Inside the Mind of a Creationist (Hope is Alive in California!)

In the last year, Silicon Valley has been a center of a showdown over religious beliefs in public schools. Meet the other side. LYNN HOFLAND often talks faster than he thinks. For Hofland, it seems the circumstances demand it. A creationist, he happily espouses a point of view that mainstream culture considers ridiculous and unenlightened.

The earth, according to Hofland, is about 6,000 years old. God created it in six 24-hour days. And, of course, evolution is just a theory.

Most people around here will shake their heads and wonder how anyone could think that in this day and age. But for Hofland, it's a basic foundation of his belief system.

And his belief system came to the South Bay in a big way last fall when Stephen Williams, a fifth-grade teacher at Stevens Creek Elementary School in Cupertino, filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the Cupertino Union School District (and against Stevens Creek Elementary's principal), claiming he had been discriminated against because he was Christian. Williams, backed by the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian legal organization engaged in contesting cultural issues across the nation, said that his principal stopped him from handing out historical materials in class that referenced God. After an initial Drudge Report headline about the Declaration of Independence being "banned" at a California school, Williams' case was egged on by right-wing radio and blogs. Sean Hannity, of Fox News' Hannity & Colmes, brought his show to the Flint Center in Cupertino for a special "Take Back America" broadcast.

Mark Thomas was one of the panelists for that broadcast. Thomas, the president of the Atheists of Silicon Valley (www.godlessgeeks.com), believes everything that Hofland does not. He believes men came from monkeys. He believes the animate sprung from the inanimate; the concept even has a scientific-sounding word for it: abiogenesis.

Thomas has met Hofland on more than one occasion; he even went so far as to give Hofland the floor during one of his atheist meetings held bimonthly in the community room of his townhouse complex in Mountain View. But the truth is, he thinks Hofland is a kook. Or, if Hofland's not a kook himself, that his ideas about the origins of life are definitely kooky.

"It's rather irritating to get into these conversations about the origins of life with him," says Thomas. "You keep coming back with God did this, God did that. The problem is for him there are no contradictions because he's right. In some ways you can't refute him. God could have created the world a hundred years ago with everything looking as though it were ancient. You can't disprove it. God could have created the universe a day ago with everything, including people's memories intact. You can't disprove that."

Hofland may think the world was created in six days, but it took him a lot longer than that to arrive at that belief—30 years and then some, in fact. Born in Montana, near Missoula (he still mixes Montana wheat into homemade breads and waffles), Hofland, now 50, has always had a Midwestern sensibility. He graduated from high school (his mother was his eighth-grade biology teacher), but flunked out of college after a year and a half. Then, he did a six-year stint in the Navy, floating around the South Pacific on a nuclear submarine.

Of all things, it was a subsequent job at NASA, where he's still employed today, that led Hofland to discard the evolutionism he had grown up with. Watching NASA scientists taking lessons from the physiology of giraffes to develop gravity suits for astronauts (the thick-skinned giraffe boasts a unique blood pressure for mammals, which is especially helpful for outer-space modeling) eventually convinced Hofland to do his own research into the giraffe—an animal, as it turns out, that has been widely used in creationist arguments.

What he found, he says, converted him. The giraffe, he learned, has seven neck bones (the norm, for many mammals), even though, as far as he could tell, there's no reason why evolution wouldn't have demanded the number of the giraffe's neck bones increase with the size of its neck. Hofland was also amazed at the giraffe's capability to withstand extreme blood pressure (due to its height) in its legs, and to adjust the pressure when it bends its head down to drink water—without its reinforced artery walls, its collection of valves and a "web" of small blood vessels, intense pressure would reach the giraffe's brain every time it bends its head. Not to mention what Hofland considers the miraculous design of the giraffe's birthing process—the new calf, which drops into the world from a height of five feet, cannot fall neither head or feet first, as both positions would end up breaking its neck; instead, the giraffe maneuvers a "perfect" exit, hind feet first and supporting its flexible neck around its shoulders.

Before he learned all this, Hofland insists, he, always scientifically inclined, was very much an ardent evolutionist. But, after his study, he ended up penning an article which became the basis for a new creationist ministry he calls Stiffneck Ministries.

"I had to struggle with this, but when I did my homework, I was convinced the giraffe was created," he says. "And, if the giraffe was created, then I was created, and, if I was created, then I had some answering to do for my life."

Thomas, however, is hardly impressed by Hofland's conversion. "I'm very well aware of his Stiffneck Ministries and his giraffes," says Thomas, with an exasperated tone. "His arguments are false; they are completely false. Giraffes have evolved over a period of time, and it's not a very good system. Giraffes have a lot of problems, many babies die during birth because they have a long distance to fall, but it works well enough for them to survive."

Thomas has little patience for Hofland's logic. "What creationist and intelligent designers like to point out is, basically, 'Isn't X amazing? I don't understand how X could be. Therefore, there must be something else that designed X and that created X. I don't understand what this other thing is either, but it must exist, because I don't understand X. That's fallacious reasoning."

Tie For First: The way Lynn Hofland's neckwear pointedly quotes the opening of the Christian Bible leaves no doubt as to where he stands on the question of life's origin.

Hofland was in the audience for the Hannity special in Cupertino. For him, the hubbub was about nothing other than certain people—in this case, the elementary school's administrators and the concerned parents—being too "sensitive." The United States, Hofland likes to say, is largely a Christian nation, though Hofland's definition of what a "Christian" nation is seems to vary subtly with the context. Sometimes, as in the case of Cupertino's Williams, who Hofland argues was only distributing material that reflected the roots and realities of the United States, the nation's very Christian; sometimes it's not Christian enough.

Even the question of what "Christian" belief is in regard to creationism has shifted over time.

"The irony, of course, in all of this creation science stuff is that modern conservative Christians are not the equivalent of their 19th-century counterparts," says J. David Pleins, a professor of religion at Santa Clara University.

Pleins, who has written extensively about readings of Genesis, argues young earth creationism—Hofland's view of a 6,000-year-old history—wasn't always a traditional Christian perspective.

"In the 19th century, you people who we would today call fundamentalist or conservative Christians, who didn't think the earth was young. They were anti-evolution Christians; they were against Darwin, but they believed the earth was old because they believe that the science told us about all these ancient lost eras. And so you had conservative Christians who were committed to an old-earth creationism. That seems to be an option that's lost today, and it's lost not because of the Scopes trial."

Instead, Pleins contends that a book, The Genesis Flood, put young earth creationism on the map. "It argued that science, rewritten and interpreted differently, would validate a literal reading of the Bible, so with creation science, you get a commitment from all conservative Christians committed to a young earth reading of the text. That's new."

The reasons behind the shift in perspective are strikingly similar to the modern fundamentalist worries that Christianity would erode away if not somehow protected, which results in a defensive posture by the Christian right in the American culture wars. The book's authors, says Pleins, thought that "if you give away the literal reading of the Bible, you start giving up the biblical truth. Where would you stop?"

Similarly, Hofland wants to establish the Bible's authority in America's public schools.

"There's nothing wrong with the Bible being added as a reference text," he insists. "If the science classroom is asking questions about how old the earth is, then this"—Hofland pats a tiny blue Bible—"is as good of a reference as rocks in the ground."

Employing Hofland's logic, solutions for teaching evolution in public schools would, seemingly, become exercises in political correctness.

"Question number one," Hofland says, "could be according to the theory of evolution; question number two could be according to the theory of creation; question number three could be according to the Buddhism or whatever. Or something like that."

Hofland may seem to be far out of the mainstream, but his beliefs have made some inroads in popular culture, as seen in cases like that of the Atlanta school district that voted in 2002 to put stickers in biology textbooks which stated that evolution is "a theory not a fact." A federal judge ruled that the stickers had to be removed.

Others who criticize the way evolution is taught in public schools say they aren't necessarily creationists, but simply believe God has been pushed too far out of the debate over life's origins. In 1998, after receiving a letter co-signed by two widely respected religious scholars, Huston Smith and Alvin Plantinga, the National Association of Biology Teachers was forced to edit its definition of what to teach about evolution in schools. The association had described evolution as "unsupervised" and "impersonal"; Smith and Plantinga argued there was no scientific basis for those descriptors, and the association ended up agreeing, deleting the two words.

At NASA, Hofland often visits an artistic depiction of the origins of human life that has been put up in a building neighboring his workspace. The depiction, a colorful painting that, from left to right, shows the evolutionary stages of life through bold white lines. It begins with volcanoes exploding, moves on to micro-organisms in the oceans, to various kinds of mammals in the forests, to cave men, and finally to modern man driving along a highway.

"I did meet the artist, the original artist," he says of the painting. "At first, he told me they told him to paint all the volcanoes exploding. Then, they told him, Oh that was too much, that would cause a nuclear winter and shut everything down, so they only had two volcanoes that were exploding and the rest were dormant. And see, they keep changing their view of what happened."

Even evolutionary biologists disagree on whether archaeopteryx was a "transitional" animal.

Is a Bird, not a dinosaur:

Referring to Archaeopteryx, Ichthyornis, and Hesperornis, Beddard stated, "So emphatically were all these creatures birds that the actual origin of Aves is barely hinted at in the structure of these remarkable remains." (F.E. Beddard, The Structure and Classification of Birds, Longmans, Green and Co., London, 1898, p. 160.)

Is a dinosaur, not a bird or transition species:

"Archaeopteryx is not an ancestral bird, nor is it an ‘ideal intermediate’ between reptiles and birds. There are no derived characters uniquely shared by Archaeopteryx and modern birds alone; consequently there is little justification for continuing to classify Archaeopteryx as a bird.” (R. A. Thulborn, “The Avian Relationships of Archaeopteryx and the Origin of Birds,” Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, Vol. 82, 1984, p. 119.)

Can't be a "transitional" because birds already existed:

“Here we describe well-preserved and abundant footprints with clearly avian characters from a Late Triassic redbed sequence of Argentina, at least 55 Myr before the first known skeletal record of birds.” (Ricardo N. Melchor et al., “Bird-Like Fossil Footprints from the Late Triassic,” Nature, Vol. 417, 27 June 2002, p. 936.)

I've even read some claims that at least 2 of the specimines were fakes. However, I don't remember who made those claims so I'll leave them out.

Yes, all this controversy and disagreement within the evolution community and nothing is ever printed about it in our kid's textbooks.

"Kids, just drink your koolaid and repeat after me: Darwinism is how you got here . . . Nothing you heard in church is true . . . "

I've read that one before also.

If you are willing to read what you linked with a fewer preconceived notions, you will see what I see: discord and disagreement within the evolution community.

The whole article is an attempt to support the "archaeopteryx was a transitional" over a multitude of other published works by other evolutionary biologists that said otherwise.

Your link proves my point. Thanks.

Oh, I see. Andf from this we should understand that all evolutionists are in perfect agreement, and therefore the philosophy of evolution is the only world view worthy of acceptance in public education.

Oh, hey, it's fester. Long time, no argue.

Science is in complete harmony that evolution occurs, and is the cause of the varous species on earth. Yes, the details are constantly discussed, but the basic concept of evolution is not in doubt.

Religion, on the other hand, can't even get it's story straight even among those who follow the same Bible.

Then we'll bring in those other major religions that are completly different, like the earth on the tortise believers.

ISA 55:9 "As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.

I want my God to be smarter than I am. He is in charge of all things and it is ironic at the very least to see His critics sitting around saying, "prove to me He exists," which carries with it the concept that they could comprehend the answers. This is the height of arrogance.

Furtherance of the teaching of moral values in public schools would be better served if the same energy were put into lobbying state legislatures and school boards to establishment classes on religion and ethics, and to end prohibitions against student religious organizations and prayers by students and teachers. Trying to inject moral teaching into the classroom through the vector of biology and the life sciences is wrong way to approach the problem. Not only will it probably fail, but it will perpetuate the untrue stereotype that most religious people are anti-science, and is likely to turn students away from religion not towards.

So, do you believe what the scientists declared to be 'fact' in the Scopes trial?

How is it that the 'basic concept of evolution is not in doubt' when the things that were called facts are proven wrong, only to be supplanted by other 'facts' which are subsequently proven wrong?

Sort of reminds me of Dan Rather's claim that the story of the President's being AWOL was still true, even though all CBS's 'facts' were revealed to be wrong.

Illogical, contortionist thinking, IMO.......

First of all Darwin is not the "founder of my faith". He is a scientist whose work I consder to be valid conclusions on the evidence he possessed. (Which also applies to Agassiz)

You are the one going ad hominem by attempting to tie the racist tag to Darwin.

But, if we are going to get into the inherent personalities of the individuals, the choice between an unbeliever who may have considerd Africans less advanced than Englishmen, but was nevertheless appalled by the idea of enslaving them, and a Christian who thought them created by God as draft animals, is a no-brainer.

Nothing ad hominem about referring to Darwin's racism, Oztrich Boy. Read his work.

I don't know enough about Agassiz to even know if he was actually a Christian (there's a huge gap between all those who claim to be, and those who actually are Christian), but your reference to him is still irrelevant, because he has no following nor influence.

Certainly, you can point to racist Christians, but as I stated previously, they don't have followers a hundred years later.

I'm not saying that anyone who believes in the deductions based on the guesswork of Darwin is a racist, as he was, but my point is that his devotees have a religious fervor that even the right wing fundamentalists can scarcely match.

It's a faith, and he's the founder. You may not be one of the faithful (I don't know that), but there IS a faithful, and they will fight to the finish for their beliefs.

Oh, please. Charles Darwin is regarded as the father of modern biology, but biologists don't worship him any more than, say, chemists worship John Dalton or Antoine LaVoisier, or physicists worship Issac Newton or Albert Einstein. Claims that Darwin was a racist do not hold water. Though some Darwins chauvinistic Victorian attitudes may seem quaint by today's standards, he was not a racist by any stretch of the imagination. Like most British, he strongly opposed slavery and supported of the Union against the Confederacy in the American War Between the States.

If the earth was re-modeled about 6000 years ago..
Then the earth could be older...but it was the re-modeling was only 6000 years ago, or so..

Some say the Hebrew word in Genesis really was re-created.. or re-modeled.. in that case what went on "before" is a mystery.. except for a few old bones and such.. and who's to say that, that didn't happen a few other times.. when some other societies offed themselves.. Could be the TRUTH is a version of the "Planet of the apes" scenario on CRACK.. but all we have are some metaphors from the book of Genesis and few legends.. or some "scientific" IF'n...

Religious and scientific folks talling me, "TRUST ME".. gives me the heeby jeebies..

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