Kurt Wise

Last updated
Kurt Wise
Born
Kurt Patrick Wise

(1959-08-01) August 1, 1959 (age 65)
Illinois, U.S.
Education University of Chicago (BA)
Harvard University (MA, PhD)
Scientific career
Fields Geology
Paleontology
Institutions
Thesis The Estimation of True Taxonomic Durations from Fossil Occurrence Data  (1989)
Doctoral advisor Stephen Jay Gould

Kurt Patrick Wise (born August 1, 1959) is an American geologist, paleontologist, [1] and young Earth creationist who serves as the director of the Creation Research Center at Truett McConnell University in Cleveland, Georgia. He writes in support of creationism and contributed to the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky.

Contents

Biography

Wise was born into a fundamentalist Baptist family in Illinois. [2] He attended the University of Chicago and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) in geology. He then was educated at Harvard University, where he received a Master of Arts (M.A.) in geology and a Ph.D. in paleontology under the supervision of Stephen Jay Gould, a prominent opponent of creationism, in 1989. [3] In 1998, Robert Schadewald described Wise as influential on "modern creationism as it is practiced at its higher levels." [4]

Since the fall of 2009, Wise has been the director of Truett McConnell University's Creation Research Center in Cleveland, Georgia. [5] Between August 2006 and May 2009, he taught at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary as director of the school's Center for Theology and Science, a job in which he was preceded by intelligent design advocate William Dembski. [6] [7] He had previously taught at Bryan College in Dayton, Tennessee, where he served as Director of the Center for Origins Research and as an Associate Professor of Science [6] for seventeen years. [5]

He served as consultant to the Answers in Genesis Creation Museum which opened in 2007. [8] Timothy H. Heaton, another scientist who studied under Stephen Jay Gould, knows Wise as "a less propaganda-oriented creationist" than Ken Ham, the leader of Answers in Genesis, and said that Wise's influence on the displays was apparent. [8]

Views and criticism

Wise has said he believes, according to a literal reading of the Bible, "that the Earth is young, and the universe is young, I would suggest that it's less than ten thousand years in age." He believes that science can be used to support and demonstrate these claims. [9] Despite believing that science supports his position, Wise has written that:

Although there are scientific reasons for accepting a young Earth, I am a young age creationist because that is my understanding of the Scripture. As I shared with my professors years ago when I was in college, if all the evidence in the universe turns against creationism, I would be the first to admit it, but I would still be a creationist because that is what the Word of God seems to indicate. [10]

As a young child interested in science, Wise tentatively adopted an old Earth creationist point of view after doing a science fair project on the geologic column, but was not completely satisfied with that decision:

What nagged me was that even if the days were long periods of time, the order was still out of whack. After all, science said the sun came before the Earth—or at least at the same time—and the Bible said that the Earth came three days before the sun. Whereas science said that the sea creatures came before plants and the land creatures came before flying creatures, the Bible indicated that plants preceded sea creatures and flying creatures preceded land creatures. On the other hand, making the days millions of years long seemed to take away most of the conflict. I thus determined to shelve these problems in the back recesses of my mind. It didn't work. Over the next couple of years, the conflict of order nagged me. [10]

Later, as a sophomore in high school, he took a newly purchased Bible and a pair of scissors and cut out every verse which could not be interpreted literally if scientific determinations on the age of the Earth and evolution were true. He pursued this task with a flashlight under the covers of his bed for several months; at the end, he had removed so much material that "with the cover of the Bible taken off, I attempted to physically lift the Bible from the bed between two fingers. Yet, try as I might, and even with the benefit of intact margins throughout the pages of Scripture, I found it impossible to pick up the Bible without it being rent in two." [10] Wise decided to reject evolution instead of Biblical literalism, deciding:

...that the rejection of evolution does not necessarily involve the rejection of all of science. In fact, I have come to learn that science owes its very existence and rationale to the claims of Scripture. On the other hand, I have also learned that evolution is not the only claim of modern science which must be rejected if Scripture is assumed to be true. [10]

Biologist and popular atheist author Richard Dawkins called Wise an honest creationist because he is willing to accept creationism even if he admitted "all the evidence in the universe" was against it: [1]

Kurt Wise doesn't need the challenge; he volunteers that, even if all the evidence in the universe flatly contradicted Scripture, and even if he had reached the point of admitting this to himself, he would still take his stand on Scripture and deny the evidence. This leaves me, as a scientist, speechless... We have it on the authority of a man who may well be creationism's most highly qualified and most intelligent scientist that no evidence, no matter how overwhelming, no matter how all-embracing, no matter how devastatingly convincing, can ever make any difference. [1]

Further, in his book The God Delusion , [11] Dawkins referred to Wise's denial of science over creationism:

[The] Kurt Wise story is just plain pathetic – pathetic and contemptible. The wound, to his career and his life’s happiness, was self-inflicted, so unnecessary, so easy to escape. All he had to do was toss out the bible. Or interpret it symbolically, or allegorically, as the theologians do. Instead, he did the fundamentalist thing and tossed out science, evidence and reason, along with all his dreams and hopes.

Books

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Creationism</span> Belief that nature originated through supernatural acts

Creationism is the religious belief that nature, and aspects such as the universe, Earth, life, and humans, originated with supernatural acts of divine creation. In its broadest sense, creationism includes a continuum of religious views, which vary in their acceptance or rejection of scientific explanations such as evolution that describe the origin and development of natural phenomena.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Creation science</span> Pseudoscientific form of Young Earth creationism

Creation science or scientific creationism is a pseudoscientific form of Young Earth creationism which claims to offer scientific arguments for certain literalist and inerrantist interpretations of the Bible. It is often presented without overt faith-based language, but instead relies on reinterpreting scientific results to argue that various myths in the Book of Genesis and other select biblical passages are scientifically valid. The most commonly advanced ideas of creation science include special creation based on the Genesis creation narrative and flood geology based on the Genesis flood narrative. Creationists also claim they can disprove or reexplain a variety of scientific facts, theories and paradigms of geology, cosmology, biological evolution, archaeology, history, and linguistics using creation science. Creation science was foundational to intelligent design.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Omphalos hypothesis</span> Creationist hypothesis

The Omphalos hypothesis is one attempt to reconcile the scientific evidence that the Earth is billions of years old with a literal interpretation of the Genesis creation narrative, which implies that the Earth is only a few thousand years old. It is based on the religious belief that the universe was created by a divine being, within the past six to ten thousand years, and that the presence of objective, verifiable evidence that the universe is older than approximately ten millennia is due to the creator introducing false evidence that makes the universe appear significantly older.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ken Ham</span> Australian Christian fundamentalist

Kenneth Alfred Ham is an Australian Christian fundamentalist, young Earth creationist, apologist and former science teacher, living in the United States. He is the founder, CEO, and former president of Answers in Genesis (AiG), a Christian apologetics organisation that operates the Creation Museum and the Ark Encounter.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Young Earth creationism</span> Form of creationism

Young Earth creationism (YEC) is a form of creationism which holds as a central tenet that the Earth and its lifeforms were created by supernatural acts of the Abrahamic God between about 6,000 and 10,000 years ago. In its most widespread version, YEC is based on the religious belief in the inerrancy of certain literal interpretations of the Book of Genesis. Its primary adherents are Christians and Jews who believe that God created the Earth in six literal days.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Old Earth creationism</span> Form of creationism

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Day-age creationism</span> Metaphorical interpretation of the creation accounts in Genesis

Day-age creationism, a type of old Earth creationism, is an interpretation of the creation accounts in Genesis. It holds that the six days referred to in the Genesis account of creation are not literal 24-hour days, but are much longer periods. The Genesis account is then reconciled with the age of the Earth. Proponents of the day-age theory can be found among both theistic evolutionists, who accept the scientific consensus on evolution, and progressive creationists, who reject it. The theories are said to be built on the understanding that the Hebrew word yom is also used to refer to a time period, with a beginning and an end and not necessarily that of a 24-hour day.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Flood geology</span> Pseudoscientific attempt to reconcile geology with the Genesis flood narrative

Flood geology is a pseudoscientific attempt to interpret and reconcile geological features of the Earth in accordance with a literal belief in the Genesis flood narrative, the flood myth in the Hebrew Bible. In the early 19th century, diluvial geologists hypothesized that specific surface features provided evidence of a worldwide flood which had followed earlier geological eras; after further investigation they agreed that these features resulted from local floods or from glaciers. In the 20th century, young-Earth creationists revived flood geology as an overarching concept in their opposition to evolution, assuming a recent six-day Creation and cataclysmic geological changes during the biblical flood, and incorporating creationist explanations of the sequences of rock strata.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Answers in Genesis</span> Nonprofit organization promoting young Earth creationism

Answers in Genesis (AiG) is an American fundamentalist Christian apologetics parachurch organization. It advocates young Earth creationism on the basis of its literal, historical-grammatical interpretation of the Book of Genesis and the Bible as a whole. Out of belief in biblical inerrancy, it rejects the results of scientific investigations that contradict their view of the Genesis creation narrative and instead supports pseudoscientific creation science. The organization sees evolution as incompatible with the Bible and believes anything other than the young Earth view is a compromise on the principle of biblical inerrancy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gap creationism</span> Form of old Earth creationism

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rejection of evolution by religious groups</span> Religious rejection of evolution

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of creationism</span>

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<i>The Genesis Flood</i> 1961 book by John C. Whitcomb and Henry M. Morris

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Truth in Science is a United Kingdom-based creationist organisation which promotes the Discovery Institute's "Teach the Controversy" campaign, which it uses to try to get the pseudoscientific concept of intelligent design creationism taught alongside evolution in school science lessons. The organisation claims that there is scientific controversy about the validity of Darwinian evolution, a view rejected by the United Kingdom's Royal Society and over 50 Academies of Science around the world. The group is affiliated with the Discovery Institute, the hub of the intelligent design movement, following its strategy and circulating the Institute's promotional materials.

The Biblical Creation Society (BCS) is a United Kingdom-based creationist organisation founded in 1977 by Scottish minister Nigel M. de S. Cameron (now President of the Center for Policy on Emerging Technologies and a group of evangelical students, who were concerned about the popularity of theistic evolution among conservative Christians, but were repelled by the "wholly negative" attitude of the Evolution Protest Movement. Although inspired by the scientific creationism of John C. Whitcomb and Henry M. Morris, it refused to limit its membership to only Young Earth creationists, and in its name rejected American attempts to separate scientific creationism from its Biblical roots. The organisation is based in Rugby, Warwickshire.

Alan Hayward (1923–2008) was a British engineer and physicist who was also active as an old-earth Creationist writer, and Christadelphian.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Dawkins, Richard (2001). "Sadly, an Honest Creationist". Skepsis ry . Retrieved 2015-11-30– via New York University.
  2. ↑ Wise, Donald U. (April 1998). "Creationist Geologic Time Scale: an attack strategy for the sciences". American Scientist . Retrieved June 18, 2024– via California State University Northridge.
  3. ↑ Rosin, Hanna (November 25, 2007). "Rock of Ages, Ages of Rock". New York Times Magazine . Retrieved 2017-08-30.
  4. ↑ "The 1998 International Conference on Creationism". National Center for Science Education. 1998. Retrieved 2009-09-24.
  5. 1 2 "Creation Research Center has been established". Truett-McConnell College. 2009. Archived from the original on 2014-04-13. Retrieved 2014-04-09.
  6. 1 2 "Kurt P. Wise". Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (Archived). 2008. Archived from the original on 2007-12-22. Retrieved 2009-08-18.
  7. ↑ "The Other ID Opponents". Christianity Today. April 2006. Retrieved 2008-08-18.
  8. 1 2 Heaton, Timothy (2007). "A Visit to the New Creation 'Museum'". National Center for Science Education . Retrieved 2009-09-24.
  9. ↑ "'Telling Lies for God'? One Man's Crusade". Quantum. July 17, 1997.
  10. 1 2 3 4 Kurt Wise. In Six Days: Why 50 Scientists Choose to Believe in Creation. John Ashton, Ed. Accessed May 17, 2008.
  11. ↑ Dawkins, Richard (2006). "Chapter 8: What's wrong with religion? Why be so hostile?". The God Delusion. Bantam Press.
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