CREATIONISM 385 would either temporarily escape to higher ground or would float there to be interred at higher elevations The book seized the attention of the evangelical community in a way that the Adventist Price’s books did not It sold tens of thousands of copies during its first decade, and remains in print today The nineteenth century effort to support the literal 6-day Genesis Creation and a young Earth through scientific data and theory was finally institutionalized when Morris and his colleagues organized the Creation Research Society in 1963 as an association of conservative Christian scientists promoting young Earth creationism In 1972, Morris organized the California-based Institute for Creation Research (ICR) to promote ‘creation science’ Its staff and publications expanded; within a decade Morris could claim an ICR publication list of 55 books The current book list numbers in the hundreds, and these and other creationist books have been translated into Afrikaans, Chinese, Czech, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, and Spanish The ICR and other creation science ministries, such as Answers in Genesis, have been very effective in shaping the misunderstanding – and rejection – of evolution by millions of conservative Christians As a result, the word ‘creationism’ itself is now usually understood to mean young Earth creation science Creation Science and Geology Proponents of creation science argue that there are only two possible views: creationism and evolution; thus arguments against evolution are arguments in favour of creationism Creation science literature thus centres on alleged examples of ‘evidence against evolution’, such as anomalies in scientific literature, that are then used to argue that the evidence for evolution is deficient Echoing Price’s contention that the geological column is not reliable, creation science proponents deny that missing strata at paraconformities ever existed: instead, they are evidence for rapid deposition by the Flood Proponents also point to fossils that are out of order, such as an alleged human footprint occurring on top of a trilobite, or ‘Moab man’, a human skeleton found in the Morrison Formation (Late Jurassic) in Utah Despite the report of the physical anthropologist who excavated the Moab skeleton that it was an intrusive burial and a 14C date of 300 years, creationists continue to promote the burial as evidence of a distorted and misleading geological column The most famous ‘out of place’ fossils, however, are alleged human footprints occurring with dinosaur footprints, claimed to have been found in Pennsylvania, New Mexico, and Texas, the last being the best known The Cretaceous limestones of the Paluxy River near Glen Rose, Texas, present many wellpreserved tridactyl dinosaur footprints Creationists have claimed since the 1930s that human footprints are found in the same strata, proving that dinosaurs and humans existed at the same time Analysis of these footprints by palaeontologists and geologists has shown that none of the claimed ‘mantracks’ is valid: all can be explained as natural erosional features, eroded dinosaur tracks, or carvings Although the ICR has retreated slightly from promoting the Paluxy River ‘mantracks’, other creationists continue to so, as can be seen by even a cursory web search Like Price, modern creation science proponents know that the age of the Earth is a critical issue for evolution; without an old Earth, biological evolution could not have occurred A great deal of creationist literature, therefore, focuses on efforts to demonstrate that the Earth is young rather than ancient For example, when presented with evidence from ice cores, varves, or even tree rings, creationists argue that these annual indicators of age are flawed, because more than one layer, varve, or ring can be formed in a year, thus throwing off the counts Many of these young Earth arguments rely on extrapolations of various rates of change When a measured rate is extrapolated backwards (or forwards), a result is produced that is incompatible with the accepted age of the Earth Engineer Walter T Brown’s book, In the Beginning, includes numbered ‘evidences’ against evolution, including this one on the decay of the Earth’s magnetic field: 84 Over the past 140 years, direct measurements of Earth’s magnetic field show its steady and rapid decline in strength This decay pattern is consistent with the theoretical view that a decaying electrical current inside Earth produces the magnetic field If this is correct, then just 20 000 years ago the electrical current would have been so vast that Earth’s structure could not have sur vived the heat produced This implies Earth could not be older than 20 000 years Of course, the rate of decay of the Earth’s magnetic field is not linear, but periodically reverses, and thus the fear of a too-powerful field 20 000 years ago is groundless Other rate arguments similarly rely on taking a known rate and extrapolating it in a linear fashion, resulting in conclusions at variance with modern geology: 80 The continents are eroding at a rate that would level them in much less than 25 million years However, evo lutionists believe fossils of animals and plants at high elevations have somehow avoided this erosion for more than 300 million years Something is wrong