Perhaps the largest, if not the largest, creationist organization in the United States is the San Diego based Institute for Creationist Research founded by Henry Morris. ICR is a multi-million dollar a year organization that publishes a large number of creationist books and tracts, and offers graduate courses leading to PhD degrees in the sciences, including geology and biology. It is a fundamental policy of the ICR that nothing in science can contradict the Bible, no matter how compelling the evidence might be, and all its academic courses are based on that premise. See the link to the section in Lenny Flank's web site entitled Who Are the Creation Scientists? for more information.
To sum it up, Creationists are convinced that instruction that is not consistent with the Book of Genesis is not only unscientific, but evil. They are therefore dedicated to instituting political change to support the teaching of creationism in the public schools.
Eliminating the public school system at all levels and replacing it with taxpayer supported, unregulated fundamentalist schools is the principal political goal of the religious right. Yet the national news media is strangely silent on this issue!
Self gratification is the proselytizing tool that creates the political clout of the religious right. This religious fervor is quickly becomes an intolerance of other ideas. Creationist leaders have gone on record many times to state that evolution (and, by extension, scientists active in evolution-related fields) is responsible for crime, drug abuse, sexual perversion, and pornography. Political demagogues like Pat Robertson and Patrick Buchanan have converted this fundamentalist intolerance into hostility towards the basic American principle of separation of church and state. Yet the national news media is strangely silent on this issue!
Creationists cannot refute evolution on the facts, so they use phony arguments that appeal to emotional fears, like: "Evolution states that we are just animals, and therefore it's OK to behave like animals." "Evolution means survival of the fittest, and therefore might makes right." "Evolution is anti-God, since it requires creation by chance."
Creationists are unable to deliver any valid scientific documentation to justify including "creation science" in the public school system. Creationism "theory" is nothing more than attacks on geology, astronomy, biology, thermodynamics, and other sciences, based on falsehoods, distortions, and misquotes. There are the three big creationist lies that have been repeated so often the public accepts them without question: that evolution is "only a theory" that has "never been proven" and requires creation by "mere chance." Creationist organizations publish lists of questions that "evolutionists can't answer," when in fact they have been answered, over and over again. Scientific terms are redefined to conform to creationist religious beliefs. The complex mathematics of astronomy and thermodynamics are dismissed with misleading catch phrases and buzz words. Because no individual can know all there is to know about every branch of science, the creationist approach is to base its phony arguments on whatever fields its opponent has little or no knowledge, then announce that it has "won" the debate.
A detailed exposition of creationist preposterous falsehoods and distortions is available in this web site and its links to other sites. This web site also links to the National Center for Science Education, which is fighting against tremendous odds to protect science education in the nation's schools and universities.
Even if all the creationist attacks on science could be validated (which they certainly have not), there still remains no viable scientific evidence to support creationism. There is absolutely no credible explanation of where all that Genesis flood water came from, and where it went. The idea that every kind of animal on the face of the earth would travel, sometimes for thousands of miles, to the ark is completely preposterous. All creationists can do is wave their hands and keep repeating "God can do anything." Yet the public at large and the national news media continue to give lip service to anything remotely connected to the Bible. Unfortunately we have gone far astray from the ideas and beliefs of those who actually founded this republic, men like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison!
The extensive creationist infrastructure of fundamentalist churches has been converted into a political power machine to mandate the teaching of creationism in the public schools. Instructors would be required to teach the nonsense that the mile deep rock layers of the Colorado plateau were laid down during the one year period of the Genesis flood, AND that hundreds of cubic miles of solid rock were subsequently removed in a single washout to form the Grand Canyon. All this in only one year!
In the story, "The Emperor's New Clothes," everyone knew the Emperor had no clothes, but no one dared say anything. The creationist emperor has no clothes, but the national news media can't bring itself to expose creationism to the light of day, for fear of offending religion. Political candidates won't expose creationism for what it is for fear of the political clout of the religious right, especially the Pat Robertson organization.
The gap between church and state is narrowing, and those bucking the trend are constantly harassed. For example, Senators Jesse Helms, Strom Thurmond, and others have asked the Justice Department to conduct a criminal investigation of Americans United for Separation of Church and State for advising local churches that they could lose their tax-exempt status by distributing Pat Robertson's partisan political "voter Guides." Persons who object to posting the 10 Commandments in public school classrooms are attacked as "un-American." Yet government leaders and the national press say nothing about the religious hypocrisy that conceals the fact that the 10 Commandments requires attendance at religious services and forbids work or other activities on the Sabbath!