Against Creationism, Part Two: Science Has Nothing to Do with It

There is no point in presenting scientific evidence against creationism. Scientists have been doing this for nearly a hundred years, since modern creationism began in the 1920s. Every creationist argument that has ever been made has been disproved by science. Creationists have, thousands of times, been personally informed that their arguments are wrong. But they keep right on making the same ones, totally ignoring every criticism they have ever received.

What this means is that creationists are liars. They know that they are wrong. Telling them for the five hundred thousandth time that they are wrong is not going to change anything.

Why are creationists liars? Here are a few reasons.

• Money. They are preying on the gullibility of religious people who have been raised to not think, and to not even read the Bible, but just to believe and give money to creationist preachers. Many of them get very rich doing this, sometimes by illegal means, as in the case of Kent Hovind. Creationists do not really believe in God; He is just their tool for getting money.
• Power. Creationists use creationism to prove God—but not just any God: they want to prove the existence of a God who commands total subservience to the Republican Party. More recently, Republicans have been calling for bloodshed in the defense of their party. Creationists do not really believe in God; He is just their tool for getting power for the Republican Party and for its armed domination of America.
• Ego. Creationist preachers like to fantasize that they are God’s special spokespeople, that God has made them alone on the face of the Earth infallible and inerrant. No matter what they say, you cannot contradict them, because that would be an attack on God. Creationists do not actually believe in God; they are blasphemers who use God as their ego-tool. Creationists just make stuff up about God whenever they want to.

And that pretty much wraps it up.

Creationist Says that God is Deliberately Deceptive

Let's get the new year started off right, shall we? By deciding whether young-earth creationists are infallible and inerrant, or merely human.

If young-earth creationists are totally infallible and inerrant, then we must believe anything they say, no matter what. They are the ones whom God has uniquely chosen to tell us which parts of the Bible to believe and which to not believe. God has given them the keys to Heaven to decide who goes to Heaven and who goes to Hell. Hell, obviously, is reserved for anyone who does not believe everything a young-earth creationist says. This sounds a little bit like blasphemy, creationists putting themselves in the place of God, but they refuse to admit this.

They claim to use the Bible, simply and literally interpreted, as their authority. But creationist evangelist Kent Hovind, who has been in prison for tax evasion (he apparently considered himself a citizen of heaven and therefore not owing federal taxes), claimed that God deliberately inserted errors into the Bible in order to weed out atheists. He made this claim in a video posted last December 28.

Our faith in what? There are lots of religious people who believe in God, but admit that the Bible contains errors, because it was written by humans who were simply doing the best they could to understand God but sometimes didn't get it right. Hovind was not referring to them. What he meant was, God put errors into the Bible to weed out those people who were not willing to accept Hovind as the inerrant communicator of truth. By putting mistakes into the Bible, God is weeding out those who worship Hovind from those who do not.

Conservative Christians, and the politicians who serve them, are so convinced of their own godliness that they cannot conceive that God would ever allow them to be wrong. If they think it, then it must be God's Very Truth even if it contradicts the Bible. To them, you might as well be an atheist if you disagree with even one thing they assert.

It looks like 2016, an election year in which creationists will identify God with the Republican Party, will be one in which there is no reason or evidence, even about the Bible. It will simply be a year in which fundamentalist Christians declare anyone who disagrees with them on any point to be a heretic. And we all know what people who are convinced that they are God's unique people can do to those whom they consider to be heretics. Don't bother asking them for any Biblical reasons for their beliefs. They jettisoned that requirement a long time ago.

Was Moses a Scientist?

Turn the clock back to 1976. I was a creationist student at the University of California, Santa Barbara.  Our little creationist group, at that time called Creation Society of Santa Barbara (later Students for Origins Research) had organized a debate, which, as it happened drew a crowd that nearly filled Campbell Hall, the major event center at the university. On the creationist side were Henry Morris and Duane Gish, both now deceased, and who remain the iconic figures of modern young-earth creationism. On the evolution side were geologist Preston Cloud and cellular biologist (later a scholar of Judaism) Aharon Gibor, both on the UCSB faculty.

It is nearly impossible for any such debate to yield any insights. First of all, it converts a continuum of belief into two armed camps. The creationist side considers itself the sole representative of religious belief; therefore, if there is anything that evolution cannot explain, it proves that their 6000-year version of Earth history must be right.  Furthermore, in such a debate, a creationist can make a large number of wrong statements, which an evolutionist could not possibly set right in an equivalent amount of time. Would Darwin debate? The guy who pretends to be Darwin says, no way!

The 1976 UCSB debate was no exception. Of course, I thought the creationist side won. But I remember a couple of statements Aharon Gibor made which, in retrospect, I understand to be very wise. One statement was that there are hundreds of creation accounts in the world; which one are we supposed to believe? (Maybe the Yoruba one, which I described in the previous post?) Debunking evolution does not lead straight to fundamentalist Christian creationism.

But his second statement really made me think, even at the time, when I was not in a habit of really thinking about this issue. He said that Moses was a sort of ancient society’s version of a scientist. When he saw the burning bush, he turned aside to see what it was. He did not simply assume what it was, but wanted to investigate. This is what science is about. Of course, Moses was a very religious man. But religious people can be inquisitive and seek data to test their beliefs. This describes many religious people today, but does not describe fundamentalists.

Just this morning I received a term paper in my Evolution course. I quickly determined that it was plagiarized. I have, in my nine years of teaching evolution, received two creationist term papers; both were plagiarized. The first one, from a Christian fundamentalist student, was bought from a term paper website for $15.95. The second one, which I just received, was reworded from the website of the Muslim creationist website run by the flamboyant Adnan Oktar, who goes by Harun Yahya. On this paper I noted that it was OK to disagree with me but not to plagiarize.

I conclude from these experiences that creationists do not reach their conclusions by investigating the world but by repeating what their leaders say. This is as true for Muslim creationists as for Christian ones. For those of you who are religious, might I pass on Aharon Gibor’s suggestion: be like Moses, and turn aside to see the evidence before you proclaim your conclusions.

Creationists Take Genesis, but not Jesus, Literally

Most creationists are protestants and fundamentalists. Some are Catholics, but the last few decades and the last few popes have not been very good for the remaining Catholic creationists. Creationists, as most of you understand, are (primarily) Christians who insist on a “literal” reading of the entire Bible.

Well, not quite. When it comes to The Last Supper that Jesus shared with his disciples before his crucifixion, protestant creationists hastily abandon their literalism. According to the Bible, Jesus book the (unleavened Passover) bread and said, “This is my body.” You will find this in Luke 22 and in Matthew 26 as direct gospel accounts and it is repeated by the Apostle Paul in First Corinthians 11. Later, he took “the fruit of the vine” which everyone except teetotalers recognize as wine and said, “This is my blood.” (I suppose it could be juice from some other vine. In one novel manuscript, I describe a desert church that used gourd juice.)

Jesus does not say “This represents my body” or his blood. It says that it is. He then says, do this in remembrance of me. But nevertheless the bread is his body and the wine is his blood. Only Catholics, during the communion service they call the Eucharist, take this statement literally. According to the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, the wafer actually becomes the same “substance” as Christ’s body, and the wine the same substance as Christ’s blood. The bread is still gluten and starch, and the wine is still resveratrol and ethanol and anthocyanin and sucrose, but the inner “substance” is transformed into Christ’s body and blood. (I wonder what Catholic physicists have to say about transubstantiation.) Protestant and fundy creationists, during what they usually call the Lord’s Supper, alter the plain meaning of scripture and twist it to mean that the bread and grape juice are just meant to make us think about Jesus’ body and blood. They throw literalism out the window where, one would think, it matters most.

“Well, of course,” they could say, “Jesus didn’t actually mean his actual body, because He was sitting right there holding the bread which was molecularly distinct from his body. And He couldn’t have actually meant his actual blood which was still inside of his arteries and veins.” But if this is so, it makes Jesus seem pretty stupid. If it was so blinking obvious that the bread was not actually his body, why would he say that it was? Was he lying, or was he stupid? (Or was he speaking symbolically? No, creationists will not permit Jesus to do this.)

I first encountered this contradiction when I read a book about 25 years ago (which I might not have read were I not asked to review it) of letters exchanged between a literalist creationist and a scientist who was also a Catholic. Personally, I have no interest in this argument, but it does show that creationists are no more faithful to the Bible than other religious people.

And yet creationists present themselves to the rest of us as practically the owners of the Bible. They imply that if you don’t agree with them that the Earth is young, then you need not bother believing in Jesus. But, they think, it is just fine to believe in Jesus without believing that the communion bread is his body and the communion wine is his blood.

The Real Creation Model

Most people, including most readers of this blog, think that creationism is the belief that God made all the components of the universe in perfect form just a few thousand years ago.

But that is only part of the creationist creed. There is another part, which they do not openly proclaim, but which they believe.

We all know there is a political correlation between rejection of evolution and rejection of environmentalism. I merely maintain that is correlation is real, not accidental. There is a reason for it.

The full statement of the creation model is that God made all the components of the universe in perfect form just a few thousand years ago for us to use up now.

Creationists believe that the Earth will come to an end soon, so we might as well go ahead and use up all the natural resources, like coal and fish and trees, as fast as we can. Why preserve them, only to have them burned up in Armageddon? Why preserve them, only to leave them behind in the Rapture and let damned sinners have them? Why have a livable Earth in 2100, if the end of the world will already have occurred?

A creationist said to me, several decades ago, that the basis of his belief was time. (That’s funny; I would have expected it to be God.) We know that Jesus is coming soon, he said, therefore just as the future is short so must the past be short. I thought at the time that this was rather strange, but now it makes perfect sense.

So when you look at the full statement of creationism, their opposition to both evolution and environmentalism makes perfect sense.

If you are, or know, an environmentalist creationist, all I can say is, glad to hear it. And I could have a respectful conversation with such a person. But this is clearly the exception to the rule. If anything, conservative creationists probably hate environmentalist creationists even worse than they hate evolutionists. If you are an environmentalist creationist, you are embracing a burden of frustration.

The political correlation between anti-evolutionism and anti-environmentalism is real, not accidental. I believe the reason is that creationists think God made the Earth for us to use up right now. If you have a different explanation, please feel free to post a comment. If your argument makes sense, I would be glad to acknowledge it.

Why Creationists and Other Conservatives Reject Global Climate Disruption

Many of us have wondered why the same people who attack evolution also attack human-caused global climate disruption. Many evolution education organizations, from the National Center for Science Education to Oklahomans for Excellence in Science Education, now address both issues. Many of us have assumed that the two issues are connected by a general conservative attack on science, and perhaps by the fact that the Republican Party happens to reject both.

But I think there is a more direct reason. It is that conservatives believe that God designed the Earth so that we humans could live in technological comfort, raise lots of grain to feed to cattle, drive big fast pickup trucks, use water for private swimming pools, and have unlimited reproduction. The fact that God did not do so is deeply disturbing to them, and they reject this fact vigorously.

The early Old Testament writings assumed that God had designed the world, and designed it for man. These Biblical writers, however, assumed that big cities, based on massive agricultural production, were evil. Their ideal was wandering shepherds like Abel and Abraham and young David, not agriculturalists like Cain and big technologically-advanced cities like Babel (Babylon), Sodom, and Gomorrah. These early writers might have agreed that God did not design the world for the kinds of things we are now doing in it.

Teaching Evolution in Oklahoma

I got my student evaluation comments back from the evolution course that I taught last fall. My goal is to teach evolutionary science, and in the process it is necessary to undermine creationist claims. But I also wish to make it clear that many scientists have religious beliefs, including Christian beliefs, that do not prevent them from accepting evolutionary science. So I teach science from neither a creationist nor an atheistic perspective. The science, of course, is consistent with atheism, but not with creationism. I make it clear to students that I am not trying to make them quit being Christians.




I think I am being successful. I am hitting right in the middle of the religion spectrum. I bothered one atheist in the class (yes, there are a few in Oklahoma) and one creationist.



The atheist wrote, “As an atheist I wish for all my professors to keep their beliefs to themselves and as someone whose way of life is often scorned, I understand how some of my fellow classmates felt. The professor had no bad intentions with the comments, but they should be left out of the classroom as they will offend no matter how they are phrased.”



A creationist wrote, “I have been studying claims that falsify evolution along with studying for this class. If such claims were taught at the end of the semester it might make us learn more in depth on this topic and to think for ourselves. A mark of an educated man is to entertain an idea without accepting it.”



So for those of you who think that Oklahoma is filled with raging fundamentalists who hate anyone who presents evolution…well, maybe you are right, but the raging fundamentalists do not generally attend universities. The fundamentalist university students are generally very cordial. I think I know who the creationist was, and if I am right, she actually earned the highest grade in the class.



The creationist comment ended with, “P.S. Christ loves you.”



Check out the new YouTube video at http://youtu.be/srp6wj1kePk. This week, Darwin hangs out on the corner of South Trenton Avenue and South Trenton Avenue in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and explains the process of evolutionary convergence.



As ever, I want to hear your comments and questions and responses. I do not have an absolutely predetermined list of blog entries, and would be happy to follow a discussion thread that you introduce.

Another Creationist Intellectual Breakthrough

According to this photograph, which I took last week, creationists do not just reject evolution; they also reject standard English, confusing "ancestor" with "descendent." This is at a church in rural Oklahoma.

If you have not read the recent posts, see them below.

Why creationism is dangerous

This morning I received an abusive message via Facebook. Facebook allows messages to be sent from anonymous sources, and this source did not identify itself except as male. Its main message was I was offending my creationist students by teaching evolution in an evolution class. The opinions expressed were brutal. The facts it cited were inaccurate. For example, the writer said that evolution was dropped from the core requirements for biology majors because nobody was learning anything from my classes. In fact, the course was dropped from the core before I began teaching it. The message said my colleagues do not respect me, which is not true, according to my colleagues. My student evaluations are mostly positive, with a few negative comments from offended creationists. The message said that my students do not learn anything; test results show that this is not true. The message said nobody accepts my books, which is untrue; they have received good reviews nationwide. The grammar and spelling in this message were bad.

This sort of thing is typical of creationists. They have no hesitation about lying about others; of sending secret abusive messages and threats; about breaking the law. For example, famous creationist Kent Hovind (“Dr. Dino”) went to prison for tax evasion. One of the world’s most famous creationists, who wrote under the name Harun Yahya, went to prison in Turkey for organized crime. In 2007, a creationist send threatening letters to evolutionary science faculty at the University of Colorado, and his messages proclaimed that it was time for Christians to take up arms against those he believed to be his enemies. My experience with creationist students is that they are often the ones who plagiarize papers.

Creationists are fueled by hatred. And since they are associated with the extreme political right wing, many of whom accumulate stockpiles of weapons, their hatred is dangerous. The fact that this message came from an anonymous source was clearly intended to heighten its terrorist effect. The writer used the name “Charles Darwen,” and a photograph of the nineteenth century drawing of Charles Darwin as a chimpanzee.

It should be obvious why “the creationist viewpoint” does not deserve a serious consideration, any more than does the white supremacist viewpoint, which appeals to some of the same people. The creationist viewpoint is a grab for political power by means of intimidation.

A new decade of evolution

Today begins a new year and, to most people, a new decade as well. I wish I could see it as a year, and a decade, in which progress will be made in opening people’s minds to the liberating insights of evolution.

But at least where I live, I do not anticipate that this will occur. Religious fundamentalist forces remain strong. In Oklahoma, we now have a Republican majority, and nearly all of them (and no small number of Democrats) support legislation that constricts the teaching of evolution. One of them, a John Birch Society speaker who believes that our society must be founded upon creationism, has announced his candidacy for governor in this year’s race.

Reason cannot reach most of these people. Many of my university students have been brainwashed before they even start primary school, much less college. A first-grade teacher here in rural Oklahoma told me that some of her colleagues—not just the parents, but her fellow teachers—say that Barack Obama is the Anti-Christ. I have had students in my evolution class who remain unconvinced by evidence that I present. I do not mean that they confront it and decide not to believe it; I mean that it slips right through their heads. Against such forces of brainwashing, what can any science educator do? It is not a problem of educating them, but of liberating their minds so that they can think.

All I can do for now is to continue teaching and writing books about evolution, not with any realistic hope of convincing creationists, but to provide encouragement to my fellow evolutionists. I realize what I just wrote does not sound much like encouragement. But the evolutionary view of the world is so beautiful and interesting that we should continue telling people about it for its own sake. Join with me this coming year and remember that the viewpoint we proclaim has been the greatest insight in the history of human thought, a viewpoint we are privileged to proclaim.

The Evolution of an Evolutionist

Let me tell you briefly how I became an evolutionist. I'd be delighted to hear brief stories from you about your experiences as well.

I started off as a creationist, as fundamentalist as they come. This lasted through my undergraduate days as a biology major. But I gave up these beliefs for two reasons. First, I kept learning more science. I found out that the creationists I had believed were wrong: there is lots of evidence for evolution, from DNA to fossils. Second, and this may surprise you--I kept reading the Bible. And I finally realized that a literalistic interpretation of the Bible just didn't work. So I would encourage creationists to do as I did--read the Bible for yourself, don't just believe what preachers tell you about the Bible. This may very well lead you, as it did me, to a figurative (literary) interpretation.

My evolution was partly gradualistic, and partly punctuated equilibrium. I gave up creationism in stages (gradualism). But there were certain memorable points in time when I had important insights about both religion and science (punk eek). I'll tell you about them sometime.

I have always been a great lover of nature. Hiking in the mountains and riding my bike in the country inspired me when I was young. At first, my admiration was framed in a creationist praise of a Creator who made everything exactly as it was. But I gradually realized that, if God made it exactly as it was and without the ability to evolve, then the world was not built to last. If life does not evolve, it will come to a crashing demise when the environment changes, as it always does. To a fundamentalist, this is no problem: they believe that any minute now Jesus will come back and destroy the world, including nature. I always had trouble with this, even in my fundy days. But I realized that, without accepting evolution, I had to see the natural world as NOT BUILT TO LAST. This seemed to me to be an insult to God.

More later. Let me know what your experiences have been.