Creation Bits

I find it amusing when talking with evolutionist friends that whenever a difficulty in the science of evolution comes up, they regard it as a research issue, but whenever a difficulty of the science of creation comes up, they regard it as an a priori insurmountable difficulty, which automatically disproves creationism once and for all.

Likewise, whenever creationists revise the mechanism (not the basic biblically-recorded historical facts of creation), evolutionists call foul, even though they themselves believe that for science to be valid it must be revisable with future evidence.

On the whole, I see three major problems:

1) People unable to see their own presuppositions, or even recognize the role of presuppositions in logic, reason, and science, and therefore assuming they do not have any
2) A gigantic double-standard for how much and what kind of evidence must be used for creation to be a plausible theory.
3) A misunderstanding of the nature of historical inquiry, and how it differs from observational/experimental science.

One of the funniest things I've seen said is this:

1) because creationism includes an all-powerful God, it cannot be tested, and is therefore not scientific
2) everywhere that creationism has been tested it has been proven wrong

Not only are both of these extremely inaccurate, the sequence of thought is nothing short of hilarious.

(1) is untrue because (a) we have a historical document, and therefore cannot propose anything we want, (b) our historical document says that the heavens declare that there is a God, and (c) it is reasonable to assume that the events recorded in the Bible left its mark on creation.
(2) is untrue because there are many areas where creation has been tested and proven right. It is only proven wrong on the _assumption_ of long ages of evolution. Just a few places where science shows theology off the top of my head:

• The pre-adaptation of many organisms to environments they have not been in yet (they often have dormant genes that are available for alternate environments)


• The existence of continental-wide evidence of water flow


• The ability to definitely prove heredity to the levels of biblical kinds where supposed, and the difficulty of proving it beyond that.


• The fact that much of recorded ancient history, even through pagan countries, trace their lineages back to Noah, and that there are many cultures whose date of creation and the flood are almost exactly what the Bible suggests.


• The fossil record is ordered _beyond_ what it should be given known natural history, indicated that the ordering process is physical, not biological. For example, there are many "living fossils" that are alive today, but whose last appearance in the fossil record is, by evolutionary timescales, hundreds of millions of years old. Is it reasonable to have a so-ordered fossil record if natural history itself is not so ordered? I think that this shows that the ordering of much of the fossil record is based on a physical ordering process, not a historical one.


• The existence of DNA, and the fact that it is a carrier for an independent message is one of the most revealing proofs of a creator. Nowhere else except by creative agency is there such a coding system.


• The fact that most dangerous aspects of life are simply good things out-of-control is evidence of a good world followed by a fall (many venoms, for example, also have healing and other good properties in lower concentrations, and many pathogenic viruses and bacteria are actually degenerate adaptations of otherwise helpful organisms).


• The existence of both perfect and imperfect adaptations is also evidence of a good world followed by a fall.

Anyway, the funniest part of all of it is not just the fact that both of these points are wrong, but that they are completely logically meaningless when combined.