>  I picked up a copy of "Skeptic" a couple of months back, and read an
>  article called "The Creation-Evolution Continuum, How to Avoid
>  Classroom Conflict". It laid out a whole spectrum that I had never
>  known existed: from the Flat Earthers, Geocentrists (It seems there are
>  people still pissed at Galileo.), and Young Earth Creationists, the Old
>  Earth Creationists, the Gap Creationists, the Day-Age Creationists, the
>  Progressive Creationists, the Evolutionary Creationists right down to
>  the Theistic Evolution and Material Evolution positions.

The big difficulty with such continua is the question of the axes.  Too often, they are a line labeled "Bible" on one end and "Science" on the other.  This is quite inaccurate.  E.g., a particular theistic evolutionist may be truer to the Bible than a particular young earther, and material evolution is not inherently more scientific than theistic evolution.  A more accurate picture is a two-dimensional graph, allowing for high opinions of both Bible and science and low opinions of both as well as for favoring one or the other.

Setting things up as "Bible versus science" parallels the science versus faith warfare model of history that has been extensively discredited, yet remains popular, especially among writers of popular histories.  Steve Gould called Simon Winchester's The Map that Changed the World "silly" in its abandonment of historical evidence to advance a warfare model.  Winchester claims that William "Strata" Smith risked arrest for promoting an old earth, when old earth views were widely accepted well before Smith's day and many of Smith's major supporters were clergy.  On the other hand, there have been similarly inaccurate young-earth attacks on the work of Smith, basically accepting the warfare model but disagreeing on who the good guys are.  In particular, Smith's conchological skills have been slandered based on his modest assertion of not knowing much about the field.  (This was part of an effort to deny the existence of the geologic column.  It also involved the creative strategy of
falsely claiming that shells are stratigraphically unreliable and falsely claiming that practically all fossils are shells.)  In fact, Smith's paleoconchological work was quite good, much of his collection still being available in the British Museum.

Another difficulty is getting acceptable labels for the categories.  As there is a continuum of views, any one person is likely to disagree on some points with a standardized position, and often there are objections to the labels as inappropriate.

However, such continua are useful in pointing out the diversity of views that exist and thus help combat the "either/or" mentality.

    Dr. David Campbell
    Old Seashells
    University of Alabama
    Biodiversity & Systematics
    Dept. Biological Sciences
    Box 870345
    Tuscaloosa, AL  35487-0345 USA
    [log in to unmask]

That is Uncle Joe, taken in the masonic regalia of a Grand Exalted Periwinkle of the Mystic Order of Whelks-P.G. Wodehouse, Romance at Droitgate Spa

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