the old Fido network days. Note to mods, he has put this in the public domain. Some good stuff, here it is:
Things creationists hate:
Geology
Even before Darwin, it was geologists who began to establish that
the Earth is much older than old Jim Ussher said it was. And modern
geology stubbornly refuses to yield up proof of a universal flood,
or the recent and coeval existence of all creatures, living and
extinct.
Charles Darwin
Well, duhh....
Physics
...has all those embarrassing laws, like decay rates of isotopes,
the non-decaying speed of light, the refraction of light to produce
rainbows, etc., which have to be ignored, twisted, or denied to
defend Genesis.
The Scientific Method
Creationists detest it so much that they've apparently invented
their own, improved version, with the following highly logical
rules:
Take as a given fact all those parts of the Bible we tell you to.
Use not the null hypothesis; make no attempt to disprove any
creationist hypothesis; report not any negative findings.
Quote as authoritative anything a fellow creationist writes,
regardless of his qualifications or subsequent discrediting of his
methods or results.
Misquote or quote out of context famous "evolutionists" so that
they appear to admit evolution isn't real.
Each Other
Old-Earth creationists think the Young-Earthers are too zealous and
dogmatic even for them. Young-Earthers know the Old-Earthers and
Multiple-Catastrophists have given in to "liberal" (if not to say
Satanic) influences. Some years there are multiple "Ark-hunting"
expeditions to Turkey, each of which thinks the others are
obstructing the progress of "Bible science".
Noah's Ark
...just refuses to be found. Or it's been found too many times, in
completely different locations. A dozen different people claiming to
have found the Ark in a dozen different places is even more
embarrassing than not finding it at all. For some reason that
escapes creationists, it just won't be found and stay found.
The Holy Bible
That old Book persists in saying things that the creationists, who
claim to take it as literal truth, have to admit are metaphorical
(like the "doors" in the firmament that let the rain through). That
means, of course, that they have to arbitrarily decide which parts
are literally literal, and which are only metaphorically literal
(and can't they twist the English language). I've never yet read a
justification for who gets to make that determination and how, so
I'll summarize it thus: Everything is literal except things that
even we can't stomach. Even worse, the "scientifically accurate"
Bible reveals not a single fact about nature that wasn't commonly
known at the time. If only it had revealed the atomic structure of
matter, or the inverse square law, or the existence of bacteria--or
even the heliocentric solar system!
Still doubt that creationists hate the Bible? Ask several if they've
ever read it--all the way through, cover-to-cover. 97% of the time
the answer will be no. They're sure every word is literally true,
and the divine message of God, but somehow they've never quite found
the time to actually read the thing. Is this irony thick enough yet?
Bats
Somehow, quite perversely, they changed from "fowls" to mammals
between the time Moses (according to literalists) wrote the
Pentateuch and now.
The Human Mind
...just to be ornery, has moved from the heart, where it resided
through New Testament times, into the brain.
Stars
...somehow have grown a lot bigger and moved much farther away, so
that by now it seems foolish to expect a sizeable fraction of them
to fall to Earth, as predicted in Revelation.
The Earth
...on the other hand, to test Man's faith in the literal veracity of
scripture, has shrunk to become much smaller than the sun, and has
taken to circling the latter, instead of vice versa, as originally
established. Furthermore (confirming its sinful nature), it has
floated up off its pillars or foundations, lost its four corners,
and become a silly ball, on which there just is no possible
mountaintop from which one could see all nations of the Earth.
Plate Tectonics
Since this is such a new development in geophysics, creationists
don't seem to have much to say about it yet. (They haven't been told
yet that they can't believe in it.) Though they may not have heard
it excoriated from the pulpit yet, it surely makes them uneasy,
since it just doesn't jibe with young-Earth or Flood geology.
Original Thought
Creationism is about believing without question a particular
interpretation of scripture. Indeed, in a belief system of that
nature, any questioning or original thought about the revealed
knowledge is not only incorrect, it is sinful.
Pi
...has inexplicably changed its value from a nice, neat 3
(reflecting the trinity, no doubt) in Solomon's time, to a messy
3.14159... today. Despite some legal attempts in some southern
states to return it to the divine purity of 3, pi has hardened its
heart and refused to conform to the biblically prescribed norm.
Universal Gravitation
Although "just a theory", universal gravitation continues to be,
well, universal. It holds true in all places, under all conditions,
so it renders the brainless quip about evolution being "just a
theory" a bit specious, at best.
Micro-organisms
Why did they have to show up? They're never mentioned in the Bible
at all, so creationists have to do some creative rewriting of
Genesis to account for their day of creation, and their presence or
absence on the Ark.
Ice Ages
Very inconvenient! They have to have occurred since the Flood,
since, according to creationists, the surface of the Earth was
reworked by the Flood (to create, for instance, the Grand Canyon
practically overnight), which would have messed up all those marks
of glaciers on the landscape. That means mile-thick ice sheets had
to advance and retreat again and again, across half the Northern
Hemisphere, with the speed of freight trains.
Size of the Earth
...has obviously expanded greatly since Noah's day, when he could,
in a short period, collect pairs of all animals and birds from all
over the world, without the benefit of modern air transport. Then
after the Flood, the critters all had to migrate, at the
double-quick, to their present habitats in Tasmania, the Galapagos,
the coasts of Antarctica, Patagonia, the American Southwest, or
wherever. It's clear the Earth was no more than a few hundred miles
across, probably flat, and with no inconvenient oceans like, say,
the Pacific.
The Slow Rate of Evolution
Having some time ago abandoned the completely silly proposition that
Noah could actually have accommodated pairs--let alone sevens--of
every animal species on Earth aboard the Ark, creationists have
fallen back upon the rationalization that he collected not species
but "kinds". They never, of course, clearly define "kind", because
any such definition would create more problems in biological
classification than it solved (and reveal how little they know about
species diversity). Be that as it may, if a pair of the bovine
"kind" walked off the Ark a few thousand years ago, they have had to
evolve into all 24 present species and uncounted varieties of wild
and domestic cattle since then. (Creationists: you really don't want
to know how many species of the bat "kind" there are. And don't even
think about beetles.) Creationists, then, are in the awkward
position of believing in a much faster rate of evolution than is
possible in nature, while detesting the term itself, and generally
refusing to call diversification-since-the-Ark evolution (Lord, how
they hate that word)!
The Number of Species in the World
There are just way too many of them! There are so many that we still
don't even have a solid estimate of exactly how many--but five
million is at least the right order of magnitude. That's so many
that creationists have given up trying to stuff them all into the
Ark (see above). A vanishingly tiny percent are even mentioned in
the "scientifically accurate" Bible. Whole orders and phyla are left
out. Of the few mentioned, there seems to be some slight confusion
over such seemingly simple things as whether a bat is a bird or
mammal, how many legs a grasshopper has, and who chews cuds and who
doesn't. There's even embarrassing mention of creatures unknown to
science, such as unicorns. My humbly-offered solution: Since the
Bible is "scientifically accurate", then when it was written there
were just a few hundred species! They could all fit onto the
Ark.After the Flood (take your pick):
They speed-evolved into the millions we have now. God made a whole
bunch more, just to test our faith in Holy Scripture.
Satan made a whole bunch more, just to ruin our faith in Holy
Scripture. (I vote for this one, since I've been told recently by
several good creationists that Satan invented evolution!)
The Sky
...has evaporated. In Adam's time it was clearly a solid dome, a
"firmament", which could separate waters above it from those below
on the Earth. By Noah's time it was still solid enough to have
windows in it that had to be opened to let the rain through. I think
that creationists that try to rationalize (weasel) their way out of
this one by calling it metaphor have given in to the godless
materialists! The Bible really is literal, in the true sense of the
word. The sky was a hard firmament with windows in it--but some time
since then it evaporated. Anybody who says different is a
mealy-mouthed evolution-sympathizer.
Fossils
...have always been a thorn in the side of creationism. First of
all, extinct creatures shouldn't even exist in a perfect Creation,
since their very extinction implies that they were not so perfect.
And there are so darn many of them, of so many different kinds.
Every excuse they come up with for why there even are fossils of
extinct organisms makes creationists look silly. And the very fact
that they've come up with so many different, mutually exclusive
explanations would seem to indicate that, essentially, they're
clueless. I have personally been offered all these sound,
creation-scientific explanations of what fossils are and how they
got there:
Dinosaurs were too big to go on the Ark, so they got buried in the
mud of the Flood.(How about extinct smaller creatures--and what
about the "fact" that Noah collected pairs of all animals?)
Extinct creatures were on the Ark. They died out later. (How many
seismosaurs, T. rexes, mastodons, and megatheria can you fit on
the head of a pin?)
Fossils never were animals. They're a hoax by Satan and/or
materialistic science.
Fossils never were animals. They're a hoax by God to test your
faith. (And I will go to hell for falling for a trick pulled by
the Almighty Himself? Doesn't that seem just a bit petty?)
Transitional Fossils
...can't possibly exist, since nothing ever gradually evolved into
anything else. Less sophisticated creationists handle the issue by
merely spouting the slogan "There are no transitional fossils". They
heard that from a good born-again fundamentalist, so it must be
true--no further research necessary. The few who are vaguely aware
of the vast range of fossils that have been found, including
beautiful examples of transitional series, merely draw lines:
everything on that side of the line is ape, and everything on this
side is human. If another fossil turns up with features exactly
between the two, no problem--just assign it to one side or the
other. No matter how fine the gradation, creationists will never
admit seeing transition, because they know ahead of time that it
can't exist. Amusingly, however, in series such as the hominid line
leading to us, different creationist "experts" draw the line between
ape and human in different places!
Human Embryos
...especially very small ones, actually have tails and gill slits.
So do all mammal, bird, reptile, amphibian, and fish embryos. One
would almost think they are related somehow. Thank goodness for
modern Creation Science, which has taught us how to ignore, deny, or
find some rationalization (anything at all will do) to explain away
this and all other evidence of evolution.
Unusual Babies
...with such birth anomalies as being born with a tail, or covered
with fur. Tails are more common than most people realize, since they
are, of course, surgically removed immediately, and often the child
himself is never told. For furry people, refer to the famous Mexican
family, several of whom are circus performers. These would, of
course, be some of the "throwbacks" which creationists assert must,
of course, occur if evolution is real. But since evolution is, of
course, not true, the good creationist, upon being presented the
very evidence he demanded, will, of course, not be fazed in the
slightest. Of course. A small footnote: back in the good old days,
when everyone was a literal-creationist, and religion was science
(known as the Dark Ages, with good cause), such babies were
identified as the spawn of Satan, and killed instantly, along with
their mothers, who were, naturally, witches.
Elephants
In the Sunday School stories, most of us imagined one pair, or at
most two African and two Asian, on the Ark; and we assumed those few
were Noah's biggest problem. But he could probably have wedged them
in somewhere, among the handful of other large mammals always shown
in the picture books. Somehow the elephants were always waving their
trunks over the side, and the giraffes poking their heads up over
the deck house. Then we grew up (most of us) and found out that
there used to be things like mastodons and wooly mammoths. As a
matter of fact, if we did just a little research, we could have
found out that there are some 160 species of probiscideans, living
and extinct, many of them wildly, grotesquely different from modern
Jumbos. Then the problem arises of whether or not all those guys
were on the Ark. All 160 species, with their months of fodder,
obviously could not have been aboard, especially if we realize that
other large mammal "kinds" also have myriad extinct species. As I
see it, there are several explanations. Choose your favorite from
the list below:
158 of God's perfectly-created elephant species had already died
out before the Flood.
Only one pair of the elephant "kind" (are they "clean" or
"unclean"?) were aboard, and immediately afterward evolved into
160 different species, 158 of which immediately became extinct.
158 species were simply left off the Ark, and got killed and
fossilized by the Flood--and Genesis is just exaggerating about
all beasts being aboard.
There never were more than two species of elephants--all those
fossils of extinct ones, including whole, frozen mammoths that
modern people have actually dined on--are merely a trick of Satan.
All animals were on the Ark, just like Genesis says. Shut up and
don't ask.
Thanks to Oren Grossman for informing me that there are actually
three species of living elephants, including the smaller African
bush elephant. Thus creationists only need to account for 157
instant extinctions... but have to accommodate at least six
pachyderms on the Ark!
DNA
Nasty stuff. It's really a shame that it had to turn up and confirm
predictions of relationships made by evolutionary theory perfectly.
And what a dirty trick to have human DNA fit right into the
distribution, right next door to the chimps'! It's just not fair. It
almost looks like Someone arranged the whole thing just to make
evolution appear to be true. Worse yet, this ultimate blueprint for
building entire human beings turns out to be just plain chemicals,
with nothing magical or even particularly unusual that sets humans
aside from other living things. And those geneticists can even
tinker with the stuff, and build new creatures. They can replace
defective genes in people, and even put human genes into pigs. Why
wasn't something put into Leviticus to forbid such ungodliness?
Their Own Coccyxes
...when examined closely via X-rays or a prepared skeleton, look
disturbingly like the vestigial remnants of tails. They certainly
serve no purpose nowadays, and if you've ever broken yours, you've
probably wondered why we were Created with such a useless source of
potential agony. (Besides, coccyx sounds downright obscene.)
Their Appendixes
Same problem as the coccyx, only it's even more likely to cause the
average creationist great discomfort, and occasionally death. The
scientifically literate, when cursed with appendicitis, might bewail
the incomplete evolution that has left him with a useless and
sometimes dangerous abdominal organ. Perhaps the creationist praises
his Creator for blessing him with a "cross to bear".
Honesty and Moral Behavior
...among evolutionists. It must really irk creationists that the
great majority of us "evolutionists" are basically upright, moral
folks. We shouldn't be, because belief in evolution "destroys our
faith in the Bible", so naturally we have "no moral guide" and "no
fear of eternal damnation", and since "we think we came from
monkeys", we see ourselves as "animals with no eternal souls". I'll
confess it right now: my basically upright, honest, cleanly-lived
life is all a sham. I'm part of the One World Government
Evolutionist Conspiracy (OWGEC), and my apparent morality is merely
a deception to lure unsuspecting young creationists over to the Dark
Side!
Ribs
...human ribs, that is, present a real problem. I've been told, on
good authority (by creationists, whose scientific authority is the
Bible, and what could be more authoritative?), that men have one
less rib than women, because one of Adam's ribs was removed to mold
into Eve. My creationist informant has generally become confused
upon being asked if that means one less pair of ribs, or just one
rib missing from one side. Then my instructor in human origins
becomes red in the face and defensive, if not to say hostile, when
asked if he has ever actually counted ribs on male and female human
skeletons, living or deceased. None that I've met have ever actually
tried this simplest of scientific experiments, which could go a long
way toward proving a testable prediction of creationism. (For
members of the Republic of Texas Militia: men have exactly the same
number of ribs as women.)
NEWSFLASH: I've just been informed by a rock-solid creationist that
the latest discovery of "creation science" is that men used to have
fewer ribs than women, but they don't anymore! Perhaps creationists
have unearthed a whole bunch of ancient skeletons, with all the
males being short a rib. An appeal: PLEASE reveal this evidence to
the rest of the world, so that we all can be brought into the Light
of True Bible Science! LATEST NEWS from Joseph Armstrong in
Australia: I don't supposed they (gasp) evolved the extra rib? Is
this a classic case of cretinist "micro-evolution"?
Viruses
Viruses hardly fit into the creationist's view of the world at all.
In the first place, nothing even remotely like them is even remotely
alluded to in either Testament. About the only "biblical" disease
that anyone can remember is leprosy (a bacterial disease), and
there's no clue that any of the writers that mentioned it knew that
it was caused by any sort of micro-organism, let alone a virus.
Egyptian cattle suffered a "murrain"-- with no apparent cause other
than a divine curse. A blight on crops is mentioned in a place or
two, which, if it were naturally caused, might be a viral disease,
but again only the disease is mentioned, not any organic cause. Then
there are the "emerods" (hemorrhoids) with which God afflicted some
folks he was miffed at. I have been told both of the following by
"creation scientists":
The Devil created viruses.
Viruses are not in the Bible because they are "imperfect".
But the really disturbing thing about viruses is that they occupy
the twilight zone between living and dead, a zone that would seem
ought not to exist in a creation in which creatures were "given
life", or have "the breath of life". Of course, the creationist may
arbitrarily assign them to either the "living" or "dead" category,
but either assignment is a forced fit. Can they be alive if they
don't move, breathe, eat, excrete, or metabolize at all, and can
even be crystallized, like other non-living chemicals? Can they be
dead if they can self-replicate (reproduce) using the same basic
methods as other living things, parasitize other creatures, and are
made of nearly the same proteins and nucleic acids as we are?
Evolutionary theory doesn't demand that there be a sharp distinction
between living systems and nonliving molecules. That's the premise
of abiogenesis, which creationists insist on lumping in with
evolution, so what the heck... we'll take it. Evolutionary theory
can also explain where viruses came from, or why they exist. The
fact that there are presently several tentative explanations in no
way threatens the structure of evolutionary theory; we're perfectly
happy with hypotheses until the preponderance of evidence clearly
favors one over all others. In evolutionary theory (with
abiogenesis) there should be some hazy area between living and
nonliving, and viruses are dwellers of that twilight zone.
The Cause of Cancer
And who wouldn't hate that? But I don't mean the carcinogens that
set it off, like tobacco tars, asbestos, or ultraviolet light; I
mean the root cause that makes it possible for things like those to
start cancers growing. And that cause turns out to be evolution in
action! A cancer starts when a carcinogen, or sometimes just a
random accident, causes a mutation in a gene of one cell. That
mutation "switches on" genes that are normally "off", and makes the
cell start reproducing wildly, as though it were an embryonic cell,
and not a dedicated part of an adult body. A mutation is one unit of
evolution. In this case it is harmful, but the ability to mutate is
so valuable to DNA--it lets it adapt to new conditions--that that
mutability cannot be given up, even if it sometimes produces fatal
cancer. It is perhaps significant that cancers in people are very
rare until after their peak reproductive years.
The Hair on the Backs of Their Necks
...which stands up at the very thought that their children might
actually be exposed to an evil-lutionist at school. When they stop
to think why the hair on the backs of their necks should stand up,
at that or any terrifying situation, the only explanation that makes
sense is that it's a vestigial reaction inherited from our mammal
ancestors. Other mammals' hair rises in response to "hair-raising
experiences" as a defense. It's a warning sign of aggression, and
may make the animal look bigger and fiercer. We've apparently given
up that signal, maybe in favor of words or other body language.
About the only trace left is that creepy feeling about nape of the
neck and scalp, which is almost impossible for others to
see.(suggested by Ron Tolle)
The Order of Creation
...is a bottomless can of worms for literal creationists, especially
if one takes literally and in their most obvious meanings both
Genesis 1 and 2, which don't match in many particulars. But consider
just a couple of minor difficulties in the first chapter. For one,
the light of day is created before the sun from which it comes. If
we assume it was some divine form of light, requiring no material
source, then what need of the sun? In the same curious order were
plants created before the sun, which is needed for photosynthesis
(especially confounding to the day-age folks).(suggested by Ron
Tolle)
Goosebumps
(the bumps, not the books
"occult" books, too]) Goosebumps were obviously "created" to erect
and "fluff up" the hair or fur on a hairy or furry mammal ancestor,
thereby improving its insulation value against the cold. Since most
of us nowadays have so little body hair as to render it useless for
insulation purposes, goosebumps are another vestigial reaction whose
tool (fur) is no longer with us.
Insects
...which have so many generations of nasty babies so often that in
just a few years they can change. Those ugly boll weevils, for
instance, develop resistance to pesticides; and those filthy
peppered moths in England (Darwin's home--coincidence? I don't think
so.) change the shade of their camouflage. Evolutionists want to
call those piddlin' changes "evolution"--which just shows that they
don't even know what the term means. So we creationists have to tell
them that "evolution" means apes popping out human babies. You'd
think them evil-utionists'd have that straight by now. (For folks
who trust Rush Limbaugh to ever get any facts right: the above is
sarcasm.)
Footprints
...especially human ones, which creationist "investigators" keep
discovering in the same strata as dinosaur bones or footprints, and
paleontologists keep demonstrating are nothing of the sort. It's
been my experience that creationist authorities (oxymoron) usually
end up admitting that they weren't really human prints after all.
But they are somewhat lax in passing that information on to their
flocks of True Believers., with the result that your average
grassroots creationist is under the impression that the fossil
record is replete with human footprints, clear back to the beginning
(suggested by Floyd Waddle).
Craters
Creationists have to hate those pesky asteroid craters which are
found all over the planet, throughout all geological strata. The
Bible is strangely silent on such devastating impacts as Meteor
Crater in Arizona, the Ring Lakes in Quebec, and that biggie that
likely dusted off the dinosaurs and created all that beautiful
beachfront property on the Yucatan penninsula (suggested and
borrowed nearly verbatim from Jason Bowes).
Planets
Anybody notice that in the last few years astronomers, using
improved techniques and instruments (like Hubble), have begun to
discover other planets around other suns? Have we noticed that
several of those solar systems are at several of the stages of
planetary-system evolution hypothesized for the creation of our own
system? To further increase the squirm factor for our
reality-challenged fellow citizens, perhaps they would be kind
enough to locate the passages in the "scientifically accurate" Bible
which acknowledge that there are, in fact, other worlds.
"In our image"
That's how God made man, according to Genesis, and therefore
according to creationists. But every moderately bright 8-year-old
immediately comes up with two questions which are never
satisfactorily answered. If any answers are offered, they are
usually cobbled-up rationalizations from outside the Bible.
Generally, the kid gets the message that he's better off not asking
such things. The first is whom the One and Only God meant by
"our"--but that's really a theological question, not related
directly to creationism. The second question, however, is right on
target: If man was made "in image", then Adam must have
looked just like God--right? But wait--it gets more confusing. Man
is immediately referred to as "them", so maybe it's not just Adam
who looks like God. Then to further confound literal-minded
youngsters, "...in the image of God created he him; male and female
created he them." If God is male (the assumption of 97.83% of all
creationists), then how could a female be made in His image? Let's
grant the general creationist assumptions (correct me if I'm wrong):
God is male; men are made "in image" in only a general way
(maybe even Adam didn't look exactly like Him); and women were made
with necessary differences to enable reproduction. Still a load of
embarrassing questions arise. Much has been made of Adam's navel,
and why he would have one, having never been attached to a placenta.
I want to know if God has one. I want to know if He has a digestive
tract. If so, why? Does He eat? If so, what, and why would he need
to? Does He excrete? Where? What happens to it? Does He have lungs?
Why would He need them? Does He have sweat glands? And naughty
stuff: does He have genitals? Why would He need those? Does He even
have two legs, and feet, and toes? Why would He need them, unless
He's bound by gravity, as we are? Childish questions? Of course, but
only because they arise from a literal (i.e., childish) reading of
Genesis. But the point is profound: either God has human-like organs
and glands and body parts, or He doesn't. If He does, why, and what
does He use them for? If He doesn't, then made "in image" has
no literal meaning.
Deep-sea Fish
One of the ways that creationists try to weasel out of the volume of
water needed for Noah`s Flood is to say that the Earth was much
flatter then--the oceans were shallow, and the mountains were more
like low hills. Therefore, much less water was required to flood the
entire planet. All the mountains were raised after the Flood (or
towards the end of it), and the oceans became deeper, allowing the
water to drain off (creating the Grand Canyon in the process). This
raises two embarrasing questions :
How did Noah`s Ark land on top of Mt. Ararat (about 9000 feet
high) if the water was never that deep?
Where did the deep-ocean fish come from - those hideous
monstrosities that are all mouth, teeth and luminous lure and can
only live at incredible depths and pressures? Super-fast evolution
again?
(suggested by Adrian Barnett)...to which I would add a corollary
question:
How, during a worldwide flood when seawater and freshwater would be
pretty much thoroughly mixed, would ANY fish survive? I've had
enough experience with aquaria to know that darn few freshwater fish
species can tolerate saltwater, and vice versa. A flood of the whole
Earth consequently would kill off all but a few brackish water
species, capable of surviving rapid changes in salinity. Since the
oceans and lakes are jam-packed with species exquisitely sensitive
to even slight changes in salinity, today's fish have to have
evolved since the one-world-ocean of the Flood. Sorry, I just don't
believe in evolution--not the lightning variety that creationism
demands!
Faith
Albert Chan points out that...Creationists hate faith. They count on
evidence, words, logic, and arguments to uphold their views. All
this reflects how weak (or even absent) their faith is. "See, we can
prove that evolution is wrong, so that automaticlly means that the
Bible is correct." This implies a notion that is
correct... just because evolution has (in their minds) been "proven"
wrong. But then it follows that the Bible can in principle be proven
wrong. (Something which can be proven right can in principle be
proven wrong.) If argue that they do have faith, and
that the Bible is right regardless of the validity of evolution,
then why on earth would they care about whether evolution is right
or wrong?
Wisdom Teeth
Steven Gay reminds us that wisdom teeth are a bit of a problem for
modern humans--and any parts of our bodies that serve no purpose,
are in the way, or are just more trouble than they're worth are a
bit of a problem for creationists to rationalize. Why would a Master
Creator give us more teeth than will fit in our jaws? I don't think
I know anybody who has had all four third molars grow into place
with the others and serve as useful chewing teeth. In some people
they never erupt. My top two grew out, but having no bottom ones to
work against, they were useless for chewing. A great many people
simply have to have them removed or suffer severe dental
problems--because modern jaws are just too small to accommodate
third molars. Wisdom teeth make sense as evolutionary leftovers
(probably in the process of evolving away entirely). What sense can
creationists make of them (especially if one lives to the biblically
promised threescore and ten)?
The Last Little Piggie
...the one who went, "Wee, wee, wee!" all the way home. (For those
with deprived childhoods, I'm talking about little toes). They're
one more body part that is in the way, all too easily injured, and,
when you stop to think about it, useless. We don't use them in
walking. In parts of the world where people go barefoot most of the
time, little toes missing through accident or disease are quite
common, and don't hinder the person's mobility at all. Think we need
them for balance or something? Our cloven-hoofed fellow mammals get
by with two toes on the ground. Horses manage to be mighty fast with
just one! Predatory mammals generally put four down. Do we need the
extra because we're bipedal? Ostriches are on their feet all day and
can outrun anybody I know--how many toes do they use? Think about
it: other primates have prehensile toes. Kids notice right away that
monkeys really have four hands. A fifth digit is pretty useful if
you're climbing through branches (and secondarily manipulating
objects). Our little fingers are truly useful and probably in no
danger of disappearing. But we quit climbing in trees with our rear
"hands" and they became feet--which explains why they have useless
fifth digits. And while we're at it...
Doggie toes
What is that thing hanging off the back of your dog's lower leg?
It's his "dewclaw", and it's entirely useless. On some dogs it's so
much in the way that it's surgically removed. It's not a result of
selective breeding, either. Cats have 'em, wolves have 'em, tigers
have 'em. What would it possibly be except a now-useless fifth toe,
in the process of disappearing through evolution?
The Land Down Under
Ed Vinson asks just how far it is from Mt. Ararat to Sydney, and
which of Noah's sons got stuck with herding all those numbats,
wombats, platypi, and wallabies down there without mixing any rats
in. G'day, Mate!
Lower Back Pain
Kate Harrop-Allin asks the perceptive question:Why should this
condition afflict such a huge percentage of the adult population (I
read somewhere that more working days were lost for this than for
almost any other reason) when we were supposedly "created" in our
present bipedal form? Other associated problems with our relatively
recently-acquired bipedalism (that other animals don't seem to have
trouble with):
extreme difficulty in childbirth
varicose veins
arthritis
....... all of which indicate that we evolved, and quite recently too,
from an animal that was predominantly quadrupedal.
Koalas
They live only in Australia. Their diet is so restricted--to a few
subspecies of eucalyptus--that they're threatened now by destruction
of the only kinds of trees they will eat. It's also hard to imagine
them migrating. Over many generations they might slowly spread
through an area--but travellers, they ain't. And when they did
migrate over 9,000 miles, in a tiny herd from Ararat to New South
Wales, eating a convenient trail of long-disappeared eucalyptus
(which took how many years after the Flood to grow?), they left no
trail of koala fossils behind. A suggestion for creation
"researchers": instead of wasting endless hours combing through the
writings of real scientists to find phrases to yank out of context
that make them seem to doubt evolution--instead of that, put
together a real research expedition! Find us that bee-line trail
from northern Turkey to Australia. Find us those fossilized
eucalyptus leaves, koala footprints, and koala bones. While you're
at it, it would be lovely if you turned up a few kangaroos, giant
moas, marsupial lions, Tasmanian wolves, and platypuses along that
superhighway to the South Pacific. Enjoy yourselves in Afghanistan.
Humility
I have determined, after extensive surveying, tabulation, and data
analysis, that the average creationist in the U.S. earns $21,387.29
in family income; owns 1.2 cars, 1.8 TVs, and 2.3 kids; and has, at
some point in his life, answered to the name "Bubba". He has less
than one year of college. Yet he knows more about paleontology than
Bakker or Horner or Currie (or he thinks that what they know is
wrong--same thing). He knows more about the definition of evolution
than Gould or Dawkins. He knows more about biology than Dobzhansky
or Mayr. He knows more about cosmology than Hawking, Smoot, or
Witten, and more about human fossils than Johanson or the Leakeys.
He knows more "true" geology than geologists, more physics than
physicists, more astronomy than astronomers--and more about
everything than atheists like Asimov or Sagan. Humble, they're not.
Truth
This isn't about the things creationists are just wrong about, like
how old the Earth is, but about things that I suspect a good many
know are not true, or gross distortions of the truth. The general
one is that there is a great debate among scientists about whether
species have evolved. A joyous update is that only a few die-hards
still believe in the Big Bang. There are plenty of other amusing
examples:
human footprints alongside dinosaurs
human artifacts found among dinosaur bones
a geological column that is almost never in the "proper" order
described by geologists
proof from all over the world of a worldwide Flood
the "NASA computer" that revealed the "extra day" when the sun stopped
to give the Israelites more time to conquer Jericho
the deep hole geologists drilled and then had to fill in hurriedly
when they heard the screams from Hell
Darwin's "deathbed recantation" (the "Lady Hope" story)
Nothing seems too silly or too obviously wrong to pass along.
Their own eyes
...defeat them doubly. First, creationists trot out that old saw
about how nothing as complex as an eye could evolve in stages, since
a half-eye is no good at all. Darwin himself trounced that one
roundly by merely observing that there are creatures alive today
with eyes in all "stages of development", from a few light-sensitive
cells, to a cup-shaped receptor with no proper lens, to eagle eyes
far sharper than ours. Other creatures seem to get along fine with
half-eyes and even 1/100 eyes. Then for the final insult, human (the
pinnacle of creation) eyes are clearly an engineering mistake! The
retinas are inside out. The nerves and blood vessels come out
through the light-sensitive area of the retina, producing a blind
spot, then spread over the front of the light-receptor cells, so
that light has to get past the fibers into the receptors. Why aren't
the nerves and capillaries behind the receptors, where they would be
out of the way and there would be no need for a blind spot? Squid
eyes are arranged just that way. Since ours aren't, one is reminded
of the maxim that evolution has to work with the materials at hand,
adapting systems already in place, with results that often seem
jury-rigged or needlessly complicated. Would an Ultimate Engineer
make such an obvious blunder, especially having got it right in
creatures created earlier?
Thermodynamics according to Isaiah
The temperature of Heaven can be rather accurately computed. Our
authority is the Bible, Isaiah 30:26, describing Heaven: Moreover,
the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun and the light
of the sun shall be sevenfold as the light of seven days. Thus,
Heaven receives from the moon as much radiation as the Earth does
from the sun, and in addition seven times seven (forty-nine) times
as much as the Earth does from the sun, or 50 times in all. The
light we receive from the moon is 1/10,000 of the light we receive
from the sun, so we can ignore that. The radiation falling on Heaven
will heat it to the point where the heat lost by radiation is just
equal to the heat received by radiation, i.e., Heaven loses 50 times
as much heat as the Earth by radiation. Using the Stephan-Boltzmann
fourth power law for radiation, we have (H/E)4 = 50 where E is the
absolute temperature of the Earth, 300 K (27 C). This gives H, the
absolute temperature of Heaven, as 798 K (525 C)! (For old-fashioned
Americans, that's close to 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Your kitchen
oven won't get nearly that hot.)
The exact temperature of Hell cannot be computed. However,
Revelation 21:8 says: But the fearful and unbelieving... shall have
their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone. A lake
of molten brimstone (or sulfur) means that its temperature must be
at or below the boiling point, 444.6 C (above that point, it would
be a vapor, not a lake). We have, then, that Heaven, at 525 C, is
hotter than Hell, at less than 445 C.
So who says that the Bible has no accurate and useful scientific
data?
(suggested by Austin Rosenfeld)
Authentic Degrees and Credentials
Isn't education a pain? It seems that creationists are more prone to
getting their science degrees from non-accredited (or just plain
fake) religious institutions rather than genuine, accredited schools
or universities. Sometimes that's too much of a pain, so they go to
a degree mill. Fifty bucks and an SASE, and you're a PhD, ready and
qualified to refute evolution! (suggested by Daniel Ball)
Their Third Cousins
One of the more idiotic quips I've heard (more than once, I'm sad to
say) from creationists is, "If humans evolved from apes, then how
come there are still apes around?" I can't speak for the
creationists' immediate ancestry, but mine runs something like this:
one of my great-great-grandfathers was named Ross. Among his
offspring, one married a Thompson and produced children who were
Thompsons. One of those children had children of her own who were
neither Rosses nor Thompsons, but Icenogles. An Icenogle daughter
produced me, who am none of the above, but a Riggins. Thus, Rosses
gave rise to descendants who are no longer Rosses. Some have become
Rigginses. But some Ross descendants are still Rosses! There are
still Rosses around, even though some of their descendants "evolved"
into Rigginses, and a lot of other "species". This isn't biological
evolution, of course, but the principal is exactly the same: an
ancestor can produce descendants which are very like itself (of the
same species), while at the same time having other descendants which
have become something else. The existence of descendants which have
varied widely doesn't mean the original type has ceased to exist, or
that there wasn't, in fact, a common ancestor. That's as true of
anthropoids and Homo as it is of your ancestors, you, and those
third cousins who retain the ancestral name that your branch of the
family no longer uses.
Carnivores
One of the more bizarre creationist notions is that before the
"Fall", all creatures lived in perfect harmony, and all ate plants
(it seems to have something to do with death not existing until Adam
bit the fruit). Thus we have an idyllic Eden, with herbivorous
cheetahs, eagles, rattlesnakes, wolves, tarantulas, and presumably
tyrannosauri and velociraptors. Indeed, the lion could lie down with
the lamb. But then there's me and my dumb questions: Unless the
carnivores evolved really rapidly after the "Fall", they came
originally equipped as they are now--with claws, incisors, fangs,
web-spinning apparatus, etc. What need would an herbivorous
rattlesnake have for venomous fangs? Why would a cheetah need
blazing speed, unless to run down impala--and why would the impala
need to be fast unless to escape speedy cheetahs? Why would those
infamous peppered moths have needed camouflage? Why would a skunk
need its stink, or a porcupine its quills? What sort of grass did a
tyrannosaurus eat with its steak-knife teeth? No matter how hard I
try, I can't imagine without amusement a black widow trapping
what--berries?--in her web, then envenomating them until they quit
struggling! A bison is "designed" as a herbivore, and has been one
for a long, long time. Your housecat is plainly "designed" as a
meat-eater, and would clearly have a devil of a time trying to graze
for a living.
Our Founding Fathers
...because they make creationists appear, shall we say, less than
intellectually competent when they toss out a howler like, "George
Washington and Thomas Jefferson were creationists!" It makes one
want to knock on their heads and call out derisively, "Helllooo!
Anybody home in there? In what year did Washington die? When was
Origin of Species published?" Old George didn't know about germs,
either.
Flat-Earthers
Oh, yes, there are still some around, and they make young-earth
creationists uncomfortable, because their risible, crackpot notions
are based on a literal interpretation of the Bible. In fact, they
take the Bible even more literally than most creationists, assuming
it means what it says about corners, foundations, and pillars of the
Earth, and that mountain from which one could see the whole Earth.
When we laugh at flat-earthers, and can hardly believe such nuts are
still around--we're laughing at them for having the same belief
system as young-earthers: take-no-prisoners biblical literalism.
Chemistry
Chemists, being somewhat familiar with how elements and molecules
combine and recombine non-randomly, haven't risen up as a body to
declare the chemical origin or subsequent evolution of life to be a
flat-out impossibility. Now why do you suppose that is?
Dendrochronology
That means tree-ring counting. Dendrochronologists, by matching
patterns in annual growth rings, can establish a sequence in living,
dead, and long-dead trees in certain areas of the world. That can be
a very reliable dating technique for, say, a beam used in an ancient
shelter. But this archeological specialty must be completely useless
and unreliable, since in some areas ring sequences extend back
through the supposed date of the Flood, showing no evidence of same,
and indeed way past the usual young-ear th creation date. One of
the conundrums of creationism is that the Earth was apparently
created complete with evidence of a past that never happened,
including tree rings, other annual layering phenomena, fossils
already in the ground, and light from distant stars already most of
the way here--revealing cosmic events that never really happened!
Varves
Those are annual layers deposited in lake beds. In some places they
are clearly distinguishable because of varying colors and
compositions of materials deposited in different seasons. We can
see them form, over a few years, so we know exactly what causes them
and that they do, in fact, represent one year per layer. The
problem, of course, (and darn near everything, it seems, is a
problem for creationists) is that there are lakes in the world with
many times the 6,000 annual varves that could have been laid down
since the Creation.
P.S. Annual ice layers in Greenland and elsewhere are also Satanic
deceptions.
R. J. Riggins
Use or repost at your pleasure, just leave my name on it, please.
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