ESSAY: SOME THOUGHTS
ON A SEMANTICS OF
CREATIONISM

By Chandon Davis
May, 2004

I like to keep track of the creationism front with all their schemes and machinations. Indeed, I'm surprised the term "creationism" is still being used. I thought it was to be re-labeled "Intelligent Design", just like "evolution" was to become "gradual change" in Georgia. I suppose next year it'll be, what; "divine prototyping"? Or how about "inspired origination"?
 
The creationist movement has shown a considerable aptitude for re-presenting its core agenda in new and ever-changing language and rhetoric, designed to slip its basically religious ideas past school boards, parents, legislatures, and judges.
 
So, here is my contribution to this effort. Let's start with "cosmic experimentation" if you will? On second thought, that may be a little too impersonal for the mystics, so maybe they'll like something a little more anthropomorphic, like "Planned Biology", or even "Supervised Biology." Hey, wait a minute! I got it!! "Planned Biological Prototyping! The NEW Origin of Species!" Check it out! Classy, huh? It has the right obfuscating quality that should lend the veneer of science the creationists have so long coveted!
 
Notice how this type of evolving language really spruces things up! Of course, it's also another indication of the intellectual poverty of the mystics in that they have to resort to semantical games to shore up their position. But we're not supposed to notice that.
 
Here are more possibilities. One is another label, "Guided Biological Prototyping". The other represents a new tactic altogether. Since the Intelligent Design movement tries to be a compromise between Biblical Genesis and science, these folks might like to further the compromise strategy by attempting to label evolution as "Dynamic, On-going, Intelligent Re-design, (DOIR)" and, therefore, not really "evolution" at all. Can you see how that goes one step further than the present day macro/micro-evolution semantical barrier which is all too easily penetrated by the one question.... And, I suppose, there is no way that a series of microevolutionary events can eventually accumulate into one or more macroevolutionary events? Ya' know, kinda' like the individual materials culminating into the one building, or the individual cells culminating into a single organism."
 
This kind of conjectural creationist semantics is really a lot of fun once you recognise it as an opportunity to be creative almost without limit. Like Mark Twain once said: "....It's amazing how, for a small investment of fact, one can get such a large return in speculation."