Faith cant prove a negative either.

One argument you'll see often is that you cant prove a negative. I've already pointed out in a previous post that this fundamentally wrong and at best you can only assert that you cannot disprove a claim that has no testable qualities.

This means that you cannot prove there was no creator standing behind the big bang because we have no way to test that claim.

I cannot disprove that some god created the universe.

I also cannot prove that some god created the universe.

And of perhaps greater concern for people of faith the inability to disprove one creator (especially when evidence that contradicts the creation myth is dismissed as intentional by the creator) equates to the inability to disprove ANY creation myth from the Australian Aboriginal Dreamtime to the Mesopotamian myth of creation.

Why god? Why a single god? There are many discussions on this topic, but deeper morality issues like freewill and the problem of good and evil actually get easier to counter if you have more than one god. Mesopotamian creation gives as much scientifically accurate information as genesis and neatly explains how not everything in the universe seems to go to the plan of a single good loving god.

Why not spirits that become alive, waking into physical forms, becoming the material from which the universe was created? The Dreaming offers more coherent answers to questions like good and evil by explaining that the creators did think or live in such simple bipolar terms.

The christian creation myth is not even consistent, with two conflicting descriptions of genesis. For a widely accepted religion it falls far short of meeting any burden of proof.

At least the Dreamtime doesn't attempt to include a timeline for the creation of the universe... especially one that that fails as badly as genesis to meet the facts. Ask a young earth creationist how we can see light from stars so distant that it must have taken more than 6000 to reach us when the universe is only 6000 years old?

Actually dont do that - especially not from answersingenesis.org whose ramblings will rapidly muddy the water with ideas like:

• "observational science" vs "historical/origins science" (Which is nonsense, science is a method pure and simple - there are different areas of study but there are not different ways to do science other than good science and bad science. You would not trust a doctor who said he would cure you with "elf science" that he got from a book on elves, or "better luck next time science" where his cures have always killed the patient but "he's got to get lucky sooner or later right?").
• The idea that the universe was created "fully mature" like Adam was! (This would only make sense if the universe was like adam and one of many we could compare to determine what a "maturity" universe is)
• That the speed of light is widely variable (While it does actually change depending on the medium, its not by much and if it did change that much we would see evidence in comparing closer stars with ones further away)
• That time is not rigid (Sorry... this one is totally laughable given that the whole premis of young earth creation is based on a day in the bible being a single normal 24 hour day as we know it.)
• Finally they will probably wrap up with some poorly and incorrectly explained physics - If you want to know what a big bang physicist says then ask one directly the web is full of really good explanations - try starting here). 

None of these arguments actually work, AIG just includes as many as possible to make it look like there is a lot of doubt on the issue - which there isn't.

Every time a testable quality of a god claim is removed or watered down or described as a special case (special pleading) they weaken their own argument and god moves further from an actual claim to a vague idea.

But best of all every time a religionist dodges the question and refuse to make testable claims about his god and his creation myth he strengthens the claims of every other creation myth and any creation myth you care to make up on the spot. They are all as testable and verifiable as each other.

Religionists weaken their own ability to tell fact from fiction when they use these arguments or claim that even a tiny chance that something might be true in some form means that it is totally true.

You'll find evidence for this in the number of people who believe in ghosts, spirits, white witches, and other forms of mysticism in addition to a claim to follow christianity or other faith that do not actually support those beliefs.

Religionists need to stop hiding in doubt and bring their arguments and claims into the light. I dont agree with the AIG guys but at least they clearly communicate their claims and dont shy away from them just because they are manifestly wrong.

It's foolish but it has a certain integrity.

Now if only they could stop misrepresenting science, quoting out of date research and reciting logical fallacies then there might be hope for them.

Baby and Bathwater...

The other day I reasoned that Ken Ham was afraid of the implications that the bible might not be totally true. I stand by that.

I also explained why the ten commandments were not the best of moral codes (or even in the top 5 for that matter), and I stand by that.

But I also believe in not throwing out the baby the bathwater.

Someone sent me a link to a video of Ken Ham saying that if the bible was wrong on astronomy, geology and biology then why should he trust what is says about morality and salvation.

A: Because they are separate claims made from separate positions.

I'm far from the first person to point out that not all the morality in the bible is good, infinite punishment for finite crimes is just one of the many things I dont agree with, but just because the book has many errors, does not mean it cannot also contain truths.

Kan Ham's desperation to defend the bible as absolute truth flows from his fundamental error in thinking:

"If it's partially wrong then it must be entirely wrong"

When all you can really say is:

"If it's partially wrong then it might be entirely wrong"

And while, as I said, the ten commandments are far from perfect, I dont think "thou shalt not kill" is wrong just because I dont agree with "thou shalt have no other gods before me".

Kens thinking seems to be stuck in all or nothing mode. It''s all right or it's all wrong.

I am worried that other creationists share his point of view, they seem to think that by accepting that one part of the bible may not be totally true they must throw the rest of it out too... Thus they lose the baby with the bathwater.

I'll be honest and say that I think treating the bible as an interesting book instead of the word of god would be the best possible outcome, but I dont think they need to go that far in one step, and I certainly dont think they need to assume that if the bible is wrong then the oposite of the bible must be right.

Even if the bible got creation wrong, killing is still not a good thing.

Even if mankind evolved from primate forebears, does not mean we should not be tolerant with each other.

Many christians are able to reconcile their faith without believing the bible as entirely literal truth, and many people who believe and understand the current state of science are able to get comfort from the bible without losing their understanding of the world. I dont think that christians fundamentalists can be helped however, as they are looking for a certainty and absolute truth they will not find it in more moderate churches.

But isolating christian fundamentalists will not help either, if any of them are to be saved from a life of fear induced radical misbelief then it will be because they can see another way, because moderates and atheists demonstrate that the world does not collapse or become a dark place when you allow yourself a little human doubt.

It's easy to shut the door on people with radical misguided beliefs, to stand back and assume that they cannot be salvaged. But as humans we need to be there and help them, we need to accept that they may find wisdom in strange places. But most of all, we need to show by example that there is another way that preserves the core ideal of "being good people".

For their part they have to realise that the world is uncomfortably complex, that while the simplest solution is the best the simplest available answer is not always a solution. And that being wrong on one issues does not mean you need to throw out all your values and start from scratch, only that you have to be willing to look at each belief honestly and judge it for what it is.

The Crocoduck Lives...

The other week someone made a joke to me about the crocoduck argument and I found myself wondering if anyone actually found it a compelling argument for faith.

For those who dont know the crocoduck is an anti-evolution argument made by creationists. Basically the argument goes that because there no intermediate species sitting between two different types or "kinds" of animal (like a half crocodile half duck) then there is no proof that evolution could create one species from another.

They refer to changes in species or in "kind" as "macro evolution" and they claim because no such strange half creatures exist that therefore there no evidence of it.

Everytime I encounter the argument all I can think of is the criminally poor education these people had in evolution theory. Did they never see a picture of the tree of life? It's a simple diagram and you dont have to be genius to spot that, like a real tree, the branches dont join up again after they've split.

The fact that this argument exists is a wonderful demonstrations of just how little the people using it actually understand about evolution or science in general... The fact that anyone raised in Australian could use the argument is evidence of a failure to graduate the second grade.

Q: If one species can change into another over time why do we never see anything like a crocoduck?

A: Because ducks did not evolve from crocodiles.

Seriously? How is that not obvious? How does someone who consideres this a valid question get dressed in the morning because I find it hard to beliefe they manage so complex a task on their own...

But birds did evolve from something reptilian, like dinosaurs. That is why the skin on their legs has scales... Why their bones are hollow... Why they lay eggs, and why they develop a tooth to help get out of the egg when they hatch just like reptiles.

Modern species, however, evolved in parallel, which is why it so fundamentally wrong to say that man evolved from chimps (and for the record proponents of evolution have never claimed this). Rather modern species of animals evolved from earlier species: Thus man and chimp evolved from the same ancestor.

But the crocoduck argument keeps getting brought out, like that one malformed example of hand made pottery your friends kid made, the one with no opening at the top and five spouts that doesn't hold water without it spraying out through a thousand tiny little holes. The one they keep trotting out to proudly show you and expecting you to say how wonderful it is without pointing out that it doesn't work and is full of holes.

But we do have proofs of biological shifts, and not just in the fossil records. In australia we have very famous living examples of the state that existed when reptiles started to evolve into mammals...

They are called monotremes (actually that is their taxonomical "order"), they are egg laying mammals and Australia has two types of them.

The first is the echidna, sometimes called the "spiny ant eater" they look a little like hedgehogs and fill a similar niche but are so drastically different in biology that they cannot be related.

The second is the platypus... My favourite because it is so incredible even compared to the crocoduck.

The platypus, has a duck like bill (actually just shaped that way as it's not a beak but is in fact bone covered in soft skin, it's body is covered in fur, males have a poisoned barb making them the only poisonous mammal ever discovered, they hunt for prey in muddy water by detecting the electrical impulses of the muscles of their victims like a shark, and the females not only lay eggs but express milk through the pores of the skin as they have no teats.

When the first examples where returned to europe, they were claimed to be a hoax... After all God would never make such a strange animal, would he?

Monotremes stands as a testament to the path evolution took from egg laying reptiles to warm blooded live birth mammals. They are not fossils, they are surviving forms and they survived exactly where evolution said they should survive, in those places in the world where conditions did not change, to favour another species  where no environmental condition forced then to completely evolve away from laying eggs.

The echidna and the platypus are not less evolved that we are, they are the result of just as many (if not more) generations. They have taken just as many years to evolve into what they are today as we have, the only difference is they had less pressure to change, less conditions favouring new variations.

Evolution has no goal, but it is not just random, it is random mutation filtered through "environmental pressures". An animal like the crocodile exists apparently unchanged for millions of years because none of the random changes and mutations that they developed as a species served them any better than the systems they already had. From this we can assume that no fundamental changes to the crocodile would give it consistent advantage or such changes are prevented from occurring by other environmental factors.

This is not hard to understand, change happens in increments, each increment must have some survival value compared to the previous state. That last part is critical and often overlooked, it does not mean that each change is objectively good, only marginally better by comparison to what already was.

The Koala is another australian animal, like most australian fauna it is a marsupial and carries it's children in a pouch, unlike most it's pouch points backwards. As the Koala lives in trees this would seem a very poor "design" indeed, until you realise that the Koala is most closely related to the Wombat. Wombats live on the ground and dig tunnels a backward pouch makes perfect sense for them because it stops dirt getting in when they travel and burrow.

The fossil record shows that koalas evolved from ground dwelling animals like the wombats, the habit of climbing trees and eating leaves is the newest part of their evolution, the backward pouch is a legacy from their ancestors. Why hasn't the pouch changed? it still might but while a ground dwelling animal can afford to drop a baby everyone once in a while while the opening of their pouch migrates over thousands of generations, a tree dweller may suffer more during this change.

The koala may never evolve back to a forward facing pouch because the incremental steps may not be better than the current mode, because evolution has no goals only environmental pressures and compounding changes over time.

Another creationist claim you will hear is that you never see an animal with a vestigial limb. No kidding they will claim that the bones in a whale skeleton that used to be hind legs still serve some purpose.

Again the fauna of australia comes to the rescue, this time with the Emu! The Emu has a vestigial arm, not a wing, an arm. It has no flight feathers, it does have a claw, but it also has no muscles or tendons. These limbs do nothing, can not be moved by the emu, cannot be controlled and serves no purpose what so ever.

These are the examples form my own country but other examples exist in both living examples and in the fossil records.

It's hard to see why or how the crocoduck argument survives. It's been described as an argument from incredulity but I think it's better described as an argument from total lack of education.

Fear Drives Them

The other day I had a blog post by Ken Ham brought to my attention, Ken basically describes teaching creation to some 1500 kids at a church event.

It had 2 quotes that really stood out to me:

I just love teaching the children the truth about dinosaurs—that they were made on the sixth day of creation alongside Adam and Eve.

And:

I was able to ask students to name some things that are fiction—meaning “not true.” They called out the following: "Millions of years", "Evolution", "Ape-like creatures turning into humans".
Yes, they know now these things are fiction.

He then goes on to ask the reader to pray for these children and I really wish I could, because if their parents are exposing them to this man then those children will need all the help they can get.

Ham is an intelligent man despite what you might think from his claims, he holds a degree in applied science, he taught science, he is able to run a business, etc, etc.

He is also very, very, frightened.

It's the same fear that drives so many christians to turn to full fundamentalism, the fear that drives them to defend it so vigorously, the fear that stops them from accepting scientific fact, the fear that makes  them stand on street corners and preach, the fear that makes them want to change the education standards so all children will think as they do, the fear that drives them not only to build christian theme parks but to visit them and call it "education".

The fear is... that they just might be wrong.

And that is a terrible fear indeed, especially for someone with a science education like Ken Ham, because he knows that what the bible claims is not consistent with the world we live in. He knows why carbon dating works, that tectonic plates move slowly, he knows that a flood leaves graded sediment, not stratified sediment, but worst of all... he knows that if any part of the bible were considered non-literal then ALL of the bible would come into question. Including the bits about God and Jesus and being saved...

In fact the more you know about science the worse it gets, because if the bible is even a little wrong, then its A LOT wrong.

From believing the bible is the literal word of god to believing it's an interesting book with some good ideas and some very questionable morality plays is not just a a slippery slope, but a straight drop down a shear glass wall  covered in grease.

The three things he cites that children know are "fiction" are very telling:

"Millions of years"

You have to understand that for fundamentalist christians this a scary concept, they dont just think in terms of general salvation, they want to be personally saved, and the concept that the universe has been around for millions or even billions of years means it's just possible they may have to wait a while before that happens.

"Evolution"

This is a biggie, and atheists tend to overlook how scary this is for a person of faith. Evolution is a process of change - and change is something that should not be able to happen without the creators design, after all, cars dont drive themselves right? If they did why would you need a driver...

"Ape-like creatures turning into humans"

My personal favourite. Did god love the "proto-man" as much as he loved us? The promise of god and the bible and indeed all religions is that we are special, we are the chosen, the faithful, the few, the true... Non of those statements sounds as impressive when you understand that we all share a common ancestor. Do our closest evolutionary cousins also have a soul? will our descendents still have souls if we continue to evolve as a species?

Conclusion:

I think, in the end, that people like Ham and others know deep down that they are wrong. They know the bible does not make sense. They know it is self contradictory. They know genesis is a really poor description of how the world came into being, yet alone the universe... but they attempt to indoctrinate as many people (children) as possible to help convince themselves they are not being self delusional.

Misery loves company and it's easier to tell yourself you not being stupid, irrational, or crazy, when you have lots of friends all agreeing with you.