Creationists

Robert W. Elias. Sept. 26, 1997. Source for metalworker s restaurant disappointed at Nobel creationist measles cartoon and Sno Cat trip. 

In recent times, the challenges of creationists and their attacks on educational institutions in the United States led to some novel scrutiny of this view. There is nothing new in the arguments of the creationists since the writing by William Paley, the Anglican priest who became famous for having introduced one of the... 

Creationists apart, the view that life originates by itself from inanimate matter is rich with important implications for the philosophy of science and life at large. It is therefore important in our discussion to pause and consider this view, the underlying conceptual framework, as well as some of the consequences. 

It is also apparent that the anti-Darwinian movement comes not so much from the present and past Pope, but rather from side-kick zealots - see, for example, the short editorial by Holden (Holden, 2005). As for myself, I would be more sympathetic towards the creationists camp if experimental evidence were to be provided. It is not difficult to conceive what this should be simply find equally old fossils of horses, dinosaurs, hominids, snails, cynobacteria, and sword fish. As long as this simple evidence is not forthcoming, it is probably safe to be scientifically very sceptical about the creationistic view (in this sense, it is almost funny that the creatioifists lament some small gaps in the theory of evolution). If you are interested in the creationist movement in Latin America and Mexico, in particular, see the recent article by Lazcano (Lazcano, 2005). 

All these crypto-creationist movements tend to negate contingency and chance as the constructors of life and mankind, as reiterated by the following extract from Monod (Monod, 1971) ... 

Now, let me go back to a few historical notes arbitrarily selected, with the aim of illustrating the historical framework (see also Luisi, 1998). Only the naturalistic view of life, excluding the creationistic or transcendental view will be considered. Let s start with the German biologist and philosopher Friedrich Rolle who noted a long time ago (1863) ... 

Despite the heated debate amon evolutionists and Creationists, the two ideas are very similar. Dr. Dobzhansky, author of Mankind Evo vin0, even oes so far as to say, Christianity is a religion that is implicitly evolutionistic, in that it believes history to be meaningful. In fact, evolution and Creation can be combined and accepted as one general explanation of mankind s origin. These two explanations are not in conflict with one another, but actually need one another in order to complete the answer to mankind s questions. 

Brush, S. G. (1987) Finding the age of the Earth by physics or by faith. Journal of Geological Education, 30, 34-58. A thoughtful evaluation of the debate between scientists and creationists over the age of the Earth. 

Before going further we should note the obvious if a poll were taken of all the scientists in the world, the great majority would say they believed Darwinism to be true. But scientists, like everybody else, base most of their opinions on the word of other people. Of the great majority who accept Darwinism, most (though not all) do so based on authority. Also, and unfortunately, too often criticisms have been dismissed by the scientific community for fear of giving ammunition to creationists. It is ironic that in the name of protecting science, trenchant scientific criticism of natural selection has been brushed aside. 

The proteinoid theory] has attracted a number of vehement critics, ranging from chemist Stanley Miller. .. to Creationist Duane Gish. On perhaps no other point in origin-of-life theory could we find such harmony between evolutionists and Creationists as in opposing the relevance of the experiments of Sidney Fox.3... 

The fourth and most powerful reason for science s reluctance to embrace a theory of intelligent design is also based on philosophical considerations. Many people, including many important and well-respected scientists, just don t want there to be anything beyond nature. They don t want a supernatural being to affect nature, no matter how brief or constructive the interaction may have been. In other words, like young-earth creationists, they bring an a priori philosophical commitment to their science that restricts what kinds of explanations they will accept about the physical world. Sometimes this leads to rather odd behavior. 

Indeed, field biologists have subsequently uncovered so many examples where two or more species blend confusingly into one another [71] that even scientifically literate creationists have found themselves maneuvered into reassigning the point of divine creation somewhat farther up the taxonomic hierarchy a level somewhere between family and genus is a typical, if arbitrary, focal point in such circles at present [72]. 

This, indeed, is what study of protein sequences across different organisms leads us to expect. There are many examples of proteins where the sequence in one organism has an aspartate residue and that in another has glutamate. In fact many observed substitutions are far more radical than that, and we can find quite different aminoacids substituting for one another in perfectly functional proteins. Contrary to what creationists may believe, there is a great deal of redundancy in protein structures, and it is far from the case that a protein sequence has to be exactly right. On the contrary, most protein functions can be fulfilled by a large number of known different sequences, not to mention all of the possible ways that are not yet known. 

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