The Damning Irony of Creationist Parody

 

When it comes to the science, evolution-denying creationists are not just unaware of the errors of the bogus concept of “creation-science”, they are unaware of the broader problem of misunderstanding science itself, especially the nature of Bayesian probability, which is a statistical method where accumulated evidence keeps adding to the overall probability of a hypothesis being true. They are so unapprised of how the whole body of science (physics, chemistry, biology, geology, etc) provides multiplicative validations that they are not aware of just how absurd it is to reject most of mainstream science in favour of their creationist pseudoscience (as you’ll see in a moment, in a preposterous act of intellectually self-sabotaging parody they don’t even know how they are actually rejecting most mainstream science). It’s very easy to apply Bayesian probability to evolution and an old universe regarding how accumulating evidence affects our confidence in the theory. Fossils showing transitional forms, comparative anatomy, nested hierarchies in the phylogenetic tree of life, the coancestry coefficient (genetic relatedness), endogenous retroviruses, vestigial traits and atavisms, embryology, radiometric dating (of the moon rocks as well as the earth), cosmology, light travel and distant galaxies, the cosmic microwave background radiation, the expanding universe and Hubble’s Law, stars in different life stages, nuclear fusion in our sun, spiral galaxies, and so forth. All of these combined demonstrate comprehensively that the universe is billions of years old, and/or that life has been evolving on our planet for several billion years.

Now, not that creation science does proper science, but let’s pretend for a moment that it did. If creationism was true and the universe and earth were only about 6 thousand years old, we would have accumulated a similarly impressive array of evidence like the above. The scientific consensus would show that the Earth’s geological layers are only thousands of years old with no indication of millions or billions of years of sedimentation, radiometric dating would consistently yield ages of thousands of years for rocks, fossils, and meteorites instead of millions or billions, ice cores would show only a few thousand years of accumulation, the fossil record would lack any indication of gradual transitions, with all species appearing suddenly and remaining unchanged, DNA comparisons would not show nested hierarchies or molecular clocks consistent with deep time but would instead suggest all species were created independently, human and dinosaur fossils would probably be found in the same rock layers, light from distant galaxies billions of light-years away would have reached us instantly or the universe would be demonstrably much smaller, the cosmic microwave background radiation would not exist as a remnant of a Big Bang billions of years ago, stars in different life stages would be absent, with all stars appearing to be of the same young age, no supernova remnants older than a few thousand years would be observable, the Earth’s magnetic field would show no signs of past reversals or gradual decay over millions of years, comets and planetary rings would show no evidence of replenishment mechanisms, radioactive isotopes in the Earth’s crust would be consistent with a young age rather than billions of years of decay, genetic diversity in species, including humans, would indicate a severe genetic bottleneck only a few thousand years ago without the expected mutational load of much longer timescales, and nobody alive would laugh at the claim that the Second Law of Thermodynamics poses a barrier to the formation of complex biological systems.

If creationism had got it right about a universe of only a few thousand years old, the majority of the scientific community for the past few hundred years up to the present day would be in full agreement that creationism is correct. Of course, a creationist would just dismiss all that with some ridiculous platitude like “Scientists are just interpreting the evidence through their secular, evolutionary worldview instead of accepting the truth of God's creation.", or “No amount of so-called ‘evidence’ can disprove what the Bible clearly teaches.", or “God's ways are higher than our ways, and scientists are always changing their minds, but the Bible never changes”, completely side-stepping the facts – but I’m sad to say from years of experience that there is little hope of a rational conversation with someone like that.

But for anyone who wouldn’t be so easily manipulated, or who rightly has doubts about the integrity of so-called “creation science”, we might be able to appeal by remembering that creationists do actually know what it’s like to be part of the consensus for mainstream science – they are part of the mainstream in many more ways than they are not. In keeping with the above lists, I assume all (or nearly all) creationists believe that the Earth is spherical, and accept Newton’s laws of motion, the atmosphere protects us from harmful space radiation, water boils at 100°C at sea level, bacteria and viruses cause disease, antibiotics can kill bacterial infections but not viruses, the speed of light is approximately 186,000 miles per second, the laws of thermodynamics govern energy transfer, metals conduct electricity, the heart pumps blood through the circulatory system, photosynthesis allows plants to convert sunlight into energy, earthquakes are caused by the movement of tectonic plates, sound travels faster through solids than through air, combustion requires oxygen, the moon orbits the Earth, objects fall at the same rate in a vacuum regardless of mass, the freezing point of water is 0°C at standard atmospheric pressure, the established principles of aerodynamics, and that friction generates heat when two surfaces rub together. I assume that most of them also accept that Maxwell’s equations accurately describe electromagnetism, quantum theory explains the behaviour of particles at the smallest scales, Einstein’s theory of relativity describes how time and space are interconnected, sound waves require a medium to travel, and that energy cannot be created or destroyed.

So, creationists do mainstream science – they do most mainstream science – they just happen to revert to pseudoscience when it conflicts with their narrow interpretation of the Bible. And if they suggest that the above scientific facts belong in a different category of science to evolution over millions of years, then they are engaging in special pleading - applying one standard of evidence to mainstream science they accept while demanding an entirely different, unreasonable standard for evolution and an old universe. To understand the fabric of the universe properly is to understand that the category distinction is bogus; that there is no separating the scientific facts on the creationist shopping list from all the others – they all nest together in one integrated, consistent, mutually complementary set of laws and facts about the universe that confirm evolution and an old universe, and undermine their own creationist pseudoscience.

For example, they trust Newton’s laws of motion and gravity, which describe not only how objects move on Earth but also how planets, stars, and galaxies formed over billions of years. The same gravity that keeps us grounded explains the orbits of celestial bodies and the gradual formation of planetary systems from collapsing gas clouds - processes that undeniably take way longer than thousands of years. They also accept the laws of thermodynamics, which govern energy transfer and decay, yet reject radiometric dating - even though radioactive decay follows the same thermodynamic principles. The predictable decay of isotopes is used in everything from nuclear power to medical treatments, and those same decay rates allow us to measure the Earth's age at 4.5 billion years, as well as confirm that the Sun has been burning through nuclear fusion for a little bit longer than the earth. Creationists accept Maxwell’s equations, which describe electromagnetism and light, when they utilise electricity, yet they reject one of the strongest confirmations of the Big Bang: the cosmic microwave background radiation. This comprehensively attested residual radiation is electromagnetic in nature, precisely what Maxwell’s equations describe, and it serves as incontrovertible evidence that the universe originated approximately 14 billion years ago. Similarly, creationists acknowledge that the speed of light is a constant 186,000 miles per second, but reject the clear implications of this fact – whereby if light has been traveling at this constant speed, then the existence of galaxies billions of light-years away means their light has been traveling for billions of years, proving an old universe beyond dispute.

In the field of biology, creationists accept that DNA carries genetic information, but deny the molecular clocks that prove common ancestry among species. The same DNA comparisons that confirm paternity in courtrooms or evidence in crime scenes also demonstrate our evolutionary relationship to other primates, with shared genetic markers that could only exist through common descent. They trust the conservation of energy - the principle that energy cannot be created or destroyed - but ignore how this same law governs nuclear fusion in stars, leading to observable stellar lifecycles that unfold over billions of years. We can actually directly observe stars in different life stages, proving that they age and evolve over millions and billions of years, not merely thousands.

And in geology, a subject in which I’m not so well-studied – but I do know that creationists seem to have no issue with the fact that plate tectonics cause earthquakes, yet they reject the undeniable evidence that continents have been drifting for hundreds of millions of years. As any creationist could learn on the fabulous Life On Our Planet series on Netflix, the expansion of the Atlantic Ocean is measurable today at just a few centimetres per year - and basic mathematical calculations confirm that Pangaea, the vast landmass that predates separate continents, existed hundreds of millions of years ago - far beyond the 6,000 year timeline creationists propose. Moreover, I think creationists would acknowledge that radioactive isotopes decay at measurable rates when used in medicine or industrial applications, but they deny those same decay rates when conveniently applied to radiometric dating – which, as it happens, independently confirms an old earth. When they go on their holidays, creationists gleefully accept aerodynamics to explain how planes fly, but fail to apply the same physics to the equivalent laws in space travel and orbital mechanics, which prove the vast distances and timescales of the universe.

From all this, you can see that creationists are participants in mainstream science - they accept most of it and rely on all of it for daily living. Which leads to the inevitably damning question; surely any self-respecting creationist, when faced with the proposition that the only elements of science they happen to reject also happen to be the few that they have been told conflict with a literal interpretation of Genesis, must eventually summon up enough honesty and integrity to admit that they have succumbed to the most absurd selective rejection, and that their unwillingness to reflect on their own Biblical interpretation smacks of gross arrogance, wilful ignorance and the most ridiculous surrender of the mind to indoctrination. In fact, we can go further – the willingness to cling to such a deeply flawed and selectively applied stance, in the face of overwhelming evidence from multiple scientific disciplines (a perverse avoidance of the very principles they otherwise embrace and rely upon in every other area of life, we saw earlier), exposes such a profound intellectual cowardice and satisfaction with foolishness that it ceases to be mere ignorance and becomes an act of pitiful wilful self-deception - a stubborn defiance of reason so extreme that it borders on parody.