Do you believe that God created the world in seven days? Do you keep the Bible Sabbath in part because, as Exodus 20:11 states, “in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day”?
If so, brace yourself: A prominent science educator has decreed that you are a conspiracy theorist.
Writing at a website called The Conversation, retired university professor Paul Braterman says that Young Earth Creationism is an “enduring conspiracy theory” that “pervades America. … And it’s one that we cannot ignore because it is dangerously opposed to science.” (He also compared Creationism to the recent and controversial cultural phenomenon known as QAnon.)
The website, whose motto is “academic rigor, journalistic flair,” doesn’t publish just anyone. “To be published by The Conversation you must be currently employed as a researcher or academic with a university or research institution. PhD candidates under supervision by an academic can write for us, but we don’t currently publish articles from Masters [degree] students,” the “become an author” page reads.
Professor Braterman, emeritus professor in chemistry at the University of North Texas and an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, has long opposed creation science: His online biography says Braterman “was involved in successful campaigns to [persuade] both the English and the Scottish Governments to keep creationism out of the science classroom.”
Braterman writes, “In the US today, up to 40% of adults agree with the young Earth creationist claim that all humans are descended from Adam and Eve within the past 10,000 years. They also believe that living creatures are the result of ‘special creation’ rather than evolution and shared ancestry. And that Noah’s flood was worldwide and responsible for the sediments in the geologic column (layers of rock built up over millions of years), such as those exposed in the Grand Canyon.”
“A Fully Fledged Conspiracy Theory”
He adds, “I would argue that the present-day creationist movement is a fully fledged conspiracy theory. It meets all the criteria, offering a complete parallel universe with its own [organizations] and rules of evidence, and claims that the scientific establishment promoting evolution is an arrogant and morally corrupt elite.”
In his brief alleging that creationists are some sort of new conspiratorial cult, Braterman picks on, in his opinion, isolated and questionable items brought up by evolution’s opponents—the famous Piltdown Man hoax, the now less-favored work of Ernst Haeckel—to attack creation instead. “It is a splendid example of creationist tactics, using long-rectified shortcomings (such as those in early studies on Darwinian evolution in peppered moths, in response to changing colours following reduced pollution) to imply that the entire science is fraudulent,” Braterman writes.
But if evolution is more fact than theory, why have so many evolutionists been duped by fraudulent and false evolutionary claims? After all, aren’t hoaxes such as Piltdown Man a mere symptom of the still-missing links in the human evolutionary chain? Why were evolutionary scientists so eager to promote Haeckel’s drawings as science fact rather than the science fiction that they are? Should the conspiracy-level frauds perpetuated by evolutionary scientists on a gullible, believing public really be dismissed when accusing Creationists of doing the very same thing?
Such questions apparently do not concern Braterman. Instead, he worries about the supposedly pernicious effect of simply believing the Bible. “I fear that the creationist conspiracy theory will not be so short-lived. It is driven by a deep-seated power struggle within religious communities, between modernists and literalists; between those who regard scripture as coming to us through human authors, however inspired, and those who regard it as a perfect supernatural revelation. And that is a struggle that will be with us for a long time to come.”
Is End-Time Prophecy the Key?
It’s impossible to know exactly what’s in Braterman’s mind as he battles against Creationism and the Bible-based belief that the earth is relatively young and not billions of years old.
But interestingly, his attack on Bible-believers as no more than conspiracy theorists does have end-time spiritual implications. The biblical account of the origins of the earth and humanity is found in Genesis 1 and is capped off in the next chapter. “On the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made” (Genesis 2:2, 3).
The Sabbath, the day upon which we are to worship the Lord (Exodus 20:8–11), is a key identifier of God’s people—throughout history and, yes, here now at the end of the age. Revelation 13 tells about a united effort between a religious power and a civil government to enforce a day of worship that opposes God’s original plan for humanity.
And in the next chapter of Revelation, the first of three angelic messengers proclaim to all the inhabitants of the earth that true worship is linked to creation: “Fear God and give glory to Him, for the hour of His judgment has come; and worship Him who made heaven and earth, the sea and springs of water” (Revelation 14:7).
Whether or not Braterman is aware of it, his battle against creationism is a fight against the principles of love and liberty established by God. Minimizing or dismissing the biblical story of origins won’t affirm faith; it’ll destroy it. The ultimate consequences, the Bible tells us, won’t be—and have never been—pleasant.
Pastor Doug Batchelor’s sermon on The Mark of the Beast is a good introduction to what this end-time religious-political power will entail. His companion presentation on The USA in Bible Prophecy is equally informative! Finally, our free online book The Beast, the Dragon & the Woman is also helpful in putting things into perspective.