A Celebration of Ignorance

Creationists want "their side" inserted into science textbooks. However, they have no real interest in teaching school children about actual controversies in science. How do I know? Just look at the subjects they focus on: origins of life, and common descent (evolution). They are totally uninterested in any other area (they'll get to cosmology eventually), because their real goal is to make the classroom safe for their narrow interpretation of Genesis.

The science textbooks take the approach that, after hundreds of years of scientific progress in understanding the natural world in terms of physical processes, there is in every likelihood a natural chain of events leading from non-life to life (even if we never figure it out). After all, the reasoning might go, here we are. Trying to stay clear of a confrontation with a multitude of religious claims, the textbooks do not attempt an analysis of natural versus super-natural causation. What they do teach is the consensus view of our understanding of the natural world (albeit always a few years out-of-date).

The creationists here are coming from a different viewpoint - they already know God "poofed" everything into existence 6,000 years ago, and so reject any claim that a natural chain of events led to life, because they "know" that is not how it was done.

Just as with ID, even if we can't figure out HOW it could have happened, this does not mean that God did it via a supernatural event- it just means that we have not figured it out. So we are back to the classic God-in-the-gaps explanation. YEC-ers argue for gaps in our understanding where they can say, "see, God did it." Inevitably, the gaps reconfigure, and the YEC-ers are forced to say "What I meant was, God did that."

Compare this with geocentrism in Martin Luther's time. The gap was different, but the approach is the same.

Quote:

"Scripture simply says that the moon, the sun, and the stars were placed in the firmament of the heaven, below and above which heaven are the waters... It is likely that the stars are fastened to the firmament like globes of fire, to shed light at night... We Christians must be different from the philosophers in the way we think about the causes of things. And if some are beyond our comprehension like those before us concerning the waters above the heavens, we must believe them rather than wickedly deny them or presumptuously interpret them in conformity with our understanding." - Martin Luther, Luther's Works. Vol. 1. Lectures on Genesis, ed. Janoslaw Pelikan, Concordia Pub. House, St. Louis, Missouri, 1958, pp. 30, 42, 43.

Martin Luther based his geocentrism on the Bible (just like YECs), he denied the evidence in deference to his interpretation of Scripture (just like YECs), and he was demonstrably wrong (just like the YECs).

The YEC position results in:

• a celebration ignorance (God acts only where we don't know what happened - as soon as it is explained "scientifically" God disappears from view),
• discouraging real science (any attempt to demonstrate the "hows" of a gap are seen as part of an anti-God agenda), and
• distorting our educational system (instead of learning about the world, the classroom is given over to partisan wrangling about the validity of the Genesis account of creation).

So not only do I think the YEC approach is flawed as both an approach to biblical interpretation AND as science; it also shrinks God to fit into a set of ever-diminishing, tawdry gaps.

Dinosaurs and Humans? Oh No!

The belief that dinosaurs and humans could have lived at the same time is an idea that has been kept alive past its time. The evidence for human and dinosaur co-existence seems to be:

1. Biblical references to behemoth and leviathan, assumed to be actual creatures and dinosaurs,
2. Literary references to dragons (said dragons assumed to be dinosaurs),
3. Cave paintings believed to depict dinosaurs contemporary with the humans who drew them, and
4. Human and dinosaur footprints in the same rock.

Arguing against humans and dinosaur’s having co-existed:

1. The plants and animals found with dinosaurs are not the same plants and animals found with humans (not even close). No modern plants or animals have been found with dinosaurs, for example, and no plants or animals found with dinosaurs have been found with human remains.
2. Dinosaurs and humans are not found in the same strata. For example, in Kansas, dinosaurs can be found in the remains of a shallow sea, while people are found in the remains of a vast plain. Note that the biblical references to behemoth and leviathan refer to these creatures as being alive in the author’s lifetime, so they all could not have died off pre-flood.
3. Unlike other extinct creatures that humans interacted with (the mammoth, for instance), there are no artifacts demonstrating interaction. We have found mammoth bones scored by spears, charred bones of mammoths in trash heaps, carved mammoth tusks, etc. There have been no such finds involving dinosaurs.
4. Ancients ran across dinosaur fossils as well, and tales of large creatures could easily have come from these bones – just as our dinosaur stories in our popular culture have. Furher, dragons don't actually look or act much like dinosaurs (except that they are both large).
5. The Bible's references to dinosaurs? There isn't any. The Bible refers to creatures known to the readers - and we have no evidence that dinosaurs lived with people (remember the evidence for human-mammoth interaction - and this is in pre-literate, pre-historic cultures; by the times of the Bible, we are dealing with literate cultures where we would have every reason to expect dinosaurs to show up, just like bears, lions, locusts and a host of other clearly identifiable animals do, in paintings, in literature, in "scientific" treatises, etc.).
   
6. The claims of human footprints found in the same rock with dinosaurs have turned out to be made in error. Even a quick Google of the subject puts the claims to rest (sure, some people still support the idea, but there is no substantive evidence - none at all).
   

Notice how these points have nothing to do with the age of the earth or evolution. Of course, when you place humans and dinosaurs in their proper timeframes (tens of millions of years apart) it is obvious that they never co-existed. When you compare the kind of plants that existed during the reign of the dinosaurs with the vegetation human's evolved around, it is clear that a large span of time separates us from dinosaurs. Even setting these arguments aside, however, there is simply no basis on which to conclude that humans and dinosaurs ever met face-to-face.

There is a big difference between explaining how something could be true, and actually looking at the evidence we have, and concluding it actually IS true. You can believe that humans and dinosaurs lived at the same time only if you look at a small sub-section of the evidence, and present that sub-section in the best possible light. Look at all the evidence, and subject that evidence to critical thinking, and you realize that people and dinosaurs never met.

What Do We Mean by Special Creation?

Special Creation is the term creationists use when they want to say that God created the world, and everything in it, pretty much the way we see it today. Further, they contend that He created it all at once, bypassing the natural processes and mechanisms we see at work around us in the universe. So while we see proto-stars, this is not how God made the current stars, though we see material from which planets will form, and material left over from planets that have formed, this is not how God made the planet we are on. Though we have discovered vast plates on which all the surface of the earth rides, these had nothing to do with the formation of the land masses we now see. Though we see evolution at work every day, evolution is not the process through which the diversity of life developed. It is true that some creationists recognize that natural forces are at work in the world, and ascribe trivial changes to them - but creationism ascribes the vast majority of the natural world to a 6 day stretch of time during which everything simply came to be.

Is there any scientific support for the idea of special creation? That is, can the facts we observe about the natural world be reconciled with the idea of a recent (6,000 year) earth, brought into existence over a 6-day period of time? The simple and best answer is no. At every level you look at it, the account of creation in Genesis 1 does not stand up as a "scientific" explanation of how the world was created. For me at least, this does not mean that it is not true - it is a declaration of freedom from bondage to the elemental forces thought to rule the earth - not a scientific explanation of the earth's construction.

It turns out that creation is a metaphor for processes that were not understood at the time, and for which people had neither the world-view, technology or even vocabulary to comprehend. And like all metaphors, it breaks down when you push it to the level of detail required to see the world as it is.

Take the opening sentence "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." When we contemplate these words, we most likely think of the familiar picture of a blue earth resting in vast space. This is not what the original hearers imaged at all - they pictured a vast sea, on which the earth, plate-like, rested on pillars. More pillars supported a dome of sky, and above that, the heavens - the place where God literally dwelt. Below the earth was a place of danger and chaos, where the dead went. The entire world was centered on the middle east, and Australia, North and South America did ot exist. Even much of Asia, India and Europe were unknown, or the merest fables. Ships kept close to the shore for fear of getting lost or eaten by monsters, women and children were property, slaves were a natural part of everyday life, and the world was ruled by powerful and unseen forces, investing all of nature with supernatural menace - capricious gods and spirits who had to be placated at every turn. This is the world pictured by the hearers of Genesis 1.

And where do we live now? In a world with 10,000 species of micro-organisms in a GRAM of soil. In a world where there are 350,000 species of beetle, where we can see the evidence of the slow shift of continents, and find the fossils of - not just strange creatures who have gone extinct- but entire ecosystems (plant and animal) who have developed and died out not just once or twice, but over and over during the 4.5 billion year history of the planet. Seas have formed and dried up, only to be replaced by plains, mountains have thrust seabeds into the sky, entire mountain ranges have been washed into the oceans - not once, but many times. We are not just related to the other apes - we share something like 98% of our DNA with them.

Yes life is wonderful and amazingly complex, and yes, there are still things we have not figured out - but one thing we have figured out is that we were not created 6,000 years ago from the dust of the earth.

If not us, then who?

While we are all living our lives with a "it could never happen here" philosophy, people are moving into the vacuums created by our non-involvement.

No one around to demand integrity and accountability in politics? The unscrupulous and opportunistic step into their niches.

No one willing to preach the gospel of Christ, knowing what it will do to their TV ratings and "free-will" offerings? Tell people what they want to hear - appeal to their vanity, their pride, their weaknesses, their fears, their prejudices.

No one around to insist that capitalism be balanced with compassion and concern for 'the commons?" Corporations take it as their duty to maximize profit - no matter what it does to people, society or the environment.

We drop duty, service, mercy from our personal values? People get ahead by being selfish and self-serving, and entire industries arise to help them along.

We humans have a remarkable ability to shape our environment - and the shape of that environment determines the behaviors required to succeed. We create and strengthen our environments by every action we take – which is why character matters, and why mercy and compassion matters, and what gives meaning to duty and sacrifice and service.

If not us, then who?

Can A Christian Color Outside the Lines?

Have you read Acts 1:9 where Luke writes about Jesus' ascension into heaven:

"After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight."

Do we think that heaven is up in the air, above the dome of the sky? The disciples seemed to think so.

Do we think that heaven is anywhere in this physical realm at all?

If heaven is not "away beyond the blue," then why did Jesus travel up a few hundred feet in the air, and then disappear behind a cloud? And where did he go? And why couldn't he have just gone there from right on the ground?

Of course, it is fine to say that there may be things about heaven we do not understand (surely we understand little or nothing) - but we can be fairly certain that heaven is located in no physical place that we can see, or reach, or locate on a map or celestial chart. In any event, we can be pretty certain that heaven is in no place that required Jesus to lift up off the ground and disappear behind a cloud.

So why did he do it? Is there a sense of theater here, playing to the expectations of the disciples? Is Jesus meaning to teach something about the location of heaven, or is he underscoring that that is indeed where he was headed? Certainly the disciples would have seen this as an unambiguous act by Jesus - literally ascending into heaven. The creeds affirm as much. It certainly cannot mean the same thing to us - we've seen what is "up there" and it is space and a planetary system and very distant stars.

So yes, science can make us take a new look at the Bible - and it "makes us look" whether we want to or not. We do not read the bible or experience the world in the same way Abraham or Moses or John or Paul did. We cannot make it otherwise - except by imposing ignorance through the process of demolishing science. This is just what well-meaning people do when they insist that matters of faith be taught as if they were scientifically demonstrated facts. When any heartfelt belief can be legislated into science, then science is in danger of losing its essential character, and truth becomes a word meaning only the opinion promoted most forcefully.

In the name of piety, there certainly are those who are taking an axe to the tree of science. They will be shocked to discover that what grows up is a crop of weeds - all claiming to be beautiful flowers of truth. Let's hope that someone is always around to stop such senseless vandalism - and let's resolve to be that someone.

“Proving” God's Power and Might

I believe the driving force behind "creation science" and Intelligent Design is the desire to demonstrate, in concrete terms, that God exists and impacts the natural world.

From the faith position, the argument goes something like this (I am generalizing about many evangelical and conservative Christians -I realize that this does not represent the experience or beliefs of all people of faith):

A large number of people believe in God. They base this belief on a combination of personal experience and revelation. We have books that claim to contain the words and acts of God. We have subjective experiences that we believe are the result of God interacting with us. We observe effects in our life and in the social, political and natural world that we attribute to the activities of God.

From these experiences and observations, we come to believe that God has a tangible impact on our lives and the workings of the world. By tangible impact, we mean measurable, noticeable - that God is potent and effective. Isaiah 55:10-11:

quote:

---

10 As the rain and the snow
come down from heaven,
and do not return to it
without watering the earth
and making it bud and flourish,
so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater,

11 so is my word that goes out from my mouth:
It will not return to me empty,
but will accomplish what I desire
and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.

---

The success of science in the past few hundred years has been to describe how the world works without reference to God (not in denial of God, but reflecting the understanding that supernatural intervention is not needed for all natural processes so far identified). So far, no cause-and-effect has been demonstrated to depend on God, and no experiments have been successful in detecting God's activities.

To be sure, there are many, many stories of things happening that are attributed to God - healings, recoveries, fortuitous happenings, incredible coincidences, chains of events leading to results that people feel can only be the action of God - but so far, no way to demonstrate that belief in the laboratory or in the field to a "scientific" level of proof.

This stands in stark contrast to the success of science in understanding how the natural world works.

The "creation science" and ID movement is an attempt to rectify this imbalance by demonstrating the power and effectiveness of God in terms that cannot be denied. So far, this attempt has not been successful. This has resulted in some people of faith "declaring victory" anyway, and trying to convince the rest of the world that areas of uncertainly, complexity and debate represent the genuine activity of God. The world's response has been skeptical.

For now, it seems that the kind of hard proof people of faith are looking for is not forthcoming. It makes sense to keep looking - but integrity demands that we be up front about how the search is going - full of confidence and faith, yes, but declaring victory - not yet.

Of course, there is another approach - to consider the possiblity that the world that science uncovers is the world God has made. God may not be detectable via science because what science reveals is what God does - all of it. In ways that we obviously do not understand, perhaps God makes his will known though what we perceive to be the natural processes we experience everyday. If this is true, then we will never (or always) find God via science. This does not make science any less useful, but it can make science less threatening.

Science and Religion Both Faith-Based?

Do scientists who accept evolution have equivalent a priori assumptions (old earth, evolution, common ancestor etc.) that causes them to process all facts through a filter that can yield only support for their assumption? That is, are YEC and evolution two faith-based competing theories?

I do not think so, because there are many, many independent lines of evidence that do not make sense in a YEC interpretation of Genesis, but do make sense in the context of evolution and common descent. And of course, this is how the theory developed. A YEC scientist (Darwin) went out and looked around, and realized what the facts he observed led to - evolution. After some rather contentious debate, other scientists came to the same conclusions. Years later, thousands of scientists recognize that evolution makes sense of the facts, whereas special creation does not. Some of these facts include the geological column and the fossils indexed to them, psuedogenes, broken genes, junk DNA, greater similarity correlating with shared ancestry, etc. etc.

So you have evolution emerging from the systematic observation of facts about the world, and the YEC approach coming from an assumption about how to interpret Genesis 1.

While science does not have anything to say about the existence of God, it does have things to say about things that have and have not happened in the natural world. When your confidence in God is tied to the accuracy of statements about the natural world contained in books of revelation, then science is in the uncomfortable position of “disproving” some possible interpretations of that revelation (Genesis can’t be both "true in a scientific sense" and teach that the world is 6,000 years old, for instance, if science is a reliable guide to nature).

Unfortunately for creationists, criticism of our evolution is not the same thing as defending the Genesis account of creation. It may be that mutation and natural selection are not the only forces acting on species to cause evolution. This just means that the theory will get better over time – that there is more to learn. While the theory of evolution will change and grow, there is no reason to expect that the evidence will suddenly start pointing to special creation, a global flood, and a young earth.

None of this rules out the possibility that God designed the universe, especially if He did it in some way that is beyond our detection – and in a way that also preserves the true random nature of the cosmos. This is a position that cannot be proved or disproved by science – two people look at the same facts, some see God, some see chance.

So faith and science two faith assumptions? Christians challenged to believe the Bible or believe science? I don’t think so. Do the findings of science challenge our beliefs? Of course. All Christians used to believe that the Bible taught geocentrism – today, YEC-ers argue strongly that the Bible teaches no such thing. The reason everyone agrees on this point is because scientists demonstrated a fact about the world (heliocentrism) that no one can successfully dispute. Like it or not, we have to test our interpretations of revelation against our real world experience. Science is a tool that magnifies and strengthens our ability to think accurately about our world. And that is all it does – but that is quite a lot.