CREATION SCHOLARSHIP is a methodology of internet research, developed from the school of  Christian Apologetics, and which in turn provides the entire intellectual foundation for Creation Science.  It is the primary scholastic methodology of  Fundamentalism.  Creation Scholarship is so named for its ability to generate voluminous screeds of seemingly substantial knowledge out of diaphanous wisps of supernatural belief, dark suspicion, rampaging paranoia and excessive anal-fixation.

 

Principles of Creation Scholarship

 

Creation Scholarship may be regarded as the most innovative and original school of rhetoric since that of the Sophists of ancient Greece. It is built on a set of novel principles or axioms not recognised by mainstream academic researchers.  Chief among these principles are:

 

1. The ''Interpretatio Vincit Omnia ''Principle

 

The first principle states:

 

"No evidence, whether physical or logically deductive, and no matter how voluminous, can refute beliefs based on Scriptural Authority."

 

As sincerely-held beliefs are by definition part of  TRVTH, no evidence in any amount can be in conflict with the belief.  Any ''apparent'' conflict between evidence and belief can be resolved as an instance of one of two possible conditions:

 

1. The evidence is false, possibly through the actions of a malevolent agent,

 

or

 

2. The evidence has been falsely ''interpreted''

 

In other words, the evidence of, say, geologic strata bearing fossils in ascending order of complexity in full accord with the Law of Faunal Succession, is in fact proof of Noah's Flood--when properly ''interpreted''.

 

2. The ''Jeepers, Really Makes You Think, Doesn't It?'' Principle

 

This principle acknowledges the vital role of numinous intuition in the quest for  TRVTH:

 

"Coincidental conjunctions of events in which symbolic meanings may be detected are valuable clues to the true nature of the cosmos; they are God's little pleasantries with us."

 

For example, consider the following data:

 

Abraham Lincoln was elected to Congress in 1846.

John F. Kennedy was elected to Congress in 1946.

Abraham Lincoln was elected President in 1860.

John F. Kennedy was elected President in 1960.

Lincoln's secretary, Kennedy, warned him not to go to the theatre.

Kennedy's secretary, Lincoln, warned him not to go to Dallas.

Both successors were named Johnson.

 

Coincidence?  I don't think so. Such extraordinary parallels cannot be the result of random chance.

 

Jeepers, really makes you think, doesn't it!

 

3. The ''Too Many Words Spoil the Quote'' Principle

 

This principle considers the proper use of expert and/or eye-witness testimony:

 

"Too many words make for too many meanings: a quotation needs excision and elision just like a rosebush needs pruning."

 

For example, consider this frankly rather rambling bit of prose from the loquacious co-discover of the structure of DNA, Sir Francis Crick:

 

"An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that, in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going. But this should not be taken to imply that there are good reasons to believe that it could not have started on the earth by a perfectly reasonable sequence of fairly ordinary chemical reactions."

 

Who can hope to fight through so many words, such a tangle of syntax, and  all the 'on the one hand / on the other hand' qualifiers? So it's time to try and get some suitable sense out of this baby. Just look at how much unnecessary verbage (marked below in red) is cluttering up this passage and obscuring its intended meaning:

 

"An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that, in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going. But this should not be taken to imply that there are good reasons to believe that it could not have started on the earth by a perfectly reasonable sequence of fairly ordinary chemical reactions."

 

Snip, snip with the pruning-shears--

 

"An honest man could only state that the origin of life appears to be  a miracle so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going."

 

--and ''hey presto''!, Creationism has a fresh endorsement from a Nobel Prize Winner!  Your quote is now ready to appear on dozens of faith-affirming websites around the globe! 

 

4. The ''Guilt is Good'' Principle

 

This principle, also known as the "Nobody gets out of here unbesmirched" Principle, is one of the most potent weapons in the Creation Scholar's armoury.  It states:

 

"We are all of us drenched in Original Sin and acknowledge our guilt.  If you don't acknowledge your guilt, I'll find some for you, even if only by association"

 

A Creation Scholar need only find a promising quote; say, Jeffrey Dahmer asserting that as people are animals who eat animals, it is acceptable that people eat people. From here, it is an easy step to knit-up a skein of associative guilt into a logical syllogistic chain, such as:    

 

MAJOR PREMISE:  Jeffery Dahmer, a psychopathic cannibal, ate people and animals.

MINOR PREMISE: Charles Darwin held that people are animals.

CONCLUSION: Darwin, and all who uphold his Satanic theory, are murderous psychopathic cannibals!

 

And are those the sort of folks you want teaching your kids biology in High School?  I don't think so.

 

5. The ''Expert, Schmexpert!'' Principle

 

This principle counters the unfair advantage in debate sought by over-educated moral relativists, and states:

 

I don't care that your expert is a Nobel Prize winning Biochemist who earned his Ph.D at MIT, whereas my expert got his Doctorate of Divinity through the mail from the South Kansas Normal Institute of His Second Coming in Glory

 

In other words, my expert is a man of God, and yours is an atheist. Next!

 

6. The ''Lectio longa, Google brevis'' Principle

 

This principle highlights the fact that reading scholarly materials is a time wasting pursuit compared to a quick search-engine gleaning of the internet for appropriately-mined quotes.

If you are unfamiliar with the "cut and paste" functions of your internet browser, then you don't really have what it takes to make a top-rank Creationist Scholar.