Mark Isaak           "There lives more faith in honest doubt,
isaak@aurora.com      Believe me, than in half the creeds." - Tennyson
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A FEW PROBLEMS WITH CREATIONISM

----- Epistomological problems

    Creationism is useless because it has no explanitory or predictive
value.  Saying "God made it that way" doesn't tell us anything.  Evolution
is a theory with applications in plant and animal breeding, conservation,
pest control, and other areas; Creationism can't even be called a theory.

    Creationism is too vague to be useful.  For example, what's a "kind"?

    The argument for the validity of Creationism rests on circular
reasoning.  Creationism depends on the accuracy of the entire Bible, but the
only "evidence" given that the entire Bible is accurate (besides subjective
opinion) comes from the Bible itself.

----- Factual problems

    Life doesn't look designed.  In designed life (to use Wayne throop's
words), "any heirarchical breakdown of features along functional lines won't
show redundancies, and any heirarchical breakdown of implementation details
will show redundancies."  This is the opposite of what you'd expect in
evolved systems, and is the opposite of what we see.

    If life was designed, the design was often unintelligent.  Many plants
and animals show examples of vestigal organs and other arrangements which
are far from optimal.  The human eye, with its nerves between the light
source and the light dectectors, is but one example.  Such kludges make
sense from an evolutionary standpoint, but they contradict the concept of an
omnicient creator.

    The ordering of organisms in the fossil record (and the ordering was
determined by creationists before Darwin formulated his theory) contradicts
the order of appearances given in Genesis 1.

    No creation has ever been observed.  Evolution, on the other hand, can
be seen any day.

    Creationism, unlike evolution, violates the first and second laws of
thermodynamics.

    The odds of atoms coming together to form just one strand of DNA are
extremely low.  (I've seen estimates ranging from 10e-50 to 10e-150.)
Evolution includes a selection mechanism which makes these odds irrelevant,
and indeed probably makes increases in complexity inevitible.  Creationism,
however, says that not just one DNA strand, but millions of entire organisms
came together all at once.  The odds against that happening are so low that
calling it impossible is almost an understatement.

----- Authoritative problems

    There is substantial disagreement about Creationism among the
authorities on it.  Some take a strict young earth position; others reject
evolution but believe the earth is very old; many other theologians reject
Creationism and Biblical literalism entirely.  On the other hand, among
those who have studied evoltion, agreement about its basic mechanisms is
essentially unanimous.

    The most vocal Creationist leaders frequently resort to immoral means to
promote their cause.  Specifically, they often falsely equate evolution with
atheism, and they often quote scientists out of context to imply meanings
opposite what the scientist said.

----- Moral problems

    Creationism promotes narrowmindedness and bigotry by focusing entirely
on one source for information and disregarding all others.  The events in
the Bible are contradicted by creation stories of several other religions;
why should the other religions be completely disregarded?  Those who study
evolution, on the other hand, are constantly looking for new sources of
evidence.

    Creationism promotes intellectual dishonesty (and frequently more
blatant dishonesty) by actively denying other sources of information.

    Creationist leaders introduce a false dichotomy between religion and
science, instilling a fear and mistrust of science and scientists among
their followers.

    Creationism promotes hubris--indeed, it is based on hubris--because the
Creationists themselves ultimately get to decide their own answers to
questions.  Although they claim that their answers come from the Bible, they
get to decide what the "correct" interpretation of the Bible is, and anyone
who disagrees with their interpretation is simply wrong.  On the other hand,
studies on evolution must be checked against reality, and this checking
occurs in an atmosphere which is usually hostile to ideas which don't have
real evidence to back them up.

    Creationism further promotes arrogance by considering mankind the
pinnacle of existence.

    It promotes sexism by considering the first woman secondary to man, and
by blaming women for evil entering the world.

    By giving man dominion over the earth, Creationism promotes
environmental exploitation.  Evolutionary biology, on the other hand, is an
indispensible part of the field of conservation biology.

----- Spiritual problems

    A literal reading of Genesis obscures its deeper meanings.

    Creationism promotes atheism.  It claims that a true faith is
necessarily associated with beliefs in factual claims that observably aren't
true.  People who make those observation have the choice either to deny the
facts, deny their faith, or deny a link between the two.  Creationists say
the last is not an option.

    Creationists eliminate spirituality from their religion by reducing
faith to a matter of belief.  Belief by itself is worse than useless, or
else God, bigfoot, and UFOs would all be in the same category.  Faith does
not attempt to pigeonhole everything according to a single inflexible
interpretation, but requires an acceptance of God's works the way they are.
This is the faith which raises religion above the level of superstition and
fairy tale and gives it some meaning, and this is the faith which
Creationism destroys.