Creation Theory Goes to a Graduate School : State-Approved Institute Teaches Bible-Based Beliefs and Attempts to Shoot Down Evolution

While working to obtain a master’s degree in geophysics, Bill Hoesch is studying such things as the Earth’s structure and the origin and age of the cosmos. But unlike most graduate students in earth sciences, Hoesch is learning that mountain ranges can be built in a day, fossils were buried in a worldwide flood, and the universe was created recently--perhaps as recently as 6,000 years ago.

Hoesch attends graduate school at the Institute for Creation Research, a private organization that advocates a theory of divine creation and actively tries to shoot down the theory of evolution.

The school--which is approved to issue master of science degrees by the California State Board of Education’s division of private post-secondary education--is the only place in the country where students can obtain a graduate degree in science taught from a creationist point of view.

“I don’t separate my physical life from my spiritual life,” said Hoesch, 32, a tall, lean, square-jawed, soft-spoken man. “It’s important to me to reconcile my scientific beliefs with the Bible, but that doesn’t prevent me from being a scientist.

“I can’t prove that the Earth is 6,000 years old, but (evolutionists) can’t prove it’s 4.5 billion years old. . . . Sure, I’m biased, but don’t tell me (scientists) on the other side of the fence are not biased.”

The Institute for Creation Research is the brainchild of Henry Morris, a longtime leader in the nationwide creationist movement. Morris, a former university professor with a doctorate in hydraulics, founded the nonprofit institute in 1972 to publish creationist literature and work toward getting creationist theory taught in public schools.

The institute’s graduate school came into being in 1981. It offers master’s degrees in astrophysics, geophysics, biology, geology and science education.

Two months ago, Morris moved his institute from the campus of Christian Heritage College in El Cajon to a 21,000-square-foot building in Santee. The spacious new building with wood furnishings and carpeted hallways also houses a creationist museum, which has displays that question the generally accepted theory of evolution and present arguments in favor of supernatural creation.

Morris called the museum “an educational tool, sort of like the Reuben H. Fleet Space Theater on a small scale. . . . We’d like to make as many people as possible aware that there is scientific as well as biblical evidence of creation.”

The school’s current catalogue explains the philosophy of “scientific creationism” in part: “Each of the major kinds of plants and animals was created functionally complete from the beginning and did not evolve from some other kind of organism. . . . The first human beings did not evolve from an animal ancestry, but were specially created in fully human form from the start.”

Given B Rating

Morris Krear, a consultant to the state board of education’s private post-secondary education division, said the board has given the Institute for Creation Research a B rating, meaning the school “has the facilities, teachers and resources to provide a sound education, and a curriculum that is consistent in quality with other recognized and accredited schools” and is allowed to grant master’s degrees. (In the board’s rating system, an A is given to only fully accredited schools; a C means that the quality of a school’s teachers and classes has not been reviewed thoroughly or compared with accredited institutions.)

The institute is not accredited by the Western Assn. of Schools and Colleges, the primary accrediting agency for 300 private and public colleges and universities in California, Hawaii and Guam--meaning that most accredited schools and institutions will not accept its degrees or class credits.

Krear explained that a committee authorized by the board visited the school in 1981 and determined that it met those criteria. He said the committee looked at such things as whether “the body of knowledge presented is sufficiently challenging, and whether the methodology used allows (students) to make discoveries.

“They have some fine teachers at that school,” he added. “The law says a master’s degree (from the institute) is supposed to be the same as any other master’s degree.”

Morris said he has no plans to apply for accreditation through the Western Assn. of Schools and Colleges, which he described as a “secular organization . . . pretty firmly committed to evolutionary theory.”

Public schoolteachers seeking to qualify for higher salaries would also find it difficult--but not necessarily impossible--to get credit for classes taken at the institute. Each school district sets its own policy; thus, the San Diego Unified School District accepts only classes from accredited colleges, while the Los Angeles Unified School District sometimes accepts classes from unaccredited institutions. (A spokeswoman said such classes are reviewed closely by district officials.)

Attracting Students

In spite of these handicaps, the Institute for Creation Research is apparently attracting a growing number of students. Kenneth Cumming, the graduate school’s dean, said only 10 people have graduated since 1981, but 46 are currently enrolled. Only two classes are being taught during the current term, however; one has four students in it, and the other has one.

One student is Walter Barnhart, 39, a former teacher at private Christian high schools in El Cajon and Chula Vista. “I hold to a creationist viewpoint, and to be able to do graduate work within a creationist graduate school was a big help,” Barnhart said of his decision to attend the institute.

Barnhart said he was raised in “a biblical family” and obtained his undergraduate degree at Biola University in La Mirada, a private Christian university. There he was exposed to theories of creation and evolution that conflicted with a strict interpretation of the Bible. “I pretty much threw them out on my own, based on what you would call scientific evidences. . . . Also, they seemed to do violence to Scripture,” he said.

As a graduate student at the institute, Barnhart has studied fossil horses, which are often used as a classic example of gradual evolution. “My final conclusion is that you’ve got a broad variety (of animals), but no interconnecting types,” he said. “We’re basically looking at a large variety of created types, which, probably following the flood or a disaster in historic times, were decimated down to the smaller variety we see today,” he said.

Hoesch, who obtained a bachelor’s degree in geology from the University of Colorado in 1981, said he enrolled in the institute’s graduate program about 18 months ago after undergoing “a spiritual conversion.” As a graduate student he plans to investigate “the possibility that large sections of (rock) strata . . . were not deposited over millions of years but were deposited rapidly, which is consistent with the theory of a worldwide flood.”

But Frederick Edwords, who, as executive director of the American Humanist Assn. in Buffalo, N.Y., has debated creationists half a dozen times, said “the flood scenario just won’t work.” Among other things, fossils are often found buried in layers on top of one another, so that creationists “would have to theorize that the animals higher up were treading water so they’d be buried later.”

Straightforward Record

Edwords added that the fossil record for horses is “very straightforward. The connections are not so gradual that you can see that one horse (species) led directly to another, but no one needs to claim that. The fossil record isn’t a precision instrument that allows you to measure changes on the species level. But each (horse) genus is so closely related that if you saw them standing together . . . you’d easily see the relationships. “Creationist arguments haven’t changed much since the 19th Century,” Edwords continued. “They’re based on a selective reading of scientific literature in order to create a harmonizing of science and a literal (interpretation) of the Bible.”

Statements like that make the institute’s staff fairly bristle. Evidence for a creator exists with or without the Bible, insisted Richard Bliss, an instructor in general science.

The school’s faculty consists of 15 men, most of whom list graduate university degrees among their credentials. “All of us on the staff, with one exception, were trained as evolutionists,” Bliss said. “I began questioning evolution when I took a course on animal evolution as a graduate student and was challenged to question it.

“We hit evolution hard at this school, from both sides. We feel that in order to determine the strength of our own model, you’ve got to know what the other model is all about.”

“This isn’t Bible school,” Cumming said. “We don’t teach Scripture in the class.”

Evidence favoring creationist theory is also presented in the institute’s museum. One display claims that the footprints of men and dinosaurs were found preserved together in stone along the Paluxy River, near Fort Worth, Tex.

Yucca Plants, Yucca Moths

Another features photographs of yucca plants and yucca moths, and notes that the plant’s seeds develop only in flowers pollinated by the moths, while the moth larvae feed only on the seeds. A sign reads, “Natural selection cannot explain why each restricts its survival to the other’s fate, and chance mutations could not develop this kind of complex behavior. This kind of dependence between moth and plant points us back to a special act of creation.”

But Edwords said yucca plants and moths could evolve together little by little over eons, since a change in one would create evolutionary pressure for change in the other.

Such an argument does little to shake the faith of creationists like Hoesch. He noted that after obtaining his master’s degree he would like to get a job in the oil industry. But the current slump in that industry has led him to contemplate teaching instead. “I’d like to teach at a secular community college and let the students decide for themselves whether evolution or creation explains earth history,” he said.

“You can believe we were all frogs in the bog, or you can believe we were created with order and purpose. The evolutionists appear to have a good case, don’t they? But I don’t believe it is a good case.”