Science, Religion:
Coulter and the Retreat of Bible Science

For over a thousand years, those who try to use the Bible as a science textbook instead of as a testament of faith have been retreating. They’re in retreat even as we speak.

Ann Coulter shows just how far creationism has retreated. In June, 2006, she stirred things up again with her book Godless: the Church of Liberalism. In it, she spends a third of her pages using Intelligent Design arguments to attack “Darwinism.” She gets her content courtesy of Seattle’s own Discovery Institute. What’s remarkable about her polemic is that ID doesn’t defend Biblical creationism. Michael Behe himself accepts science’s age of the earth over the Bible’s. The upshot? Today’s hottest creationist thinking abandons young-earthism in the continued attempt to remain believable.

Let’s see what the Bible-scientists have lost over the centuries and decades. Decades listed for when various scientific facts were accepted are approximate, and are meant to apply to most (not all) Bible scientists.

500s

accept round earth

1600s

accept solar system, the earth moves

1800s

accept sun as a star

1940s

accept “days” in Genesis as figurative, see Scopes trial

1960s

accept dinosaurs, identified as "dragons," on Noah's ark as eggs or young

1980s

accept Ice Age, occuring after the Flood

1990s

accept microevolution, but not speciation

current

accepting old earth and generation of species, see Godless

Here's a great web site about Bible science, including the overlap between flat-earthism and creationism.

—JoT
September 2006

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