Creationism

[number8]

How can people possibly believe in creationism?

[sft42]

Quite easily...if you look really hard at them you'll see that evolution has given them a body swerve so they refuse to believe in it as a form of revenge.

I actually once worked with someone who refused to even touch a copy of Darwin's "Origin of Species" that I brought him in....He denounced it with the devastating comment of "That's an evil book"....ah the joys of the teachings of the presbyterian church eh?

[woofgang]

Its a sad fact that someone somewhere on this planet can believe in anything....

[incitatus]

belief is the operative word. with belief you dont need proof. or logic. or sense.

[BadBob]

incitatus is correct all you need is faith and belief. Faith being that as long as you believe then no amount of proof one way or the other will sway you. I've always used this as a good discussion point with religious people, I believe that the earth is a great fur ball coughed up by the "great cosmic rabbit" who is our creator when we dye we become tics on his back. As long as I have faith in the "great cosmic rabbit" its as valid as anything else. The story of the "great cosmic rabbit" is contained in our version of the bible called the watershipdown. wibble wibble honk honk all hail the cosmic rabbit.

[number8]

All fantastic answers - the original question was asked as I was dumbfounded recently when a colleague steadfastly refused to believe anything other than Adam & Eve despite all the overwhelimg indisputable evidence to the contrary. She absolutely refused to even enter into a conversation about it - so it surprised me that an otherwise sensible person belived that God created two people and from those two people we are all descended. Staggering. Fair enough have a faith (I am a failed Catholic), but please temper that faith with an element of pragmatism and common sense.

[TommyC]

Well.. given the tone of the comments here so far, I guess it's time for me to play devil's advocate again, just to redress the balance a little..!! I'm no apologist for the nonsensical and irrational excesses of the fundamentalist churches, but from the postings here it's perfectly evident that none of you were given at school so much as a rudimentary understanding of the various hard scientific arguments AGAINST evolution..!! Arguments such as (1) the total absence of hard fossil evidence at not just one, but at EVERY one of the crucial "phases"; (2) the utter impossibility for any scientist today to "prove" any part of evolution due to the enormous timescales supposedly involved, therefore to believe in evolution is every bit as much an act of "faith" as to believe in any form of creationism; (3) the long-established fact that "Neanderthal man" is known clearly and unreservedly to be nothing to do with the human gene chain, but many ill-informed scientists STILL today quote it as hard evidence for evolution; and (4) most damningly, the simple fact that Darwin HIMSELF enunciated a whole string of matters yet to be fully understood, and stated that if any one of them were scientifically disproved beyond his own lifetime, his theory would in his own words, "completely fail" - since which time, all but ONE of them have been demonstrably scientifically disproven..!! As for Adam and Eve... They're just convenient names (straght from the oldest living book, actually) to represent the genetic source of what every scientist on earth knows and implicitly accepts, namely, that despite superficial differences in skin, features,etc. we ARE indeed all ultimately descended from one single breeding pair of humans, and many thousands of years later every oneof us still maintain our totally unique identity as "homo sapiens", ie. all part of one huge identical scientific classification, that could NOT conceivably have arisen identically from any other source..!!

[incitatus]

tommy- note i am not a biologist but: you can see evolution in action at your local doctors surgery every day. so the basic process happens. The timescales supposedly needed are not as long as you think. as steve jones has pointed out speciation can occur in less than 12 generations, i.e. less than a thousand years for most animals. And there is good evidence of this happening with introduced species like the mink or the rough necked wallaby becoming noticeably variant. this just leaves did it happen to humans..... Im not sure what you mean by missing evidence at every point. obviously the fossil record is far from complete but what about lucy, the turkana boy etc. etc. these are good peices of hominid evidence. And the notion of there being "key stages" in evolution, the "missing link" went out in the 1960's. evolution is a gradual spectrum. which is why there were never two homo sapiens who fathered all the others, because the first true humans would have differed only very slightly from their parents, and where do you draw the line, and no sane biologist would claim so. I have never met a scientist who would put a neanderthal in the main branch hominids. Yes humanity radiated from a limited gene pool in africa, but the notion that they were suddenly zapped into being by the giant pixie is unhelpful. The bible isnt even close to being the oldest book, living or dead. its just popular, thats all.

[sft42]

Hey tommy you should take that act on stage...hilarious...one word....Madagascar...the evolution of different lemur species to take advantage of different prevailing conditions and food. If all the animals alive today where created then why where the ever animals alive before that died out? Did god muck up on her first couple of goes? Perhaps she just buried fossils and the like to keep us guessing then eh?

PS Don't shout certain words....if your arguement ain't strong enough screaming about it won't help any.

[BadBob]

OK Tommy, we accept that evolution has its pit falls, so perhaps, as your playing devils advocate here, you could tell us about the evidence for the following, no mention of the dinosurs in the bible despite hard evidence they were here millions of years before man, the world was created in just 7 days with reference to 1, the complete destruction of all life apart from that on Noahs boat (yes we accept there were world wide floods at some point in history), why Moses et all lived for 200+ years, how Jesus fed the 5,000 with the equivalent of my weekly food budget... need I go on. I'm nore than happy for people to use the "Tales" in the bible as a guide book for good morals but lets get real here the evidence to the contry is far larger than your evidence against evolution.

[BadBob]

The Jehovas Witnesses for example say that world wasn't created in 7 days but 7 time periods spaning longer periods i.e. millions of years. Still a load of rubbish but it seems they have come to terms with the evidence for evolution and decided not to look stupid and fit their book around current thinking. As I said before, by all means use the bible as a moral reference book but if you take it as fact your setting yourself up in my opinion. Anyway the way I see it as long as you say sorry to God when you get to Heaven your in anyway.

[Quizmonster]

According to 'Genesis', God created light on the first day, but did not create the sun, moon and stars until the fourth day. One wonders, therefore, where the light came from.

Apart from anything else, in the absence of the sun for the earth to turn its face towards in rotating every 24 hours, what can the word 'day' conceivably mean?

It was made a long time ago, but I wonder whether any of you has seen the Spencer Tracy film 'Inherit the Wind'. He played the part of the defence lawyer in the Scopes 'Monkey trial', set in Tennessee in 1925. Scopes was an actual teacher who taught evolution in school, bringing hellfire down on his head from the Bible-thumping fundamental creationists. The lawyer decided actually to use the Bible to bolster his argument by raising the very points I made above. If a day was not 24 hours, what was it? A week, a century, a millennium, a million years?

All he got in reply was, in effect: "If the Bible says there was light, then there was light and let the absence of a light-source go hang!"

That's the point really...you can't argue with someone who says such things and nor can you prevent them from believing them. The truly appalling thing is that in many states in the USA - Tennessee amongst them, I suspect - the teaching of evolution has, once again, been forbidden!

[number8]

The teaching of evolution has been forbidden - I'm flabbergasted, I had no idea (naively it appears) that people were so blinkered. Amazing.

[TommyC]

All very interesting, and amusing too, for all I was trying to point out earlier was that, contrary to what many people today believe, evolution is not in any truthful sense a set of proven facts, as there are actually some hard scientific arguments against it, as well as some in favour. I happen to believe it's wrong for children to be routinely taught something for which there is no ultimate proof, and to have it presented to them as established scientific fact when it is nothing of the sort, in just the same way as the religious beliefs of a particular church should not be hammered into the minds of children who may have no interest in them, or even any real spiritual inclination. And for those of you who are outraged by the idea of certain teachings being banned, that's fine... as long as you'll be in the front line of rebellion when the whole of worldwide religious belief comes under persecution and ban from the powers that be, as is increasingly being mooted, due to their supposedly dangerous threat to the state. Or doesn't the liberal ideal of religious freedom actually extend quite far enough to protect those trying to practice it ? :o)

[Quizmonster]

Tommy, if, as you say, you (quote): "happen to believe it's wrong for children to be routinely taught something for which there is no ultimate proof", then surely you believe they should not be taught anything at all about creationism or religion generally...the ultimate 'something' for which proof is signally lacking.

You also claim "the religious beliefs of a particular church should not be hammered into the minds of children". That's what parents and schools do worldwide. I'm with you...it should be stopped. If it were, the world would probably be at peace within a generation. So far as I know, there aren't any suicide-bombing evolutionists!