Speaking as an ex-creationist, I think I’d have to say that serious debate within the creationist camp is both sparse and feeble; the whole setup exists to (attempt to) create an shield around the faithful, impenetrable to evolution; it doesn’t actually seem to matter much that this barrier is composed of grossly contradictory elements, just as long as it fends off evolution.
It isn’t uncommon, for example, to debate a creationist and have them tergiversate back and forth between incompatible arguments (for example “All the evidence points to a young Earth” one moment and “God created Adam and the Earth in a mature state” the next).
Creationism isn’t a quest for truth or fact, it is a search for anything at all that will make evolution go away.
Would I be considered an OEC if I belived that God was the spark behind abiogenesis and that everything else evolved from that? If not, what would I be?
Lord Ashtar: I’m actually willing to go further and postulate that there may have been “intelligent design” taking place incrementally over the couse of evolution. That’s “god of the gaps” thinking, but what the hey, at least I am keeping it in the gaps.
I’m not trying to squabble about your beliefs, but I am curious; Why would God need to operate this way? I confess that I’m an atheist, but I don’t understand why God would need to continually interfer with his creation to correct it. Why couldn’t he set the whole thing up to go accordingly to his plan from the get-go?
(his plan being to evolve intelligence, not necessarily human intelligence)
I think that’s probably true, but this reminds me that I had originally intended to include a disclaimer with my previous endorsement of Finding Darwin’s God.
I don’t buy Miller’s arguments in favor of theism. In my opinion, his arguments for evolution and against creationism are solid and well-constructed. When he starts trying to use quantum physics to argue that science doesn’t necessarily negate the possibility of the existence of God, it stops being a book about evidence and science and starts being a book about trying to find someplace that God can still exist. Miller takes some creationists to task for trying to shoehorn God into the gaps in scientific knowledge, hoping that God will be ‘safe’ from disproof where science has not yet found definitive answers, but then he pretty much does the same thing except he chooses to shoehorn God into a place where he knows there will never be a definitive answer: quantum indeterminacy. Cop out!
I am also an ex-creationist, and I have been/seen what Mangetout describes. Creationism, old or young, is purely about fact avoidance. It has nothing to do with evidence, truth or honesty. It is a desperate attempt to keep the faithful safe from the evils of Doubt, Dispair and Meaninglessness. Not to mention Amorality.
If it isn’t already taken, I propose FordPrefect’s Law, which postulates that the longer a discussion on evolution between and non-theistic evolutionist and a creationist goes the probability that the creationist will say, “Well, why don’t you go raping and killing if it doesn’t mean anything!” approaches one.
(My apologies to Gaudere and Godwin )
Research and development. Each design element had to be proven in the field before additional refinements could be added, just like with the evolution of, say, aircraft. This fits in with puctuated equilibrium, since prototypes are built in small numbers before being put into production with few additional changes. “Intelligent” design, maybe; omnipotent design, not neccessarily.
I was at a planetarium show recently where we heard about the Earth’s age (4.5 billion years), and the age of the universe (many more billions of years).
YECs would of course object and say that the Earth is quite young, but how do they ponder the rest of the galaxy and the universe? Same response? Same denials?
They tend to use variations on the same arguments that they use for a young Earth for the rest of the universe.
[ul]
[li]God created everything so that it looks old, including light already on its way from distant stars.[/li]
[li]Satan created all the evidence for an old universe.[/li]
[li]Scientists are lying, there’s no evidence for an old universe.[/li][/ul]
I believe that Og created this thread 10 minutes ago and planted all this stuff to test my faith in him. I know for SURE by FAITH ALONE that this is not a years old thread, but really just a few minutes.
Genesis 1:1 has “the heaven and the earth” created at the same time; creation of the Sun and the Moon happens in the same week (a period of seven twenty-four-hour days, according to the Young Earthers) as the separation of Earth’s continents and seas, creation of plant and animal life, etc. True blue Young Earth Creationists thus think the whole thing–Earth, Moon, Sun, stars, quasars–was created six or ten thousand years ago.
Their arguments to support their views about the age of the Universe are about as convincing as their arguments about the age of Earth specifically.
The existence of numerous fossils of numerous extinct species would show that God is either incompetent (He created things that could not survive), or a sadist (He created thinks just so He could watch them die), or a malicious joker (He created fossils just to mess with our heads).
No rational creator would have distributed currently living species geographically in the way that they actually are distributed, particularly in ecologically isolated environments such as oceanic islands and mountain peaks. (This is what actually tipped both Darwin and Wallace off to the fact that OEC, the orthodoxy in their day, could not be true, whereas, as they realized, evolution provides a very neat explanation of the biogeographical facts that they independently discovered. This is why the Galapagos - an unusually isolated group of islands - and their finches in particular, are so famous, as having provided the vital evidence that led Darwin to embrace evolutionism.)
Thus, if OEC is true, the Creator is an incompetent lunatic or a sadistic one. That conclusion is unacceptable to anyone who might otherwise be inclined to embrace creationism, which is why most mainstream Christians who have a clue (about either biology or mainstream Christian traditions of Biblical exegesis) embraced evolutionary theory long ago. Basically, this is what originally convinced Darwin himself, too.
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