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Fighting Creationism[long]
I figured that with the recent hoopla about creationism, this
post is rather timely.
Most of the ideas contained herein are inspired by the book
_Is God A Creationist?:The Religious Case Against Creation-Science_.
This book should be required reading by anyone who wants to jump into
the debate. I found out many interesting things, including how the
Roman Catholic church has officially denounced creationism, and that
in the Arkansas "equal time" trial, the main front against it was
religious. It would seem that creationism is further from the
religious establishment than it is from the scientific. This book
also gave me a new understanding about what the debate is really
about...not creation vs. evolution but faith vs. the scientific
method.
THE BOUNDARIES OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION
The first thing we have to do is set the boundaries of science
and religion. Science and religion are two different, yet compatible,
methods of inquiry. Despite what many people, creationist,
scientist, and lay think, they are not exclusive of each other. They
are not even in the same proverbial ballpark. Science is concerned
with the physical, or in other words, the "how" and the "when".
Religion investigates those things that science cannot...the soul,
what's there after death, morality. It's concerned with the "who" and
the "why". Science is concerned with increasing knowledge, religion
with spiritual growth. Science does not, or should not, overstep it's
bounds in those respects; and I think it would do us some good to
remember this.
DE-MYSTIFYING SCIENCE
Whenever creationists throw another volley, many of us are
left wondering why the public accepts what is so obviously junk and
pseudo-science...obvious to us. The public seems generally unable to
make the distinction between real science and pseudo-science because
they don't know what makes what we say any more legitimate than what
creationists say. When we, the scientific community, present our case
to the public about almost anything, we always seem to be saying
"hey, trust us...we're the scientists". What we should start doing
(or at least doing better) is to try and get the public involved,
teach them about the scientific method, present the "short form"
evidence to them and let them assess it for themselves.
One of the most agravating statements I come up against in
dealing with creationists, or even just the public, is "ahhh, it's
just a theory". As though a theory was just something a scientist
thought up off the top of her head while sipping coffee on a Saturday
morning. We have to try and get the public to know what is entailed
in making something a theory. We have to make the public understand
the process of inductive and deductive reasoning, get them to
understand the importance of the scientific method; the self-imposed
set of rules that all scientists adhere to and the stick by which
real science is measured. They should be able to see why what
creationists do, or don't do, disqualifies them as scientists.
In debating with creationists, we can throw-up evidence (so
to speak) until we're blue in the face...it won't do us any good.
Quite simply, it's not the evidence that matters. We have to defend
the method by which we got the evidence. "We have this rock and it's
X old" won't cut it; we should be saying "We found this rock in such
and such a context and dated it such and such a way, and that's why
we think that creationists are wrong", etc. Another example of this
is the defence of probably the most important principle in
palaeontology: Uniformitarianism, or, what geological and biological
processes that are going on today must have been going on back then
because there is no reason for it to be any different. The infamous
"gas-bag sauropods" come in handy here. Even the most hardcore
creationist will admit that the idea of hydrogen-filled apatosauri
floating along the treeline is absurd (sorry John:-)), it simply
defeats common sense; yet without uniformitarianism, which is just an
extension of common sense, it's entirely possible.
A CRITICAL PUBLIC
Now for the hard part, we have to get the public to think
critically. Yes we all know that critical thinking skills are only
taught in art and english classes, otherwise being crushed out of you
by the school system. But after we teach the public about our
methodology, they should be able to question creationists on their
own, without our evidence or our help. The recent Man-track problem
for example; the public should be asking where are other human
remains besides footprints? or where are these humans before the
dinosaurs and during the time between their extinction and when
humans become common in the fossil record? Another example lay in
"Flood Geology". We have to teach the public to wonder "have they
disproved our dating technique?", "have they disproved
uniformitarianism?", or "how well do they explain why a flood can
leave deposits that look like rivers or glaciers or deserts or coal
forests?". This kind of questioning is also useful against pop
science as well, like the seemingly rampant "because-I'm-Bob-Bakker-
and-I-say-so-ism" (no I don't mean this as a pot-shot, just an
example).
HOW TO DO THIS?
Good question. This is the point where we have to put our
collective heads together and think. One obvious way is to give a
healthy treatment of this in every level of school. Maybe we can put
pressure on NBC or someone else to give us our own T.V. specials (The
Not-So Mysterious Origins Of Man?). Popular books written on the
subject couldn't hurt either. How many book store shoppers ever go to
the "science" section? Maybe even books written for the religious
community (probably best if done by members of those religions) on
these subjects? Any more ideas?
I can't stress to much how important it is that quit trying to
argue our case to creationists, we're only going to be talking past
them and achieving nothing. We have to face this issue with
understanding and go to the public, teach them about how real science
works, why creationist books sit in the "spirituality" section along
with books on tarot, Atlantis and UFOs. We won't be able to convert
die-hard creationists, but at least we can try to end their popular
support. Thank you.
Cory Gross
Alberta Palaeontological Society
MRC Earth Sciences Society
gros4891@adc.myroyal.ab.ca