Creationism in high school

This is an oldie but a goodie, and some of you may not have seen it.

Evangelical vs. Fundamentalist (a response to Robin’s post)

I have intended to create a blog post on this topic for a while now because I think we atheists tend to use these terms interchangeably, and they are not quite interchangeable. Many fundamentalists would not want to be called an evangelical, and vice versa. But the reality is that the terms fundamentalist, evangelical and mainline Christianity rest on a continuum, with many people and churches on blurry lines between these terms. My parents were self-identified fundamentalists throughout my childhood, and then switched to a more evangelical church when I was a teenager. This post is only my first-person observations of these groups. I am not familiar with “every jot and tittle” of every point of every denomination’s doctrine. Feel free to post angry comments about how I am wrong about what some sect believes. <sarcasm>

The big issues in this debate are the inerrancy of the bible and cultural conservatism. If you were to set the broad spectrum of Christianity on a right-to-left scale, “fundamentalists” would be on the far right and “mainline” churches (United Methodists, Evangelical Lutherans, Presbyterian USA, etc.) would be on the far left. Evangelicals sit on the middle ground between these two extremes. Continue reading…

Creationism: the recent numbers

Gallup has released an interesting new scientific poll gauging America’s belief (or lack thereof) in evolution. I think you can look at this data in one of two ways. If you are a glass-half-empty person, you can look at it like the pollsters did:

Most Americans believe in God, and about 85% have a religious identity. It is not surprising as a result to find that about 8 in 10 Americans hold a view of human origins that involves actions by God — that he either created humans as depicted in the book of Genesis, or guided a process of evolution. What no doubt continues to surprise many scientists is that 4 out of 10 Americans believe in the first of these explanations.

These views have been generally stable over the last 28 years. Acceptance of the creationist viewpoint has decreased slightly over time, with a concomitant rise in acceptance of a secular evolution perspective. But these shifts have not been large, and the basic structure of beliefs about human beings’ origins is generally the same as it was in the early 1980s.

On the other hand, if you are a glass-half-full person, you will notice that creationism is currently at an all time-low, and secular evolution is on the rise. Sure, the overall numbers are 40% to 16%, but that’s still an improvement over 2000, when the gap was 47% to 9%. Continue reading…

Irreducible complexity

I’d like to take a moment to introduce you all to a YouTube user named QualiaSoup, whose channel is found here. QualiaSoup has a lot of great videos on science and popular creationism arguments, the production value is always great and they are really easy to follow. Here is a great example of one of his newer videos on irreducible complexity. Irreducible complexity is one of the most popular arguments in favor of creationism. Time and time again, leading biologists have proven that the irreducible complexity argument is without merit. Have a look for yourself at the video below to explore the topic more:

Episode 28: ‘Creation’ Film, Boy Scouts, Morals Without God

Morals without God? Why not?

This article by Frans De Waal is both very interesting and very confusing. Most of the article is spent explaining De Waal’s and other’s findings on ethical behavior among primates, such as a sense of fairness and genuine altruism. The studies De Waal’s discusses are strong arguments for the evolutionary origins of ethics and morality, and De Waal also wisely dismisses the argument that all animal altruism is selfish, pointing out that if this were the case, all human altruism must be considered selfish, as well.

De Waal then changes track, however, and argues for a conclusion that contradicts with the evidence he has presented. While primates appear to have a basic sense of fairness built into them, De Waal explains, morality as we understand it is only possible with high level thinking. Human ethics becomes morality because we have to imagine scenarios involving more complex questions, and larger groups of people, than primates encounter in small group settings. Therefore, this requires systemization and logic, and, De Waal appears to argue, religion.

Science is not in the business of spelling out the meaning of life and even less in telling us how to live our lives. We, scientists, are good at finding out why things are the way they are, or how things work, and I do believe that biology can help us understand what kind of animals we are and why our morality looks the way it does. But to go from there to offering moral guidance seems a stretch.”

Continue reading…

Answers in Genesis publishes cutting edge ‘research’

Answers in Genesis recently published an article entitled Anisotropic Synchrony Convention—A Solution to the Distant Starlight Problem. At first, this site might remind you of other sites based on Poe’s law (spoof sites), like Objective Ministries (a good example is one of its funnier articles that depicts half-eyed octopi). The Answers in Genesis article deals with some of the essential problems creationist scientists face, such as the distant starlight problem:

According to the Bible, everything in the universe was made in the span of six days (Exodus 20:11); these are clearly ordinary earth rotation days comprised of one evening and one morning (Genesis 1:5). Moreover, this creation happened a few thousand (roughly 6,000) years ago, as deduced from the genealogies we read in sections of the Bible such as Genesis 5 and 11. The clear biblical teaching therefore is that everything in the universe is a few thousand years old. Since light travels a distance of one light year (about 6 trillion miles or 9 trillion kilometers) in one year, it would seem that we should only be able to see objects within a radius of 6,000 light years. Objects beyond that distance should not be visible, since presumably their light has not yet reached us. Yet, paradoxically, we can see galaxies whose distances have been measured to be many billions of light years away. This apparent mystery has been often addressed in creation literature as “the distant starlight problem.”

A sane person reading this might find a lot of problems, don’t worry, creationists see problems too and the author of the article elaborates (because of his scientific integrity) on some of the problems this approach has:

But the light-in-transit model undermines the basic reliability of our senses. Consider: the light-in-transit model would mean that all events (supernovae for example—fig. 1) beyond about 6,000 light years have never happened. They would merely be a sequence of images in a beam of light created by God. These images would not correspond to any real event… But if God is willing to make movies of fictional events at distances beyond 6,000 light years, then why would we arbitrarily assume that He would not also make fictional movies nearby? (Is the tree outside my window real, or is it merely a picture embedded in light beams created by God?)

Arguments of this nature embody the ‘mental gymnastics’ that creationists undergo to maintain their beliefs regarding creationism and evolution. What is worrisome is that so many individuals who don’t believe in evolution, 25% in last year’s Gallop poll (36% with no opinion either way), hold this belief likely without giving it much thought or investigation. So why bother targeting clearly foolish people like those at Answers in Genesis, or the Creation Museum? The people who believe in creationism defer to those people as their experts and never investigate their claims. It is appalling, perhaps even dangerous, that so much of our citizenry think the Earth is 6,000 years old and furthermore that evolution is an absurd notion.