Calzaer

Why is it that every single solitary example of "evidence" for creationism is really just an attack on evolution or the age of the earth?

If, for the sake of argument, the Creationists proved that evolution was 100% complete and total bullshit. HOW DOES THAT ADVANCE THEIR OWN THEORY? How does that prove a God, and specifically THEIR God, created the universe?

I don't understand! There's an infinite number of wrong answers! It seems obvious to me that disproving evolution does nothing to prove special creation! I feel so stupid, like I'm missing something!

Kosmo

Frankly, it's the best they can do.

Without any actual evidence for 'creation', all they can do is try to refute evidence against it.

Evidence for evolution, and for the age of Earth is incompatible with young-earth creationism; so the only chance creationists have (to reconcile their own beliefs) is to discredit this knowledge.

The Lone Ranger

It's worth keeping in mind that the average person's grasp of logic isn't too good, nor does the average person have much of a grasp of basic science. The Creationists know very well that if they keep shouting "Evolution is false; the only alternative is Creationism; therefore Creationism is true; Bow down to Jesus!" many people will see this as a perfectly reasonable progression.

It's enough to make you want to weep, at times.

Cheers,

Michael

Conchobar

They lack a capacity for complex thinking. They simply can't understand evolution, plate tectonics, continental drift, brain functions in thought, belief, choice, speech, emotional and basic survival drives. So they reject what is way over their heads. It is like trying to explain the human birth process to a 3 year old, which leads to fairy tale about the stork carrying babies.

Creationists are adults with 3 year old brain capacities and inability to grasp abstract and complex things. They are brainwashed into a terrible religion, Christianity, that has all of the major hallmarks of psychosis or insanity. It teaches an irrational universe and a delusion of immortality. It threatens them with burning in Hell for eternity for seeking the truth. Plus there are implied threats that Atheism and naturalism will disprove their immortality and they don't want to give up on such a delusion as immortality.

Christianity is truly a Brain Virus. It cripples the person from rational thinking. But it forbids even the consideration of any ideas that disprove Biblical bollocks and idiotic fantasies that lead to immortality. If you accept evolution. Then you must reject the infantile Adam and Eve story, Original Sin, Inherited guilt, the need for a redeemer, no need for Jesus to die on a stick, and no need for the resurrection since there was no redeemer who died for a non-existent sin by imaginary ancestors. The whole psychotic delusion comes down like a house of cards in a wind storm.

Plus my hypothesis is that religious, especially fundamentalist's brains are hard wired for mythological superstitious belief. Their frontal lobe "rubbish filters" don't work. They can't reject bullshit, but they lack the mental capacity to understand science.

I realise that some will find this offencive but it is my honest opinion based on personal research evidence. And BTW is it worse than they consiging me to Hell?

Conchobar

Albion

They've constructed some very elaborate arguments along the lines that creationism is the only alternative to atheistic evolution (apparently every other religion's creation story is just evolution dressed up a bit), so by defeating evolution they'll win by default. I wonder if the professional creationists who put that stuff out actually believe it or just count on the fact that the sheep will believe it if a man of God tells them.

Course, the Muslim creationists are using the same arguments as the Christian ones - hardly surprising since the creationist groups of the two religions have been collaborating - so after vanquishing evolutionism the creationists will still have to persuade people that intelligent design creationism is un-Biblical and then set about discrediting the Muslim creationist arguments, which should be amusing since they're the same as the Christian ones.

Zira_C

Calzaer asked "Can someone explain this [creationism] to me"

And Conchobar replied with.
As acerbic as Conchobar's tone may be I think he has come quite close to hitting the nail on the head. I think he goes a little over the top though by trying to dismiss these people as "adults with 3 year old brain capacities". I think it's a mistake to underestimate these people as being unintelligent, clearly they are not. What I think is more likely is that they have something important they think is in jeopardy, and something important, they are willing to go to extreme lengths to protect. I think the thing they're trying to protect is their evidence for (and consequently the existence of) God.

I've come around to the idea that the problem creationists and evolution evidence deniers have with the theory of evolution is not the evolution part, it's the theory part. According to their reality, divine creation of man is the miracle that proves the existence of God. Think about it. What evidence do people hold as proof of the existence of God? Some people see God in the beauty of a flower; I had someone tell me that their beautiful children were their evidence of the existence of god. It seems that each theist uses a different bit of reality to hold up as their evidence of God. Well I think that creationists have determined that miraculous creation of man is their evidence for the existence of God.

A miracle is an unexplained phenomenon, a theory is an explanation. Explain the miracle, and you destroy the miracle. Destroy the miracle, and there goes your evidence of God. The reason they need to disprove evolutionary theory, is so they can deny it's explanatory power. If the miracle can't be explained, then it stays intact, and so too does their evidence, and so too does their God. They are not trying to prove special creation, they're trying to leave their miracle intact by disproving the explanation that destroys it. That's why they equate TOE with atheism, they see it as an attack on their God (well at least an attack on their perceived evidence for their God). Look closer at what they do, rather than what they say (much of what they say is inconsistent, self contradictory, and ad hoc anyway). Creationists take action in the area of evolution education. They try to stop students from being taught that a legitimate explanation exists for the origin of man. They do this any way they can; first it was in the courts, but when that ran it's course they turned to politics. They formulate no testable hypothesis for creation, they do no research. All they do is try to prevent students from learning that there is an explanation for the origin of man. So far they've been very successful.

Think about it. Who here was really given a robust education in evolutionary theory in high school? Heck, I wouldn't classify what I got in high school as being even minimally adequate. And this is 150yrs after Darwin.

So let me see if I can use what I've just said to answer your OP.

1) The reason you attack evolution is because if you destroy evolution, then your miracle doesn't get explained, and therefore stays intact.
2) The reason you attack the age of the earth is to rob evolution (specifically descent of man from precursor organisms) of enough time to happen, thereby making it a physical impossibility. Remember, age of the earth arguments are specifically YEC. They were cooked up by Henry Morris, who thought that evolutionary theory would fall if it did not have sufficient time to occur.

1) Proving that evolution was 100% bullshit would not advance their own theory. They have none, remember; a theory is an explanation, and it's the explanation they are trying to avoid. In fact when Gish was asked point blank if creationism was science he said no (I can try to dig up the link if you want, I think it's somewhere on TO). I can't remember the thread over at ISCID, but when some ID critics were actually proposing testable avenues for ID to persue, Demski shot back with the ID is not a mechanistic theory speal. They will never perform some sort of test for ID. A test would lead to answers, and answers would lead to explanations; and explanations must be avoided at all costs.
2) The way it proves their God, is by leaving the creation of man event unexplained, and therefore the miracle that proves the existence of their God intact.

You're right disproving evolution does nothing to prove special creation. What it does though is leave you with an unexplained phenomenon, a gap in knowledge. A gap big enough to drop your miracle, and therefore your God, into.

Coragyps

Hey, Zira: well said. :notworthy

Darwin's Beagle

This is a very good question. I think you can come up with the answer if you try. Here is the one I came up with:

Creationists have set up a false dichotomy and play it to the hilt. The false dichotomy is: There are ONLY two possibilities, either naturalistic evolution or special creation by a Christian God. Thus, if evolution is wrong, Christianity must be right. Also since there is no overlap, evolution must be atheistic. Also since there is no overlap and the two possibilities cover every possible reality, everything that they see as non-Christian must be due to evolution.

Hence, evolution is essentially a tool of Satan, and to oppose all its principles is to fight for God, which will likely lead to rewards in the afterlife.

If you read the Morrises (both John and Henry) and Phillip Johnson discuss the moral depravity of naturalistic evolution you will see that the above characterization is NOT too strong. I really believe they see it as just that black and white.

To me that explains why they attack evolution. But why do they not also give evidence for creationism? Well, in a sense, YECs do present some evidence for their beliefs. The evidence is the old and throughly debunked moon dust, solar shrinkage, seashell fossils on mountaintops, etc. But, I agree that they don't have their hearts in it. I suspect the reason is best expressed by the old saying "you can't make a silk purse out of a cow's ear". There just isn't any real evidence to be found.

Regards,

Darwin's Beagle

Happy Wonderer

I think one of the reasons evolution is attacked so heartily is that -- our sops to theistic evolutionists aside -- evolution knocks the stuffing out of the most obvious reason to believe in divinity. It isn't a matter of supporting an alternate theory so much as it is a matter of defending an entire belief system.

Before there was any real understanding of how nature 'worked', the single best evidence for God(s) was how well organized and beautiful the world is. Obviously this was created by something that had an appreciation for wonder and beauty, and such a being is worth worshipping. All theists that I have read fall back onto this basic emotional position. Some fall back into the cellular level ('how wonderful the heamagloblin molocule is..') but it is the same story in different clothes.

If we have an explanation for all of the wonderful things around us then God looks less like something that appreciates the things that we appreciate. God as the creator of the first RNA replicator just isn't quite the same being, and God the creator of the singularity seems hopelessly cold and remote. Even God the setter-upper of all the physical laws that led to our marvelous world is just a being that is hard to feel warm and fuzzy about. This is a tremendous problem for religions that believe in a personal diety who cares about us as individuals.

We believe in gods for ultimately selfish reasons - we hope to be able to influence the world through his/its intercession, or hope for rewards for our good behavior. A remote god doesn't do that, and evolution says that is the best you can get.

The only way to solve this problem is to attack the evidence and the theory. Or become a Buddhist...


hw

Conchobar

The defined the principles of Darwinian Natural Selection in Evolution as well as the Creationist (Christian Fundamentalist) positions are quite well known. The study of evolution does not address God in any way. It deals with biological mechanisms to explain the fact that new species have appeared while others have disappeared repeatedly over the last 2 ½ billion years. Acceptance of the fact of evolution in no way prohibits one from also believing in a God or creator. Likewise the acceptance of the spherical Earth, the Solar System, gravity, and plate tectonics does not prohibit God belief or Theism. The Pope, an unchallenged theist, allows Catholics to accept the fact of evolution.

There is a point of conflict between traditional Christianity and the fact of evolution. Evolution shows that humans evolved gradually over some 3 million years. There was no Adam and Eve. Without Adam and Eve there was no Original Sin, no fall of mankind. Without the fall of mankind there was no need for a redeemer. God had no need to father a human offspring to be a blood sacrifice for a sin that never occurred. It follows that there was no crucifixion of Jesus, and no resurrection. There would be no salvation or need for salvation. While I concede that evolution is compatible with theism in a very generic sense (a creator-designer god), it may be incompatible with traditional Christianity. To accept the mass of compelling evidence proving evolution may threaten traditional Christians by making their core belief system illogical and irrelevant. This is perhaps the real reason for their angry opposition to modern biological and geological discoveries, like evolution and continental drift.

There is a huge amount of evidence supporting evolution, plate tectonics with continental drift, radio-isotope decay rate chronology, seafloor spreading rate chronology, ocean floor magnetic polar reversal chronology, and the tremendous genetic evidence with the thousands of findings supporting evolution right in our own DNA. But there is no evidence at all of the Magical Creation. In fact Magical Creation as presented in the Bible has been thoroughly debunked on every claim. Whenever religion/mythology tries to masquerade as science, it exposes its blatant fallacies.

It is clear that other factors are at work in America. Ireland is 90% Christians and 97% support evolution as science not theology. Their god belief is separate. In Scotland where 50% are unbelievers (Atheist, Agnostic, Ignostic) you can't find a creationist with whom to debate. In England the main Creastionists are Muslims. Anglicans are pretty laid back, believe in God but try to not get sticky about the nature of belief. France is similar, and more so in Netherlands. In Germany a small majrity are Chrsitians yet almost everyone accepts evolution. America stands out for its 48% acceptance of science/evolution.

http://www.secularhumanism.org/libra...kurtz_22_3.htm

I will follow up on this in the next post for length of time.

Conchobar