Degrees Without Darwin : Creationist School Braces for Scrutiny by State Panel

Most graduate students are familiar with the pinch of deadlines, but biology major John Rajca says he’s laboring under an unholy strain.

Rajca’s thesis is all that stands between him and a master’s of science degree from the Institute for Creation Research, a tiny Christian graduate school in Santee that teaches, among other things, that evolution is a myth. Rajca is just praying that ICR will be allowed to continue granting degrees--at least until he can finish his paper.

“I want to get it done ASAP, just in case,” said Rajca, nervous at the news that a new state agency is preparing to reevaluate ICR’s graduate program. He and his professors say his paper, based in part on the belief that a “Great Flood” formed fossils by drowning all but the animals aboard Noah’s Ark, is good science interpreted within a biblical framework. But he knows many state officials would call it theology.

“I’ve got the whole state of California ready to slice me in half,” he said. “Nobody’s got that kind of pressure.”

They’ve been called busybodies, book-burners and glint-eyed folk. Their graduate school has been likened to a house of voodoo learning, and their curriculum has been knocked as neo-Dark Ages nonsense. But, beginning this week, the men who run the nation’s only creation science graduate school say, they are bracing for their most formidable challenge ever.

As of Jan. 1, 1991, a new 15-member state council has been given the power to evaluate post-secondary schools like ICR, taking over the reins from the state Department of Education. In doing so, they enter a bitter debate over ICR’s definition of science and its right to religious freedoms--a complex theoretical battle that has occupied top state education officials for more than a year.

In March, 1990, based on a recommendation from a state Board of Education evaluation team, State Supt. of Public Instruction Bill Honig sought to revoke ICR’s license to operate. The institute’s physics, biology, geology and science education curriculum was not as rigorous as other comparable degree-granting institutions, he said. Calling ICR teachings “science,” said one Honig aide, was like peddling Fords, but calling them Chevys.

In April, ICR filed suit in federal court, alleging that Honig and other state administrators had violated its constitutional right of free expression. And seven months later, in November, Honig backed down, citing a technical flaw in the department’s evaluation criteria. He promised that no further action would be taken until the new state body took over in 1991, when his authority over ICR would be significantly diminished.

Indeed, whenever the council re-evaluates the legitimacy of ICR’s graduate program--probably sometime during the next year or two--Honig’s representative will be just one of 15 people to decide its fate. But Kenneth B. Cumming, the dean of ICR’s graduate school, takes no comfort in that. As he sees it, the new agency will be run by longtime Department of Education staffers--all of whom he sees as “evangelical evolutionists.” As for Honig, Cumming calls him a “religious bigot.”

ICR is pushing its federal suit forward, preparing for a February hearing in which the state will seek to have the school’s claim dismissed. But Cumming and his colleagues, angered by declining enrollment that they attribute to Honig’s “witch hunt,” say they are primed for a fight.

“Mr. Honig has made it a policy that creationism is not going to be taught in this state,” said Cumming, who long ago rejected Honig’s suggestion that ICR offer master’s degrees in theology instead. “We’re a Christian school that teaches science. There is more than one valid interpretation of events. Who gave him the right to define science? He’s not a scientist.”

But then, say ICR’s critics, neither are the institute’s 14-member faculty.

“These guys are debaters. They are not scientists,” said Kevin Padian, an associate professor of integrative biology at UC Berkeley who also sits on the board of directors of the National Center for Science Education, a group formed specifically to respond to the conundrums of creationist thought.

“They almost never submit to peer-review journals. Almost none of them go into the lab. What they do is look through the literature done by active scientists and try to find remarks they can take out of context,” said Padian, who charges that, although ICR professors all have scientific degrees from mainstream, non-theological schools, their academic credentials are of “less than desirable currency.”

“They try any rhetorical trick,” Padian said, “as long as it gets their point across to an unwitting audience.”

And what is their point, exactly? Creationists start from the belief that evolution is as much a religion as Christianity. Since no one witnessed the Earth’s first moments, they say, both theories about the universe’s origins are unprovable and equally viable. Therefore, both evolutionists and creationists can be scientists, each analyzing data in accordance with their world view.

Under this reasoning, everything is up for debate--from the age of the Earth to the formation of the Grand Canyon. The Colorado River did not cut the 1-mile-deep gorge into the Arizona landscape slowly, they say. Instead, they believe the waters of the great global flood chiseled the canyon very quickly.

Most importantly, Man did not evolve from animals over millions of years, they insist. Instead, less than 10,000 years ago, a Divine Creator spent six days forming all species exactly as they appear today.

“Evolution is floundering at this time,” said ICR geology professor John D. Morris, who believes that, despite the impending state challenge, 1991 promises to be a good year for creationism. “Many of (evolution’s) precepts are not substantiated. Many of its leaders are outwardly stating they’re in trouble. It looks like the time is right for other alternative viewpoints to have a go.”

Ridiculous, said Stephen Jay Gould, a Harvard professor and leading evolutionist who is often referred to in ICR publications as the arch “anti-creationist.”

“There are certain issues that do get settled--the shape of the Earth, whether it goes around the sun,” Gould said when asked about ICR’s teachings. “They have this absurd notion that something that occurs in the past and that is not subject to direct observation is not provable. That’s nonsense. . . . There is a mystery as to how evolution occurs, but there is not a whole lot of doubt as to whether it occurs.”

What doubt remains is alive and well in the East County city of Santee, in a two-story office building that once housed a copying store. There, Henry M. Morris, ICR’s 72-year-old founder, still teaches students to let the Bible guide their search for scientific truths.

Today, the elder Morris (his son is John, the geology professor) is widely acknowledged to be among the most influential contributors to 20th-Century creationist thought. His 1961 book, “The Genesis Flood,” was the first major attempt to defend creationist principles through scientific observation. It is to creationism, many say, what Charles Darwin’s “Origin of Species” was to evolution.

In a decade, Morris’ graduate school has granted just 25 master’s of science degrees. But ICR’s reach is much broader. School officials say that more than 100,000 people receive their newsletter, “Acts and Facts.” Tuition payments--about $300 a course--make up only a tiny fraction of its $3-million annual budget. Most revenue comes from its books and seminars, and from thousands of private donations that ICR claims average just $25 apiece.

The institute’s ambitions, although now seemingly focused upon self-preservation, have at times included a push for “equal time” for creationism in public classrooms. And, according to opinion polls conducted in the 1980s, Morris and his colleagues have made some headway in that regard--the polls showed that more than half of all Americans agree evolution should not be taught exclusively.

In that vein, ICR has built a museum, visited by hundreds of schoolchildren each year, that attempts to poke holes in evolutionary theory. Now being expanded, the Museum of Creation and Earth History is a maze-like series of exhibits arranged under the motto, “What We Observe in the World Agrees with What is Written in God’s Word.”

There is a dimly lighted section about outer space that claims that the behavior of galaxies and comets proves the universe is less than 10,000 years old. One wall is devoted to “Bible-believing Scientists of the Past” and another to the “Errors of Evolution,” a display that challenges such commonly accepted ideas such as the belief that the human tail bone is a trait inherited from an animal ancestor. (Instead, the exhibit claims, the coccyx is an important attachment for “posture muscles and intestinal support.”)

Around a corner sits a model of Noah’s Ark. According to the text posted on the wall, the vast ship was 437 feet long, 72.92 feet wide and 43.75 feet high--with enough space inside to carry 125,280 sheep-size animals.

Then there’s the stink bug, displayed in a plastic case on another wall. When pursued by predators, the tiny insect emits a hot, noxious mixture of chemicals, employing a system of inhibitors and special body cavities that creationists deem too complex to have been created by evolution.

“How is chance going to produce this system anyway?” a sign on the wall demands. The little beetle is further proof, it says, that God designed all His creatures with a purpose--and that evolutionary theory is fatally flawed.

Padian, an adept critic of creationist teachings, says the exhibit, like many creationist “proofs” conveniently leaves out relevant facts. In fact, he says, the stink bug has evolved as part of a long lineage of bizarre, but biologically logical, insects.

“They’d like you to look at this animal and say it does this in defiance of all laws and therefore--and here’s the big jump--it must have been created to do so,” he said, lamenting that such reasoning takes advantage of the public’s general ignorance about science. “If the public were better educated, these people would still be free to say what they believe and would be free to ignore the scientific findings. But the public would be much more in a position to recognize these (stories) for what they are.”

Artfully, Padian dissects a few. If the ark carried two of all the animals that ever existed, he says, it would have had to be much bigger than creationists claim. The elephant species alone, he said, would take up much of the space, and a lot more storage would be required for food. What about the meat-eating animals, he asks--if Noah only brought two of each animal, which did he sacrifice to feed the lions and tigers?

“They must have lost a lot of species,” Padian said, noting a favorite cartoon in which an exasperated Noah is depicted at mealtime on the ark--”Ah, hell,” he says. “There go the unicorns.”

As for the tail bone, Padian called the creationist explanation of its usefulness “stupid. If the coccyx has such a great function, then I’d like to see Henry Morris hang by his tail from a branch,” he said. “Of course we have a coccyx because we descend from other animals that had tails.”

In a review of ICR completed at Honig’s behest last year, five academics supported their negative findings with simple questions: if a global flood was the dominant event in shaping the geological record as it exists today, where did all the water come from? And where did it go?

“Serious questions arise about the guidance being offered” to students, the review panel concluded, adding that the selection of thesis topics was of particular concern. For example, the thesis chosen by Rajca, the biology graduate student, was described as being “tainted by a determination to hammer the observations into a preconceived young-Earth mold. . . . The questions he was raising had already been raised, discussed and settled in paleontology 70 years ago.”

But then, that’s what evolutionists would be expected to say, the younger Morris retorts.

“Evangelists for evolution will say it’s a fact. Well, I think creation is a fact,” he said. “I can’t prove it, though, and I’m honest enough to admit it.”

For now, ICR continues to operate with the state’s blessing. And its students continue struggling to create what Rajca describes as a new world paradigm--”one that postulates that there might be Somebody there.”

“I know most people consider my views very unrealistic and old-fashioned,” he said. “People can’t believe we still exist. They say, ‘We thought all those flat-earthers died off long ago.’

“But, if we’re right,” he added hopefully, “there are all kinds of implications.”