CREATIONISM IS NOT SCIENCE
Religious believers in the war with science concentrate more on the alleged fact
that God created all things out of nothing and don't show the same interest in
the notion that God is a friendly presence in our hearts which guides to live as
as servant of love and as a person for others. One would think the creator role
of God would be less important.
Creation is the notion of God making something where there was nothing. There
was change. There was a cause of all things. For something to be really caused
there has to be continuity and also something new. There is a necessary
connection between cause and effect. The cause has to be like the effect and
vice versa. Cause and effect describe something going from one state into a
different or another one. But there is no similarity or connection between
something and nothing. Those who believe in creation are in fact saying that God
has the power to make something that has no cause!
Creationists say that the Bible gives the truth about the creation and the
origin of all things and that science fits in with and/or supports the Bible
account. This approach necessarily denies that the scientific method is the only
way and the only chance of finding out the truth about reality. Science can be
wrong sometimes. That does not discredit the scientific method of testing and
investigating. It is needed more than ever. It will be respected and encouraged
and praised despite the schemes of Creationism to ruin it.
Creationism is popular because people find that the notion of simple laws
becoming complex ones rings true. They think the universe came from a simple
God. An explanation for the creation is not an explanation unless it is simpler
than what it explains. But this shows ignorance of physics in which everything
is bewilderingly complex. Hardly anybody can understand the science of physics.
The brightest physicists only understand a little.
Physics says the laws of nature are intrinsic to nature. To say the laws come
from God is flatly to deny they are intrinsic.
Peter Atkins wrote: "Creationism is fundamentally dishonest, for as well as
having no mechanism of self-control, it distorts the evidence to suit its
prejudices; science though occasionally corrupted by false practice when
practitioners are overcome by their own ambition and perhaps thwarted by their
own incompetence, has a powerful public procedure of self-policing that sooner
or later flushes out malpractice and exposes simple unintended error.
Creationism is dangerous to society, for it undermines the rational; science
contributes positively to society, for it is the apotheosis of the rational"
page 27, On Being, A Scientist's Exploration of the Great Questions of
Existence, Oxford University Press, New York, 2011).
Creationism is really down to the religious desire to show that life has a
divine purpose. There are entities in the universe that have no purpose. What
purpose can a speck of dust at the other side of the universe have? Depressed
people feel life has no purpose and they won't recover unless they learn to give
it a purpose. Belief in God is not going to do it for them. If people say it is
then they forget that it is how people respond to their beliefs or circumstances
that helps them feel their lives are important and meaningful. Creationism is
based on the illusion that you must show God exists and made all things just as
the Bible tells us in order to have meaning in life! Scoffers at the Bible who
believe in God have a sense of meaning. Creationists seem to forget that.
Science shows that the creation of the universe and more importantly our
evolution was agentless - there is no need to assume a God. Thus our existence
is necessarily purposeless in terms of an ultimate purpose. We have to make our
own purpose.
Science has helped us see that the universe can be accounted for without a God.
There is a tendency starting in God religion now to say that God made something
from which the universe could build itself! They have not fully realised the
implications of this. If God hides like that and wants the universe to at least
act independent of him then the miracles reported by religion must be hoaxes.
God would not cover his tracks and then do miracles that uncover them! Deism, at
best, is what is implied by their teaching. Deism teaches that a God who is not
interested in a relationship with us, is behind all creation.
The notion that God set things up to make themselves is akin to finding a fine
doll in your Christmas stocking and because you can't explain how it got there
you say thin air was set up to make itself. That is not science but the
perception you impose on the situation.
Physics is about the how and why of existence. It is a Christian lie that
science is about the how and religion is about the why. And religion does not
believe it itself for it says that God is the ultimate answer to how all things
came to be. Also, if chance is how all things started off, the answer to the why
is, "Chance is real. We know that. Chance is the reason why all thinks exist."
The why in that case is the how.
In physics, you ask a question. You get an answer. But the answer raises a
hundred questions. And each of those can raise thousands of questions. Given
this complexity, religion's simplicity is anti-science, anti-verification and
anti-rational. It's fundamentalist. Even the most liberal Christian must have
some fundamentalist opinions and doctrines.
It is known that information is not abstract in the ultimate nature of reality.
It seems to be encoded in the heart of the universe. The Christians are making
out that it is encoded in God and deny that God is part of the universe. There
is no need to assume the existence of God. And God is that which we must adore
totally therefore religion is a threat to the open-mindedness we need. It is an
attempt to make physicists fail to see the information in at the heart of
reality if that information makes God redundant.
Creationism takes the Bible account of the origin of the universe and of man as
true history. It denies evolution. It often asserts that the world is only a few
thousand years old. It treats the Bible as a science text book and bends
scientific evidence to make it fit this theory. Even liberal Christians who are
horrified by creationism must admit that religion does not use evidence to help
it form a theory. Rather it forms the theory and then may look for evidence. You
can make anything superficially convincing with that approach. Whatever the
creationists get up to and regardless of how much they deceive, the criticism
they get from liberals is a case of kettles and pots. Liberal Christians are as
bad as the fundamentalists for bending scripture. They do the manipulating
equally - the fundamentalist twists scripture to fit science and the liberal
does it too in a different way.
Creation Science is an embarrassment so it is sometimes disguised as Intelligent
Design.
Religion says the big bang doesn’t address the issue of why there was nothing
before it. But it can never be proven in religion that there was nothing before
it. What if God made a spirit force that existed in all eternity and then which
turned into whatever exploded?
In relation to the big bang, we know that the speed expansion that took place
after it is significant. Too fast and the atoms would be all over the place and
there would be no order. Too slow and the power of gravity pulls everything back
in making a black hole. This leads some to surmise that the universe must have
came into being through intelligent design. Intelligent design could refer to
God. Or it might not.
The odd thing is we have chaos and disorder. Then order appears. Does the
designer not act at first? It looks more like a case of luck. There was no force
behind it.
Is an uncaused God worse than an uncaused big bang? Or vice versa?
We cannot look into the heart of everything. We know the big bang happened but
we don’t know if God exists. So we have to take it for granted that an uncaused
big bang is a simpler explanation than God. We cannot always directly show if
something is simple and have to make do with indirect.
Some scientists who believe in God have a God in the background of their
science. Anything that science can't explain they think he is behind it. But
this God of the Gaps has a problem. As the gaps get smaller there is less room
for him. This is a God in the background. It is degrading to God, if he exists,
to use belief in him to fill holes. He is not much of a God if his self-respect
is poor enough that though he controls all things he wants to be believed in in
such a stupid and disrespectful way. Is the view that God hides his role in
evolution so that it looks like the work of chance advocating the God of the
Gaps? No. If we can account for evolution without him then there is no gap.
Evolutionists who believe are guilty of pretending that God is needed when he is
not. They are worse than the God of the Gaps brigade.
Those who believe in God and those who do not, often do agree that the universe
had no beginning in the sense that there was always something there. Even the
Bible does not rule out there always being something. It has no word for making
things out of nothing. It just speaks of God making the heavens and the earth.
Creation out of nothing is about protecting God’s power and nothing else which
is why it is nothing special. In other words, it is needed to give us a God of
unimaginable power who can make things pop into existence. A God who does not
have responsibility for every single thing is not a God for then there is
something he cannot do anything about and he is not completely his own boss. So
he is not literally almighty and he must fight if he wants more power. Creation
as a theory is not about explaining anything for it is not science. Logic
does not suggest creation. Creation out of nothing is an excuse and is about
giving us a God and nothing else.