Carolyn Reeves

Retired science teacher and co-author of a series of elementary science textbooks (New Leaf Press).

June 2016 – This is not the first time the mere mention of Creator in a scientific article, class, or other public forum has created an uproar. An article entitled “Biomechanical characteristics of hand coordination in grasping activities of daily living” was published in the online scientific journal PLOS ONE in January 2016. The authors wrote about how human hands have an amazing ability to grasp things and perform a multitude of other coordinated tasks.

In the article, hands were said to have the “proper design by the Creator.” If the article had said that hands had been properly designed by Nature, there would have been no objections. But because of the use of the word Creator, there was a flood of complaints as many furious readers called, emailed, and tweeted their criticisms. Some called for the editor to be fired while others demanded that the article be immediately retracted. Some even thought PLOS ONE itself should be shut down or boycotted.

PLOS ONE reacted quickly to retract the article and apologized for the “inappropriate language.” The authors of the article also apologized and blamed the offending language on the fact that English was not their primary language.

On the other side, perplexed Christians who read about the raucous debate were thinking Of course human hands are designed by the Creator, as are our eyes, our brains, our hearts, and every other part of our bodies. Why is saying that hands are the proper design by the Creator offensive to PLOS ONE readers? Why is the idea of a Creator or an Intelligent Designer out of bounds in scientific discussions?

The answer is that the authors violated a “rule” that all science must be explained in terms of natural processes, and anything supernatural is outside the realm of science.

During the Scientific Revolution, early scientists working in the field of operational science limited their scientific explanations to natural processes because they were studying in real time how, why, or what happens in nature. Later, the field of historical sciences (which included Darwinian evolution) began to gain prominence. Assuming that origins could be explained naturalistically, evolutionists also chose to limit their attempts to reconstruct the past to natural processes. However, the very real possibility of an intelligent cause or a Creator was eliminated because all fields of science had been defined so that only natural processes were considered scientific.

Thus, when the word Creator showed up in a scientific journal, scientists who believed that only natural processes were allowed in science reacted as if science itself might be about to collapse. The same frantic reaction is often seen by some national science organizations when public schools consider including evidence that living things are the result of intelligence and design. Words like planned and purposeful elicit the same kinds of response, because Darwinian evolution requires random, unguided natural events.

Darwinian evolutionists would never promote outright atheism in public schools because schools are required by law to be religiously neutral. Nevertheless, the leaders of some national science organizations have come to staunchly limit science to explanations that are based only on natural processes. So, influenced by naturalistic Darwinian evolution, many students wonder if God is either false or irrelevant.

Basic Darwinian explanations for our origins are based only on unguided natural processes, while a designed, purposeful, supernatural creation is not a consideration in science. In responding to this, Christians should carefully consider Romans 1:18-20, which tells us that humans cannot not know that God, the Creator, made everything. Furthermore, suppressing this truth is a great wickedness in God’s sight.