See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil

“By definition, no apparent, perceived or claimed evidence in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the scriptural record.”
~ AnswersinGenesis.org (http://www.answersingenesis.org/about/faith)

Of all the jaw-dropping statements made by Christians, this one takes the cake. Answers in Genesis is one of the biggest and most popular apologetics websites, giving Christian arguments in favor of the flood, the 6-day creation, the 6,000-year-old earth, and dinosaurs living with humans. But I believe that this statement in their “Statement of Faith” completely removes any integrity from its authors.

This quote is saying that before the folks at AnswersinGenesis.org look at any evidence, before they think about or approach the problem at all, they have already decided the outcome. They completely base their findings on their own preconceptions, preemptively plugging their ears and eyes and accepting only what they already assume. Their is no worse way to pursue truth than that.

The criticism I make here has been responded to by some, claiming that going off the authority of the Bible is no different than going off the authority of science. But science doesn’t operate off of authority. Claims in science aren’t true merely because someone said they are. The conclusions of scientists are based on evidence, and the evidence remains for all to see. Scientists know that their ideas must stand to the scrutiny of other scientists, who may not share their preconceptions. The way to do this is to make the case strong enough on the basis of evidence so that preconceptions don’t matter.

The history of science is filled with scientists accepting ideas contrary to their preconceptions. Examples include the reality of extinctions, the reality of meteors, meteors as causes of mass extinctions, ice ages, continental drift, bacteria as cause of ulcers, and of course, evolution. Scientists are not immune to being sidetracked by their preconceptions, but ultimately go where the evidence leads.

Scientists make a deliberate effort to remove subjectivity from their work, and do a good job in general of removing bias. They do such a good job, in fact, that what creationists really object to is the fact that scientists do no interpret evidence according to certain religious preconceptions.

- Evan

“Intelligent Design” = Religious Creationism

Creationism is a religious idea of the beginning of the universe. There have been as many creation myths as religions, and no one myth is better than the other. The high amount of Christianity in the United States has led to a movement seeking to belittle the scientific advances we’ve had on the origin of life and advance the Christian creation myth, having it taught as if it were science. The movement has made many claims that certain scientific facts back up creationism, but most of these claims have revealed the movement’s lack of scientific literacy and have been debunked. I will address these specific claims in later blogs, but today I will talk about the credibility of the creationism movement.

Merely believing in creationism is one thing, but many try to make it appear as a scientific theory, giving it a credible-sounding name (“Intelligent Design” or ID), wanting it taught in schools, and saying that it’s an “alternative” theory with much evidence in its favor, all the while making ill-informed criticisms of evolution. ID is not mainstream science as its proponents claim. The movement has shown itself time and time again to simply be a propaganda machine trying to give the appearance of respectability:

• a 2003 poll showed support for teaching of intelligent design, but was found to be falsely reported and worthless to begin with

• the Discovery Institute presented a bibliography listing reputable scientists who had dissented with evolution and supported ID. When the scientists were contacted, they said their work did not support ID or challenge evolution, and many said their work was evidence against ID

• in order to get their promotional video on television, the ID movement deliberately hid the fact that it was about intelligent design

On top of the ID movement’s dishonesty, the “theory” itself has no explanatory power. A theory has explanatory power if facts can be deduced from it, and no facts have ever been deduced from ID theory. It may try to account for things we see, but accounting for things means nothing towards a theory’s truth. For instance, I can use my new “it’s magic” theory (IM) to say why things are the way they are. Now my theory can account for any fact anywhere, but it’s about as far from science as you can get. A real theory that reflects the workings of our world makes predictions and produces facts. ID has done neither.

In order for creationism to even be plausible, you must first show that there is a God, which is impossible to do. The “evidence” that the creationism movement shows for God (alleged failings of evolution and the big bang) is the same “evidence” they use to try and validate creationism, so there is a circular argument going on. It is no mystery why the scientific community doesn’t acknowledge creationism as an alternative: it is clearly motivated by religious theology and lacks the properties of a scientific theory.

- Evan

School Science Projects > Creationism

Remember when you were in elementary school and you had to do a science project? The steps of your project were to line up with the scientific method, which was taught to you in science class. Here were the steps:

- Ask a question
- Do background research
- Construct a hypothesis
- Test your hypothesis (perform an experiment)
- Analyze your data
- Draw a conclusion

Creationism claims to be scientific. The main argument of creationism is that life appears designed, and is too complex to have arisen naturally. Therefore, the Christian god designed all life. The problem with this is that they skip all the actual science of the scientific method. I have never heard a creationist hypothesis (in the form of “if I do this, then this should happen”), and I have never heard of any creationist experiments or collected data. So let’s plug creationism into the scientific method:

- Ask a question: From where did life originate?
- Do background research: Life is very complex, it could not have arisen naturally (even though evolution has shown that it can), and the Bible says God created life.
- Construct a hypothesis: *missing*
- Test you hypothesis: *missing*
- Analyze your data: *missing*
- Draw your conclusion: God did indeed design and create all life.

The sentence “if life is complex, then God created it” is not a hypothesis, let alone a theory. It is not testable, because God is an immaterial being that does not show himself in any knowable way. There is no known sign or mark that he would leave on material things to show that he has intervened. The only things that are testable are physical realities.

From this, we can safely say that your science project in elementary school was more scientific that creationism (if you did it right!).

- Evan

Life: Complex and Clumsy

Many proponents of intelligent design (ID) claim that life is too complex to be the result of natural processes, and therefore must’ve been designed. To this argument I have the following responses:

1) Even if the complexity of life were unexplainable by evolution, it wouldn't give evidence of design.
2) Complexity is not the same as design. There are simple things that are designed and complex things that arise naturally (cave formations, weather patterns).
3) In known designs, innovations that occur in one product quickly get incorporated into others, but in eukaryotic life, innovations stay confined to one lineage.
4) In design, form follows function. Yet life shows examples of different forms with the same function (differing wings of birds, bats, insects, and pterodactyls), as well as similar basic forms with different function (same bone patterns in human hand, whale flipper, dog paw, and bat wing). This shows that life lacks a plan; there are no optimal specifications for living processes and structures.
5) Life is indeed complex, but doesn’t design aim for simplicity?
6) In almost all designs, the manufacturing process is separate from the design itself. Living things replicate themselves.
7) Life is wasteful. Many organisms do not get to reproduce, and most fertilized eggs die before growing much. Good design would minimize this waste.
8) Life itself shows poor design. There are parts that were jury-rigged out of other parts that were used for another purpose. The result is a form that is functional but is not optimal (many organisms have parts that are not even functional!). This is what we would expect from evolution, not from intelligent design.
9) Evolution itself can be considered a design process, and the complexity and arrangement we see in life is much closer to what we would expect from an evolutionary, accumulative design process than a purposeful, intelligent designer.
10) Some systems, like a cell or the human body, are irreducibly complex, meaning that if you remove one certain part, the whole system fails. But contrary to creationist argument, irreducible complexity shows a lack of design. For the designer’s purpose of keeping the creature alive, you would not want systems that would fail if any one part fails. You would want a robust system.
11) If complexity in life indicates a designer, then what about non-living things? Rocks and lava aren’t complex. Neither are solar systems and galaxies. These things are simply collections of matter mindlessly following natural laws. If complexity and purposefulness truly indicate a designer, does simplicity and purposelessness indicate no designer?
12) There are several evolutionary mechanisms that can result in irreducible complexity: deletion of parts, addition of multiple parts (sometimes accidental replication of entire systems), change in function, and gradual modification of parts. These observed mechanisms make irreducible complexity completely plausible.

Claiming intelligent design of the universe based off of life’s complexity and functionality has no ground to stand on. Combine that with the complete lack of evidence, predictions, and scientific research that ID has generated, it is safe to say that ID is a belief based on religious theology, not on evidence.

- Evan

The Universe: a double-edged sword

We live in a beautiful and mysterious place. On Earth, our skies are a calming shade of blue, our clouds are fluffy and white, and our atmosphere burns up incoming meteorites and filters out dangerous radiation. Our plant life is green and vibrant, and provides our planet with vital oxygen that it would not otherwise have. Our animals are intriguing, beautiful, and extremely varied, each occupying a niche of its environment and serving a purpose in the food chain, a food chain that gives life on Earth autonomy. We are at an ideal distance from our sun, and our own moon stabilizes Earth’s climate, which is among the reasons why terrestrial life has flourished here. Even the planet Jupiter, with its massive gravitational influence, acts like shield for life on Earth, deflecting countless rogue comets and asteroids.

It seems as if everything here is perfect. Everything is fine-tuned, and it all promotes our existence. How could this place not have been made for us? The answer comes from simply looking at what we have in context with the forces of the Earth and the cosmos that would have us dead. For brevity, I have included only a fraction of these:

The Cosmos:
1) 65 million years ago, an asteroid unsympathetically struck our planet, and wiped out all but a few tendrils of the tree of life. The universe does not care that we are alive; we are participants in it, and are susceptible to its destructive forces.
2) Gamma-ray bursts are the most violent explosions in the universe. They most often occur in other galaxies, but are so powerful that they are visible to the naked eye from 10 billion lightyears away (the other side of the universe!). They are highly directional and very rare, but if one were to strike Earth, every point on the planet would experience something similar to standing a mile away from an atomic bomb.
3) In 5 billion years, our sun will turn into a red giant, engulfing our planet.
4) The Milky Way galaxy is on a one-way collision course with the Andromeda galaxy.
5) The laws of nature are NOT perfect for life. 99.9999% of the volume of the known universe will kill life instantly (heat, radiation, cold).

The Earth:
1) Earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, volcanos, hurricanes, lightning strikes, attacks from other life forms (including deadly plants and animals, infections, and other humans).
2) 99% of all life that has ever lived on Earth is now extinct.
3) We can’t live on 2/3 of the Earth’s surface, we could freeze or starve on half of what remains.

I am thankful to be alive and to live on Earth. But when I look at all the events of Earth and the universe (not just the good ones), I see that this place is in no way perfectly tuned for our existence.

- Evan