Creationist Wisdom — Example 26

WE PRESENT to you, dear reader, a letter to the editor titled Creationism is alive and well , which appears in the Worthington Daily Globe, of Worthington, Minnesota, population 11,283 in the 2000 census.

We usually leave off the author’s name, but in this case the author has popped up on your Curmudgeon’s radar before. It’s Mike Bogle, who was mentioned in one of our earlier posts: Creationist Wisdom — Example Nineteen.

In that former post, as in this latest offering, Bogle raves about the dinosaur and human footprints allegedly found together at the Paluxy River near Glen Rose, Texas. We’ll omit his current references to that “evidence.” You won’t miss them, because what makes Mr. Bogle so entertaining — unlike all other creationists — is that he keeps coming up with arguments we haven’t seen before. Not all of his arguments are original, of course, but stay with us. You won’t be disappointed.

Here we go. The bold font was added by us:

In every area of scientific endeavor, creationism is becoming even more credible. Even Fred Hoyle (who is no Christian) has said that spontaneous generation of life is the equivalent of believing in magic.

Not only is Fred Hoyle no Christian, he’s no anything, because he’s no longer among the living. Nor, while alive, was he a biologist. Rather, he was an astronomer who also wrote some decent science fiction. His work was sufficiently outstanding to win him several honors, including a knighthood. Alas, he somehow ended up a bit of a panspermia kook. Anyway, although the “spontaneous generation of life” is not a feature of Darwin’s theory of evolution, Sir Fred Hoyle continues to be a hero to creationists everywhere.

Let’s read on:

Jack Cuozzo, a many-degreed orthodontist, has studied Neanderthal skulls worldwide and found that not one lower jaw was properly placed in its socket. Every “honest” paleontologist had manipulated the jaw to make them appear ape-like.

We like that paragraph for several reasons. First, we learn about and marvel at yet another creationist dentist. Second, we’ve never before seen even the craziest creationist claim that every single pre-human fossil was fraudulent. Finally, it left us wondering — Who is Jack Cuozzo? Check out that Wikipedia article; it will confirm your suspicions that it’s a strange world out there.

We continue:

As usual, when scientists manage to climb Mount Truth, they always meet a band of theologians on top eating lunch wearing “been there, done that” t-shirts. There are different routes up a mountain, but the summit is the same for everybody.

Yeah, right. Here’s more:

In 1492, Columbus sailed across the ocean in a sophisticated vessel using a sextant for navigation and gunpowder for negotiations. He encountered a fully “evolved” intelligent race of people living in the stone age. How can evolution explain that?

See there? We told you this Bogle guy had some original arguments. Admit it — you’ve never seen that one before.

Okay, here’s the end of his letter:

History shows that technology did not flourish until after the Reformation, when the common man got the Bible. It has nothing to do with evolution.

It would be fun to play with that one, but time is short, so we’ll leave it as an exercise for you, dear reader. You gotta admit, this Bogle guy makes creationism interesting.

Copyright © 2009. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.

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Discovery Institute: Casey and Puff-Pieces

THERE ARE DAYS when this is just too easy. At the blog of the neo-theocrats — the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture (a/k/a the Discoveroids) — appears this gem by Casey Luskin, with one of his typically long, rambling, inelegant titles: MSNBC’s Birthday Present to Charles Darwin: Puff-Pieces on Evolution (Part 2).

Here’s one small excerpt, with emphasis supplied by us:

As part of their celebration of Darwin’s 200th birthday, MSNBC has been printing puff-pieces promoting evolution.

Click over there and read Casey’s article if you like. It appears to be a catalogue of foolish reasons to ignore evidence supporting the theory of evolution.

Creationists have no evidence at all to support their “theory,” so any anti-evolution talking points Casey can toss them, regardless of merit, must be welcome by his followers. Perhaps Casey’s analysis is also welcome material for psychologists — it offers yet another peek into the mind of a dedicated Discoveroid.

As for the specifics that underlie Casey’s disregard of MSNBC’s show, we can’t judge any of that. Your Curmudgeon doesn’t watch MSNBC — their politics are not to our liking — so we’re reluctant to endorse anything from them. Nevertheless, we can use indirect evidence, and if Casey didn’t like their show it must have been a decent effort. Besides, praise for Darwin is certainly justified, even if it comes from sources we regard as dubious, so the term “Puff-Pieces” in Casey’s title is most revealing.

But there’s more going on here than merely the inference to be drawn from Casey’s disapproval. Were that all, this post wouldn’t be worth the effort. There’s so much of value in this world that creationists reject, one TV show wouldn’t even register on our radar.

The news here is that we’re adopting a small change of tactics. Because Casey initiated the use of Puff-Piece in the context of the evolution-creationism controversy, we’ll reciprocate by using that term regarding Casey’s creationist insights.

Puff-Piece … Casey Luskin … Yes, somehow they seem to go together.

Copyright © 2009. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.

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Creationism: How Old Is the Earth?

WE’VE WRITTEN about this subject before: How Old Is the Earth and the Universe? We also wrote this: How Old Is The Creationists’ Universe? But those were written mostly from a scientific perspective.

To a limited extent we discussed the creationist viewpoint here: Creationism and the Problem of Time, and also here: Creationism and Tree Ring Chronology. But now your Curmudgeon has found the mother lode of creationist thought on this issue.

At the website of Answers in Genesis (AIG), one of the major sources of creationist wisdom. they have this article: How old is the earth? The author is described elsewhere at the AIG website: Bodie Hodge; and he appears to be a well-educated mechanical engineer. Here are some excerpts:

Where did a young-earth worldview come from? Simply put, it came from the Bible. Of course, the Bible doesn’t say explicitly anywhere, “the earth is 6,000 years old.” Good thing it doesn’t; otherwise it would be out of date the following year. But we wouldn’t expect an all-knowing God to make that kind of a mistake.

Of course not. Let’s read on:

God gave us something better. In essence, He gave us a “birth certificate.” For example, using my personal birth certificate, I can calculate how old I am at any point. It is similar with the earth. Genesis 1 says that the earth was created on the first day of creation (Genesis 1:1–5). From there, we can begin calculations of the age of the earth.

Let’s do a rough calculation to show how this works. The age of the earth can be estimated by taking the first 5 days of creation (from earth’s creation to Adam), then following the genealogies from Adam to Abraham in Genesis 5 and 11, then adding in the time from Abraham to today.

We understand the concept. The author then provides us with the conclusions of bible scholars, including Archbishop James Ussher, who agree that the world is about 6,000 years old. More or less. But they don’t all come to the identical conclusion. He explains why:

Some used the Septuagint or another early translation, instead of the Hebrew Masoretic text. The Septuagint is a Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament, done about 250 B.C. by about 70 Jewish scholars (hence it is often cited as the LXX). It is good in most places, but appears to have a number of inaccuracies. For example, one relates to the Genesis chronologies where the LXX indicates that Methuselah would have lived past the Flood, without being on the Ark!

How embarrassing! We’re glad they cleared that one up. Here’s more:

What about extra-biblical calculations for the age of the earth? Cultures throughout the world have kept track of history as well. From a biblical perspective, we would expect the dates given for creation of the earth to align much closer to the biblical date than billions of years.

This is expected since everyone was descended from Noah and scattered from the Tower of Babel. Another expectation is that there should be some discrepancies among the age of the earth as people scattered throughout the world, taking their uninspired records or oral history to different parts of the globe.

Actually, discrepancies are not expected. Englishmen, for example, have scattered from their home island and now live all over the world. But except for known embellishments by later writers, there is no variation in the legend of King Arthur. Nevertheless, the author gives numerous estimates of the age of the earth from several cultures, and they don’t agree at all — except that they don’t involve billions of years.

The author then discusses what happened when the science of geology began, starting with James Hutton. That’s when the idea of millions of years crept into the thinking of educated people. The author says:

From these men [early geologists] and others came the consensus view that the geologic layers were laid down slowly over long periods of time based on the rates we see them accumulating today. Hutton said:

The past history of our globe must be explained by what can be seen to be happening now. … No powers are to be employed that are not natural to the globe, no action to be admitted except those of which we know the principle.

This viewpoint is called naturalistic uniformitarianism, and would exclude any major catastrophes like Noah’s Flood.

Presumably he intended to say “unevidenced major catastrophes.” The writer than summarizes the age of the earth as estimated by several early scientists, and their estimates obviously vary according to what was known at the time of their work. The author stresses that variability, but never mentions the virtue of a system that accepts and encourages such improvements. Near the end he says:

The age of the earth debate ultimately comes down to this foundational question. Are we trusting man’s imperfect and changing ideas and assumptions about the past or trusting God’s perfectly accurate eyewitness account of the past, including the creation of the world, Noah’s global Flood and the age of the earth?

Well, one could look at it like that. Then he provides a lot more information — this really is an interesting article — and finally he winds it all up like this:

The age of the earth ultimately comes down to a matter of trust — it’s a worldview issue. Will you trust what an all-knowing God says on the subject or will you trust imperfect man’s assumptions and imaginations about the past that regularly are changing?

Actually, it’s not a matter of trust. If it were, then the prudent among us would follow Reagan’s dictum: “Trust, but verify!”

This “worldview issue” is really a question of epistemology — What is knowledge? How is knowledge acquired? How do we know what we know?

Copyright © 2009. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.

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Florida Creationism: Slow Start

THIS IS for those interested in the “progress” of Florida’s State Senator Stephen Wise and his promised anti-science, anti-evolution, creationism-friendly law inspired by the misleadingly-named Academic Freedom Act, promoted by the neo-theocrats at the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture (a/k/a the Discoveroids).

Although Senator Wise made a big splash a couple of weeks ago when he announced that his science-killer bill was coming, he seems to have done nothing about it. Not yet. Nor has his colleague in creationism, the pride of the Florida House, creationist dentist Alan Hays. There’s been noise from Hays’ direction, but it could be mere indigestion.

Alabama, Iowa, and New Mexico are actively considering anti-rational, anti-Enlightenment, pro-Dark Ages legislation of the same kind that Florida’s Wise and Hays have been talking about, but those states haven’t done much since their respective bills were filed. Elsewhere this year, Oklahoma’s legislature had the good sense to kill their state’s version of such a bill in committee, and Mississippi briefly considered a foolish “warning sticker” bill for biology texts, but that too died in committee.

Of all the creationism legislation proposed for this year, Florida’s will be the most significant. That’s because of Florida’s population and the inevitable effect such a law will have on the textbook industry. It’s doubtful that publishers will produce a “stupid” version of science texts for Florida, and a version acceptable to the science community for the other states. The same reasoning applies to Texas, where that state’s Board of Education has yet to make up its mind about whether to teach Texas children science from the Eleventh or the Twenty-First century.

Meanwhile, although there’s no legislative news, Jacksonville’s Florida Times-Union, in Senator Wise’s home district, carries what appears to be a guest column by Paul Cottle, professor of physics at Florida State University: Intelligent design: Proposed bill misses the mark. Here are some excerpts:

As a member of the Florida Science Standards Committee, the proposed legislation on intelligent design that Sen. Steve Wise described in the Times-Union will provide the strongest challenge yet to the treatment of evolution education in Florida’s new science standards.

To evaluate these clashing opinions, here’s Cottle’s page at the website of Florida State University: Dr. Paul D. Cottle. And here’s Wise’s official page at the Florida legislature’s website. Senator Stephen R. Wise, which gives his occupation as “Retired Educator,” presumably not science-related. We report, you decide.

Let’s read some more from Cottle’s article:

Wise and the Legislature should leave the evolution standards alone.

Instead, send Gov. Charlie Crist a bill that simply says that Florida’s public schools should be tolerant of students’ religious backgrounds and that no teacher may denigrate a student’s religious beliefs, regardless of the subject being addressed.

That’s better than mandating creationism, but even Cottle’s alternative seems goofy. While they’re at it, perhaps the legislature should also pass a law that tells teachers not to run nude down the halls giving their students wedgies. Come on, people! Don’t teachers already know how to behave?

Anyway, although Cottle seems a fine fellow, and we agree with him in opposing Wise’s creationism bill, we’re not in agreement with Cottle’s thinking about what the legislature ought to do instead.

How about this — Do nothing! That’s the Curmudgeon’s legislative agenda.

Copyright © 2009. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.

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