Creationism is Crap
jbrock@panix.com (John Brock)

Let's approach this from a different angle. Suppose I tell you I
have a scientific theory. I'm not going to tell you what the
theory is right now, but I am convinced it is true, and I would
like to have you pass a law so that every high school student in
the country will be taught my theory, and so that my theory will
be given equal time with the standard theory. I think this is
only fair.

Like I said, I'm not going to tell you what my theory is right now,
but I will tell you some other things. I will readily admit
that 99.99999 percent of the world's scientists think my theory is
pure garbage. Not just wrong, understand, but trash. I will also
admit that of the small handful of "scientists" who do back my
theory, most are non-productive nobodys with degrees in irrelevant
fields, and who are by the way obligated to believe in my theory or
else give up their religion. Nevertheless I want you to pass a law
to force unwilling science teachers to teach my theory to high
school students.

Will you do it? Does it matter even a little bit what the details
of my theory are, or how good I am at convincing people who are not
scientists? Of course not!!! High school students are just being
introduced to science, and we teach them standard, non-controversial
science, because that is all they are ready for.

Why am I talking about the way we teach science to high school
students? "'Scientific' Creationism" is a deeply dishonest enterprise.
Real scientists work to convince other scientists that their theories
are true, because only the other scientists can understand anyway. If
Einstein had been unable to convince other scientists of the truth of
relativity, do you think he would have gone to the state legislature
and tried to get them to pass a law and teach relativity in high
school? Such a thing would never occur to a real scientist. But the
'Scientific' Creationists make very little effort to convince the
scientific community. They would much rather have the matter decided
by the lawyers and politicians, and that's where their arguments are
directed, that's where their efforts go. Their main goal is to have
their transparently religous "theory" taught in our schools (or to
surpress the teaching of evolution), and they are perfectly willing to
bypass the scientific community to do so. Arguments here as to the
truth or falsity of their ideas are really rather irrelevant. Until
they can convince the scientific community that their ideas have merit,
those ideas should not be taught as science in our schools! And that's
all the Creationists are after anyway.