No. 99 AN ANSWER FOR ASIMOV

By Henry M. Morris, Ph.D.

One of the most widely circulated anti-creationist articles to appear in

many years was recently published in the New York Times Magazine.

There was nothing new or significant in the article, but it has never-

theless been reprinted in whole or in part, under various titles, in news-

papers from coast to coast and overseas, and has probably turned many

people against creationism.

The reason for its impact is certainly not its contents, which feature

the usual evolutionary distortions and pseudo-logic. However, the author

is Dr. Isaac Asimov, the most prolific and widely read science writer of

our generation, and this fact has assured a wide audience for his

opinions. He is the author of over 230 books on all kinds of scientific

subjects, including even a few books on the Bible, and many people con-

sider him an authority on anything he chooses to write about.

Asimov does, indeed have impressive academic credentials and is a

brilliant writer. It is, however, impossible for any scientist to be a real

,,authority" on anything outside his own limited field of special study and

research (which, in Isaac Asimov's case, consists of certain aspects of

enzyme chemistry), so that he owes his reputation more to his excep-

tional ability in the techniques of exposition than to his accomplishments

in scientific research.

Furthermore, Dr. Asimov has his own religious axe to grind. He was

one of the signers of the infamous Humanist Manifests II, promulgated

by the American Humanist Association in 1973. Among other state-

ments, this Manifesto includes the following anti-theistic affirmations:

"As in 1933, humanists still believe that traditional theism, especially

faith in the prayer-hearing God, assumed to love and care for persons,

to hear and understand their prayers, and to be able to do something

about thdm, is an unproved and outmoded faith."

"As nontheists, we begin with humans not God, nature not deity."

"No deity will save us; we must save ourselves."

Asimov and other humanists decry the teaching of creationism as

"religious" while, at the same time, their Manifesto proclaims their

own set of beliefs to be "a living and grovang faith."

The quasi scientific basis of their humanistic faith, of course, is evolu-

tion. Hitler?iariist Manifesto I (published first in 1933) made this clear. Its

first four tenets were as follows:

"First: Religious humanists regard the universe as self-existing and

not created.

Second: Humanism believes that man is a part of nature and that

has emerged as the result of a continuous process.

Third: Holding an organic view of life, humanists find that the

traditional dualism of mind and body must be rejected.

Fourth: Humanism recognizes that man's religious culture and

civilization, as clearly depicted by anthropology and history, are

the product of a gradual development due to his interaction with

his natural environment. . ."

It is significant that Asimov, in his anti-creationist harangue, does not

attempt to offer even one slight scientific evidence for evolution. Never-

theless he proclaims: "To those who are trained in science, creationism

seems like a bad dream, a sudden reliving of a nightmare, a renewed

march of an army of the night risen to challenge free thought and en-

lightenment." Asimov, as a prize-winning writer of science fiction, is a

master at the use of emotional rhetoric to intimidate and frighten, and

this essay is a skillful niasterpiece of alarmist propaganda. He warns

about those previous "societies in which the armies of the night have

ridden triumphantly over minorities in order to establish a powerful

orthodoxy which dictates official thought." He concludes with an

Asimovian prophecy: "With creationism in the saddle, American science

will wither. . . We will inevitably recede into the backwater of civilization

tion. . ." The "prophet" Isaac never mentions the fact that most of the

great founding fathers of modern science (e.g., Newton, Pascal, Kelvin,

FariAday, Galilee, Kepler, etc.) were theistic creationists, nor that

thousands of fully qualified scientists today have repudiated the evolu-

tionary) indoctrination ()f their school days in favor of the much stronger

scientific evidences for creation.

Although Asimov gives no arguments or evidences for evolution, he

does attempt to identify and refute what he thinks are the seven most

iniportant arguments for creation. These he denotes as follows:

I. The Argument from Analogy. Since no one would question that

the existence of a watch implies an intelligent watchmaker, by analogy

the much more intricate and complex universe implies an intelligent

universe maker. Asimov makes no attempt to answer this unanswerable

argument, except to say that "to surrender to ignorance and call it God

has always been premature." Such an answer is foolishness. The prin-

ciples of mathematical probability and scientific causality certainly do not

constitute a "surrender to ignorance," but provide a compelling demon-

stration that complex systems do not originate out of chaotic systems by

random processes.

By this term, Asimov, is the widespread belief among all peoples that

the world must have been brought into its present form by some god

or gods. Asimov main-tains that the "Hebrew myths" of creation are no

more credible than all these other beliefs and that "such general consent

proves nothing,"

Actually this so-called "argument from general consent" is rarely, if ever,

used by creationists. However, it is almost always used by evolutionists

to prove evolution! That is, since they can cite no scientific evidences for

evolution, they use the argument that "all scientists believe evolution" as

the main proof of evolution.

(3) -The Argument from Belittlement. Here Asimov incorrectly

accuses creationists of failing to understand scientific terminology and of

belittling evolution as "only a scientific theory." As a matter of fact,

creationists maintain that real "vertical" evolution is not even a scientific

theory, since it is not testable. There is no scientific experiment which,

even in imagination, could suffice either to confirm or to falsify, either

macro-evolution or creation. The proper term to use is not "scientific

theory" or even "scientific hypothesis," but "scientific model" or

"paradigm," or some such title. The creation model can be used far

more effectively than the evolution model in predicting and correlating

scientific data (the laws of thermodynamics, the character of the fossil

record, etc.).

(4) The Argument from Imperfection. Creationists are often accused

of mistaking disagreements among evolutionists as evidence that evolu-

tion itself is false. Actually, all creationists are well aware of this distinc-

tion, but it does seem odd, if evolution is a sure fact of science, that it is

so difficult to describe how it works! How does it happen that, if evolu-

tion iS SLIch a common process in nature, its mechanics remain so

obscure? Yet, as Asimov says: "However much scientists argue their

differing beliefs in details of evolutionary theory, or in the interpretation

of the necessarily imperfect fossil record, they firmly accept the evolu-

tionary process itself." Evolutionists walk by faith, not by sight!

(F)) The Argument from Distorted Scienc:e. One of the main crea-

tionist arguments against evolution is its apparent conflict with the

second law of thermodynamics, but Asimov says this argument is "dis-

torted science," since it ignores the fact that the earth is an open

system. Of course, it does not ignore the fact that the earth is an open

system; evolutionists such as Asimov seem to have a strange blind spot

at this point, perversely continuing to ignore the fact that this naive

charge has been repeatedly answered and refuted. Asimov should know,

as a chemist, that the mere influx of external heat into an open system

(such as solar energy entering the earth-system) would not increase the

order (or "complexity" or "information") in that system, but would

actually increase its entropy (or "disorder" or "randomness") more

rapidly than if it were a closed system! If "order" or "complexity" is

actually to increase in any open system, the latter must first be pro-

grarnnied to utilize the incoming energy in some organizing fashion and

then be provided also with a complex energy storage-and-conuersion

mechanism to transform the raw heat influx into the specific useful work

of increasing the organized complexity of the system. Since the imag-

inary evolutionary process on the earth possesses neither such a direct-

ing program nor organizing mechanism, the second law of thermo-

dynamics does indeed conflict with it and, to all intents and purposes,

renders it impossible.

Asimov also makes the arrogant charge that creationist scientists

"have not made any mark as scientists." The fact is that a cross-section

of the records of the scientists on the ICR staff, for example, or of the

Creation Research Society, would compare quite favorably with those of

most secular colleges and universities (including Asimov's own record).

(6) The Argument from Irrelevance. This criticism is merely a carica-

ture of the concept of a completed creation, which Asimov thinks would

be "deceptive." The fact is that a genuine creation would necessarily

require creation of "apparent age," the only alternative being eternal

matter and no true creation. There is no deception involved at all. As a

matter of fact, the world does not even look old, except to the distorted

vision of an evolutionist. The fossil record by its very nature speaks

clearly of a recent worldwide cataclysm, and there are far more physical

processes which yield a young age for the earth than the handful of

processes which, through arbitrary and unreasonable assumptions, can

be forced to yield an old age.

(7) The Argument from Authority. Asimov insists, as do many other

evolutionists, that the only real evidence for creationism is from the book

of Genesis. The Bible does, indeed, teach creation and its literal author-

ity was accepted by most of the founding fathers of our country and by

our country's first schools. That ought to count for something, especially

with those who deliberately chose to come to this country from other

countries (Asimov came with his parents as immigrants from Russia in

1923). As a matter of fact, however, creationists are quite content to let

the scientific evidence speak for itself in the public schools, with no

reference whatever to the Bible. Many of us, in fact, are quite insistent

on this point, appalled at the prospect of a humanist teacher such as

Asimov teaching the Bible to a class of impressionable young people.

Dr. Asimov opposes creationism in the schools with the following

astounding concluding argument: "It is only in school that American

youngsters in general are ever likely to hear any reasoned exposition of

the evolutionary viewpoint. They might find such a viewpoint in books,

magazines, newspapers or even on occasion, on television. But church

and family can easily censor printed matter or television. Only the school

is beyond their control."

Unfortunately, his last statement is mostly correct. Parents have

indeed largely yielded control of their tax-supported schools to the

educational establishment and its de facto religion of evolutionary

humanism. However, the increasing incidence of such tirades as this

from Dr. Asimov indicates that the creation movement has become a

serious threat to this powerful and pervasive system.