CREATIONISM - CRAZY AND NOT SO CRAZY
15th February 2002
The next issue, Number 69, will appear on 15th March 2002.
First let us set up a tight definition of 'Creationism' - there being much confusion on the subject.
Creationism is the notion that the natural universe is, in its entirety, the work of a conscious agent - The Creator (aka God) - prior to, independent of, but capable of intervening in, the Creation (the natural universe).
That is the Creationist Principle - neither more nor less. (But see the footnotes for some seldom explored possibilities that might be entertained, or even be entertaining, if you have time on your hands and a glass or two of the hard stuff).
Hereinafter the Creationist Principle will be referred to as the Principle.
The Principle is unfalsifiable in that whatever we may come to discover ......we can never refute the assertion that 'it is so because God willed it so and made it so'. Whether there is any point in making unfalsifiable statements is a matter of opinion but the fact remains that we can devise no test whereby the Principle can be proved to be false. We can only express a preference - perhaps a culturally promoted preference - for asserting the Principle.
It is worth noting, in passing, that the Principle is very appealing; it seems to sew up the Problem of Existence ...... the problem expressed by the questions 'why is there anything whatever; why is there not simply nothing? Admittedly we have difficulty in supposing that the natural universe either has no origin or that it originated itself; equally it can be wondered whether it helps any to postulate a Creator either with no origin or having been self-originating. It might be thought that such questions are hardly worth bothering with - a more innocuous philosophical problem could scarcely be thought of - but the question of the reality, or otherwise, of the supposed Creator has always aroused deep feelings among seriously silly persons. People have killed and have been killed on account of such matters.
We can now consider two main versions of the application of the Principle - the Crazy and the Not So Crazy, respectively.
CRAZY CREATIONISM
A quite gratuitous linkage has been made between the Principle and the supposed truth of sundry creation legends. These legends are, in general, without any great factual foundation even though some of them (the Genesis stories particularly) are beautifully expressed in such translations as the King James's Bible. Unfortunately the seductive majesty of the best seventeenth century English is no proof of the veracity of what it expresses.
The choice of the Genesis story, as an amplification of the Principle, is particularly misplaced - and for two main reasons, empirical and theological.
Empirically we know that by far the most numerous category of living things is the huge variety of micro-organisms in the biosphere. Micro-life is immensely varied as to the very wide range of physical conditions in which it, in its various species, can survive. This range is far wider than the range of conditions to which the many species of macro-life are restricted. Moreover, micro-life is essential to the functioning of macro-life.
The Book of Genesis makes no mention of micro-life and so, as a factual account of the living world, that book is about as convincing as a history of modern warfare that makes no mention of the internal combustion engine!
It is evident that if the Book of Genesis is of Divine Inspiration then God must be characterised as a deceiver by omission. What sort of theology is that?
If, as most people accept but the pious refuse to admit, the Book of Genesis is no more than important human literature then one can understand the omission from it of any mention of micro-life; the author, or authors, had no microscopes.
There is also a wider theological objection to the Genesis Story. In that story God is portrayed as creating species after species separately - specific creation. This portrays God as an unimaginative plodding creator - and that is a contradiction in terms. An act of creation requires a prior exercise of imagination; the notion of 'unimaginative creator' is an oxymoron. In the next section we can postulate a more credible creator.
NOT SO CRAZY CREATIONISM
The main point about this 'not so crazy' creationism is that it is not disrespectful to the supposed Creator; it does not suggest that the Creator would inspire the production of a misleading creation story and it does not portray the Creator as, unimaginatively, plodding His weary way through the toils of specific creation. (No wonder He is supposed to have needed a rest on the Seventh Day).
The essential feature of the 'not so crazy' model is the supposition that the Creator has endowed us with what it takes to understand His Creation - the capability to make meaningful observations and to draw credible inferences from what we see around us and what we can come to see by way of valid experiment. In short, let us suppose that He has endowed us with the ability to 'do science'.
Doing science has led us to, among other things, constructing a model of evolution of species by natural selection (instead of by specific creation). Thus we might postulate the creation of rudimentary life and then letting it evolve and differentiate itself into distinct (but not immutable) species. Since natural selection depends upon variations within any given species (and hence the favouring of those members having advantageous variations) ..... it follows that the Creator of an evolutionary world could intervene at any time by inserting variations at His will. That is not say that this actually happens; it is to say that there is no logical invalidity in the idea of God's intervention in evolution.
Given a choice restricted to the 'crazy' and the 'not so crazy' we would prefer the latter - presumably.
CONCLUSION
Given the Stratonician Presumption (Strato, circa 200 BCE) ...... the presumption that the burden of proof lies on those who believe in God rather than on those who do not ...... given that ..... then my vote is against any sort of Creationism but I can respect those who vote for its 'not so crazy' possibilities.
FOOTNOTES
1) A slight variation of the Principle might be to suppose that the Creator expired some time after the initial act of creation. It is not known whether anyone actually believes this but probably someone does so - perhaps in California. Watch out for people calling themselves Creatheists.
2) A more credible variant might be to postulate a Committee of Creators. Enthusiasts for natural theology might care to work on the idea that such a committee might be quarrelsome, lumbered with dodgy standing orders and subject to a weak chairperson. That figgers!
E.S.
HOME PAGE