Modern Creationism and Scientific Authority

Abstract

Much of modern creationist thought is obviously generated by fundamentalist theology, but there is another major influence at work — namely, the cultural-historical dynamics of the social role of scientific authority in American life. This paper describes a variety of modern creationist positions on the merits and credibility of scientific authority, and then analyzes that situation in terms of the history of three cultural models of science that circulate in American popular culture. It concludes, first, that creationist attitudes about scientific authority represent an interesting problem in their own right; and, second, that the social role of scientific authority is both varied and complex.