Because creationists get themselves elected to schoolboards and then teach creationism as science.
Thanks for the responses, lots of excellent points! I don’t think I worded my OP very well. I kinda rushed it this morning, trying to get it ouot before going to work.
No, I don’t have a cite regarding theclaim that religious leaders were concerned with low church attendance. I’ve heard plenty of info about that, and assumed it was common knowledge. Here in Canada churches have had to close due to low attendance.
As for the money thing, churches are a business. They need money to operate. They get money by having people come into church and donate. Again I’d assume this was common knowledge. I didn’t mean they are all scamming the poor parishoners, but yes, they do depend on attendance and donations to stay open.
As well, I was speaking of creationists specifically, the Ken Hamms, Gishes and Hovinds of the world. Yes, I think those people are lying scumbags.
I’ve had lots of conversations with people who tend towards creationism. One fellow said specifically he argues against evolution because it’s a threat to his church. Not to ‘my eternal soul’ or ‘salvation’, and certainly not because he sincerely beleives evolution is wrong, no, it’s a threat to the church.
Yes, this is a much superior way of putting what I was thinking than what I wrote 
On the bright side I did have a conversation with a guy who turned out to be an old earth creationist. He was much more reasonable. I showed him Hovinds info, which he had never seen before and he laughed.
Yeah, and? Creationists support churches.
Now, maybe if you could convince them creationism is an atheist plot to make religion look so ridiculous that the moderates leave…
Low church attendance is not the problem with the OP.
Churches needing to operate is not the problem with your OP, either.
The problem was that you stated the chucrches with these problem decided to use fear of science as a marketing ploy.
Cite? Is for that.
However, the problem with your assertion is that it is historically wrong. Creationism arose at a time when religious belief was very stable and growing and it has flourished during periods when religious belief was actually on the upswing. The first Creationist efforts occurred in the midst of the third Great Awakening when religious groups in the U.S. were in the midst of a powerful expansion. The most recent “outbreak” of Creationism occurred at a time when the most conservative religious groups were thriving while “Liberal Christianity,” (the movement most open to accepting the Theory of Evolution), had begun to decline.
If one’s premise is in error, it is unlikely that one’s conclusions will stand up to scrutiny.
As Blaster Master has pointed out, the notion that religious leaders are simply in the “business” to scam people out of their money is as silly as the belief of some religious people that Atheists “really do” believe in God, but are just rebelling for some reason. (We have adherents to the “It is a scam and they know it” on the SDMB, and they diminish their arguments when they resort to such nonsense. We have fewer adherents to the “Atheists are in a religion that just denies the God they know exists,” because this is not a comfortable place for such people to hang out, but we do see that silly claim from time to time.)
I’m not sure if it’s especially germane to the OP, but I thought I’d mention that if you are arguing Creationism v Evolution with a typical Creationist, you might bring up the point that “Creation Scientists” have actually had to finally accept the general premise of evolution that says DNA changes drive organism changes, and drive them to the point of speciation.
As Creationists have begun to grapple with the diversity of species, they’ve not only had to wrestly with things like Dinosaurs (Creationist theology requires Dinosaurs to have been on the ark) but also with the apparent impossibility of the ark carrying every described species of bird, mammal, insect, reptile, amphibian and so on. The solution has been to allow for “kinds” mentioned in the Biblical account to mean (loosely) “families” in traditional taxonomy. And without coming right out and saying it in so many words, that concept has been stretched so that the Ark would no longer have had to contain a million insect species, or 30,000 species of birds, mammals, reptiles and amphibians. Instead, each “kind” could have have descendants which morphed into the vast speciation we see today.
Of course, these Creation Scientists are still a bit vague on the specifics of how to define a “kind” exactly. Nevertheless, if you put “kind” somewhere between order and genus, you have an incredible amount of evolution going on post-flood. Way more evolution–at least, way more rapid evolution–than real evolution.
Kind of ironic, isn’t it? 
That’s one of the good things about the affair: there are “in between” positions that are (by definition?) less extreme than the hard-line young-earth creationists. One of the most nuanced is the “guided evolution” idea, where God picked and chose among mutations (and maybe nudged an asteroid from orbit) but avoided actions that would leave any evidence.
And the most austere of all, the deist position, that God simply set up the whole shebang, from the Big Bang, with the modern world as its destiny…all via natural laws!
Another thing to remember is that a great many scientists, even evolutionary scientists, are also religiously faithful. Religious faith and knowledge of evolution are not intellectually incompatible.
I have found that even this approach might not work. A “good” creationist will always have an answer to any question. I once asked one, “What happened to all the water?” He said that it drained into the earth’s interior through a hole in the bottom of the ocean.
You are right, of course. Not every Young Earth Creationist can be cured of their “science” positions. The ones that can’t, though, are ones who cannot grasp critical thinking in the first place, like your water guy.
There are also a handful of folks in the Creationist world educated enough to impress the scientifically naive, and many of the naive then simply choose to trust the Creationist Scientist instead of the Secular Scientist, without independently analyzing topics further. For example, I own a book by John Woodmorappe titled “Noah’s Ark: A Feasability Study,” that purports to answer every objection to the standard Flood myth. It’s chock full of graphs, tables, cites and scientific terminology. The actual rebuttals are comical, and general follow this pattern: Bats have been shown to eat “glop” instead of insects. Therefore bats would have survived a post-Ark world. Carrion has been shown to survive without skeletonization for months. Therefore carnivores would have eaten carrion instead of the surviving ungulates when the animals were all released from the Ark. And so on.
So there is definitely a category of folks so bound to their belief that they cannot think critically, or come to an obvious truth which contradicts their paradigm. I consider such folks no different psychologically from the average conspiracist, and therefore unsalvageable. These sorts are not going to open the door to evaluate a variety of choices if one of those choices might disrupt their entire paradigm.
[Kenneth Parcell]
Science was my most favorite subject, especially the Old Testament.
[/Kenneth Parcell]
As usual, most of you are missing, or at least skirting, the most important point regarding creationists vs science, and that is: the main threat to society from this conflict is the prospect of superstition supplanting science in the public school classroom. But, you’re going after the wrong target; it’s easy to point out that creationists are wrong (and it’s usually a waste of time arguing with them), but they aren’t the real enemy … it’s the unscrupulous politicians who are willing to trade the education and future of students for votes that enable their power-mongering in the present.
It might give you a feeling of superiority to berate creationists, but the politicians are the ones using the superstitious as pawns in their power games. You won’t change the minds of believers. Work on trying to change the careers of unethical politicians, that’s at least possible.
I politician who believes in Creationism is stupid, but not unethical if he pushes for laws he believes in. And the inly way to tell if one is stupid or merely pandering to the stupid for their votes is to get them to admit it. Good luck with that.
Attack Creationism on religious grounds !
- Unless the (Christian) Creationist is an Evangelical Protestant*, they are heretics.
Cite?
No need, really. That claim has already been refuted and I see no effort to defend it.
That’s just stupid. If he wanted to postulate some sort of “hollow Earth” scenario, he’d have done better to say that the Lord caused the core of the planet to expand (probably from Hell coming back up to normal operating temperature), causing the whole thing to blow up like a party balloon, so there would be too much surface for the water to cover.
Because it’s racist?
I once asked my Church of Christ grandmother how all species of animals could fit on the Ark. She replied, “God could shrink all those animals down. God can do anything.” There’s really no answer to that, at least none that will appeal to persons who do not have a scientific-materialist world-view.
If God can do anything, what did he need Noah, the Ark and/or the Flood itself for?
(how I usually respond to that)
Can someone do me a favor and define “Creationism”? My thoughts on the matter depend upon the way it is defined.