riveRraT wrote:
I think you are missing the point.
How do I tell my Pastor that creation science is full of it?
And if it is not full of it, then what should I tell him about it.
I want to do that with authority.
Wow, where to start in jumping into this thread?
First, kudos to you for wanting to help your church and the future of humanity. I’ve pointed out many times to ardent Chriationists that of all the people, things and institutions hurt by creationism, none is hurt more than Christianity.
I’ve put together a rough outline of some of the ways creationism (note that the term “creation science” makes as much sense as “astrology science”, so I tend to use the term “creationism”) hurts Christianity. You may like to use it as a starting point, seeing which points you feel competent to discuss, and asking about any others as you choose. See especially #5b, perhaps.
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Some of the Ways Creationism Hurts Christianity
1. Creationism/Intelligent Design Ridicules God by
a. making God into a tinkerer (and a poor one at that)
i. Bad designs - Human eye, dodo wings, sea turtle eggs, giraffe neck, horse fingers dev.
ii. Most of our DNA is useless, like a book with hundreds of pages of “sdrvsdrvsdrvsdrv”.
b. Making God evil- most species are parasites, wasp/spider, behavior alterers, matriphages, etc.
c. Making God deceptive - “the evidence for evolution was placed there by God to test our faith” -would a good God trick someone, then torture them for it? Created with “appearance of age.”
2. Creationism Ridicules the Bible by making Genesis literal
a. talking snakes - compare with flood or tower of Babel
b. incorrect order, water < land, birds < land mamls, trees < sea creatures, reads like myth
c. auditorium worldview (we live under a bowl or firmament)- are ark, Babel, real?
d. “nave observer” approach destroys reliability of Bible, such as Jesus’ miracles
e. Or, encourages Christians to make up unbiblical information and put it in the Bible
3. Makes Christians seem primitive and superstitious (anti-science)
a. Creation Moments type broadcasts regularly incorrect (deceptive?)
b. "To assert that the earth revolves around the sun is as erroneous as to claim that Jesus was not born of a virgin." - Robert Cardinal Bellarmine - -Trial of Galileo in 1615
c. Harmful to American competitiveness - not just biology, but physics, astronomy, archeology
i. Hottest area now is biotech (genetics, healthcare, biomimicry) - based on evolution
4. Causes Christians to lie (and therefore over time implying that Christianity causes lying)
a. Behe, Meyer, Hovind, Gish and others lying repeatedly, Dover testimony perjury
b. Encourages Christians to (unknowingly?) spread lies - see nearly any creo website for numerous examples of well disproven falsehoods
i. Lady Hope, claims that Arch. is a fake, that C14 can’t be used, moon dust, common deception using quote mining (such as Darwin eye quote), Paluxy track hoax, Plesiosaur caught by trawler, etc.
5. Effectiveness
a. Does it cause millions of people to leave Christianity? (% Atheists have doubled since 1980)
b. Creationist are often inside Christianity, thus more effective than Dawkins, Harris - who are often just offensive. But creationists can much more easily get themselves listened to by other Christians, who soon find out about what creationism really is, and then sometimes leave Christianity due to the “Christian” behavior they saw.
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Let’s try to address some other questions raised on this thread:
But in all the years so far that creation science has been around, has there every been any solid (objective) evidence that the world was created?
OK, first, as others have pointed out, creationism is an irrefutable hypothesis - that means, a meaningless statement that says nothing about the real world. For example - let’s say that I claimed that the evil wizard of oz on the distant planet X controls all our weather. No matter what weather we get, I can say “see, that’s what he wanted to happen”. Similarly for any conceivable piece of evidence, a creationist can say “that’s the way God created it”. Irrefutable hypotheses purchase their invulnerability by saying absolutely nothing about the real world. If they did, then that would be a testable point, and thus make them refutable. A refutable hypothesis would be, say, “the world began less than 10,000 years ago with today’s animals in their present form”.
Because creationism (the claim that God created the world) is an irrefutable hypothesis, there is practically no evidence that COULD prove it. For instance, imagine any possible evidence, for instance, finding that rabbit fossils appearing suddenly in the geologic strata before any other vertebrates. This would suggest that they didn’t evolve from earlier forms, but wouldn’t be evidence that God created them, since they could have spontaneously created themselves, or been beamed in from another dimension, or what have you. So no, there hasn’t been any evidence supporting creationism, nor will there ever be.
OK, so what can we do with evidence? We can test real, and testable, hypotheses. For instance, the hypothesis that life developed from earlier forms. Because no practical evidence can support an irrefutable hypothesis like creationism, creationists normally spend their time attacking what they see as rival hypotheses, such as evolution. The hypothesis of evolution has been tested literally millions of times by many different fields of science (such as anatomy, geology, genetics, pathology, neurology, chemistry and others) using many different methods. In practically all cases, the results have been consistent with our current understanding of evolution (not always our past understanding, because our understanding of evolution has evolved a bit itself). We have a stronger set of data confirming evolution than we do that the earth orbits the sun, or that the civil war occurred. So, even if we give up on evidence in favor of creationism, and instead look for evidence against evolution, we don’t have it - instead we have literally mountains of data confirming evolution, despite the fact that hypotheses based on evolution could very well be shown to be incorrect - that’s just not what the data says. The most common creationist tactic is perhaps to take evidence that confirms evolution and then use a variety of pseudoscientific techniques to discredit that evidence. For instance arguing that ontology doesn’t show evolutionary vestiges because Haeckel forged some drawings. Not only is this fallacious because the ontological evidence still stands despite Haeckel, but even if the ontological evidence did refute evolution, that in itself wouldn’t be evidence in support of creationism, unless an hypothesis were made which was actually supported by the evidence.
In a similar vein, we could look for evidence supporting real (refutable) hypotheses that are consistent with creationism and not consistent with evolution. For instance, the hypothesis that “the earth is less than 10,000 years old”, or that “aquatic species are able to breathe water” (which is suggested by the idea that a designer designed them). In cases such as these, one can come up with a list of ways to test them - varves or dendrochronology, for instance, for the 10,000 year hypothesis, or simply looking at the breathing mechanisms of all aquatic species for the second hypothesis.
It’s not hard to come up with a bunch of similar, real, testable, hypotheses - as well as ways to test them. In all of those cases that I’m aware of, the hypotheses consistent with creationism are not supported by the evidence, unless they are also consistent with evolution. For instance (see the previous two hypotheses), there are many ways that the earth has been shown to be older than 10,000 years, and many aquatic species can’t breathe water - often resulting in their death. Here is a thread having some: http://
EvC Forum: REAL Flood Geology -->
EvC Forum: REAL Flood Geology
You might like to start a thread asking for other real hypotheses that are consistent with creationism if you want more - many people here are scientists, and coming up with hypotheses is often part of our jobs.
Those would all be opportunities to actually see if the evidence supports them, but like I said, it doesn’t except for when the hypothesis is also equally consistent with evolution. Perhaps this would be what creation science should be - making refutable hypotheses consistent with creationism, and then testing them - NOT to prove creationism, but rather to see if the hypothesis is supported by the evidence, being willing to junk the hypothesis if it is not supported.
If I can make a difference in a few hundreds peoples lives, and get them to more focus on what is right from God, then, thats is what I will do. IT is part of my calling. We as a church, and a body of Christ should only be following the two greatest commandments. IT is pretty simple, and all this creation science, and gems, and orbs, do not fit into those descriptions.
I think this is a very important point. It’s hard to predict the future, but in the past, views that were inconsistent with the real world eventually were recognized as such, even if that process took a long time and much gnashing of teeth. I think of the Copernican revolution, the idea of a spherical earth, Newtonian physics, the efficacy of idolatry to cure a head cold, the idea that women became pregnant at random (without sperm), and on and on. As such, it seems likely to me that creationism will lose favor. If Christianity has by then tied itself tightly to it, creationism could hurt Christianity a lot. Or on the other hand, if people like you help get the church past the charlatanry and deception required to sustain creationism (and gems-in-the-lawn, and orbs, and snakehandling, and poison drinking, and . .), then maybe Christianity will survive as a healthy spiritual path.
I’ll be out for the weekend. All the best-
-Equinox
PS. As far as where to start with your pastor, perhaps one good way to start would be to slowly and clearly go through case after case after case of clear and undeniable creationist deception to reveal how utterly immoral they often are. Maybe the Darwin eye quote mine, the Paluxy hoax, the Lady Hope story, the moon dust, the japanese plesiosaur, the deception used to say that the flagellum can't evolve, etc. There are many more to list, so I'd focus on the ones I was most comfortable with.
There are plenty of places to start with your pastor, maybe the idea that evolution shows how wonderful God's creation is (that it can change freely), or how supported evolution is. I'm suggesting the above method (exposing the deceptions), but you may know a better way.
Edited by Equinox, : Added PS
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