For him, Dr. Ross said, the methods and theories of paleontology are one "paradigm" for studying the past, and Scripture is another. In the paleontological paradigm, he said, the dates in his dissertation are entirely appropriate. The fact that as a young earth creationist he has a different view just means, he said, "that I am separating the different paradigms." … Dr. Ross said his goal in studying at secular institutions "was to acquire the training that would make me a good paleontologist, regardless of which paradigm I was using."

Apparently, switching "paradigms" is nothing new for Ross. Even though he earned his Ph.D. at a secular institution, he currently teaches earth science at Liberty University, a conservative Christian institution founded by Rev. Jerry Falwell. According to the article, Ross also appeared on a DVD that endorses "intelligent design" (or ID for short), another version of creationism, while he was still a graduate student.

While this may seem like a topic that falls firmly within the ongoing debate of science vs. faith, an analysis of Ross's personal dichotomy reveals an underlying strategy that is almost as old as the Christian faith itself: conversion of traditions and institutions through imitation. While evangelicals have been mostly doing this to other religions—twisting the original meanings behind their traditions, rituals and symbols around to suit Christian purposes—individuals such as Ross prove that secular establishments such as science are not immune to aggressive evangelism's time-worn tactics.

An Evolving Conflict
The conflict between the Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and Christian creationism is nothing new. However, in America's ongoing "culture wars," Christian fundamentalists' attacks against evolution appears to have assumed the same level of urgency as their attacks against abortion and homosexuality. Some of the more notable examples of recent anti-evolution efforts:

• In April 2005, the Museum of Earth History opened in Eureka Springs, AR. Exhibits show the creationist view of world history, where Earth is no older than a few thousand years and dinosaurs co-existed with Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden before they became extinct. According to the museum's Web site, "This phenomenal venture will offer high-quality, scientific exhibits displayed in a totally biblical setting. Viewers will journey through three epic periods of ancient history often overlooked by modern historians: life before the fall, the post-fall world, and life after the devastating effects of the great Genesis Flood." The museum's president, G. Thomas Sharp, says that his exhibits are intended to counter the shift in public education to what he refers to as "a very secular, pagan base." (How something can be simultaneously secular and pagan, Sharp never explains.) Plans for a bigger museum in Dallas have been considered.
• In August 2006, conservative Christian broadcaster Dr. D. James Kennedy produced Darwin's Deadly Legacy, a documentary that argues that Darwin's theory was directly responsible for Hitler's rise to power in Germany. "To put it simply, no Darwin, no Hitler," Kennedy says in his program. "Hitler tried to speed up evolution, to help it along, and millions suffered and died in unspeakable ways because of it."
• Around the same time as the airing of Darwin's Deadly Legacy, conservative Christians protested the Origins of Man exhibit at the National Museum of Kenya (NMK). Evangelicals demanded that the display, which consists of ancient artifacts recovered from around Africa's Great Rift Valley, either be removed or placed in a less prominent location. "It's creating a big weapon against Christians that's killing our faith," says Bishop Boniface Adoyo, who is leading a campaign against the exhibit. Adoyo is the pastor of Nairobi's "Christ is the Answer Ministries" and chairman of the Evangelical Alliance of Kenya. He argues that, "When children go to museums they'll start believing we evolved from these apes. This is not the truth."
• A few weeks ago, a memo was distributed under the name of Rep. Ben Bridges (R-Cleveland) to lawmakers in several states that argued in favor of banning evolution from public schools because the theory is part of an ancient Jewish conspiracy. According to the memo, "Indisputable evidence — long hidden but now available to everyone — demonstrates conclusively that so-called 'secular evolution science' is the Big-Bang 15-billion-year alternate 'creation scenario' of the Pharisee Religion"… "This scenario is derived concept-for-concept from Rabbinic writings in the mystic 'holy book' Kabbala dating back at least two millennia." While Bridges denies writing or authorizing the memo, the memo does instruct supporters to call Marshall Hall, president of the Fair Education Foundation Inc., an organization that believes that evolution is a myth. Hall claims he showed Bridges a draft of the memo and got his permission to distribute it, and Bridges has acknowledged that he talked to Hall about filing legislation this year that would end the teaching of evolution in Georgia's public schools.

Regardless of how contrived and hyperbolic the efforts have been to advance creationism/ID at the expense of evolutionary science, some critics insist on maintaining a balanced view of the controversy, with a few even blaming scientists themselves for not doing enough to promote evolution. For example, a recent film, A Flock of Dodos: The Evolution – Intelligent Design Circus, argues that the reason why evolution is losing ground to creationism is that scientists lack the communication skills to effectively "sell" the concept of evolution to the general public. As Joel Keller summarizes in his review of the movie:

The crux of the problem, though, is that evolutionists are eggheads who are too busy talking above people's heads to try to get the word out. … Many of them condescendingly put down I.D.ers, calling them ignorant, then overexplain why evolution shouldn't be questioned. Meanwhile, the I.D. contingent, backed by the deep pockets of right-wing think tanks like the Discovery Institute, have gotten their talking points down, which is why they seem to be "winning" the debate, even though their scientific evidence is sketchy at best.

While having a good public relations campaign that appeals to a wide audience never hurt a cause, such criticism of evolutionary scientists cannot explain the likes of Dr. Ross—someone who appears to have an "egghead"-level understanding of evolution and yet clings to young earth creationism as a focal point in his personal belief system.

Defining Evidence
Even though Christian conservatives have been trying to frame the evolution/creationism issue as an example of secular culture unfairly discriminating against their religion, what is really at the heart of the problem is this: how does one define 'evidence' when constructing and endorsing a scientific theory. Science is based upon verifiable evidence. Science is not limited to the dictates of any holy text to determine what qualifies—and what does not qualify—as evidence, as well as what is a workable theory based upon such evidence that will yield practical results through research. If the standard of what qualifies as evidence that can used by science for research becomes trivial, then science itself becomes trivial regardless of its measurable results. In contrast, Christian fundamentalists view the Bible as the final authority for EVERYTHING, hence making the Bible the only evidence that matters regardless of whatever situation to which it is applied and the validity of all other evidence becomes subordinate to it. From this viewpoint, if the Bible is not literally true, then Christianity becomes trivial and meaningless.

Building upon that belief, many young earth creationists will argue that fossils, evidence that there were organisms present on this planet millions of years before human beings came into existence, were created by Satan to lead people away from Christianity by contradicting the creation story in the Bible and therefore are 'false'. For the creationists who choose to include the organisms suggested by fossil records as real, they simply argue that: a) their god created all of them as well and put them on earth at the same time as all modern organisms; and b) these organisms were killed off by the "great Genesis Flood" depicted in the Bible. In the case of ID proponents, they will argue that Earth is as old as current scientific theory says it is, but that evolution was guided by the hand of the Christian god. ID proponents, probably the least rigid—albeit no less devoted—of the fundamentalist Christian creationist set, adhere to the notion that biological complexity across such a vast timeline is impossible without a "designer". Yet no matter which creationist attitude is present, the Bible must remain constant and irrefutable, no matter how the surrounding evidence is either dismissed or contorted to fit the Biblical literalist world view.

When it comes to Marcus Ross, the notion of what evidence is becomes even more abstract, subject to his personal whims. By being able to jump back and forth between evolution and creationism without hesitation even after earning a Ph.D. in science, Ross is essentially turning the standard monotheist/atheist argument inside out. Instead of pondering whether the Christian god exists or does not exist, Ross has apparently arranged in his mind a conceptual framework that can argue both for and against the existence of countless prehistoric animals and environmental conditions specific to certain geological eras. Even though the overwhelming majority of such animals and their environments could not have existed at all if the Earth is only 10,000 years old, everything depends upon what paradigm Ross chooses to accept at any given moment. On the basis of this capricious set of standards, Ross might as well be a tabloid journalist writing articles about fabled animals such as Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster for the Weekly World News, where detailed descriptions and analysis of fantastic creatures take a higher priority than the actual existence of the creatures themselves. For example, in his DVD appearance, Ross argued that intelligent design could better explain the rapid diversification of animal life that happened during the Cambrian era almost 500 million years ago. Yet under the paradigm of young earth creationism where Earth is only 10,000 years old, the Cambrian era and all life forms that existed during that period could not have existed at all—which makes one wonder why Ross bothered to make such an argument in the first place. On the other hand, if Ross is willing to hop from paradigm to paradigm for the purpose of endorsing a fundamentalist Christian-friendly view of science, then his own definition of evidence hinges greatly upon what kind of Christian audience to which he is trying to appeal (be it young earth creationist or ID), not what his scientific peers deem to be evidence.

One can only imagine how Ross would function as a defense lawyer in, say, a multiple homicide case: "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, under the paradigm of this courtroom, we cannot dispute that my client was found by police at the murder scene just minutes after the crime was committed, that the blood of the five victims were found on his person, and that his fingerprints were all over the murder weapon, a weapon that matched the wounds found on the bodies of each of the victims. However, when I shift my reference paradigm over to the paradigm of my own personal religious belief system, I would argue it was impossible for the police to have found my client at the murder scene, because the scene itself, by my understanding, did not actually exist until two days ago. Furthermore, all of the physical evidence against my client—including the five victims themselves—was created and planted by Satan himself, the Prince of Lies, and therefore no crime was in fact committed. If the crime could not exist, this case must be dismissed."

So with such a blatantly unreliable standard of evidence in place, why would Ross even bother to get a Ph.D. in a field where he could, quite literally, love it or leave it depending upon his frame of mind? He did it to lend credibility to his religious beliefs, not his scientific research, thus giving his young earth creationist work a veneer of scientific credibility—never mind the fact that he never subjected his religious beliefs to scientific peer review at any point in his career. Furthermore, by having a Ph.D. in science and yet rejecting one of its core theories, creationists such as Ross give the impression to the general public that there is a controversy within the sciences over the validity of evolutionary theory, when in fact there is none. It's not a coincidence that the latest rallying cry for supporting the teaching of creationism/ID in public schools is "teach the controversy."

Religion vs. Science and Religion
Other young earth creationists have entered the field of science before Ross, and their enduring adherence to their beliefs sheds some light on what standard of evidence matters within such a contradictory conceptual landscape. For example, Dr. Kurt P. Wise earned his doctorate from Harvard in 1989 while studying under noted paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould. Even though Wise devised a statistical model that would allow paleontologists to deduce when a particular extinct species was present on the Earth regardless of how ancient it is or the incompleteness of its fossil records, Wise is still very popular among creationists for his young earth beliefs. As Wise himself wrote in one of his books, In Six Days, "As I shared with my professors years ago when I was in college, if all the evidence in the universe turns against creationism, I would be the first to admit it, but I would still be a creationist because that is what the Word of God seems to indicate." Another example would be John Baumgardner, a creationist geologist who also believes that the Earth is only 10,000 but has published scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals that do not mention his religious beliefs. When asked by New Scientist magazine as to how he reconciles his papers with his Bible-based views of Earth's history, Baumgardner replied:

I admit that I struggled with that. Basically, my rationalisation is that there's nothing wrong with the underlying physics that I described. There were a few points where I had some editorial input and tried to tone down some of the language. My colleagues felt strongly . . . that I should be an author. So I allowed it to go through. I believe God has called me to participate in the scientific community, not to be a Lone Ranger.

Baumgardner's assertion that he was "called" to participate in a field that would be openly hostile to his religious beliefs evokes the idealized image of the noble Christian missionary, the selfless holy man who travels to the far, unmapped corners of the world to spread the "good news" of his gospel. However, instead of bringing his faith to the stereotypical primitive, uneducated savage, he is bringing it to the stereotypical secular, scientific savage. From this perspective, what creationism is doing to science is not too far removed from what evangelical Christians have done to other religions throughout their history. While scientists may balk at this suggestion, the parallels should not be ignored. Just as Christian evangelists earn advanced degrees in science to make their literal interpretations of the Bible appear scientifically sound, they have also assumed other pretexts to add a faux sense of legitimacy to their expansion into other religions:

• Despite the fact that Jesus is never mentioned in the Bible as practicing Hindu- or Buddhist-like meditation, that has not stopped the Catholic church at Parimanam village in India from recently installing an idol that depicts Jesus sitting cross-legged in 'padmasanam' posture with his right hand raised showing the 'yogic mudra' and the left hand resting on the lap (a common visual motif in the artistic depiction of Hindu and Buddhist sages). Above the idol is a painting depicting the Last Supper, showing Jesus and his apostles sitting on the floor cross-legged with banana leaves spread out before them for the bread and wine that will be served. According to Fr. Romance Antony, Director of the Quilon Service Society under the Kollam Catholic diocese, "It is an attempt in incarnating the Christian experience in the religious ethos of India by bringing about a blending of Western and Indian art forms to transfuse the Christian theology in Indian motifs." This fits into the Catholic Church's "Indianisation of the church" in India, which includes Christian clergy studying Sanskrit, adapting to monastic life in an ashram, and adopting the Hindu ritual of aarti during mass. According to Fr. Tony Charangat, editor of the influential Church weekly, The Examiner, "We're … for the use of (Hindu) rituals, myth and culture as the best means of communicating the message of Christianity in the Indian context."
• Even if Jesus and his apostles never practiced yoga, modern Christians can: Christian yoga is popular in the United States, with outreach efforts that include classes, books and videos. According to John Keller, a pastor at one of the churches in Minnesota that offers Christian yoga classes, it draws potential converts to Christianity through his church's doors.
• Rick Love, founder of Frontiers, the largest Christian group in the world that focuses exclusively on proselytizing to Muslims, encourages his missionaries to go undercover in Muslim communities in order to find converts. This includes having a ready, nonreligious explanation for their presence in hostile areas, such as going under the guise of aid workers, teachers, or business owners. Love also supports the practice of "contextualization" in converting Muslims, where missionaries assume Muslim names, dress in veils and other Islamic clothing, prostrate themselves during prayer, and even fast during Ramadan. According David Cashin, an evangelical professor of Intercultural Studies at Columbia International University in South Carolina who also used to wear Muslim clothing to pursue converts in the Islamic world, "We must become Muslims to reach Muslims." The number of missionaries in Muslim countries nearly doubled from 1982 to 2001, and the number has kept growing since the September 11th attacks of 2001.
• Modern Christian evangelical groups that target Native American cultures also incorporate tribal symbols and concepts into their conversion efforts to win greater appeal among the tribes. For example, as part of their conversion tactics, the Bible Mission to Native Americans names their newsletter "The CHIEFTAN," which includes a picture of a tribal chief in full head dress. Missionary groups such as the Native American Baptist Ministries in Oklahoma and Indian Life Ministries regularly fuse Indian terminology and iconography (glyphs, tapestry patterns, and fetishes) with Christian terminology and iconography, making the two appear indistinguishable. The Cherokee National Children's Choir mixes Cherokee and Christian songs—all in the Cherokee language—on albums such as Voices of The Creator's Children, Building One Choir and Jesus is Born Today without pause, as if Christianity is an inherent part of the traditional Cherokee faith. There are also Indian Nativity Crèches.

In his 1964 Masks of God series, Joseph Campbell catalogues and compares the major religions and their associated movements throughout history. He points out that the western priesthoods, particularly those of the Judeo-Christian religions, have historically practiced what he calls "mythological defamation". In summary, this is the practice of claiming your neighbors' gods as your own, then converting them into demons over which your own god has dominion. (This is contrasted with the Greco-Roman and Eastern traditions of recognizing their neighbors' gods as analogs of their own and extending to them the right to worship as they see fit.) In other cases, as the above examples demonstrate, evangelical Christians seize key concepts and ideas from other religions (rituals, symbols, teachings, etc.) to make it appear that Christianity is the logical, irrefutable heir apparent to whatever religion it is mimicking. Either way, Christianity ensures its dominance by disconnecting concepts and ideas from their original points of origin and standards of validity, and then devaluing or re-purposing them to serve Christian interests. Just as modern Christian evangelists are using Hindu yoga and Muslim practices for their own ends, they are likewise using advanced degrees in science and curtailed implementations of the scientific method to benefit their religion. Ironically, conservative Christians are trying to undermine the scientific process by repeatedly attacking evolutionary theory while their missionaries simultaneously use medical techniques and technology that would have been impossible without science as a means to encourage members of minority, indigenous religions to convert to Christianity. Perhaps that is one of Christianity's biggest hypocrisies; regardless, both science and non-Christian religions end up losing in the process.

For as often as Christian evangelists pathologically steal ideas from others to further their own interests, it is a shame that science and religion cannot sue the evangelists for copyright infringement. After all, Christianity is predicated upon the notion that it exists to supersede its progenitor faith, Judaism, and it regularly uses Jewish scriptures to argue in favor of this notion. Therefore, the Jews alone could earn trillions in compensation for all the times throughout the centuries when Christianity used Jewish scripture to support actions that infringed upon the prosperity and autonomy of the Jewish community.

The Biology of Ideology
For me, it is so painfully obvious what is happening here: conservative Christianity is obsessively determined to wipe off the face of the planet anything that contradicts their view of the world, be it revolutionary scientific theories or other religions that feature gods, historical events, traditions, and holy lands that are completely alien to the Biblical account of history. Like the teachings of other faiths, they see evolutionary theory as just another 'false' story that happens to be competing with their religion for adherents (a story, to quote Bishop Adoyo, "that's killing our faith"). By earning advanced degrees in science and yet remaining faithful to young earth creationist beliefs, scientists such as Ross, Wise and Baumgardner are reinforcing this point of view. All they have to do is 'tell the story' of evolution in just the right way and secular science will reward them, while reserving the option to dismiss the conventions of such storytelling whenever they want because, from their viewpoint, evolution is just a story and the Bible is the literal truth by which all physical evidence must be measured.

The so-called controversy surrounding evolution is not about creationists/ID advocates who want to be taken seriously by the scientific community. All creationists want to accomplish is to diminish support of the scientific process—at least when it comes to scientific ideas that directly challenge the Bible—and thus prove to the secular, non-Christian world that the Christian literalist view of the world is the indomitable master of all things. In an ideological context, this is an important goal: scientific sophistication is of vital importance in today's world, where scientific discoveries can lead to windfalls in areas such as health care, economics, and military strength, windfalls that in turn have vital political repercussions. If fundamentalist Christians succeed in demoting the status of a powerful secular institution such as science by undermining one of its most crucial theories, the symbolic importance of such a victory to the evangelical mindset of supreme Christian dominion is beyond measurable political value. In the presence of such a single-minded devotion to a world where everything is ruled by Christian dogma, both scientific freedom and religions freedom are facing the same possibility of extinction.