Mere Creation:
Reclaiming the Book of Nature
Conference on Design and Origins
Biola University, November 14-17, 1996
The Mere Creation Conference is intended to bring together scientists and scholars in this emerging coalition, fostering our collegiality and focusing and accelerating the research program that needs to be done. With Del Ratzsch's permission, here are some excerpts from his book:
. . . . But there is barely beginning to emerge a new generation of creationists with legitimate and relevant credentials who are undertaking to actually do some of the painstaking, detailed drudgery that underlies any genuinely live scientific program.This emergence has begun to produce a separation in the creationist movement--an upper and lower tier, so to speak. I think that what ultimately separates the two tiers is different levels of respect for accuracy and completeness of detail, and different levels of awareness that a theory's looking good in vague and general form is an enormously unreliable predictor of whether in the long run the theory will be disemboweled by recalcitrant technical details. That appreciation is something that typically comes only with a legitimate scientific education, which some of the creationist popularizers and many in their audiences lack. (p. 82)
The newly emerging upper tier of the creationist movement, however, seems to have little patience with the vague popularized treatments and is, again, undertaking to do the meticulous detail work that a genuinely scientific creationism requires. As yet, this upper tier is not associated with any particular organization. . . .
Although it is a bit too early to tell much, some shape is beginning to emerge. A loose coalition is forming around a few key books--The Mystery of Life's Origins and The Creation Hypothesis, for instance. (Some other works, such as Johnson's Darwin on Trial and Denton's Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, have served as catalysts.) Most of this group's present work seems to fall into three areas: (1) constructing a competent philosophy of science defense for the legitimacy in science of the hypothesis that life embodies design and structure not well accountable by purely natural means; (2) exploring detailed technical--and perhaps ultimately intractable--problems with attempts to explain relevant data, structures and events (like the origin of life) by purely natural means; and (3) attempting to construct rigorous, legitimately scientific positive cases for creationist positions (such as design theory) in various areas of conflict with mainstream theory.
It is, again, a bit early to tell where all this may come out. But those in the emerging upper tier are starting out with serious credentials (Ph.D.s from Cambridge, Harvard, the University of Chicago and Berkeley, for instance) in relevant areas (such as philosophy of science, paleontology, chemistry, mathematics) and with a recognition that shortcuts will not do. Future work produced--whether right or wrong--is not likely to be either uninformed or more polemical than substantive. (pp. 84-5)
Mike Behe recently commented on the significance of a penetrating critique of naturalistic evolution by David Berlinski, "The Deniable Darwin," which is the lead article in Commentary (June 1996), published by the American Jewish Committee. Mike, another of our conference speakers, stated:
So in one stroke skepticism about evolution has been transported out from the Protestant ghetto to which it had been consigned. Such a transformation can only be done by folks outside of Christian circles, and preferably by folks who define themselves specifically in distinction to Christians. . . . [I]t seems that history has reached (to paraphrase Richard John Neuhaus) the "design moment."
The Mere Creation Conference could not be coming at a better time!
