Analysis

It is true that many truly great scientists in the past were creationists of one form or another. However, nothing helpful follows from this for modern creationists.

(i) The scientists creationists cite become scarce as the evidence for evolution mounts up. For instance, one creationist publication (Morris 1982) claims thirty-five "great scientists" for creationism. Of these men, thirteen (Bacon, Kepler, Boyle, Pascal, Steno, Da Vinci, Ray, Linneaus, Woodward, Newton, W. Herschel, Davy, and Cuvier) died before the publication of On the Origin of Species in 1859. Fourteen more (Pasteur, Babbage, Maxwell, Faraday, Mendel, Agassiz, Simpson, Maury, Riemann, Brewster, Joule, J. Herschel, Henry, and Morse) died before 1900. Of the eight who lived into the 20th century (Lister, Kelvin, Fabre, Stokes, Virchow, Rayleigh, Ramsay, and Fleming), only one (Fleming) lived long enough to see the advent of the modern synthesis of evolution. This trend reflects how Darwin's key contributions to biology, and the steadily mounting evidence for evolution thereafter, caused the scientific consensus to shift from creationism to evolution, and eventually relegated creationism to its proper status as a pseudoscience.

Thus, the fact that it was at one time possible for an informed and unbiased scientist to be a creationist, does not establish that it continues to be possible today. Arguing to the contrary on the basis of such historical figures is akin to assembling a list of great scientists who believed in alchemy (like Newton or, for that matter, even Boyle), and arguing on that basis that it still is possible today for an informed and unbiased scientist to accept alchemy (mainstream chemists presumably being the vanguard of a grand materialist conspiracy against god, truth, and morality).

(ii) It should be understood that the scientists in the list above may not all be comfortable allies for contemporary creationists to cite. For instance, in the case of Agassiz, creationists will be dismayed to learn from Desmond and Moore that

Agassiz was a religious freethinker like Darwin...When pressed, he would say that Genesis was wrong and the Flood story was just watered-down ice-age science. (Desmond and Moore 2009: 232)

(iii) The debate about whether or not creationists can count as real scientists (and the point that creationists miss when they complain that evolutionists just dogmatically define science as naturalism) centers not so much upon the question of what creationists believe about the world, as upon the manner in which they approach evidence. The issue scientists have with creationists is not, per se, that creationists believe the earth to be 6,000 years old or what have you; if that were all there were to creationism, there would be no problem, because scientists would be able to convince them of their errors by presenting evidence. The problem is that (most) creationists are not really open at all: they have decided, in advance, on the basis of their interpretation of a particular religious text, that such and such must be the case about the world, and (rarely) bend, regardless of evidence. That is what scientists usually mean when they say that creationists, even those who publish respectable scientific work outside of the context of creationism, are not real scientists.

(iv) As an amplification of the point just made, the charge that modern creationists are not real scientists is not (or should not be) intended as the claim that a creationist (or alchemist) cannot do good scientific research when working on issues unrelated to those against which they have an ideological bias: in such cases, creationists employ the same methodology and answer to the same standards as mainstream scientists. Likewise, an aficionado of power crystals can still be a good engineer, and a believer in astrology can still be a good doctor, as long as they do not allow those beliefs to guide their practice. An engineer who relies on the mystical force of power crystals to hold up a building, a doctor who uses astrology to dictate what medicine to prescribe to a patient, and a creationist who uses divine activity to explain biological processes, will all fail equally. So again, there is nothing strange about a creationist being able to do normal, even brilliant, scientific research when they behave like other scientists. It is just that when it comes to areas like evolutionary biology, the same creationists, however well-intentioned, are led by religious bias to fail to employ the same methods and standards they otherwise do . This should not be surprising, as it is ubiquitous in life: for any crackpot idea you can think of, you can find someone with an otherwise excellent mind who believes in it. But that is one reason why it is so crucial for scientific work to be peer-reviewed in mainstream journals: bringing the collective attention of mainstream scientists to bear upon an idea or item of research is one of the best ways to control for unnoticed personal biases (while an attempt to bypass them and appeal directly to legislators and the masses is as sure a sign as one could ask for of bias and crackpottery).

References

Desmond A and Moore J. 2009. Darwin's sacred cause. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Morris HM. 1982. Bible-believing scientists of the past. Impact No. 103.

Defender's Guide to Science and Creationism
Copyright © 1997, 2012, Mark I. Vuletic. All rights reserved.