Henry M. Morris

Dr Henry Madison Morris (born 1918) is an American young earth creationist and hydraulic engineer, considered the father of the creation science movement.

Biography

Morris grew up in Texas in the 1920s and 1930s and was a religiously indifferent youth. Morris graduated from Rice University with a bachelor's degree in civil engineering in 1939. Shortly afterwards he became a Christian and adopted Biblical inerrancy.

On January 24 1940 he married Mary Louise ..?.. and they later had six children. From his graduation to 1942 he was a a hydraulic engineer working with the International Boundary and Water Commission, El Paso, Texas. He then returned to Rice University to teach civil engineering from 1942 until 1946. Between 1946 and 1951 he worked at the University of Minnesota, where he was awarded a master's degree in hydraulics in 1948 and a PhD in hydraulic engineering (with a minor in geology and mathematics) in 1950. In 1951 he became professor and head of civil engineering at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette until 1956. He was then professor of applied science at Southern Illinois University 1956–1957. Following that he was professor of hydraulic engineering and chairman in civil engineering at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.

In 1961 Morris, with Bible scholar John C. Whitcomb , wrote a book entitled The Genesis Flood that brought to widespread attention the concepts of creation science and flood geology. Two years later he founded the Creation Research Society with nine other like-minded individuals. In 1970, he founded the Institute for Creation Research (ICR).

His son John D. Morris (born 1946) took over presidency of ICR when his father retired.

Beliefs

Morris believes that science cannot be used to study God's creative act. Instead, he believes that any evidence of past events must be interpreted through a non-scientific framework. For example, in his book Scientific Creationism he states:

. . . it must also be emphasized that it is impossible to prove scientifically any particular concept of origins to be true. This is obvious from the fact that the essence of the scientific method is experimental observation and repeatability. A scientific investigator, be he ever so resourceful and brilliant, can neither observe nor repeat origins!

This means that, though it is important to have a philosophy of origins, it can only be achieved by faith, not by sight.

In this, Morris sets himself against many philosophers of science, who see no important distinction between past and present data, but instead use falsifiability and testability as the demarcation criteria for science.

Also, even though Morris claims that science can't answer the question of whether the Bible's creation story is literally and historically true, he has written several books about scientific evidence that he believes fits better into a creation framework than the mainstream science framework. Many creationists (for example, Answers in Genesis) have followed Morris' lead and now make a distinction between what they call operational science (which they accept) and origins science (which they reject).

The mainstream scientific community rejects both his philosophy of science and his creation evidence as pseudoscience, and claim that Morris' representation of evolution as a complete religious system is a strawman.

Bibliography

Morris has written several books, including:

• The Genesis Flood (1961) (with John C. Whitcomb)
• Scientific Creationism (editor) (1974)
• The Genesis Record, A scientific and devotional commentary on the book of beginnings (1976)
• What is Creation Science? (1982) (with Gary E. Parker )
• The Biblical Basis for Modern Science (1986)
• The Long War Against God (1989)

External links

• Institute for Creation Research
  • CV

• biography of Henry M. Morris (anti-creationist)