Creation Question

We referred this question to Dr D. Russell Humphreys (pictured), a nuclear physicist who works at Sandia National Laboratories. Dr Humphreys says he has often had this question put to him. He writes:

‘When people ask me this, I feel a certain amount of frustration because of the evolutionist brainwashing in our society which it reveals.

‘Firstly, it shows that the questioner is unaware of the large number of published professional scientists who are creationists. Where I live and work (Albuquerque, New Mexico) there are large numbers of scientists, and I know many who happen to be biblical creationists. Using a simple statistical approach, I would conservatively estimate that in the United States alone, there are around 10,000 practising professional scientists who openly believe in six-day recent creation.

‘Secondly, it suggests that the questioner doesn’t understand what the day-to-day life of a scientist is all about. One could almost say that publication in professional journals is the essence of being a scientist. So asking a man who says he is a scientist if he’s published in secular journals is like asking a man who says he’s married if he’s got a wife!

‘I would therefore reply to such a question ‘Are there any who don’t?’ Every one I know does publish. Even scientists who are full-time in creationist organisations usually have a few such publications, despite the serious disadvantage their institutional connections give them. Although there is strong discrimination against high-profile creationist scientists, most creationist scientists publish non-creationist scientific articles frequently. Moreover, many of them have published data with important creationist implications—but without explicit creationist conclusions, which would point out the significance of the data to the average non-creationist scientist.

‘What about creationist scientists publishing articles, in secular journals, which specifically come to creationist conclusions? The bitter experience of a number of us has made it clear that there is almost no chance that such articles will pass the review process, no matter what their quality. I have also had repeated correspondence with the letters editors of major journals, having submitted brief, well-written items which critiqued published conclusions favourable to long-agers or ‘big-bangers’. These contained no explicit creationist connotations, but I have concluded that, now that I am known as a creationist, such items have virtually no chance of publication.’

That’s why creationists have had to develop their own peer-reviewed journals, such as the Creation Research Society Quarterly and the Creation Ex Nihilo Technical Journal. Some creationist scientists are world leaders in their field, like geophysicist Dr John Baumgardner of Los Alamos Laboratories, in the field of plate tectonics [see interview Creation 19(3):40–43, 1997].

For a more detailed answer see Do Creationists Publish in Notable Refereed Journals?. For details on some creationist scientists and their publication records, check out the Biographies section of the website.