They Are Not The Same

Do I really need to say it? I shouldn't, but then again, if people were able to be convinced by facts and logic, we wouldn't have flat-earthers, anti-vaxxers or neo-Nazi's, so I suppose I'll have to.

Creationism is not science.

Thankfully, while the majority of my Christian friends accept that the Bible is not meant to be a science book (though they will crow when a headline comes out that seemingly indicates that the Bible got something right), there is a rabble-rousing minority that have lost the argument so bad that it invites riducule, and that rabble-rousing minority are called by a variety of names: Intelligent Design Proponents, Science Skeptics, Biblical Literalists, whatever, but their collective beliefs all come under the umbrella terms Creationist and Creationism.

It's not that I want to dismiss Creationists out of hand - I try to listen to both sides of the argument to try be as intellectually honest as I reasonably can be, and as well as evaluate points directly contrasted against each other. But after considering their points and their modus operandi, I have no choice, but to dismiss them.
You see, if you're anything like me you will have spent too much time on YouTube, and one of the things I do in my YouTube time is listen to the comparative arguments between Creationists and atheists - I do this because I want to give myself reasonable room to see if I am wrong, and to see if Creationism can explain reality better than non-Creationist explanations.

After some time thinking, I've come to a few conclusions that I believe sum up the Creationist side of the argument, to the point that it exposes their fatal flaws:

1. Creationism is not a tool to gain knowledge. 

Creationism is not a tool for finding out more about the natural world - it is an assumptive stance that railroads you to a predetermined conclusion based on one particular interpretation of one particular religion's scripture.

Unlike science, Creationism is not open to new and contradictory information. It is not self-correcting. It considers it cannot be wrong in any way (because it already has the answers, you see!). It has no predictive capabilities. And because it can't explain the mechanisms of the natural world, it is useless.

No Creationist has ever said "because the universe is 6000 years old, we know where to find oil reserves!"

No Creationist has ever said "because Noah and his family survived a year with a boatload of animals, this is how we should engineer cargo ships to hold up to 23'000 TEU's!".

No Creationist has ever said "because God created all the animals after their kinds, this is how we should prevent outbreaks of preventable diseases!".

2. Science isn't a worldview or a belief system.

One of the common tactics of Creationists is to say that the way science is practised is merely because of a worldview (they especially do this when science shows the Bible is wrong about something). They do this to try make the argument about a comparison of belief systems instead of what we can demonstrate about the natural world, as if the point at hand was about something comparable like chocolate vs vanilla ice-cream. 

Then because Creationism loses every single scientific argument it finds itself in, Creationists then shift the argument to that of worldviews. And at this stage they will then state that atheists are immoral because atheism is inherently evil, and any science that shows the Bible is wrong has a foundation of evil and immorality - the well has been successfully poisoned.

But science isn't a worldview. Science is two things - one, it is a methodology for finding out facts, and two, it is a collective body of knowledge that the methodology has verified that can be used to find out more about what is being studied (be it rocks, outer space, the genome, etc).

Creationism, however, is a worldview. It is a worldview that informs how data is interpreted, up to the point that it explicitly rejects anything that tells them they're wrong. Furthermore, Creationists proudly state for all the world to see that if a scientific or historical discovery can prove the Bible wrong, they don't want to know about it.

3. The comparative goals.

The goal of science is that we understand more about the world around us, which in turn informs the decisions we make, how we treat people and what technology we produce to make our lives more productive and safe.

However, the goal of Creationism is to either appease a deity, or to make you think that the deity is happy because that deity psychically read your thoughts and he liked what he saw because you glorified him. This is why the number one place Creationists talk at is churches, hardly ever in university science faculties (and even when they do, their own universities present disclaimers! Michael Behe, anyone?).

They are not the same!

4. What would happen if every scientist was a Creationist instead?

If everyone who studied nature did so through a Biblically-Literal, Six-Day Creationist mindset where the Bible is the ultimate truth on any and every topic, we would see the following:

First, we wouldn't even know that other planets existed, let alone know that there are literally billions of them. The Bible simply does not mention anything other than the sun, the moon and 'the stars' which are woven in to the fabric of the night sky as if they're as close as the moon is.

Gamma rays? Asteroids? Gravity? Black holes? Nup. They don't exist in the Bible.

Second, treatment for mental health and neurological issues would consist either of exorcisms, or intense one-on-one shepherding, because in the Bible, mental health issues are caused either by demons or by the sinful nature, and are cured by expelling either.

And this one I can attest to personally - no-one in any church could tell me I had anxiety disorder, but they did tell me that I was under the control of a spirit of rebellion. Numerous times.

Third, because electricity doesn't exist in the Bible, there would be no computers, no refridgeration, no life-support systems, no automated external defribilators. Nothing that has improved our life in the last 200 years.

In Creationism, if you have a heart attack, all you're getting is a group of faith healers.

5. The contribution of Creationists.

When Creationists have contributed to science, it can only be considered coincidental at best. History has shown us that people can come to the right conclusion for the wrong reasons - take the ancient Hebrew aversion to consuming swine, for example. Does God hate pigs, or was the ban on pork a blunt tool to avoid trichinosis?

So when someone like Isaac Newton or Blaise Pascal claim they did what they did because he saw a divine order to things, if Creationists are correct in asserting or implying that theology is indeed an important part of science, this should mean that no atheist should be able to make world-changing discoveries.

Nobel prize laureates such as Curie (all three of them), Niels Bohr, and Einstein - all confirmed atheists - should be enough data to defeat the Creationist argument.

So when both an atheist and a Christian study nature and they both make new discoveries, what does that mean? It means that the study of nature doesn't care about your religious beliefs. 

6. Creationists have ridden the coat-tails of science.

It is hilarious to think of the paradox that Creationists find themselves in.

Creationists will happily accept the findings of every field of science that has made their life healthier, safer and more productive, such as that of medical science (I've never met a Creationist who never went to hospital), electrical science (every Creationist I know has used a computer or turned on a power point), engineering (every Creationist lives, works and worships in a building of some sort) and even chemistry (I'm sure even Creationists have applied sunburn lotion, painted a house or washed their hair at some point in their lives).

But when it comes to the fields of science that unequivocally say that a literal interpretation of the Bible is completely incompatible with reality, then all of a sudden, the excuses come out:

That science was produced by an atheist who hated God!

University science faculties are corrupt professors who are full of pride and refuse to listen to alternate opinions!

Were you there? I have the word of someone who was!

That is NOT a God-of-the-gaps fallacy, and I'm offended by what you said.

I'm open to the evidence, but I'm yet to see any evidence for evolution!

Atheism has contributed nothing to science!


If these people weren't trying to get in to classrooms and textbooks, it would be hilarious.

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Long story short - I don't feel bad for dismissing Creationist arguments.

A Creationist explanation for a particular natural phenomenon has always been trumped by a naturalistic one.

When a Creationist quotes a scientist who seemingly makes a contradictory finding, it is almost always a quote-mine.

But most of all, the data we have collected has already been looked at and studied as objectively as possible, and there was no god and no God anywhere in it.

Bottom line: science and Creationism are not the same.

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Stay safe, keep warm, and if you can, stay home to prevent the spread.

Regards,

Damien (quiterationaldad@gmail.com)

If They're Common, Then Kind Is Meaningless

As someone who has been debating Creationists for some time (and admittedly without much qualification - my understanding of evolution is more broad brush strokes rather than fine details), I do come across numerous anti-evolution comments and arguments, some which require some thought and knowledge to respond to, and some that are just downright silly.

Among one that requires some thought comes from my Creationist mate Theo (shout-out to you if you ever get to read this!) who challengingly asks: "Can the theory of evolution answer which came first: the penis or the vagina that the penis goes in to?". The simple answer is sexually antagonistic co-evolution, and the longer answer is...well, if you really want the answer, go look at the research. It is publicly available (scholar.google.com is a great first step), a lot of it is free to access, and frankly, if you aren't looking for scientifically-justified statements to come to the most scientifically-justified opinion on something, then what the hell are you doing?

But among one of the ones that are downright silly is a refutation to the evidence of homology.
Just before we get in to the meat of this post, this is the definition of homology that I will use. Homology is the sharing of features between organisms in different taxa, such as how humans and whales both have five-fingered hands despite humans and whales both being very different creatures - whales are cetaceans, whereas humans are hominids (but both are mammals).

So in homology, what some people see as evidence for evolution (genetic change with inherent modification) some people see as Creation by an intelligent designer with the common refrain being that "the designer of both the whales and the humans decided to use the same parts!".
Sometimes, the argument will then reference the fact that motor vehicles, despite there being differences, are made of the same parts - a car and a motorbike and a bus all use motors and brakes and exhaust systems, thus evidence of their common design. We know these things were created, and if all the animals have common features (which is what homology is trying to prove), then we must have been created as well! 

Now, I've thought about this for a while (as you can see from the amount of time between blog posts, I definitely do take my time!), and while I knew this Creationist argument didn't make sense, and not having the foundational study in biology to know more about the topic, I wanted to take a theological look at why, and I think I've found it...

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Genesis 1:24-25 says: 

"And God said, "Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: the livestock, the creatures that move along the ground, and the wild animals, each according to its kind." And it was so. God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good." (emphasis added)

Creationists will, in their staunch defence against the big, bad monster of evolution (you know, the one that Billy Graham had no problem with), revert to the blind faith of this verse that says nothing about evolution, but everything about God creating according to the kind.

[It's funny - God also mentions nothing about abortion, yet Fundamentalists believe they know God's most inner thoughts on the topic]

But, what exactly is a kind? From what I can read, a kind is either:

A. A classification of function and appearance (i.e. does it walk, does it fly, do

es it have two or four legs, etc) rather than inherent relatedness.

B. Another way of inferring what is meant by the word species, but without the implicit admission that current evolutionary terminology has got it right.

For the purpose of making a point, I will ignore definition B, because if kind were just a euphemism for species, then we both know the current evolutionary terminology and theory is correct, but only one of us is trying to avoid the baggage.

Furthermore, if kind was analogous to species, why is there no mention in the Bible of the single-celled kind (e.g. the bacteria kind or the virus kind), or even the cat kind (the Bible does not mention cats at all!).

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But now we come to the crux:

If all creatures were made, in their current form, with common parts, using a common design, by a common designer, then the word kind in a biological classification is meaningless. Kind literally becomes just a definition of function and/or appearance, not of relatedness.

But kind also then opens up two cans of worms.

The first is this: the people who wrote the Bible were writing from an extremely limited perspective (and thus, not written or inspired by an all-knowing deity). They clearly had no idea about a spherical earth or of celestial bodies trillions of kilometres away, and they definitely had no idea about genetics, embryology, or how humans and whales both have hands with bones - the best classification they could come up with was that all the animals were made by God according to what they did and what they looked like, not what they were. This is extremely simplistic and should not be relied upon to form a scientific opinion on something, especially when such simplicity flies in the face of what science already tells us.

The second is extinct species kinds. If you want to say that God created all the animals instantaneously in their final forms and ranked in their kinds, you then have to admit that God made hundreds of thousands of kinds of animals, if not millions, that he knew would go extinct.

So an intelligent, all-powerful and all-knowing God created millions of creatures he knew whose lineages would die out, and not only that, but millions of kinds of creatures that he knew humans, his ultimate creation, would never ever interact with?

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But why is kind meaningless in the face of homology?

Because anyone can see what an animal does - but the true beauty of what we see in nature lies in what that animal actually is, and its relatedness to every other animal.

Creationism, and especially Creationism's reasoning for homology not being evidence for evolution - "because a divine designer used common parts" - is simply inadequate, particularly because it has no predictive capability.

Evolution by common descent, on the other hand, is something homology explains, which then drives predictions!

Enough said.

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Creationists Believe In Evolution As Well

Creationists believe in evolution as well...but not as we know it.

The joy of being an atheist who still goes to church is that you have friends who gravitate towards the Young Earth Creationist (YEC) worldview - both the earth and the universe are 6000 years old and evolution is a dirty word. Bishop Ussher got it right, dagnabbit!

For reference, Creation Ministries International have a PDF available which demonstrates the chronology of the earth according to the Bible.

So why is having YEC friends a joy? Because you can do what I do and constantly probe them with real-world counter-examples to show them how their worldview doesn't line up with what we know about reality.
One question I have thrown out recently is this: If the universe is 6'000 years old and started out at a central point, how come there are galaxies and stars 13'000'000'000 light years away? If those stars travelled 13'000'000'000 light years in the space of 6'000 years, then they travelled 2.16 million times faster than the speed of light, which has some very unfortunate effects on different aspects of physics and cosmology.

The unfortunate fall-out of the YEC worldview is that it makes a person either intellectually honest at best, or hypocritical at worst.
A YEC will accept the findings of, and use the knowledge gained by, sciences such as electrical science (even YECs have to turn a light switch on at some stage in their life), mechanical/industrial science (all the YECs I know drive cars and fly on aeroplanes), geo-engineering science (I've never met a YEC who is afraid to cross a bridge over a river!), medical science (all YECs go to hospital at some stage, for some reason), nutrition and dietetic science (you know, to know how to eat a healthy diet), and every single other field of science except for the three that hit hardest at the YEC worldview:

Paleoecology, cosmology and biology.

Here I want to highlight how, for the YEC worldview to be correct, they need to rely on either magic or on a version of evolution that not even evolutionists recognise.

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Disclaimer: while I don't fully understand the theory of evolution or the exact mechanisms of how it works, I accept that the scientists that have studied the theory accept it.
Evolution has been tested, observed, verified, which meets the fundamental criteria of science.

There are challenges to Darwinian Evolution, just like in any field of science, and every theory, bad or good, should be challenged. But we don't challenge science with pseudoscience - we challenge science with better science, and YECs are yet to produce better science. If they did, it would be science and the argument would be over something else.

Before I get to the crux of this post, I want to challenge those who may think that I am accepting evolution by faith:

If I want to consider and accept any scientific hypothesis, do I have to go to university, get a undergraduate degree, get an Honours degree, a masters, then spend another four years writing a thesis in order to get a PhD, just so I can say I am suitably informed to have an opinion on a subject?

You probably haven't studied microbiology, yet even people who have no tertiary education still know that viruses cause colds and flu and that eating raw chicken is a really bad idea.

Enough said.
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Nature.com report, quoting an academic article from PLoS Biology, that there are approximately 8.7 million species of life on the earth today, which incorporates millions of species of animal. This, bear in mind, is not a forensically accurate figure, but it's the best and most recent answer the Google machine spat back at me - as well as being the one with the most references to actual people at actual universities.

What I want to stress is that the idea of there being millions of species of animal in existence should not be in dispute.

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So, time to do some maths: 

Based on the chronology provided by CMI, the flood of Noah happened approximately 5000 years ago.

5000 years x 365 days = 1'825'000 days. Let's keep this figure in the back of our head.

How many animals were on the ark? This is a hard one because the Bible uses the vague word 'kind':

They had with them every wild animal according to its kind, all livestock according to their kinds, every creature that moves along the ground according to its kind and every bird according to its kind, everything with wings.
- Genesis 7:14

This to me is more a representation of function (does it walk or fly, how many legs does it have, does it lay eggs or give birth, etc.) rather than taxonomic rank or classification.

How many animals can eight people without professional veterinary experience look after for a year, on a boat with no proper ventilation, plumbing or professional medical assistance? This is a vexed question, so I'm going to be over-generous (and I mean over-generous) and say that there were 2'000'000 animals on the ark, representing 1'000'000 species (two of each animal, thus two of each kind).

To do this, I have strictly equated: 1 pair of animals = 1 kind = 1 species, and have disregarded the seven of each clean animal taken on board for sacrificing, as they were going to be killed at the end of the flood anyway (as per Genesis 8:20). 

One, this makes the maths easier, two, if one kind represents more than one species, then this breaks the classification system for species - the goalpost of 'kind' moves to wherever you want it, creating an equivocation fallacy (you have to be consistent with your terminology to make your argument coherent) and three, if one kind represents less than one of each species (i.e. two million animals represents 10'000 species rather than 1'000'000) then the number of species on board the ark goes down, which makes the conundrum I am about to throw out to you even harder for YEC to stand.

Other assumption I have made: 

1. There was no procreation while on the ark.
2. No animals died while on the ark (either by sickness, attack from other animals, accidental death or old age).
The same 2'000'000 animals that went in to the boat are the same 2'000'000 that went out.

So, at the end of the flood in 3000BC, a boatload of 2'000'000 animals, representing 1'000'000 species, goes out, finds their own patch of turf and get procreating.

Thus, begins the conundrum.

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1'825'000 days ago, we had 1'000'000 species. We now have 8'700'000 species.

To explain this, there are only two hypotheses available to the YEC apologist as to why the number of new species has increased markedly since the end of the flood:

1. God-did-it.

Under this hypothesis, God created millions upon millions of new species after the flood, just as he had created the first million species before the flood.


2. Nature-did-it.

Under this hypothesis, it was nature itself that used a mechanism inherent to all reproductive life on earth to create all the varieties of animals into their species. Not their kinds (I prefer not to use kind because it is such a loosely defined word), but their species.

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So now, to answer the question, which hypothesis makes more sense?

Let's consider first, the God-did-it Hypothesis.

Under this hypothesis, we have to think not only how, but why God created millions upon millions of new species after the Noachian flood.

Because this exposes one of the biggest traps that when defending not only Creationism, but Christianity as a whole - in anything and everything that happens, as well as asking the how question, you also have to find a why component and add it (if it can be found) to every answer - Christians are the ones claiming an intelligent force is either controlling everything, or at the very least is mindful of everything, so an intelligent why has to be added to every explanation from the Christian worldview - if an intelligent why cannot be found, then it defeats the purpose of having an intelligent God.

How? There is only real one option available here to the Christian, which is magic. If God uses special words or special actions to make something exist when that thing didn't exist before, then this is the very definition of magic. And if God uses words to give life to something inanimate (such as dust or clay), then this is the definition of a golem spell. 
(And remember, what is a miracle in your religion is just magic in the eyes of another religion).

Why? I'm stumped. Why would an intelligent God create 1'000'000 species of animals, tell Noah to build a custom-design boat to for the sole purpose of keeping alive one pair of those species so they can repopulate the earth after a cataclysmic flood, then just go ahead and create new species anyway? And not just a handful here and there, but seven new species for every one already in existence!

If God was just going to magically create new species after the flood, then why did he tell Noah to build a large boat to keep the species alive when he was just going to magically create new species anyway? Couldn't God have told Noah to build a boat just large enough for his family to survive, and not need to take along animals as well? 


The Nature-did-it Hypothesis:

How? Biology has observed a mechanism by which new species are created, which is called speciation.
You, the reader, are free to come up with an alternative explanatory mechanism, but then you start distancing yourself from the best available science.

Speciation occurs via a number of methods, but there should be no doubt that speciation not only has happened, but is happening.

Why? Great question. The simple answer is that whatever lives and has the capacity to reproduce also finds ways to adapt to their environment, to acquire traits, and to pass those traits on to their offspring.

Hang on a second - what is the ability of organisms to inherit and acquire traits and pass those traits on to their offspring called? Evolution! 

Now, the kicker - how do we get 7.7 million new species to be created in 5000 years?

We have either God-did-it using magic, or Nature-did-it using evolution.

Now, magic sounds pretty lame, doesn't it? So the only hypothesis left, even by virtue of sanity and logic alone (let alone actual real-world scientific data) is Nature-did-it.

[The biggest reason I sour to the idea of magic is lies in the answer to this question: 

In what field of life (other than religion) does magic explain something better than what a naturalistic theory does?

"I don't know how jumbo jets fly!" - magic!
"I don't know why I have the flu!" - magic!
"I don't know why Port Adelaide lost the 2007 Grand Final to Geelong by a record margin!" - magic!

You wouldn't accept magic as an explanation for anything else in life, so why accept it here?]

Now, it turns out that most YECs accept microevolution (you know, the good evolution). Good, so let's work with that.

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But what about those numbers? How do we get 7'700'000 new species in 5000 years? 

To crunch the numbers:

8'700'000 species today minus 1'000'000 species on the ark 5000 years ago = 7'700'000 species in the course of 5000 years.

7'700'000 species / 5000 years = 1'540 species per year = 4.219 species a day.

4.219 species a day, every day, for the last 5'000 years. By the end of each and every week, 30 new species will have formed.

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You know how earlier I gave the figure of 1'000'000 species on Noah's Ark? Let's drop that down to 10'000 and see what numbers we get.

8.7 million species - 10'000 species = 8.69 million species.

8.69 million species / 5'000 years = 1'738 species a year = 4.76 species a day.

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What happens if we increase the number of species on Noah's Ark to 2'000'000?

8.7 million - 2 million = 6.7 million.

6.7 million species / 5000 years = 1'340 species per year = 3.67 species per day.

(Also, how do 8 people look after 4 million animals for a year?)

So whichever way you look at it, Noah's Flood creates a big problem for Young Earth Creationists.

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The Bible tells us that 8 people with no professional qualifications (their only qualification was that Noah was righteous) looked after 10'000, 100'000, 2 million or maybe even 4 million animals, in the space the size of a boat, with no external food supply, for a year. 
The real-world tells us that teams of zookeepers (people with minimum three years university qualification) look after roughly 5'000 animals, over the space of hectares, using sophisticated supply chains.


Belief in a literal reading of the Bible requires you to believe that after the flood, to concord with what science tells us, new species are generated at the rate of 3.67 to 4.76 a day.
The real world tells us that species form in the space of anything to 10 years up to 1'000'000 years.

Something isn't right here.

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Young Earth Creationists could be irrational and say God using magic is the best explanation, but then magic is not a rational explanation.

So the only rational option left is to accept evolution - but accept a version of evolution that is so much faster and rapid than anything observed or reported by actual biological scientists.

But this then leads us to a fatal trilemma for YEC: 
either the science is wrong, the explanatory mechanism is wrong, or the Bible is wrong.

Pick one.

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Until next time, stay cool, stay healthy, stay rational.

And if you find those 30 new species by next week, let me know.

-Damien