motor of a flagellum, the whiplike tail that propels some 
bacteria. According to Behe, this motor would be rendered useless if even 
one well-matched part was removed, making it "irreducibly complex." Thus 
its specialized function could not have arisen through the stepwise 
processes of evolution.

Evolutionists retort that many systems deemed "irreducibly complex" by Behe 
and others have plausible evolutionary histories and simpler, yet fully 
functional, versions in nature.

Intelligent-design advocates have also touted mathematician William 
Dembski's book, "The Design Inference," which proposes that intelligent 
design can be readily detected in nature.

"We can identify intelligence because of the distinctive signature that 
intelligence leaves behind," explains Discovery Institute senior fellow 
Stephen Meyer. "If you find the Rosetta Stone, you're not going to infer 
wind or erosion [as the source of information]. Information is a hallmark 
of intelligence."

Dembski, an associate research professor in the conceptual foundations of 
science at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, launched the independent 
International Society for Information, Complexity and Design in December as 
another research outlet. Although the intelligent-design community is still 
in the "opening stages" of research, Dembski hopes to publish the first 
issue of the society's online journal later this month.

In the meantime, intelligent-design advocates have pointed to a third line 
of research as "the most promising development in the next few years" and 
yet another potential roadblock to evolution.

The research, by Douglas Axe of the Centre for Protein Engineering in 
Cambridge, England, introduces a concept called "extreme functional 
sensitivity" that relates a protein's specialized function to the changes 
permitted in its amino acid sequence. Axe's premises are hinted at in an 
article published two years ago in the Journal of Molecular Biology, but 
Dembski and others say Axe plans to go public with his full findings soon 
and "shake things up."

"As these systems get nailed down," Dembski says, "the Darwinian stories 
about them will become increasingly implausible."

Scott replies that such methodology is "intelligent design by default," in 
which evidence against evolution is presented as positive evidence for 
intelligent design.

"They're using what I call the 'Aha! School of Science,' she says. "You can 
pull something out of context, wave it about, and then say, 'Aha! Evolution 
didn't really happen.'"

In a small conference room overlooking downtown Seattle, Discovery 
Institute fellow Jonathan Wells makes his case for a more expansive 
intelligent- design argument: more honesty in science education.

"I'm not in favor of taking Darwinian evolution out of the curriculum," 
says Wells, who brought his message to the Ohio Board of Education 
yesterday morning. "But I think the students should be taught the truth 
about the evidence - and its shortcomings."

A longtime skeptic of evolution, Wells cut his teeth on a famous drawing by 
19th century German biologist Ernst Haeckel. In the drawing, Haeckel 
allegedly distorted human, calf, salamander and other embryos to make them 
seem more biologically similar in their earliest stages of development.

Many scientists, including researchers who wrote about the deceit four 
years ago, say the drawing contains an element of truth, albeit 
exaggerated. But Wells and other critics complain loudly that it is used 
repeatedly to illustrate evolutionary similarities among humans and other 
species in leading textbooks, including the most recent edition of 
"Evolutionary Biology" by SUNY Stony Brook professor Douglas Futuyma.

Despite the embarrassing revelation, Futuyma has cried foul.

"The idea that evolutionary biologists are trying to perpetuate a fraud and 
pull one over on their students is absolute rubbish and it makes me 
absolutely livid with anger," he says. "No one is trying to sweep anything 
under the rug." Futuyma concedes he's guilty of not keeping up with the 
scientific literature, but he has fired back a salvo of his own.

"Their typical ploy is to take a particular instance and say that if that 
falls, then the entire edifice of evolutionary biology should fall with 
it," he says. "This is errant nonsense."

Wells has taken direct aim at felling several examples in his book "Icons 
of Evolution," contending that Haeckel's embryos by themselves would 
constitute little more than a "tempest in a teapot." The number of 
distortions, he says, has justified his suspicions that "there's a 
philosophical agenda as well as a scientific process going on here."

Many evolutionists have in turn criticized the "big tent" philosophy of 
intelligent design that mutes disagreements between its adherents over the 
age of the Earth.

"That works well with anti-evolution sentiments, but it's a disaster with 
regard to trying to portray it [intelligent design] as scholarly, 
scientific work," Scott says. With real science, "it behooves you to say 
what happened."

Scott says young-Earth creationists have at least provided a scientific 
model, albeit a poor one. "You can test whether the Grand Canyon was really 
produced in two weeks by a flood," she says. "The intelligent-design people 
don't really tell us what happened, so it's very difficult for us to test 
that."

Nor do intelligent-design advocates explicitly identify the designer.

"All intelligent design is trying to do is look at arrangements of 
pre-existing matter," says Baylor's Dembski, "so it can never answer the 
question of what's behind it all. It could be E.T."

But critics say its religious roots are showing.

"What the ID people say is that there is an intelligence, wink, wink, 
nudge, nudge, that created something at some time, but we're not really 
going to tell you what it is," Scott says.

Numbers responds, "Everyone knows they mean God."

William Grassie, executive director of a Philadelphia-based online forum 
for science and religion called Metanexus, says the anti-evolution movement 
is suffering from "a bad case of physics envy" - a backlash against the new 
cultural prestige and independence that science has attained.

Creationist efforts stem from trying to turn the Bible into a science book, 
Grassie says. "People want simplicity, simple black-and-white answers to 
everything," he says. "And that's not fundamentally what the Scriptures 
teach us, and that's not, I think, what nature teaches us."

Back at the Museum of Creation and Earth History, a small wooden cross in 
the Hall of History is juxtaposed with displays discussing the creation 
myths of worldwide cultures.

"This is where everything comes together," Wood says. "In this room, I say 
to people, 'You've seen what you've seen, you've heard what you've heard, 
but it's up to you what you want to do with that information.'" Wood shares 
his own story about finding God after a church secretary shared the Bible 
with him during a rough period of his life.

Political correctness has reached such heights, Wood says, that those 
scientists who believe in creation are afraid to admit it, fearing 
ridicule. If scientists accepted the truth, he believes, vast research 
efforts would be devastated by the financial impact and institutions that 
espoused evolutionary beliefs would "go down the drain."

Wood extends an invitation to an evening lecture at a nearby church as the 
Southern California sun descends amid a palette of blues. He bids a 
cheerful farewell, then secures the museum door and returns to his small 
office to prepare for another day of creation. Proponents of evolutionism, 
young-Earth creationism and intelligent design were asked to explain the 
findings of research on the genetic makeup of humans and other animals. Q. 
As part of the Human Genome Project and other DNA-sequencing efforts, 
scientists have discovered that humans share 98 percent of their genes with 
chimpanzees, 90 percent with mice, and 21 percent with roundworms. How do 
these discoveries fit with your view of human origins? Evolution: Francisco 
Ayala, professor of biology and philosophy at the University of California 
at Irvine A. "They fit perfectly. Our ancestors diverged from those of the 
chimpanzee about 6 million years ago, from those of mice about 70 million 
years ago, and from those of roundworms about 700 million years ago. At the 
DNA level, evolution is, by and large, a gradual process. The theory of 
evolution, therefore, predicts that the greater the time elapsed since the 
last common ancestor of two living organisms, the greater the amount of 
genetic differentiation. The observations agree with the predictions." 
Young-Earth creationism: John Morris, president of the Institute for 
Creation Research A. "I think this is an equally good concept for the idea 
of a common designer. For organisms to live in a similar environment, to 
eat the same food, to breathe the same air, the designer would have 
utilized some components more than once." Intelligent design: Stephen 
Meyer, senior fellow at the Discovery Institute A. "Similarity might be the 
result of evolution from a common ancestor or it might have resulted from 
an intelligent designer using similar assembly instructions to build 
similar components that perform common functions. ... The real question is 
not why are the genes in different animals similar, but where does the 
information content of genes come from in the first place. Design theorists 
regard the presence of information in DNA as an unequivocal hallmark of 
prior intelligent activity, because in our experience only intelligence 
generates information."

GRAPHIC: 1) Photo by Stephen Rose - Eugenie Scott, above, of the National 
Center for Science Education decries the willingness of some to see past 
scientific errors as refuting all evolution theory, 
2) Newsday Photo / Bryn Nelson - but the Discovery Institute's Jonathan Wells says such errors 
point to a "philosophical agenda." Newsday Chart - Radioisotope Dating (not 
in text database)