1st Foundational Falsehood of Creationism

My personal rant against one of foremost falsehoods of the creationism movement; the idea that accepting evolution is tantamount to declaring atheism, or that one need be creationist to be Christian.

Here's the script
http://darwinwasright.homestead.com/1stFFoC.html

The US population seems pretty evenly divided over whether the human species is biologically related to

other animals or whether we were specially created as part of a flurry of miracles.

Even our collective politicians seemingly all of them are wrapped up in this controversy,

yet it's hard to find even one of them who knows what it's about.

Why is it that there's such concern in so many great schools, K through twelve, about teaching evolution,

yet there is still a complete consensus among scientists all over America and the rest of the world

that evolution is the backbone of modern biology and a demonstrable reality historically as well.

Most people don't understand science.

What it is, how it works, what hypothesis and theories are, or even the purpose behind it.

Sadly even those on your school faculty or state board of education often need an education themselves

before they can be trusted to govern how or what our kids will be taught.

And that's why I thought I would speak up and do what I can to help.

To adequately understand evolution,

you not only have to understand how to be scientific, which is the real trick for most people,

but you also have to know something about cellular biology, genetics, anatomy,

geology, particularly paleontology,

as well as environmental systems, tectonics, atomic chemistry and especially taxonomy

which most people don't know squat about at all.

Most people who accept evolution also tend to know a whole lot about cosmology,

geography, history, sociology, politics, and of course religion.

But to believe in creations you don't have to know anything about anything and it's better if you don't.

Because creationism relies on ignorance. It is not honest research.

It is a scam, a con job exploiting the common folk and preying on their deepest beliefs and fears.

Creationist apologetics depends on misrepresented data and misquoted authorities

out of date and out of context and uses distorted definitions, if it uses definitions at all.

There are basically two types of creationists.

The professional or political creationists, these are the activists who lead the movement

and who will regularly deliberately lie to promote their propaganda.

And the second type, which are the innocently deceived followers

commonly known as "sheep".

I know lots of intellectual christians, but I can't get any of them to actually watch the tele evangelists,

because they either already know how phony they are or they don't want to find out.

But that only allows a radical fringe to claim support from the masses they now also claim to represent,

so there's nothing to stop them.

Professional creationists are making money hand over fist with faith healing scams

or bilking little old ladies out of prayer donations, or selling books and videos at their circus-like seminars

where they have undeserved respect as powerful leaders.

All of them feign knowledge they can't really possess and some of them claim degrees

they've never actually earned.

"You are a scientist, correct?"

"Oh that's right, I have a PhD in Truthology from Christian Tech."

Were it not for this con they'd have to go back to selling used cars,

wonder drugs and multilevel marketing schemes.

They will never change their mind, no matter what it costs anyone else.

So it is obviously the 'sheep' whom I am attempting to reach with this speech

so that they might not be sheep anymore and will stop feeding fuel in the manipulative movement.

Because it is one thing to believe something which might be true,

like God in general or christianity specifically,

even though neither can be substantiated or tested in any objective way,

but it's a whole other matter to willfully deceive other into believing things which are definitely not true,

like creationism.

Especially when we can also prove that those doing this know their assorted arguments are bogus

and know they're lying to our children and that they hope to continue doing so under the guise of

education.

Creationism extorts support through peer pressure, prejudice and paranoid propaganda

and sells itself with short simplistic slogans

which appeal to those who don't want to think too much, or are afraid to question their own beliefs.

Worst of all, it actually forbids critical inquiry and promotes anti intellectualism

and is based on at least a dozen foundational falsehoods.

First and foremost among them is the idea that accepting evolution requires the rejection of theism

if not all other religious or spiritual beliefs as well.

For decades those behind the creationism movement have tried very hard to portray the illusion

that one cannot accept evolution and still believe in God.

They know better

but they still want you to believe that evolution is atheist

and that it is either evolution without God, or God creating without evolution.

That's been their central claim since the creatiionism movement began

but this supposed controversy never was about whether or not there is a God.

Most people believe there is a God

and they believe he is in control of all the seemingly random events of our lives.

This is true of most of the people who accept evolution also, most of them believe in God as well

and they believe that God is in control of evolution,

that evolution like every other system in nature is part of God's design.

Of the couple hundred different and often violently conflicting denominations of christianity,

the largest of them by far is catholicism followed by orthodoxy.

Both of these have stated support of evolution and denounced creationism.

Pope Benedict recently described evolution as an enriching reality and

described creationist contest against it as absurd.

Both of the Popes before him advised christians around the world

to consider evolution to be more than a hypothesis

and not to fear acceptance of that as being any challenge to their faith in Christ.

The early proponent of evolutionary science were all initialy christians including Darwin

and many of the leading proponents of modern evolutionary science are still christian today.

For example, microbiologist Dr. Ken Miller

who testified against intelligent design creationism in Kitzmiller vs Dover, is a catholic.

Another outspoken proponent of evolution, Dr. Robert T. Bakker,

who has PhDs from both Harvard and Yale

is not only one of the leading and most recognizable paleontologist in the world today,

but he also happens to be a bible believing pentecostal preacher,

though he interprets genesis differently than literalists would.

In his book "Bones, Bibles and Creation" he says that

to treat the bible as though it were common history is to degrade its eternal meaning.

One of the earliest geneticist , Theodosius Dobzhansky,

was an orthodox christian who many times professed his belief that life was created by God

but that nothing in biology made sense except in light of evolution.

All these men agree that even if there really is a God

and even if that God is the christian God,

and even if that God created the universe and everything in it, which they all believe,

evolution would still be at least mostly true

and creationism would still be completely wrong.

Of all the developed nations throughout christendom

only the United States has a significant number of creationists, and they're the minority even here.

Every other predominantly christian country tends to regard creationism as

an incredulous, if not insane, radical fringe movement

which is an almost exclusively american phenomenon and not taken seriously anywhere else.

Poll after poll continues to reveal that around the world

most evolutionists are christian and most christians are evolutionist.

So evolution is not synonymous with atheism and creationism is not synonymous with christianity either.

Most creationists aren't even christians.

There are millions more muslim and hindu creationists than christian ones.

Regardless which religion they claim,

creationism can be collectively defined as the fraction of religious believers who reject science.

Not just the conclusions of science but its methods as well and I mean all of them.

From uniformitarianism and methodological naturalism to the peer review process

and the requirement that all positive claims be based on testable evidence.

These people rely instead on blind faith and the assumed authority of their favorite fables.

In all cases, creationism is an obstinent and dogmatic superstitious belief

which holds that members of most seemingly related taxonomic groups did not evolve naturally,

but were created magically,

that plants and animals were literally poofed out of nothing,

fully formed, in their current state, unrelated to anything else despite all indications to the contrary.

Creationists may side with western abrahamic religions,

being the judeo christian islamic mythos in which there are conflicting versions of the same tales,

or creationists may belong to one of the many eastern religions

where the sacred stories of creation are much older,

completely different and dedicated to other Gods and pantheon.

But in every case, the proposed creator is supernatural,

meaning that it is not a part of perceptible reality,

therefore it is undetectable by any testable means

and can only be assumed to exist through subjective emotional reasons or as a result of cultural indoctrination

rather than because of any measurable evidence or logical rationale.

In other words, there's no way to say if it's really there.

Worst of all there's also no way to distinguish anyone's Gods or ghost

from the imaginary being some primitive folks just made up either.

This doesn't mean no God exist, but it does mean that science can't say anything about them.

Because even if Gods are real, they still don't appear to be,

and apparently don't want to since all the holy books demand that they be believed on faith alone.

As there is nothing anyone can verify and thus actually note, be correct about Gods,

then science is unable to make any comment about them at all.

Because science can only ever investigate things with demonstrable evidence

which can be tested or measured.

From the creationist perspective,

the method or mechanism of creation, which these mystical beings use,

is nothing more than a Golem spell, where clay statues are animated with an enchantment.

Or it's an incantation in which complex modern plants and animals are spoken into being.

That's right. Magic words, which cause fully developed adult animals to be conjured out of thin air.

Or a God simply wishes them to exist so they do.

That's it.

There really is nothing more to it than that. Pure freaking magic by definition.

Remember that the next time you hear anything from a creation 'scientist'.

So for those who believe in God, the question really is 'how God created' and

whether that was by one of many inextricably integrated natural systems he seemingly designed

or whether he simply blinked, wiggled his nose, wished upon a star and said

"Abra cadabra!".