Skepticism, Religion Archive

Friday, January 22, 2010

Young Earth Creationism - Is It a Modern Phenomenon?

Note: I'd originally posted a lot of this information in a comment on Pharyngula, but I figured it was worth a blog entry, so I worked on it a bit and posted it here.

Adam & Eve with Some PterosaursI've been hearing a lot recently that creationism is a fairly modern American movement, and that Christians were more nuanced in their understanding of scripture before that. For example, there was a recent entry on Pharyngula, summarizing a lecture by Ron Numbers, describing how creationism is really the product of Ellen White, the founder of Seventh Day Adventism. I've also heard Richard Dawkins make the claim a few times that young earth creationism is something new. There are certainly quite a few Christians today who interpret Genesis figuratively or allegorically, and quite a few of those who argue that it's obvious that Genesis isn't meant to be interpreted literally.

But how true are those claims? I went to the first place that all of us lazy researchers go - Wikipedia. Granted, I'm aware with the problems of trying to use Wikipedia as a primary source, but it's usually pretty useful.

The Wikipedia article lists examples of Christian creationism going all the way back to the beginning of Christianity (as well as numerous flavors of creationism of other religions predating Christianity). Even Saint Augustine, so often quoted for telling Christians not to speak about natural phenomena of which they were ignorant, thought that pretty much all of Genesis except for the creation story was literal, and seemed to think that the Earth was still only a few thousand years old.

They are deceived . . . by those highly mendacious documents which profess to give the history of many thousand years, though reckoning by the sacred writings, we find that not 6,000 years have yet passed. (City of God)

Sure, there were people that thought the Earth was much older, but young earth creationism doesn't appear to be a particularly new phenomenon.

I think that when people talk about creationism being a modern phenomenon, they're actually referring to a modern resurgence. By the 1800s, geologists were starting to learn enough about the history of our planet that it was pretty obvious that it was very ancient. They didn't have the techniques to pin down the age as well as we do now, but their estimates ranged from millions to billions of years. For anyone who studied the evidence, it was no longer possible to be intellectually honest and still maintain a young earth perspective. So, educated Christians who hadn't already done so switched to non-literal interpretations of Genesis. Day age and gap theories were among the popular interpretations.

It was in response to this 'liberalizing' of Christianity, as well as in response to the Enlightenment, that fundamentalist Christianity sprang up. And it was against this backdrop that young earth creationism had its resurgence, including the visions of Ellen White.

I think another point that's worth bringing up is the difference between what educated and uneducated people believe. I don't mean for this to sound condescending - merely factual. As I bring up over and over on this site, just look at the Science and Engineering Indicators put out by the National Science Foundation. One in four people in this country don't realize the Earth orbits the Sun (it's even worse in Europe), and one half don't realize that electrons are smaller than atoms. Of course, practically anybody with a good education knows those simple facts. But, consider what future historians would think about our society's understanding of those facts. If it wasn't for polls like those, all they would have to go on would be books, articles, and other written records. And it's mainly people with good educations who leave those records. Outside of polls and similar research, written records are biased towards the educated. Now, considering young earth creationism, I think there might be a similar bias going on when we try to figure out what people believed in the 1800s and even earlier. What gets recorded in books written by educated priests is not the same thing as what was believed by the uneducated population.

So, it seems a bit misleading to claim that young earth creationism is a modern phenomenon. You could get away with talking of a modern resurgence, but young earth creationism appears to be as old as religion itself. And to claim that Genesis is clearly figurative or allegorical seems a bit of a stretch, as well, considering how many intelligent people accepted it as literal before we knew enough about the history of our planet to know otherwise. It's tough to know what people were thinking thousands of years ago concerning the creation stories now recorded in Genesis, but it certainly seems possible that they were accepted at face value.

Friday, November 20, 2009

E-mail Forward - Obama's Reaction to Ft. Hood Shootings

I got another e-mail forwarded to me to research that hasn't yet been covered by Snopes. There is an official statement from one of the parties implicated in the e-mail, but the misleading nature of the e-mail makes people less likely to actually go to that organization.

The e-mail is about Obama's reaction to the recent shootings at Ft. Hood. It claims that Nidal Hassan was an advisor to Obama on homeland security, and that Obama has been quiet in his response to the shootings for this reason. As evidence, the e-mail provides a link to notes from a meeting that lists Hassan as a participant.

For the most part, this e-mail is false or misleading.

The link provided goes to the George Washington University Homeland Security Policy Institute (HSPI), not the federal government's Department of Homeland Security. The HSPI describes itself as follows.

Founded in 2003, The George Washington University Homeland Security Policy Institute (HSPI) is a nonpartisan “think and do” tank whose mission is to build bridges between theory and practice to advance homeland security through an interdisciplinary approach. By convening domestic and international policymakers and practitioners at all levels of government, the private and non-profit sectors, and academia, HSPI creates innovative strategies and solutions to current and future threats to the nation.

Nidal Hasan is listed in the pdf link, and this is the same Nidal Hasan responsible for killing the people at Fort Hood. However, he is listed as a participant, or in other words, an audience member. The presenters are listed earlier in the pdf, and Hasan is not among them. The HSPI has released a statement on Hasan's connection to the institute (currently available on their homepage). Here is the first paragraph of that statement.

In his capacity as Disaster & Preventive Psychiatry Fellow at the Uniformed Services University School of Medicine, Nidal Hasan registered ("RSVP'd') to attend as an audience member a number of Homeland Security Policy Institute (HSPI) events in the period June 2008 to February 2009. All of these events were open to the public. At no time has Nidal Hasan been affiliated with HSPI or The George Washington University.

So, Hasan was an audience member, or at least RSVP'd, for a meeting on homeland security organized by a university think tank. I think it's disingenuous to try to use that to try to show that Hasan was connected somehow with the president (other than the fact that as commander in chief, Obama was Hasan's boss, though removed by many levels of supervisors).

The full text of the e-mail forward is available below the fold.

Continue reading "E-mail Forward - Obama's Reaction to Ft. Hood Shootings" »

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Ray Comfort - Still Ignorant on Evolution

On the Origin of Species - The Ray Comfort EditionWow. Just, wow. I know I've talked about Ray Comfort more times on this blog than is healthy (for example - here, here, here, here, here, and here), but now, not just is he publishing his drivel on his own, making scam websites, or getting followers to put the equivalent of junk mail into books at the book store. Now, he's been published in a blog on the U.S. News and World Report website, and boy is it ignorant.

The background of this article is this. Ray Comfort is publishing two versions of a reprint of Darwin's Origin of Species, along with an introduction in each version. The first version was abridged, and the introduction was made publicly available on the web. After the negative publicity it received, Comfort made his second version unabridged, and supposedly with a modified introduction. To give an idea of the introduction, here's how Comfort himself described it (be forewarned - there are many falsehoods and examples of bad logic in just these two paragraphs*).

This introduction gives the history of evolution, a timeline of Darwin's life, Hitler's undeniable connections to the theory, Darwin's racism, his disdain for women, and his thoughts on the existence of God. It lists the theory's many hoaxes, exposes the unscientific belief that nothing created everything, points to the incredible structure of DNA, and the absence of any species-to-species transitional forms.

It presents a balanced view of Creationism with information on scientists who believed that God created the universe—scientists such as Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton, Nicholas Copernicus, Francis Bacon, Michael Faraday, Louis Pasteur and Johannes Kepler. It uses many original graphics and "is for use in schools, colleges, and prestigious learning institutions." The introduction also contains the entire contents of the popular booklet, "Why Christianity?"

Towards the end of September, Dan Gilgoff posted an entry in his God & Country blog on U.S. News & World Report describing Comfort's book (the first version). After all the feedback Gilgoff got for that entry, he decided to revisit the issue. He set up an online debate between Ray Comfort and Eugenie Scott, the executive director of the National Center for Science Education. The debate consisted of four posts in total - Comfort's original argument, Scott's original argument, Comfort's response to Scott, and finally, Scott's response to Comfort.

I guess there are several ways I could have addressed this in a blog post, but I've decided to focus on Comfort's second post. That one struck me as so out and out ignorant, that it seemed a ripe target. I encourage you to read Scott's response first, but I thought I could supplement what she already wrote.

Continue reading "Ray Comfort - Still Ignorant on Evolution" »

Monday, October 26, 2009

Evolution No More a Fact than the Civil War

There's a minor brouhaha over Nicholas Wade's review of Richard Dawkins's latest book, "The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution". Wade claimed that Dawkins had confused fact and theory, which prompted quite a few letters to the editor explaining Wade's mistake.

Now, I don't often get involved in discussions in the comments sections on websites, but I did leave a couple comments on this one. Rather than give a long introduction, I'll jump right to quoting the relevant comments from the article. Here is the original comment that prompted me to reply.

These people who keep arguing that evolution is a fact because there is so much supporting evidence for it are very funny. Evolution is a fact only if you can directly observe it happening. Otherwise, it is not a fact and will never be a fact. What is a fact is the evolutionists religious zealotry… ;)

— island


I responded thusly.

Island wrote: "Evolution is a fact only if you can directly observe it happening."

Aside from the observed instances of evolution (Lenski's e. coli experiments are a popular recent example), this statement seems to imply that nothing from history can be a fact, since events that happened in the past can no longer be directly observed. I don't think that's the way most people use the word, since, for example, I think most people would call it a 'fact' that the U.S. Civil War occurred, or that Abraham Lincoln was the 16th president of the U.S. There are other forms of evidence besides direct observation.

— Fatboy


Island responded to my comment as follows (this is the comment that made it worth reposting this whole exchange).

The civil war may be a fact, but you can't *know* this beyond any shadow of a doubt. You can know it beyond any *reasonable* doubt, however, so we can have an extremely high degree of certainty that it happened, but that is not the same thing. We can confidently assume that humans evolved from apes, because there is much supporting historical evidence in support of this assumption, but it will always be an assumption, and will never be a knowable truth…. or a fact.

— island


I responded again.

Island,

You're playing semantic games. You say it's not a fact that the Civil War occurred. Your definition of 'fact' is different from everybody I know personally, but at least now it's clear why you argue that evolution isn't a fact.

However, if something has to be proven 'beyond any shadow of a doubt' to be a fact, and the Civil War doesn't meet that criteria for you, I'm curious if there's anything that you would consider a fact. After all, one can always fall back on solipsism or Last Thursdayism to cast doubt on just about everything.

-Fatboy


Island did follow up with a long comment, and a link.

Fatboy, you miss the point that the scientific method is not “solipsism” and there can be no room for slopiness in this because theories are **always** subject to a better theory as defined by efficiency, or accuracy in conjunction with Occam.

As I stated, “degrees of certainty” (or our confidence level), increases with the strength of evidence, and I don't expect evolutionary theory to be radically overturned because of this, but it is a fact that a better theory will always be possible that approximates the historic record more accurately or with equal accuracy, but in less steps than Evolutionary theory does.

In this case, “evolution” didn't necessarily occur via the criterion that define our current understanding of the process, and the author might choose not to incorporate the term into this theory. In which case, “evolution” never was a fact.

Like I said, I don't expect it, but there is no room for play or you are not representing science like you claim to be, which is the point where the lies embellishments and distortions of this politics hurt science.

My personal beef is the way that this ideological mentality predetermines the assumptions about impetus behind some of the less-well defined mechanisms of evolutionary theory that are automatically taken to be of random or accidental nature, rather than of necessity or natural law, because evolutionists wrongly perceive such an admission in favor of the creationists position.

Which, unfortunately, justifies the pressure of the “other side” in order to counterbalance the dogma of the left.

And those are observable facts… ;)

— island


This is an excellent example of what I am talking about:

http://knol.google.com/k/richard-ryals/the-anthropic-principle/1cb34nnchgkl5/2#

— island

I responded one last time.

Island,

I was all ready to go with another long explanation of 'facts' and levels of certainty, but decided against arguing over semantics. If, as you already stated, your definition of 'fact' precludes including the occurrence of the U.S. Civil war in that definition, you're clearly using a definition well outside the standard usage. If 'fact' is to have any meaning at all, it must surely mean 'very high level of certainty', and not 'absolute 100% certainty'.

When you wrote, "theories are **always** subject to a better theory as defined by efficiency, or accuracy in conjunction with Occam," you're pedantically correct, but really stretching the point. Larry Woolf's quote of Gould above explains this point better than anything I could write, so there's no need for me to dwell on it.

To steer this back to the topic of the article, it seems that you may also be missing the point of what Dawkins wrote originally. Descent with modification occurred. We can be as sure of that as we can of the existence of the Roman Empire, the occurrence of the Civil War, Armstrong and Aldrin landing on the Moon, or the idea that the Earth orbits the Sun, whether you're willing to call those things facts or only grant them high levels of certainty. That's not being disingenuous. There really is that much evidence supporting common descent.

Now, there's the separate issue of what drives that evolution, the 'mechanisms' as you put it. That's where the theory comes into play, and is also where more of the uncertainty is, concerning natural selection, sexual selection, group selection, or genetic drift, to name just a few. We still know that those things occur, because they have been observed, too (except group selection - it's still questionable). However, there is a question as to how important each has been to the history of life on this planet.

— Fatboy

For reference, the Gould quote was this.

Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts do not go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's, but apples did not suspend themselves in midair pending the outcome. And humans evolved from apelike ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other, yet to be discovered.

As another aside, I know I didn't address the link that island provided, but I think Douglas Adams already covered the anthropic principle quite well. (I've also seen an even less reverant refutation of the anthropic principle.)

This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in - an interesting hole I find myself in - fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it's still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise.

If island responds again, I'll include the response here. However, I'm not sure if I'll leave any more comments on the NY Times site. There's an old saying about arguing with fools, and when someone resorts to saying that the historicity of the Civil War is something we can't be sure about, they may not be the type of people you want to be seen arguing with.

(There's always the chance that perhaps I'm a victim of Poe's Law. Island did, after all, leave a winking smiley in two comments. However, I get the feeling that island is being serious.)

Friday, October 23, 2009

What's the Point of Intercessory Prayer?

Hands Clasped in PrayerThis is something I've written about before (and has been written about by others), but it really struck me last night, so I felt like commenting on it today.

Last night, my daughter had her girl scout award ceremony. As is pretty common for these things, her troop meets at a church. The room where we had the ceremony is also a meeting room for one of the Sunday school classes, and one of the walls had a section for "Prayer Requests," where students put up little notes with things they'd like the congregation to pray for*.

One of the girl scouts, I'm assuming one who hasn't been exposed to church too much, asked what the "Prayer Requests" wall was about. The troop leader explained it to her, but I had a thought that made me smirk a bit, and bite my tongue not to say out loud - because God wouldn't know those people were having problems unless he heard about it through prayer.

When you stop and think about it, if you believe that your god is all knowing and all powerful, then intercessory prayer really is a weird thing. Sure, it makes sense if you believe in imperfect or fickle gods, who may or may not follow the daily events of our personal lives, and who may or may not care what happens to us. But that's not the type of god most Christians believe in.

Most Christians I know believe that Yahweh is omnipotent, omniscient, and that he has a perfect plan for us. If that's the case, what could you expect to achieve through prayer? Yahweh already knows what's going on - he doesn't need earthly informants. It's not as if it's a popularity contest, and Yahweh's going to count votes to determine his divine intervention. And it really is less than humble to ask the almighty to change his divine plan simply because you don't like it. The plan is supposedly perfect, after all.

I can understand other types of prayer - praise, thanksgiving, asking for strength for yourself. But when it comes to intercessory prayer, it seems a bit, well, odd.

Anyway, these aren't terribly original thoughts. But, the more and more I've been outside of Christianity, the stranger and stranger some of those old habits seem.


*I don't mean to belittle the actual topics of most of the prayer requests. There were definitely some serious issues on that wall.

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