The problem with Creationism

[demiurgent]

Creationism -- now "intelligent design" -- is based on a literalist interpretation of the Book of Genesis. In other words, as you all know, it's Religion. Theology. A Myth of Creation. The current debate is whether or not it should be included alongside evolutionary (and one assumes planetary) science in science courses.

I've heard a number of points (mostly sophistry) about it. "There's no way to prove God didn't create the Earth in seven days." "We just want people to know all the theories." And so forth. And I've heard any number of good arguments against it, like "if we include one creation myth -- the Christian one -- we also need to include the Native American myths, the Buddist myths, the Greek myths, the Norse myths, et al," and "there's nothing scientific about it. Teach it in Theology where it belongs, but save things that can be verified with observation and math for science class."

That misses an essential point about strict Biblical Creationism, when applied to the real world. A point that to me damns it from a key theological position.

Let us say, for the record, that God created the Earth in six days approximately five thousand years ago. Let us also say that he is all powerful, that he put everything in place as it is.

If God did all of this... then he also put an absolute preponderance of verifiable, measurable and reproducible evidence that suggests A) the Earth is millions of years older than it really is, and B) that evolution works exactly the way it seems to be.

If we're going to accept Creationism literally and at face value, then God stacked the deck with evidence that it's wrong and punishes people for believing in planetary science and evolutionary theory based on the conditions He created.

I submit that a benevolent God wouldn't be that much of a bastard. I further submit that if he is that much of a bastard, all the bits of the Bible about how much He loves us are wrong. And if those bits are wrong, we can hardly take the Creation myth at face value. If He isn't a heartless bastard who enjoys damning people, then either the Creation didn't happen as it's put forth in the Bible or he doesn't care if we figure out the mechanisms of evolution, treat those as science (and the Bible as Religion), and doesn't use science as a litmus test.

In either scenario, evolution and planetary science should be taught in Biology, Chemistry and Physics, and creationism shouldn't be. And failure to follow that questions the beneficence of the Lord. And that seems like a much bigger sin than talking about Gregor Mendel and Charles Darwin.

Comments

[aquamarcia.livejournal.com]

This is indeed a very fresh, compelling new insight and I'm glad you thought of and typed it. I think I'll link to it from my journal.

[airsick-moth.livejournal.com]

My complaint about intelligent design is that it's unteachable. It's not that I don't even believe in intelligent design -- I do think God gave the amino acids a little nudge at the outset -- it's that it has no place in a science classroom. You find me a curriculum that can could possibly include intelligent design beyond "some believe life is too complex to have arisen by itself, and theorize that an outside force had a hand in its creation."

Where does the lesson go from there? ID believers are Christian fundamentalists in disguise. To them the answer is obvious -- "aha! Now they have to talk about Jesus in the science classroom!" Yeah, they would.

But that's horribly one-sided for science. So now what does the teacher do? Spend a week on all creation myths and beliefs from cultures around the world? This isn't science class anymore, it's religion class. And I doubt Christian IDers want to have Buddhist and Taoist creation "theories" taught in their classrooms anyway.

Regardless of my ranting against fundamentalists, I don't see how intelligent design can be taught in a classroom beyond a single statement that the theory exists.

[ericmonster.livejournal.com]

"I don't see how intelligent design can be taught in a classroom beyond a single statement that the theory exists."

Right, but also: Part of the problem with teaching the "theory" of intelligent design in a science classroom is that, by scientific standards, it's not a theory. It hasnt been tested, it hasn't been verified in any way, it isn't based on collected data or observations, therefore it's not a theory. If anything, it's just a hypothesis. A really, really bad hyposthesis. For backers of "Intelligent Design" to claim they have a "theory" only shows how little they know about science and the scientific method.

Exactly.

[magentamom.livejournal.com]

What is there to teach? From a scientific standpoint all we can say is this: Some people (myself included) think that the beauty and complexity of the universe reflects the hand of a god or gods.

Personally, as a Christian, I've always thought it was one of the more absurd arguments among denominations, and there are some pretty absurd arguments out there. But it's always seemed ridiculous to me that people want to debate how God created the universe, as if God is going to quiz us on this later. I figure if He's just looking for reasons to damn people, he can come up with better than that.

My response when people argue that I have to believe in the literal creation story in order to be a "good" Christian is to ask if they take antibiotics when they have an infection. Because germ theory is only a theory, too, and the Bible would indicate demons are at fault.

[kazriko.livejournal.com]

I disagree with the idea that ID believers are Christian Fundies in disguise. Most real christian fundies would be clinging to the outdated creation myth until they die.

I believe most IDers are christians who basically have realized how screwy and unsupported creationism is and are desperately trying to find something scientific to justify their beliefs, even if they don't actually understand science itself or why ID isn't science. Just enough knowledge to be dangerous.

A handful are grabbing onto it as a pseudoscience wedge to push creationism into the classroom. These are the annoying ones.

As far as in classrooms, the only thing you really have to do is reign in the atheist science teachers who would unequivocally state that there is no god. This is as much of a religious belief as stating that there might be a god tinkering with the DNA behind the scenes. Whether there is or is not a god is not science and should not be part of the classroom, and the teacher should say as much if asked about god, ID, atheism, etc. Stating that Creationism ideas like the earth being 6000 years old are contradicted by the evidence would be within the realm of a science class. The best course of action is to not even bring religion up unless a student specifically asks, then keep the answers purely scientific without personal religious opinions (including atheism) coloring them.

[the-gneech.livejournal.com]

Yes, you are correct. However, you're applying a rational argument to an irrational process, and as such your chances of getting anywhere with the people who need convincing are exactly nil.

-The Gneech

[ecrane.livejournal.com]

I think the Gneech hit the nail on the head. If reason was a valid tool for negotiating with some of these people, chances are they wouldn't need negotiating with.

[trpeal.livejournal.com]

It's obvious, Eric. Fossils are the remains of creatures killed in the Flood. Like unicorns and such. Or they're there to test our Faith. I can never remember.

Way back when I was in Catholic school, one of my teachers -- a nun, no less -- told us that while God might work miracles he doesn't work magic. There's a fine theological line between the two, to be sure, but it's there. Young-Earth creationism is based on magic. Intelligent design is based on magic. Nudging the amino acids, like airsick_moth suggests, is more of a miracle. Not that I believe that's how it happened, myself.

Plus, as you mention, any God that would create the universe (in more or less the condition we find it in now) in six days no more than 6,000 years ago and yet include all sorts of false evidence that leads us to believe it's around 5 billion years old is a right bastard of a God, and is laughing us all the way into the grave.

[airsick-moth.livejournal.com]

I am not a fan of the "God is just testing us" theory. When I do something bad, I feel guilt... until I remember that guilt is just God testing me, so He actually wanted me to try and get high off that old lady's heart medicine after I stole it.

[ocarina.livejournal.com]

As a Christian and an evolution-loving-blasphemer, I agree with the God as bastard idea as well. I've always had the idea of God as Calvin's dad, trying to get us outside and to do "character building" activities, rolling his eyes when we complain with our charts on what a bad job he's doing, and telling us with a straight face things that if Mom knew he was telling us, she'd be mad as hell at him.

Intelligent design will feel the wrath of the mighty Calvinosaur's appetite for destruction!!

[trpeal.livejournal.com]

Oh, yeah, I found this in athelind's LJ:

[elvedril.livejournal.com]

Now I don't consider myself to be an authority on intelligent design, but aren't they the group that thought creation happened about the same time that evolutionists think it did? I thought that the only major issue of disagreement was whether it happened by chance or if an intelligent designer did it... If so isn't your whole fossil argument only work with a certain group of creationists and not "intelligent design" people, like you claim in the first sentence?

[archangelbeth]

It's my understanding (I could be wrong!) that the Creationists have hijacked Intelligent Design and been busily redefining it. Which annoys me vastly, because I have my own theories about nudging those amino acids, and I don't mind the idea that sometimes they got a tweak.

But it really shouldn't be in science class. "Here's what happened, and here's how it could have been all coincidence" is more science. Faith or suspicions of meddling... is for a different study group.

[shaenon.livejournal.com]

I've said this elsewhere, but creationism has very little to do with giving glory to God; an honest study of the diversity and ingenuity of life should fill any religious person with humble awe. For the most part, this is all about giving glory to Man, maintaining the idea that humans are special and different from other animals and NOT RELATED TO ANY MONKEYS AT ALL. Darwin didn't get into trouble with religious types when he first proposed his theory of natural selection and speciation; no, that only happened when he pointed out that humans seem to be a product of the same process that created other forms of life. Many "intelligent design" proponents (and don't you love how cunningly that term is engineered? Intelligence AND design: it must be scientific!) grudgingly admit that evolution may happen to other species -- but not humans! No siree! We're just too damn complex and well-designed! Look at our awesome eyeballs!

Oh, and when you talk about "those people" who think intelligent design ought to be taught in public schools, keep in mind that you're talking about over half the U.S. population. No joke. They did polls. And if this stuff gets into school curricula (actually, it's been working its way into textbooks for years), by the next generation belief in evolution may be a minority opinion in America.

Pretty soon, we will simultaneously believe that human life was created by incomprehensible magic AND be able to clone ourselves. That will be weird.

[inkbrush76.livejournal.com]

It's kind of funny that one of the things ID proponents are using against science is one of the cornerstones of the scientific method. Since any new piece of evidence that contradicts a theory or law must be considered and tested, and occasionally a new piece of evidence will destroy a previous theory, scientific theories and laws are never as concrete as religious dogma. If you believe in a scientific theory, you're not paying attention.

Because of this inherent uncertainty built into the system, real scientists rarely if ever come out and say things like: "I believe in Brownian Motion." They'll come out in droves and say that all the current evidence strongly supports the case that Brownian Motion is the best explanation for a set of natural phenomena.

To most true believers I've known (and having lived in Oklahoma for almost 30 years, I have known a lot of them.)an indeterminate truth is not as compelling as an absolute truth. Reasoning with someone that wants reassurances doesn't work.

Which is to say that the folks in support of ID have a distinct advantage over the folks who support the use of the scientific method where propaganda and public opinion is concerned. I haven't heard anyone in the ID community express even a smidgen of doubt about the veracity of the "theory" that they espouse.

Besides which, most of the time, I don't hear the ID folks defending their stance, I hear them on TV and the radio attacking the theory of evolution. It's a lot harder to poke holes in opponent's arguments when every time you're given an opportunity to explain your side, you spend it defending yourself and your community.

Oh, and one last thing. I've heard that evolution can't be tested, which is bunk to anyone who's graduated high school with their brain intact. Mssrs. Watson and Crick saw to it that we could test for evidence of evolution through the study of deoxyribonucleic acid. Of course it's never 100% certain, but then if it was, it wouldn't be science, it would be religion.

[no-relation.livejournal.com]

If you believe in a scientific theory, you're not paying attention.

Heh. I remember college, my Elementary Modern Physics (i.e. the development of relativity as a theory) class. End of the semester, my professor asks us, "What have we learned in this class?" He calls on me, for some reason I can't discern. I say, "Nobody knows anything."

He didn't appreciate that.

[kazriko.livejournal.com]

What they're saying above is true. Creationism is something completely different from intelligent design. Intelligent design says that evolution is happening exactly the way the evolutionists say it is, except that there is some small tweaking going on to shape it in a more intelligent way. Anyone who says "6 days + rest" has anything at all to do with intelligent design is just completely ignorant of what ID is. The main argument for the ID people is how certain things would be almost impossible to do by straight evolution which is always movement away from something. They're saying some intermediate steps in evolution would be impossible with only this movement away from style because the start and end point are more useful than the intermediate forms, and the start form would be selected over the intermediate form. It certainly isn't anything in science that you could point to and say "a higher being is the only way this dna modification could happen" so it's not really teachable as pure science.

(I really don't believe in it myself though. :)

[ronin-kakuhito.livejournal.com]

The biggest problem with that is their complete inability to come up with an example of a system where there is no possible set of intermediates. Three of the traditional favorites of creationists (and let's not fool our selves. IDers are creationists with a different vocabulary and the same agenda) are the Eyeball, Wasp Flowers (and other forms of misleading coloration), and Bacterial Flagellium.
In the case of the eyeball the claim is that an eye has to be perfect to be worth having. First off, no it doesn't. Ask someone who has glaucoma or astigmatisim if they'd rather just have their eyes put out and be done with it. Amusingly enough, a fairly complete set of intermediate steps in the evolution of the eye can be seen through a study of mollusc eyes, going from single light sensitive cells to clusters of cells to clusters of cells in parabolic depression to a pinhole camera type eye (open to the water) to the same covered with a transparent film then a transparent mass (both of which act as protection and a lens) to the advanced eye of the squids which is essentially like our eyes without a blind spot.
With camoflage/misleading colors (like the wasp pollinated flowers that trick the wasp into copulating with the flower) the claim is also that it must be all or nothing. Except that in nature there are examples of imperfect camoflage, and a little thught experiment will show that even imperfect camoflage is better than none. Looking solely at camoflage as a method of avoiding predation (but the reasoning applies elsewhere too) imagine that you are trying to hide an easter egg in the crook of a tree. If it is hot pink, people will find it immediately unless they are very far away, it is dark out, or some other impedement to their vision applies. If you change the color to something more natural (say forest green) it will still be easy to see, but conditions would have to be a bit better to find the egg (a little closer, less rain, a little lighter out) and as you grade the color of the egg closer to the brown of the tree bark, the searcher has to be closer to the tree to see it. Each little change makes the egg harder to find, until you have switched to a humming bird egg painted to look just like bark. By the same reasoning, any little improvement in camoflage gives a prey species a slightly wider range of conditions where it is safe from a preditor (and every small improvement in sight/smell/etc gives a preditor a small increase in the number of prey items it gets to eat, be them bugs, deer, fish, or black berries.)

At first glance, the flagellium thing seems intractable. After all it is a highly complex, non-robust system. There are dozens of pieces and parts that must come together just right to have a functonal flagellium (though even in this case, it isn't an all or nothing situation. A malfunctioning method of locomotion is better than nothing at all. Ask anyone with a beater that they have wired together with clothes hangers, bubble gum, and duct tape and running on a quart of oil every two days why they don't just say "top hell with it" and stay home every day.) The creationist claim is that there is no way that this complex system came together piecewise, that each of the (I believe) 20+ components of a bacterial flagellium is worthless by itself. Problem is that with further research there have been at least 15 types of bacteria (I can't remember the exact number and I don't have a copy of the paper where I first saw this) identified that use bits and pieces of the protine structure of a flagellium to do something. The one that sticks in my mind is a bacterium that uses the long sticky out bit and a small subset of the motor pieces to produce a spring loaded venomous harpoon.

There are other examples, like most of the organs and organ systems in the body (pass a comprehensive comparative anatomy course and tell me that there is no way to evolve a complex kidney or a 4 chambered, valved heart.)

[shaenon.livejournal.com]

And what makes intelligent design unscientific isn't so much that it's obviously wrong, but that it amounts to throwing up our hands and saying, "nope, we can't understand it, shouldn't even try." That's the very opposite of science. Science is the process of examining things that seem mysterious and finding explanations for them. You can't just give up and say God did it. If a scientist honestly thinks God did something, her next move should be to figure out *how.*

[kazriko.livejournal.com]

Of course, not everyone who believes in ID is going to say "we can't understand it and shouldn't try." More likely they're going to continue looking deeper. To me, it seems like ID is a last ditch effort to keep christianity relevant in a world where their original mythology is almost certainly wrong. Many christians are the ones who actually pioneered the whole study of evolution as a more in depth examination into the world. The fact that someone is saying "Well, there could have been something higher involved in this" won't keep them from searching for HOW something higher could get involved in it.

(Standard disclaimer: I am not a believer in intelligent design. ;)

[tem2.livejournal.com]

Yup. I also love confronting the literalists with a game of "my creator deity created a vastly older, immensely larger, incredibly more complicated yet still self-regulating world than your creator deity." That's the price of not having a scientific imagination.

[paradisacorbasi.livejournal.com]

You have earned:

[X] Kisses
[X] Pipchiks
[X] A Backrub
[X] Me doing the "we're not worthy!" bow at your feet
[X] My respect, admiration, affection, and more admiration.
[X] My amazed abject astonishment that someone else thinks like I do about this and can articulate it so beautifully.

[tem2.livejournal.com]

Coincidentally, there's an intelligent design piece coming tomorrow morning on Last Week's News (http://el-dubya-en.com). That's Thursday. At 6:30AM Eastern Time.

In the meantime, there's this entry (http://el-dubya-en.com/archives/2005/05/toadsplosion_20_2.php) from March featuring the following debate between proponents of "devolution" and "moronic design":

"Now that you've each presented your theories, please boil your argument down to two words or less. Ready? One... two... three... shoot!"

"Holy Bible!" Hardgrove shouted.

"Occam's Razor!" Zinn replied.

"Scissors cuts paper," Bruce judged. "The debate is over. Devolution wins!"

[ursulav.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I came to a somewhat similiar conclusion many years ago, when presented with the crudest form of creationism--i.e. "God put dinosaurs in the earth to test the faith of paleontologists." (No shit, somebody really tried to use that on me at church camp. My devout-but-not-stupid mother was furious.) If you're dealing with that kind of divine personality, nobody's gettin' to heaven anyway, so you might as well opt out of the whole system.

There's probably something rather telling about the sort of person who would rather believe that God is a raging asshole than that they are a few chromosomes away from their fellow primates. Then again, as my philosophy prof used to say, man made God in his own image...and some of those people do strike me as the type who'd go burying dinosaurs just for the pleasure of saying "SUCKER! No heaven for you, nerd!" So maybe it makes total sense, now that I think about it.

[mishamish.livejournal.com]

Personally, my favorite line to use on those who say "We are NOT descended from Monkeys!" is to say "Look... Jesus himself said that 'from these stones, God can raise children of Abraham,' and if you take Genesis literally, God DID make people out of mud. Are you having SO much trouble believing he could make them out of monkeys? I mean, he's got better raw materials!"

It's not a POPULAR argument, but I enjoyed making it. Their faces shifting from outrage to puzzlement to contemplation to confusion and back to outrage was PRICELESS. :-P

[mishamish.livejournal.com]

Actually, in a couple of instances, I've even seen radio Carbon dating attacked as imprecise (to a degree that could let the earth be 6000 years young). And the dinosaurs died in the FLOOD! Didn't you read the comic book? :-P

Of course, the people who attacked radio Carbon dating did NOT attack the double-whammy argument of using precise parallax measurements to determine that we are seeing stars more than 10,000 light-years away (i.e. due to the speed limit of light, we are seeing what they looked like before the universe was supposedly even created), but I'm sure that one's forthcoming. Either that or, as you said, we just stop teaching astronomy entirely.

*sigh* Mutual admiration societies

[kazriko.livejournal.com]

Reading these posts over and over again, it's occurred to me exactly why many of them bother me so much.

1. The self righteousness of those who have gone up against creationists and thrown some scathing point at them and walked away coupled with insults to their intelligence.

2. The mutual admiration society that grows around a group on the same end of a polarized belief commenting on how insightful some post or another is.

You should really ask yourself, what am I trying to accomplish with the teaching of science? Because these two trends will accomplish one thing, the alienation and shunning of anyone who believes in christianity and its various views on how life began. You're going to get a group of people who are basically out of scientific circles because of a handful who are unwilling to put their differences in non-scientific matters aside and concentrate on the science. This will lead to less people who are educated in and less people who believe in the scientific method and science in general when what we need are MORE people who embrace the scientific method. These two behaviors are part of why there is that big push to get non-scientific things taught in a science class.

There's really nothing new in this post other than the attempt to equate creationism and intelligent design. Everything else could be reasonably replicated by anyone with a working knowledge of what omniscience, omnipotence, and benevolence are. Tune into any random theological forum and you'll find at least one person who will note how incompatible omni-* and benevolence are and how if god is an omni-* then he's a right bastard. This is just yet another example of that basic incompatibility. All of this back-patting just serves to increase polarization.

Everyone in this forum seems to think that ID is purely a wedge to get creationism into schools. Nobody has realized that by introducing real ID into christianity and having the blessing of the church on it allows a wedge going the OTHER way introducing science and evolution to christian students!

Science and Religion are not incompatible, or at least could reasonably coexist after the religious admit that things pure creationism 6,000 years ago that are contradicted by the evidence are likely to be wrong, and the scientific side admits that god is basically not within the realm of teaching science and cannot be tested either way. (The fact that by learning the scientific method and judging all of the evidence based on it leads you to believe that it is simpler without a god is irrelevant. Let them figure that out on their own.) If the teachers take a tolerant and purely scientific stance towards religious students then they may eventually work their way over on their own once they have learned the scientific method and done enough to convince themselves one way or another.

In any case, hopefully people will quit getting in a pissing contest over the size of their world knowledge and intellect and start trying to teach science instead. Getting that one zing in on the creationists just serves to make them angry and even more set against your opinions. With the polls showing so many more people pushing the other direction it will not be pretty for science with things remaining so polarized.

Think of it this way, If you take a fish from the fish store in water that is one temperature and drop them directly into a tank that is another, they will definitely suffer immense stress and frequently die from it. If you take the same fish and float their bag in the water to allow the temperature to slowly equalize before pouring them in, they will usually survive with no ill effects.

Re: *sigh* Mutual admiration societies

[demiurgent.livejournal.com]

There's really nothing new in this post other than the attempt to equate creationism and intelligent design.

Well, no.

First off, I'll admit I conflate the two, when there's really a potential for depth in ID that doesn't exist in literalist creationism. However, the current debate pretty much has conflated the two, and the powers that be that are strongly pushing for the inclusion of ID in science aren't doing it from a general, theoretical standpoint. As has been mentioned, "intelligent design" comes down to the extremely simple point of "some people thing an intelligence was behind the process." Getting that into a textbook doesn't serve the interests of the people who are active behind this movement. The people active behind this movement are actively against the theory of evolution, and there is a very specific theory of intelligent design they're championing. It includes the phrase "God created them in His image," though admittedly that's a paraphrase.

Put another way, the Buddists, the Shintoists, the Native Americans and the Norse aren't pushing to have science textbooks and curricula changed.

My point is not the inherent paradox of omniscience, omnipotence and omnibenevolence, either. You're right. That one's been done. My point is, if the strict, literal interpretation of Creationism is to be believed, then God specifically set things up this way. He specifically made the stars seem to have been created in an explosion billions of years before the Universe's actual creation. He specifically made all the dating methods we have point to a world millions of years older than it is. He specifically put a record in place that lends strong evidence and credence to the evolutionary process in man and beast alike.

If He did all that, and then damned people for believing his evidence, he is a bastard. (And, to be blunt, is unworthy of praise and worship.) That's where the theory of Creationism -- and the theological belief that one must only believe Creationism or be damned -- falls down metaphysically.

So, the point is not a retread of "if God is all powerful, why do bad things happen to good people." The point is "Creationism as stated -- and the belief that Creationism must be taught as science and belief in Evolution is wrong, evil and damning -- yields a God who is actively cruel, and that point is both incompatible with Christian theology and is sinful within said theology."

Is that polarized? Yup. Is that polarizing? Yup. But it's also key and core to Christian belief, and far far easier to demonstrate than the thought that you have to reject Darwin or burn in eternal Hellfire.

The fact that by learning the scientific method and judging all of the evidence based on it leads you to believe that it is simpler without a god is irrelevant.

It's worth noting, people who believe in Intelligent Design as a philosophical point but have an understanding of science and faith in the scientific method believe it is metaphysically shown that it is not simpler without a god. They cannot accept that the mind-numbing number of coincidences necessary to lead to a world where we could live and think and see could just happen without intervention and a plan. And they may be right.

However, they don't advocate teaching that in science class.

My .02 worth

[quaero-verum.livejournal.com]

I hope you don't mind me raising my hand here (I found this thread via Aikon's journal)....

I am a devout Christian who:
a)is NOT a Biblical literalist (the Bible is not intended, as far as I can tell, to be read in a literal fashion, but rather seen and understood as a "finger pointing to God"), and a regular reader of said Bible,

b)thinks that "6 day, young earth" Creationism is about the biggest pile of crap to have ever developed within Christianity, and therefore has absolutely no problem with the idea of God creating His world through the process of evolution, and

c)is completely convinced of of the truth of Intelligent Design.

If someone else isn't, that's ok, because it's not my job to tell everyone else how to believe. In the end, that's up to God and I am also not about to tell Him how to do His job.

Quite frankly, I really don't care how He created the world; that is not important to me. It IS important to me, however, that He DID create it, and I cannot see why it isn't reasonable to suggest to students of science that "God created everything, and here's how we think He did it." Religion and Science CAN co-exist, and are not mutually exclusive, in my opinion.

In the end, what's most important is that we live in the here and now, doing what He would have us do, which is to love one another as we love ourselves.

*end of my .02*

[5eh.livejournal.com]

I have about as much faith in Science as I have in Creationism.