|
Feedback archive →
Feedback 2010
Creationists hypocritical?
Answering the evolution-is-science-creation-is-faith caricature
Published: 9 January 2010(GMT+10)
A mock cladogram of wheeled vehicles, showing ‘transitional’
changes leading to the ‘evolutionary’ emergence of 18-wheeled trucks.
Using this as an analogy, but adhering to evolutionistic reasoning, the pakicetids
are walking whales in the same way that unicycles are primitive trucks.
Mike D claimed our article Creationists
are liars was very hypocritical then paraded the evolution-is-science-creation-is-faith
fallacy. His email is first printed in its entirety.
I have to say, that while this article is interesting, it is still very hypocritical.
First of all, the author keeps talking about how evolutionists assume their ideas
are true. Ok, yes. They do. But creationists assume their ideas are true, and the
evolutionists ideas are wrong, so what’s the difference?
Secondly, the author talks about how evolutionists change their ideas when new evidence
comes around that does not fit with their theories. That’s because they are
SCIENTISTS. They look at evidence, and form theories around it. If new evidence
comes around that changes the theory, they change the theory to something that accounts
for the new evidence. Creationists, when confronted with evidence that conflicts
with their ideas, simply ignore it, use the ‘God did it’ excuse, or
distort it to look like something that fits with creationism.
Finally, using analogies in an argument is a horrible logical fallacy. I have no
idea if the fork and spoon have a common ancestor; I highly doubt it. The two ideas
are not even remotely close enough to be comparable. I don’t fully understand
why it was even included in this essay. A better comparison might be the evolution
of language over time. But again, argument by analogy is a logical fallacy.
Dr Tas Walker responds to his claims
paragraph by paragraph.
I have to say, that while this article is interesting, it is still very hypocritical.
First of all, the author keeps talking about how evolutionists assume their ideas
are true. Ok, yes. They do. But creationists assume their ideas are true, and the
evolutionists ideas are wrong, so what’s the difference?
It is not hypocritical at all. The difference is that creationists acknowledge that
they have made assumptions and are prepared to discuss and debate those assumptions.
On the other hand, evolutionists will not acknowledge that they are making assumptions
but keep saying they are dealing with facts. They try to silence debate and avoid
answering questions by saying things like “Creationism is a religion”
or “Creation is not scientific” or “Creation is based on faith
but evolution is based on evidence”. All these are false but they have the
effect that evolutionists avoid defending their ideas with evidence and logic.
Secondly, the author talks about how evolutionists change their ideas when new evidence
comes around that does not fit with their theories. That’s because they are
SCIENTISTS. They look at evidence, and form theories around it. If new evidence
comes around that changes the theory, they change the theory to something that accounts
for the new evidence. Creationists, when confronted with evidence that conflicts
with their ideas, simply ignore it, use the ‘God did it’ excuse, or
distort it to look like something that fits with creationism.
See, as I described above, you are falling into the trap that evolutionists fall
into all the time. Here you are claiming that evolution is about evidence and creation
is about faith. Richard Dawkins keeps trotting out the same wrong strawman. Evolutionists
have the idea that Christianity is about faith and then falsely claim that biblical
faith is believing things without evidence (see
What is Faith? to address this and other misconceptions). That is absolutely
the wrong idea of how worldviews work.
Both the creation and evolution worldviews begin with assumptions about the nature
of reality. Evolution assumes naturalism. As the late Carl Sagan said, “The
Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be.” How can he prove that
scientifically? He can’t. That sounds like a theological statement, and it
is. It is a position that he accepts by faith. And evolutionists do their science
by faith, assuming that naturalism is true.
Creationists do careful scientific research and come up with answers to scientific
problems.
But there are lots of phenomena in the world that indicate that naturalism is not
enough to explain the world. The fact that the
universe is running down means that it could not have existed forever and
that processes unlike those we see today were involved in its creation. The fact
that you can
think and reason means that your brain is more than chemicals and natural processes.
The fact that you can appreciate beauty and feel love means that you are more than
an electronic circuit that runs on impulses and electrons. The
detail being discovered within the living cell points to it being designed
and shows that it could not arise by natural processes.
But evolutionists just ignore such conflicting evidence because it does not fit
with their ideas. They will say things like, “We can’t explain it now
but that does not mean that naturalism is not true.” So evolutionists do what
you are accusing the creationists of doing. They hold onto their beliefs in spite
of the evidence. “Evolution did it! Scientists have not yet worked out how
evolution occurred. But there is total agreement on the fact that evolution did occur.”
This is a blind faith. They ignore the evidence, or distort things to make it look
like the evidence fits with evolution. “Life
evolved on the back of crystals.” Ha! What nonsense.
And it is wrong to suggest that creationists simply say, “God did it”,
when confronted with evidence that runs counter to expectations. Creationists assume
that God exists and that he has revealed himself in the Bible, which is taken as
accurate and reliable. Yes, this is a position of faith, but there is good evidence
supporting that position. But
many creationists are SCIENTISTS
by any reasonable definition. Creationists do careful scientific research
and come up with answers to scientific problems. They do not let go their starting
assumptions but they do change their scientific models in the light of new evidence.
That is exactly the same way evolutionists work. Have you read the
Creation Answers Book? It answers scores of questions about creation
and evolution. Have a look at the Q&A page on Creation.com.
That deals with thousands of questions and topics that come up. Creationist scientists
have produced sound answers to things that have been considered a problem.
Finally, using analogies in an argument is a horrible logical fallacy. I have no
idea if the fork and spoon have a common ancestor; I highly doubt it. The two ideas
are not even remotely close enough to be comparable. I don’t fully understand
why it was even included in this essay. A better comparison might be the evolution
of language over time. But again, argument by analogy is a logical fallacy.
Sure, the argument is
formally fallacious, but it doesn’t mean that it’s
always inappropriate. After all, your hero Darwin frequently used analogical
arguments, e.g. artificial selection by breeders as an analogy for natural selection.
An arrangement of animals and fossils in a cladogram proves nothing about their
ancestor/descendent relationship
The analogy that so offends you shows that an arrangement of animals and fossils
in a cladogram proves nothing about their ancestor/descendent relationship. A cladogram
does not prove one animal evolved from another or that two animals have a common
ancestor. It only shows how similar the two are in the features that are considered
in the cladogram. And that similarity can have a range of explanations, including
design.
When you say that you “highly doubt” that “the fork and the spoon
have a common ancestor”, it seems to me that you are confused about what a
cladogram is doing and how that relates to evolution. I suspect you are thinking
of the design of the fork and the spoon, and you are wondering if the similar
designs were inspired from a more generic design of another piece of cutlery. But
the design of an object is totally different from the supposed process of evolution
of living things. The fork concept may have been inspired from something else but
this inspiration occurred in the minds of the designer. The new design
was not the result of an evolutionary process involving the cutlery reproducing
other cutlery over thousands of generations.
You can arrange any group of objects into a cladogram simply by selecting a range
of properties for the objects (length, width, number of appendages, engraving, etc.)
and then scoring the properties on each object. You can do it on animals and fossils.
You can do it on cutlery and automobiles. The cladogram falls out of this process.
When you use this process on forks and knives it is abundantly clear that the resulting
cladogram has nothing to do with ancestors and descendents. It is clear
because forks and spoons do not reproduce themselves the way living things do. In
the same way, a cladogram of animals and fossils says nothing about their ancestors
and descendents.
Regards,
Tas Walker
Geologist, Editor, Speaker
Creation Ministries International
Related articles
| The thousands of fully searchable articles on this site are accessed daily by thousands of people. If even a fraction of those thousands of people gave a small amount regularly, we could dramatically increase our outreach!  | | |
|
