Creationism and Creationists

A Primer
By Larry Weinstein
11 January  2001


General Definition:  People who reject evolution and/or the Big Bang.

Categories:

'In transit Creationist' (my term):  Believes God created the world in 7 days 6000 years ago with the Dinosaur bones already fossilized and the light from distant galaxies in transit.  This is not a disprovable argument and hence distorts science less than the other ones.

Young Earth Creationist (Biblical literalist):  Believes God created the Earth 6000 years ago in seven days.  Noah's flood really happened.  Argues that radioactive dating is incorrect, that the speed of light was much faster 5999 years ago (so light from distant stars could reach us in time), that thousands of sedimentary layers were laid down in the flood,....  Really distorts science badly.

Old Earth Creationist: Believes God created the Earth a long time ago.  Evolution does not happen.  New species do not evolve naturally.

Intelligent Design Proponent: The Big Bang really happened but God has to keep intervening to make new species.  They point out specific biological structures that they claim could never have evolved by random chance (eg: flagella on micro-organisms, hemoglobin, etc.).

Scientific Arguments:

  1. Order cannot arise from randomness. The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics (entropy) forbids this.
     
     Not true.  With continual input of energy from outside (ie,: from the Sun), the entropy of a system can decrease.  (Eg., with enough energy input, you can get your kid to clean his room.)

  2. Evolution is random.
     
     Not true.  Evolution consists of random variation plus natural selection.  The variation is random but the selection is not.

  3. Fossilized species are very different.  We have never seen any transitionary species.
     
     Not true.  While rare (not many critters get fossilized and then found), we have found transitionary species between whales and their ancestors (and many others I have since forgotten).


Philosophical Arguments:(more important)

  1. The Bible says so.  The Bible guides my life.
     
  2. I know God created me, therefore I'm special.  Therefore, God created everything else.
     
  3. Uh-oh.  If you defend evolution you are directly attacking the basis of their life.
     
  4. You're all a bunch of amoral atheists.


Philosophical Counter-arguments:

  1. There are two creation myths in the Bible.  The underlying message is that God created the universe and we don't know how.  (I first heard this from a Rabbi.)  The danger with this is that you can rapidly get into an argument on Biblical exegesis which many of us are unprepared for.
     
  2. Why would God bother to explain Big Bang Cosmology, Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA), and evolution to a bunch of nomadic herders?  The underlying 'truth' in Genesis is that God created the universe.
     
  3. If God is omniscient, then S/He can use whatever means necessary to create you.  An omniscient God will know that 15 billion years after the Big Bang, John Smith will be born in Virginia Beach.  Why must you insist on immediate intervention?
     
  4. (For intelligent designers) Why is it better to have a God who has to intervene in His/Her brand new universe every million years or so to create a bunch of new species, than to set it up intelligently so the new species arise by themselves?
     
  5. Do you really believe that the more we understand of the universe, the less room there is for God?  Is God merely the 'God of the gaps', the deity of what we do not know yet?  That is really trivializing God.