The three failures of creationism, by Walter M. Fitch

Abstract

The three failures of creationism, by Walter M. Fitch. 2012 University of California Press, Berkeley. ISBN 9780-520-27053-4 pbk. 194 pp., glossary, bibliography, index. $24.95 (£16.95). Walter Fitch was Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of California-Irvine and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Capping off a professional lifetime, he undertook to write a small textbook for high-school seniors and undergrads explaining problems with Creationist explanations contesting evolution. The result is useful to instructors, too, providing short, sound answers to questions about the alleged conflict between religion and science. Logic, rhetoric, and science are the three areas where creationists fail, according to Fitch. He begins with a very basic introduction to logic, listing and giving examples of logical fallacies and of pitfalls such as “loaded words” like “methodological atheism” (used by creationist Philip Johnson), where “atheism” may be technically correct for science—by definition science does not postulate deities—but its connotation of expressed rejection of belief in deities is not involved (p. 21). His next chapter presents “The Basics,” how we obtain knowledge from observation, authority, or faith. Theology, esthetics, ethics, and science are domains for judging and evaluating observations; Fitch explains how creationists fail to keep these domains separate, invoking theology to account for natural-world observations and ethics to claim moral worth as a criterion for accepting a scientific hypothesis. Fitch’s next chapter lays out “some simple math and statistics” pertinent to the age of the earth and to genetics. This chapter requires more mental energy than the preceding ones, which could make it particularly educational for students, leading them through examples of mathematical thinking. The final chapter is called “‘Young-Earth’ Creationism”, although it could better be