Are creationists liars or scientifically challenged?

The foolish notion of creationism or ID has been proven to be unscientific and illogical. The debate has been over for some time and ID has lost. Every argument for ID has been debunked rather easily. Many books have answered all of the creationist ridiculous claims. One of the best rebuttals is covered in "Atheist Universe" by David Mills because it is explained in layman's terms. I suggest that creationists read this before they embarrass themselves with the usual arguments that have already been dismissed. This brings me to my point. There are only two options when it comes to creationists, 1) They are incapable of understanding the science which so clearly exposes ID as foolishness, or 2) They are in denial and they intentional use fallacies and twist facts to support their position, making them liars. For those people that fall into category (1) I strongly suggest educating yourself. For those of you in category (2) you are despicable.

Secularman:

You wrote, "Are creationists liars or scientifically challenged?"

The answer is neither. I have educated myself to a very large extent on these issues. It seems clear, though, through the argumenative tone of your original post that you aren't really interested in genuine debate or conversation on the issue.

As seems to so often be the case, you have taken the usual line of dismissing the creationist perspective as foolish rabble propounded by hopelessly uneducated Christians.

For the record, I am neither uneducated or foolish. Lets talk.

Secularman, i agree with you, however i don't think "Atheist Universe" is the best rebuttal of creationism. David Mills uses the argument of how germs evolve as a result of adapting to stonger pesticides. Yet he doesn't differenciate between micro and macro evolution. The creationist can easily handle Mr. Mills argument by saying "sure germs may evolve, but they still remain germs". I think CREATIONISM VS EVOLUTION by Ugene Scott, or Michael Shermers WHY DARWIN MATTERS, does a much better job.

Secularmean:

I sort of agree with your assessment, but perhaps in different words. There is another option 3) They really believe what they say (not liars, but dis-illusioned)

SWC

Pastor Chris says: "For the record, I am neither uneducated or foolish. Lets talk."

Ax: A very sensible response to a somewhat rude question. I propose an examination of the evidence offered by creationists and the methods employed by writers championing that cause. Most of us are dependant on "experts" for our information, and, as we should be be aware, all these experts have agendas (both sides of the table). Apologists seem to claim that scientists who don't agree with their perspectives must be biased, some kind of an agenda against religion, rather than just doing science. Do you agree with this accusation against scientists? Sure, some do, but do all who don't support creationism fall into this category? I can show you where many apologists deliberately misrepresent evidence, which makes them liars of a sort. It would be a mistake to categorize all apologists thusly, wouldn't you say?

I would like to add to this that scientists are trained to be objective and unbiased, and, as far as them doing science, I have not seen (I am part of the community) a scientist distort evidence to fit a conclusion (I cannot say it has never happened), and it likely does not happen very often. I HAVE seen scientist discard ideas because the evidence does not agree with it [several of them my own hypothesis :( ]

I HAVE seen creationists reject data because it does not agree with an idea, and very seldom have they rejected a "hypothesis" because, well, they are not "hypotheses" they are conclusions prior to evidence.

Bohemian man says: "...however i don't think "Atheist Universe" is the best rebuttal of creationism..."

Ax: After many decades of study, I find that no single source of "expert information" is the best. Every writer has some kind of agenda, even if it is an agenda of honest scholarship to the best of the writer's ability. We are ALL biased in some ways. I have a very strong bias against the idea that I am biased, for example.

May I suggest another source of rebuttal of creationism? This is an odd one, though. I suggest taking the works of those considered the champions of creationism, yes, the apologists. Read those books, then research their backgrounds and the critical reviews of their work. I have been consistently surprised by the "rest of the story". For example, on the Lehigh University webside, (where Micahel Behe works) the science department has published a disclaimer on his work as unscientific. You would think that if his work had scientific merit, he would have at least been able to impress a few of his collegues right next door to his own office.

Ax

Ha! Ha! Now that's something else ... the obvious Creationist rebuttal is "See, that's the bias we were talking about"

SWC

Declaring the debate over is the standard line when you've got nothing. The fact is, history will remember the theory of evolution as biology's version of alchemy.

Actor

"The fact is, history will remember the theory of evolution as biology's version of alchemy."

... or perhaps the Judeo-Christian God as the Romano-Greek version of Zeus ...

SWC

Bohemian man,

There is no dividing line between "micro evolution" and "macro evolution". These are just terms of convenience which are cleverly misused by Creationists/ID'ers to obfuscate the issue. The Creationist/ID people use this as a tool to further confuse people who don't understand that there is no clear dividing line between micro and macro, just as there are no clear dividing lines between species and no completely neat and tidy definition of speciation (the existence of "ring species" is a perfect example of this, and completely invalidates the Creationist/ID arguments against speciation); "species" is a scientific concept that they do not understand, instead they rely on dictionary definitions of the word "species" resulting in a kind of circular reasoning since the scientific use of the word "species" is not in practice the same as the common use of the word found in dictionaries. They never attempt to understand the term "species" as scientists use it, therefore they never encounter actual examples of speciation and thus never confront the real scientific evidence.

The Creationist/ID argument over the origin of species basically boils down to a variation of one of Xeno's paradoxes, for instance his dichotomy paradox (you can never actually arrive because every attempt to halve the distance towards your destination leaves a half remaining to traverse, and thus, you never arrive) which no matter how clever, is in direct violation of observable fact. Just as we can in fact arrive at our destination in spite of Xeno's paradox, so too micro evolution eventually results in macro evolution. There is no dividing line between the two; macro evolution is simply the cumulative result of lots and lots of micro evolution. Just as we arrive at our destination in spite of Xeno's paradox, so too one species evolves into another in spite of much clever Creationist/ID wordplay and rhetoric about "micro evolution versus macro evolution". Big changes are made up from lots of little changes. That is how reality works.

Whenever a new species is discovered that demonstrates evolution, that was formerly a "missing link" between two extinct species in the archaeological record, Creationists/ID'ers demand to know where the "missing links" are between this new species and the others; when in time these also are found, Creationists/ID'ers demand to know where the additional new "missing links" are, and so on, ad infinitum. Their refusal to see the overall pattern is precisely the problem, and talk about "micro evolution" versus "macro evolution" simply plays into their dogmatism, their refusal to connect the dots, and their "God of the Gaps" way of looking at the issue.

Now, this thread was a bit confrontational in tone; I don't think all Creationists/ID'ers are liars, although some of their leaders/publicists certainly are, as they have repeated many untrue claims over the years in spite of knowing they were untrue. But the root of the problem isn't dishonesty, it is simple ignorance of science and the scientific method. Creationist/ID people use theological arguments, or lawyerly/legal type arguments, or philosophical arguments, which take certain ideas or assumptions as a given (a priori) and build up an edifice of reasoning on top of these ideas/assumptions without any way to demonstrate that these ideas or assumptions are, in fact, true. They do not understand that the scientific method does not work that way, and thus, they are not (usually) being dishonest, they are just consistently missing the point. Now, they do demonstrate a consistent refusal to get the point, and if one wants to chalk that up to dishonesty one can, but I personally don't think pig-headed stubbornness is of itself dishonest, however annoying it may be.

Our real problem is that we have lots of law schools teaching people how to play games with words, we have seminaries and theological schools which teach people how to reason based on religious assumptions that are unproveable, we have philosophy departments that can argue endlessly over definitions, language, epistemology, and systems of thought, all without ever having to subject any of these things to scientific tests, but none of these people's methods of reasoning are applicable to the scientific study of evolution - and yet that hasn't stopped these sorts of people from misapplying their forms of reasoning to scientific questions.

We also have a system of public eduction that is doing a very poor job of teaching students what science is, and we have a mass media that is even worse.

On the whole I chalk the problem up to ignorance. There are however some dishonest people who are taking advantage of this ignorance.

I'm not going to be impressed by anyone who dismisses the above without showing 1) that he or she actually knows what the scientific method is and how it works, and knows what a scientific theory actually is, and why Creationism and Intelligent Design are neither scientific nor scientific theories, and also without showing 2) that he or she knows what species are according to science and how speciation occurs according to science, and what a "ring species" is, and why the existence of "ring species" invalidates the Creationist/ID rejection of speciation and macro evolution, ie, species for science are phenomena whereas for Creationists/ID'ers, species are Platonic Ideas, inviolate and separate from each other.

If you can't grasp any of this or demonstrate that you understand these concepts, you're providing a perfect example of what is wrong with Creationism/ID. If you're playing the game of "poor me, the Darwinists are making fun of me/persecuting me/disagreeing with me, so I'm not going to respond", you're also demonstrating the bankruptcy of Creationism/ID. The problem for Creationism/ID is that if they actually try to enter the scientific debate using scientific arguments, they lose, and badly. But since most people don't have a clue what science actually is and how it works, Creationists/ID'ers can get away with this.

David M. Deane:

Per your Zeno paradox comment ... the mathematical solution to the paradox is that the infinite series converges to a finite solution. Does evolution work this way? Is it continuous or discrete? I would presume on the smallest scale that it is discrete ... is this a fair assumption?

And per you latter comments, I think it is fair to conclude the the scientific method is by far the most successful method for studying reality ever developed by humanity ... so, many creationists are not liars or scientifically challenged; but they do refuse to use the most successful method of reasoning in there process ...

SWC

S. W. Chambers,

Well I'm not sure evolution has to be "solved" mathematically in that way. Mathematics have proofs - science does not, ie, a scientific theory is never really "proved" the way a mathematical equation is. A scientific theory merely survives enough attempts to disprove, so it that it comes to be relied upon as effectively true. That's an important point that Creationists/ID'ers don't understand, and that the vast majority of the public does not understand.

I mentioned Xeno's paradox by way of analogy to the "God of the Gaps"/"missing links" argument, to show that just because something is "logical" does not mean it has to conform to observable facts, and logic can be misused to deny or dismiss observable facts.

To answer your question, I would assume that evolution works in a way analogous to the mathematical solution to the paradox, however, evolution as a scientific theory survives, or not, based on its ability to survive tests to disprove it (ie, non-falsifiability) and on its ability to predict future results, regardless of mathematical proofs. For the past century it has been passing these tests very nicely.

David Deane:

Yes, I understand scientific methodology quite well, thank you ... by "effectively true" you mean "fact". I did find interest in the Zero Paradox reference; I was putting on a mathematician's hat thinking "Proof by Induction" ... [Karl Pooper would have a hoot with that :), right? ] In other words, since we are continuously filling in space between gaps, then, although the number of gaps is growing, the relative size of the gaps are shinking at a higher rate ... thus if one takes the limit, the gaps become filled (of course I realize this is not scientific, but interesting none the less)

One correction, however, if I have understood you correctly: "evolution as a scientific theory survives, or not, based on its ability to survive tests to disprove it (ie, non-falsifiability)"

Evolutionary is STILL falsifiable. The idea in scientific methodology is that any theory MUST be falsifiable. This does not indicate that it is false, but only that it is open to the possibility of being false (Popper again) ...

Cool ... Cheers
SWC

SWC

Short answer to the title question of this thread: a varying mixture of both.

But to any objective and learned person the question is really: "Why do so many people continue to believe in creationism despite sound science?"

The answer is complex and demands an answer from many fields that intersect human psychology. Short, naive, but nevertheless partially correct answers include ignorance, cultural indoctrination, lack of reasoning ability, bias, prejudice, irrational emotional satisfaction outwaying rational correctness, etc.

The simplest overarching answer seems to be that evolution gave our minds an anthropomorphic bias because the most important agents in our survival are indeed other human beings. Human beings are posited to be present in many matters that relate to us as they mostly are.

However, this tendency bleeds over into explanations of the natural world where it is quite useless and false. The cognitive shortcut of the average human animal to explaining life on earth is to say: "my magic man did it." Hence myths, hence creationism in a supposedly enlightened age, hence why "the god of the gaps" won't go away.

God, in all his various cultural permutations, is the pan-cultural psychological tendency of human beings to explain things in a social, anthropocentric way - an emotionally satisfying way. It is obviously false to those with a rigorous epistemological methodology, but obviously "true" to those without.

I have an analogy that I like to use.

My cousin likes to believe she's psychic. I don't know why it's so important to her, but she's always had this belief in her "special gift".

Each time she has a dream or a sense of the future, she tells you about it and adds, "All my friends KNOW to listen to me whenever I make predictions."

I don't recall even ONE of her "predictions" coming true. Not one. So she's 100% psychic whenever she has her visions - she'll tell you so - but she totally ignores the fact that they never EVER EVER come true. She doesn't even factor it in. She still firmly believes she is scarily psychic, and that everyone listens to her whenever she speaks.

People have an endless ability to believe whatever they want to believe. Evidence plays no part in their beliefs - in fact, evidence is annoying to them and makes them defensive and mean (look at the people who still support Bush).

So she's a kook. Lots of people are.

It's kind of like hypochondria. Everyone knows you're a hypochondriac except you. Everyone knows Creationists are kooks except them, and you can't explain it to them just as you can't convince a hypochondriac he has clean medical test results, or point out to a self-proclaimed psychic that her predictions are always false.

It's called self-delusion. It's abundant.

Yeah, let's talk. In sworn testimony before the Kansas board of Education, ID advocators claimed that ID was a "new" approach with nothing to do with Creationism. Then they advocated the very same teleological approach debunked by David Hume in 1776. So? Ignorant or liar?

ID-part of God's Intelligent Design.

Secularman,

It doesn't seem to matter how you debunk it, the story in Genesis is still better than anything you have come up with in these forums:

Note* There has been many theories on how long the first day is.

First day: God creates light. The light is divided from the darkness, and "day" and "night" are named.
Second day: God creates a firmament and divides the waters above it from the waters below. The firmament is named "heaven".
Third day: God gathers the waters together, and dry land appears. "Earth" and "sea" are named. Then God brings forth grass, herbs and fruit-bearing trees on the Earth.
Fourth day: God creates lights in the firmament of Heaven, to separate light from darkness and to mark days, seasons and years. Two great lights are made (but not named), and the stars.
Fifth day: God creates birds and sea creatures; they are commanded to be fruitful and multiply.
Sixth day: God creates wild beasts, livestock and reptiles upon the Earth. He then creates Man and Woman in His "image" and "likeness". They are told to "be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it." Humans and animals are given plants to eat. The totality of creation is described by God as "very good".
Seventh day: God, having completed his work of creation, rests from His work. He blesses and sanctifies the seventh day.

I like this better than the big bang theory!

Jo

Jo,

Liking something doesn't make it true. Liking something doesn't mean you've factored in the evidence - or ever intend to.

You've just demonstrated a mindset. Thank you.

Whether you like something or do not like it has no bearing on the truth. Get over yourself, Namedujour.

Isn't that what I just said, Jo? Aren't you more or less quoting me?

Please think up your own retorts.

SWC "I sort of agree with your assessment, but perhaps in different words. There is another option 3) They really believe what they say (not liars, but dis-illusioned)"

Being led and a) unaware of it or b) aware and grateful for not having to think for themselves and/or take responsibility for their actions?

;0),
Namedujour, perhaps I misunderstood your reply. I am so tired of the atheists jumping on the bandwagon when any quote is taken from the bible. I am not a 'Bible Thumper' but I am interested in it, as well as any books for the betterment of mankind or mystical teachings.

Jo

And I am not an atheist. But neither do I agree that the earth was created in seven days 6,000 years ago (carbon dating refutes that theory), or that Atlas carries the earth on his shoulders, or that the earth rests on the back of a giant turtle.

Every culture in the world invented a myth about the creation of the universe. And people believed those myths. Some people still do.

If I LIKE the idea of the earth resting on the back of a giant turtle, I might persuade others to believe the same thing as me - they might like that theory as well. Then we can build a museum that supports that theory, and home school our children so they aren't exposed to other beliefs.

What a good idea.

Joanne Collicott McGuigan says: ID-part of God's Intelligent Design. It doesn't seem to matter how you debunk it, the story in Genesis is still better than anything you have come up with in these forums:

Note* There has been many theories on how long the first day is.

Sarah: Don't worry about this. The ancient Rabbis gave us the first clue. They said one of God's days is equal to a thousand of our years. Since they had no concept of millions, let alone billions, but we do, the problem is easily solved and no further theorizing is required.

We calculate, using the figure 5,000,000,000 as the Earth's accepted age, divide by 6 for the days of Creation, and conclude that one of God's days is 833,333,333 years long. And four months.

I know scientists everywhere will be grateful to me, but I must modestly point out that the groundwork for my incisive inference was laid 2000 years ago by the Pharisaic / Rabbinic tradition. I'm now working on that ticklish problem of the waters above and below pre-existing everything in creation, including dirt and light.