Why creationism is almost certainly wrong

 

Credit: @cos_nightsky_ (at Twitter)

Young Earth Creationism (YEC) is a very extreme position to take. I know that YECs get angry when their position is compared to flat earthism, but YEC *is* similar in many ways to the flat earth position. In order to uphold YEC, you essentially have to deny *all* science (not just macro-evolution), since there is literally *no* evidence that the Earth and the entire universe is only 6,000 years old – something even YECs sometimes admit. No evidence, that is, except for a literal reading of the Bible, which does indeed strongly suggest a date of creation circa 4,000 BC (although even this can be questioned). YECs also sometimes admit that God must have created the world with an apparent age, but that´s just another way of saying that all scientific evidence points to it being older than those 6,000 years.

The position is theologically problematic, too. If God created the universe with an apparent age, isn´t he intentionally deceitful and hence not all-loving? To this, YECs would respond that God gave us the correct age in the Bible. But this leads to a different problem: God doesn´t seem all-powerful if he is constrained by the problem of apparent age when creating a physical world. The God of young earth creationism surprisingly often comes across as quasi-deist…

Of course, there is also the question of the credibility of the Bible. On a plain reading, the Bible certainly contains a lot of contradictions or “Bible difficulties”. Add to that the existence of divergent manuscript traditions, different ways of translating the Hebrew (or even parsing the words!), and the existence of “lost books” which at one time were considered part of the canon. Archeology strongly suggests that the Bible isn´t even reliable as a historical chronicle (although this is a somewhat complex issue). Many of the previously mentioned contradictions cannot be wished, exegeted or harmonized away. They truly are the result of conflicting agendas of different Biblical writers or editors. At the very least, they testify to Biblical religion being ever-changing. In sum, there is no reason to believe that the Bible is anything else than a fallible human book recording purported divine revelation (and perhaps real spiritual experiences, the ontological status of which is unclear). And while science is of course also a fallible enterprise, it surely must mean *something* that no method of dating the age of Earth or the universe (not even those proposed by YECs) gives the desired result of a date of creation circa 4004 BC. The position is simply absurd.

Old Earth Creationism (OEC) has its own problems. It was possible to be an “intellectually fulfilled old earth creationist” still during the 19^th century, but hardly today, when our knowledge of the fossil record is much richer. OEC must essentially assert the following: first, God created a fish ex nihilo, then he waited millions of years until he created a fish with some amphibian characteristics ex nihilo, then he waited another million years to create an amphibian with some fish-like traits (ex nihilo) and finally also an amphibian. But why on earth would God create every species out of nothing and then arrange them in a chronological evolutionary sequence? This once again points to deception or even capriciousness (why did God suddenly destroy the non-avian dinosaurs?). It´s easier to believe that an all-powerful deity simply programs or directs evolution – that, after all, is what we see in the fossil record.

The Discovery Institute and the Intelligent Design (ID) movement has problems of its own. For instance, they have never launched a scientific research program into ID. But such a program should be possible to launch, at least in principle. Even if the divine creation of the designs is forever mysterious, the implementation of those designs in the physical world (most ID advocates are OECs) should be open to scientific investigation. However, it would probably be a very heterodox form of science, perhaps involving a search for astral bodies, morphogenetic fields, or pre-existent spirits. Perhaps the ID movement shies away from this since it would also be very heterodox and “occult” as theology! 

Another problem with ID are the metaphors used to describe creation – or are they even metaphors? These are based on computer science, in which bits of “information” are downloaded into matter, or downloaded as matter. But why assume God is a computer geek? This is a late modern conception and therefore cannot be taken seriously, anymore than Paley´s metaphor of the watchmaker, which was obviously based on early modern technology. Note also the similarity between the information obsession of IDs and the explicitly super-computer-fixation of the trans-humanists.

None of the above means that we know everything about evolution. We probably don´t. Perhaps we will never know. Or perhaps we simply haven´t found the right metaphors yet!