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©Marko Grönroos, 1998

USENET News talk.origins

Säie: Creationists' Hate of Faith

Mark Isaak <atta AT earthlinkNOSPAM PISTE net> writes: > It is obvious that creationists have a great deal of contempt for > faith. I wouldn't be surprised about that. You should think about the differences between creationists and other Christians; why don't the others see evolution as a problem for their religion? The answer: they have FAITH. They don't need evidence for the existence of God or for the literal truthfulness of Bible to believe in God. I'm not sure they even want to have such evidence. I can see a bunch of theological arguments why Catholic and Protestant churches would be unwilling to challenge the theory of evolution. The following argument may be the most important one: Can an omnipotent God design a universe that is capable of spontaneously creating life that is capable of evolving without divine intervention to arbitrarily complex, learning, conscious beings? Therefore, if you say that creation of man through natural evolution is impossible, you also claim that God is incapable of creating such a universe. This would go against the basic tenet of omnipotence, which is, actually rather important for the Intelligent Design, unless they want to propose that God is not omnipotent. QED? Of course, creationists would argue that while the omnipotent God certainly _could_ design such a universe, Bible explicitly tells that God CREATED life and animals and man on earth. However, this argument is wholly irrelevant for the notion of Intelligent Design, which -- as Dembski and pals apparently try to claim -- is not specifically bound to Christian creation story. To prove that God created life directly, the ID theory would first have to prove that life was designed and then have to prove that it was _not_ created naturally because of the design of the universe. This would require proving that there is *no way* for creating life through any natural phenomena known or unknown to man so far. Sounds like a bit impossible proof (not that proving design sounds any more possible). Certainly, such a designed universe would be indistinguishable from a universe in an infinite multiverse, which would make an infinite Creator useless, but that's not the issue here. But, back to the faith topic. Nevertheless, the appeal to Bible is an inherently _fundamentalist_ Christian interpretation of Bible; if you spend even a little thought for interpreting Genesis so that it fits the scientific theories, you will see that use of evolution as a tool is a very plausible interpretation. We could therefore argue that Creationism is not just struggle against atheism, but against all non-fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible. Proving that life was not created through evolution, that world is 6000 years old, and that Flood really did happen, would prove that Bible is a literal description of truth. This would have vast theological consequences against the non-fundamentalist denominations, as it would show that they've had too little faith in the literal truth of Bible, which means that they don't have true faith in God. This struggle against establishment is again one standard raison d'etre of all religions: showing that We Are Right And Will Be Saved And Others Are Wrong And Will Die. Of course, they would miss the point that -- as explained above -- true faith would not be subordinate to proving the literal truthfulness of Bible. That's not, of course, the only possible reason for creationism. As a rationalist, I do understand creationism in a way. In a sense, it is more rational than the forms of Christianity that deny the need for proof about god. It's a reaction to the basic atheist argument - why believe in a god without any proof? Evolution is the last straw for such pseudo-rationalist religion, as without any direct evidense about gods, it's the only possibility to argue that something couldn't be without a God. I must stress the word PSEUDO-rationalist, as it's inherently non-rationalistic by assuming with a "leap of faith" that a god exists. I would say creationism is in a perverted marriage with rationalism, which is such a strong symbol of the technological success of the western world. Even creationists can't deny the fruits of rationalism in the technological, economic, military, and political fields. What they wish -- desperately -- is that the strong force of rationalism would somehow turn against the atheistic world view that is such a big threath to their religious conviction. -- -- Marko Grönroos, magi<at>iki.fi (http://www.iki.fi/magi/) -- Software Architect, among a few other unimportant things

Edellinen säie: ONE PROOF OF EVOLUTION
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