Tower of Babel
The Evidence against the New Creationism
by Robert T. Pennock
(Notes written in July, Year 2)
Consider the coffee at the natural grocery store. You can get the brand from the grower-operated coop, the brand that was roasted without the use of petroleum products, the shade-grown brand from a country guaranteed not to be under an oppressive regime, the brand pollinated by non-Africanized bees, and so on. No two customers have to buy the same coffee. In the same way, when you look for creationists, you have to say whether you want Young-Earth, Intelligent-Design, Old-Earth or Progressive creationists, theistic evolutionists, creation "scientists," believers in plenary verbal inspiration of the Bible, . . . it goes on.
That analogy breaks down if you consider freshness, though. Creationism gets churned up as new talent brings in zanier and zanier notions, while the one-bin-per-customer coffee selection means slow turnover and rancid beans.
A philosophy professor at the University of Texas, Pennock has made a years-long study of creationists and their opponents. He cites dozens of books and pamphlets by creationists ranging from Phillip E. Johnson to Jack T. Chick, as well as web sites, debates and other public forums. He has cultivated these folks and presents their positions in a fair and balanced way.
Fairness and balance don't mean, however, that he lets their points stand. In Tower of Babel he sets out to describe every creationist faction (expressing a certain wonder that they even submit to standing under one umbrella), establishes the sources for what they claim, identifies the chief spokesmen, and places their ideas in context. Or rather contexts: He shows every form of creationism in its own realm of discourse, in the open field of science-antiscience debate, and in the world of American politics. He took on a big task, one that a mere 400 pages couldn't hold.
Science—not our collection of facts but our system of discovering, verifying and interpreting evidence—rests on the principles that you should be able to say what you see, others should be able to see it too if they do your observation over again, and you should be able (or at least concerned) to make your knowledge fit into a scheme so that it doesn't collide with other knowledge. Isaac Newton saw objects fall and other objects seem not to fall; he described experiments that we've repeated daily for nearly 400 years; he invented a few "laws" that account for the falling and nonfalling behaviors of apples and satellites; and, here's the trick, he stated his laws so clearly and generally that they became their own scheme, which all other observers had to come to terms with. Newtonian science isn't a list of facts but a framework for finding out new things and, often, understanding them.
It's been a couple of centuries since people began noticing patterns in sediments and finding bits of mosasaurs. Once observed, these things had to be (a) made into a testable scheme or theory, that is, swallowed up in science, or (b) denied a place in any grand framework, that is, left undigested as random and even suspect facts. By following path (a), scientists have helped us look into the deep past of our world. In choosing approach (b), creationists have set their reading of Scripture above any amount of consistent evidence.
It is just their reading, too. Not only do creationists not agree with paleontologists and geochemists, they don't agree with one another. On almost any question you can find divergent views: Did the seven days of creation last 24 hours each? Did the creator allow new species to evolve from created ones? Can our eye come about by any process except the divine Hey Presto? The only unity in this "community" is the rejection of any scientific scheme. Well, that turns out to be enough unity for many; it's enough for example to warp the writing and editing of textbooks for people we are supposed to be teaching about their world.
The frustration in reading a good book like Pennock's is that it has no ending. If creationists are misguided, how can we guide them better? If they have found the way to political power, how can we outpower them? If they have seized some apparent high ground in public discourse, how can we reduce their position? While this book fails to point us toward some social reorientation, that doesn't mean it simply fails, for it was never an aim of the author to defeat creationism. What he has done, and done in a most satisfactory way, is reveal its authoritarian framework and its methods. Scorn for your opponents will win you a few battles, but you get through longer campaigns by knowing and appreciating their strengths. That's the strength of Tower of Babel.
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Tower of Babel