The Questioning Librarian

Today is the final post of CMI's "Question Evolution" campaign, or rather my answers to their supposed Fifteen Questions for Evolutionists. I'm glad to come to the end of this exercise; the questions are long and tiresome, full of the same garbage that supporters of evolution (i.e. "real science") have rebutted over and over again only to see it thrown back at us like it's absolutely new. It isn't. There are the same old recycled arguments creationists have had for years. I have to think that the people pushing this wouldn't be satisfied with any  answer we can give them, no matter how much evidence is provided. They'll just close their ears and spout "irreducible complexity," "problems in the theory," "religious dogma" and other such denials at us. Nonetheless, I've come this far and won't stop until I've answered the last two. Here they are: Q14: Science involves experimenting  to figure out how t...

Back to answer three more of the "Fifteen Questions" for Evolutionists from Creation Ministries International. Stay with me for two more posts; now with ten of the fifteen answered, we are almost finished. So far, nothing they say has any weight in bringing down evolution; they are questions that can only appeal to creationists as definitively debunking evolution when they have done no such thing. Here they are: Q11: How did blind chemistry create mind/intelligence, meaning, altruism and morality? If everything evolved, and we invented God , as per evolutionary teaching, what purpose or meaning is there to human life? Once again, the argument from incredulity combined with a mischaracterization of what evolution actually says. Evolution says nothing about God; it is science, not theology, and explains the development of the diversity of life, not the origin of life or the origin of the universe. I repeat: evolution says nothing about God. Further, the brain is driven by c...

Back to the "Fifteen Questions" for two more today, both dealing in one way or another with fossils. The question of support for evolution in the fossil record is one of the segments of evolution that I am most interested in, especially refuting the oft-repeated canard that there are no transitional fossils, a lie if there ever was one. Here they are: Q9: Why are the (expected) millions of transitional fossils missing? Darwin noted the problem and it still remains... The creationists appears to be blind as well as deaf it seems; we do not have "millions" of transitional fossils, but we have many, enough to demonstrate the validity of evolution. The creationist once again thinks that evolution hasn't changed since Darwin wrote The Origin ; what was a problem for Darwin is no longer a problem. The discovery of Archaeopteryx soon after the publication of Darwin's book in 1859 was one of the first corroborating pieces of fossil evidence, and the case has onl...

The next three questions are up today. I must admit, I've been enjoying doing the necessary research to fill the gaps of my own knowledge in order to answer the questions, research, I might add, that any creationist could do if they actually wanted answers to the questions rather than just public relations point-scoring by asking so-called "unanswerable questions." Regardless, here we go again; Q6: Living things look like they were designed, so how do evolutionists know  that they were not designed? Ah, one of my favorites, the argument from design, often masked in the "irreducible complexity" of Intelligent Design such as Q5 represents. Living things give the illusion  of design, they are not designed, and in many cases this so-called design seems quite faulty. Species evolve over time through natural selection, their "fitness" as a species consisting of being adapted to their environment. Natural selection produces organisms that are adapted to t...

Here we are, back again to tackle a few more of the "Fifteen Questions" for Evolutionists that are supposed to awe and stump us into acceptance of creationism. Good luck with that; from what I can tell, these questions are rehashes of tired old creationist talking-points. Here are the next few... Q3: How could mutations--accidental copying mistakes--create the huge volume of information in the DNA of living things? This question encapsulates creationist obsession with, and misunderstanding of, what "mutations" are. Sorry to burst your bubble, but in the DNA when we speak of "mutations" one shouldn't read that to mean detrimental mistakes exclusively, though many are. What creationists don't seem to understand is that it isn't an all-or-nothing proposition when mutations occur in the genetic code. Sometimes they have no effect at all, but they are used later in combination with more recent mutations. This is clearly demonstrated in the devel...

Creation Ministries International has launched a new initiative, which seems a lot like all the other creationists blitzkriegs before it. With the wonderfully creative tagline of "Question Evolution", CMI intends to challenge "evolutionists" and their "indoctrination" of high school students with the supposed dogma of evolution. They also aim to  cut the population of atheists by half , presumably by challenging the "faith" that every atheist (and only atheists, no "real Christians") is supposed to hold in Darwin's great idea. The main thrust of this is a tract with fifteen "unanswerable" questions for evolutionists. I'm done putting quotation marks around the word, evolutionists; from here on out I ask my readers to recognize that it is a creationist term that is about as silly as calling someone a general relativist (accepts general relativity) or germist (for accepting germ theory). Regardless, CMI seems just as i...

There are quite a number of concepts that one could successfully argue that creationists fail to understand; whether this is out of a simple lack of knowledge or willful ignorance is hard to say and certainly can't be generalized to every creationist. Some, the everyday creationist, I would like to think simply haven't been exposed to the evidence. Others, the holders of Ph.D's in various fields, especially in the sciences, who happily reject evolutionary theory are willfully ignorant (John Whitmore comes to mind). But I think there is one idea that creationists of all stripes simply fail to understand; evolution is based on solid, visible evidence. Evolution is not some tenant of a "science religion" that descended down to Darwin from on high, it is an explanatory framework based on quite a lot of facts and mountains of evidence. It is evidence that leads to the conclusions of evolution, that life changes over time and, given the long history of the earth, all ...

Next up on the list of Enemies of Reason is a little creationist ministry called "Creation Moments." I was first made aware of them through email forwards; I have a contact who regularly sends them to me, presuming that I agree with them (I don't), and I assume that by forwarding them he agrees with them as well. Creation Moments, a daily radio broadcast on  five major radio networks  with transcripts available on their website, was founded over forty years ago by a man named William Lang, a minister in Idaho, was disturbed by the trend he was noticing, not just in his church but in numerous other churches in which youth attendance was declining sharply in the first one to two years of college. "Evolutionary theory, with its godless worldview, was poisoning young minds in Lang's church. These young people were taught evolutionary theory as fact, with no mention of Biblical perspectives and creationism theories (taken from the "About" section on the Crea...

This one is almost too easy. Ken Ham, the co-founder of the Creation Museum (2007) and Answers in Genesis (1994), is a Biblical literalist who formerly taught biology in Australia before moving to the United States in 1987. Author of The Lie: Evolution , Ham is in the vanguard of creationism as one of its most vocal proponents. He regularly posts blogs and articles on the Answers in Genesis website, claiming over 1.25 million visitors to the Museum and ten million hits on the AiG website. Ham promotes the notion that dinosaurs were on the Ark, that they can exist comfortably  within the framework of the Bible  and that any Christians who find that evolution is compatible with their faith are nothing but a bunch of compromisers who ignore that a literal Genesis is  fundamental  to a Christian worldview. He is also fond of repeating that the creation-evolution "debate" is a choice between God's inerrant Word and "man's fallible opinion", along with the standa...

First in the spotlight as an "Enemy of Reason" is Conservapedia, the conservative response to the "liberal untruths" of Wikipedia . They state that  "liberal bias"  isn't allowed here, and that it is not only a resource for college-bound homeschoolers, but a resource for those "seeking the truth." Well, what "truth" would that be? While I'm sure some articles are fairly good, there are a number of topics that read like they were written by creationists...likely because they were! Hence the article on  evolution , that never actually gets around to talking about the numerous strands of evidence for the theory but instead spends most of its time trying to attack it, through numerous, boundless and irrelevant attacks such as their claim that creationists win the actual debates (with a quote from the late Henry Morris, a creationist debater, voicing his opinion that they always win--hardly compelling evidence), attempting to paint e...

In any battle, it's important to know who the enemy is. This one is no different. If there is to be any victory over the foes of science and reason, then we need to know just who they are and what they are about, and even what level of threat they pose. So in that spirit, I'm beginning an occasional series with the intent of highlighting a number of the bigger foes of reason. Beyond perhaps a co-worker, a neighbor or the pastor at the church down the street who hold these opinions are larger organizations that exist to promote them and very public figures who aren't shy about speaking their mind, their words lending weight to a notion that really has no validity whatsoever. First up in the series is that bastion of irrationality and denial. Yes, I'm talking about  Conservapedia !

I well recall going with three friends to see "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed", partly out of curiosity and partly out of encouragement from one of my creationist coworkers whose church was sponsoring the showing. At that point, two of us had been convinced that evolution was true while the other two were transitioning from creationism to Intelligent Design (and have since made the final step and accepted evolution, seeing it as no threat to their devout faith). I remember being singularly unimpressed by the film, more horrified that such a trite piece of anti-intellectual screed existed than I was impressed by the strength of the arguments contained therein. Though I knew very little about evolution at that point compared to what I know now, I was shocked at the attempted linking of Darwin to Hitler (a favorite tactic of creationists) as much as I was shocked by the lack of the "there are no transitional fossils" argument which I expected to see and knew how to ...

Some time ago I wrote a post  regarding the survey of U.S. biology teachers which found education in evolution to be in a terrible state, where only 28% of those surveyed teach evolution as the unifying theory of biology with the evidence that supports it. In that same survey 13% actually teach  some form of creationism , in complete and consistent violation of legal precedent. The group "Creation Moments" took some time to praise these "renegade" teachers who  upset the educational establishment  and frustrate the progression of public acceptance of evolution. The creationists assert that while these teachers may get an "F" in evolution, they get an A in their book. Hardly an honor to be proud of, coming from people who make it their business to routinely attack science they believe to be in contradiction to their revelation. Nearly as bad as teaching creationism outright is comparing many different ideas, "scientific or not." Well, that's...

This is a call to action. Now, with evolution under assault, and also much of science in many different fields facing similar treatment, we who love and respect science have a duty to speak out to defend it. As much as we might wish it otherwise, creationism, in spite of losing nearly every battle it has fought thus far, is not dead by any stretch of the imagination. Instead, creationism evolves over time, taking new guises in hopes of getting into the classroom, forcing its views on the entire body of students. We who are on the side of science have fought them as well, but the battle is ongoing. Science in the classroom remains under assault, with evolution, climate change and modern geology being the prime focus of irrational attacks.  The anti-science opposition is vocal, persistent, well-organized and well-funded, and they have long triumphed in the minds of much of the public. Whether it is Answers in Genesis with its Creation Museum, and now the taxpayer-supported Ark Encou...