Creationists just don’t get science… What’s funny though is when they attempt to refute science or scientific theory using naive and ignorant faith-based philosophical arguments.
Enter Pastor Dallas Bunch of the Bible Baptist Church (BBC…? haha) and an article he wrote two days ago entitled ‘You can’t prove the theory of evolution‘, which turns out to be incredibly unintentionally funny. As are most articles written by creationists on any aspect of science.
Anyway, I’m going to go through it and commentate / refute pretty much the entire thing. Here goes.
I read the very biased article “You can’t even do it in Texas” about creationism and science. The article was printed Sept. 10. Let me share a few thoughts with your readers.
Well at least he announces his biases straight up, as I’m sure the rest of us never would’ve guessed…
The word science comes from a root meaning knowledge. True science does not and should not endorse unproven theories as science. Evolution, of course, is not a proven fact.
Well you’re right on the first part, the word science is based on the Latin word for ‘knowledge’, scientia. However, the rest is unenlightened unintelligible religious rhetoric… Wikipedia states that science ‘is a systematic enterprise that builds and organises knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe’. A scientific theory is thus ‘a collection of concepts…together with rules (called scientific laws) that express relationships between observations of such concepts’. Science is based on scientific theories, they are ideas and explanations for natural phenomena that stand the test of time in the face of scientific inquiry. Scientists want to prove theories wrong and replace them with their own new and improved theories, as one finds greater fame in disproving theories than in the attempt of proving them. Until a theory, such as gravity, electricity, germ theory, AND evolution is disproved… while it still stands the test of time and explains all phenomena and questions that are thrown at it, it is considered fact. I really don’t understand why most creationists don’t get this, whether they’re making straw men arguments on purpose or in err. Please join the rest of the educated world and learn what a scientific theory ACTUALLY is already.
From a purely scientific basis no one has scientific proof of when or how the universe, life, man, came into existence.
Well actually we do have plenty of ‘proof’, or scientific evidence if you will, of how the universe evolved, of how life came into existence (though the theory of evolution doesn’t attempt to explain this), how man ‘evolved’ and thus came into existence. If you decide not to enlighten yourself via a few millisecond Google search, that’s your irresponsibility. Putting your head in the sand to avoid seeing the sun doesn’t make it any less real my friend! (what has the bible got to offer??)
Factually most people who believe in and teach evolution do so because they fear the existence of God and His creating the world they live in.
Uhh… what? As an evolutionary biologist that’s news to me, and seems to be a pretty arrogant assertion for a ‘believer’ to make. I’d put it to you the majority of people who accept evolution as fact, and those who teach it too, do so because of the robustness of the theory. Because of its beautiful and wonderous implications for the world around us, not because we give a monkey’s about your God one way or another… Futhermore, I’d love to see some evidence backing up this claim. This for instance is a ‘theory’, it’s not factual.
Here is the basic creed or belief of evolutionists. I have shortened it just slightly to save time. But when pushed here is the evolutionist creed. Nothing plus nothing plus time equals everything.
Shortened it just slightly eh? Maybe you mean misrepresented it entirely? You can actually sum up evolution in a single word, a synonym for its name anyway, change. Whether regarding life, technology, language, whatever… It’s not just restricted to explaining the organisation, complexity and diversification of life on Earth.
Can this be scientifically proved? Of course not, but it does eliminate any mention of the Creator and thus any fear of meeting Him and giving account to Him.
Well, again your head is clearly deep down in the sand, might I direct you to Google Scholar and a search for ‘evolution’. I’d also add it doesn’t address the idea of a Creator one way or another with regards to life, though it does explain the existence of Homo sapiens a great deal more comprehensively than does the Book of Genesis.
Look where this leaves us educationally. We don’t study the first man, Adam. We don’t study the greatest King, David. We don’t study the strongest man, Samson. We don’t study the greatest general, Joshua. We don’t study the wisest man, Solomon.
We wind up not knowing who we are, how we got here, what we are supposed to be doing, and not knowing what happens after death. And this is called first class education.
We don’t study any of those people because unlike evolution there’s no evidence for their existence. You don’t study the tooth fairy, santa clause or easter rabbit. So why on Earth would we study these fictional characters? Historians have surely tried to no avail due to lack of any evidence to their past existence… So yeah, this is called ‘first class education’, teaching what is fact. Creationists would do well to get used to it.
There are numerous books that refute evolution and there are many scientists who know it is fraudulent. These books are not recommended reading for discussion in our modern classroom. Why is that? If the evolutionist theory is provable, why not let the opposing views be shared in the class and let the students see the other side.
Books like this one? Written by and for creationists? They’re not recommended reading for modern classrooms because they’re full to the brim of fundamentalist anti-science rhetoric that has no basis in fact or science whatsoever. The opposing views are not shown because they’re not on a level playing field… Unfortunately everyone is allowed their opinion, whether educated or not, though opinions are not inherently or automatically equal. You might as well be teaching children that the world is flat in geology class, or that the Roman Empire never existed in history class.
As I’ve stated, evolution remains such a robust theory not because it is provable but because it IS disprovable. That is to say that there is nothing preventing it from being disproved. If new information and evidence is found that does so it will be welcomed by science and scientists alike. The reason the theory of evolution is so strong and remains so widely accepted as fact is because for the past 150 or so years it hasn’t been disproved.
I was taught evolution in a state school years ago. The teacher said he was paid by the state to teach evolution and he would do a good job at it. He then added he did not believe in evolution and neither should we.
He mentioned we lived in an agricultural community and every farmer knew if things were left alone, whether it was livestock or crops, nothing ever evolved into anything better. In fact things got worse and not better. He was right.
Wow, you mean to say if farmers left things for what… a few weeks, months maybe even years, that nothing ever evolved in that time to be better?! No shit… Further evidence of how little creationists grasp with regards to the time scale of evolution. Though, when looking for it at the right scale it is very visible indeed. Genetic changes, whether mutations or allele frequencies, occur in the majority of organisms from generation to generation. Intelligent Designers refer to it as microevolution (though macro and microevolution are the exact same thing just over differing time scales), and its measurable and has been verified in countless studies. An example of what Intelligent Designers would call macroevolution, or ‘visible evolution’ is the domestication of the Siberian silver fox, which occurred over only a few decades. In this case a great many noticeable physical (phenotypic), and obviously genetic (genotypic), aspects of the fox were changed via artificial selection by humans.
Evolution is not scientifically provable, It is just wild guessing and wrong interpretation of things. It is clearly anti-god, anti-religion, and anti-reason. Don’t be taken in by such nonsense. His Glad Servant
Pastor Dallas Bunch
Bible Baptist Church
Barton
You attack the theory of evolution with such tenacity it really saddens me and I’m sure many others. It is especially ironic when your own fundamental beliefs hold a great deal less water in the eyes of science and what you believe to be ‘proof’. But you would no undoubtedly go on to defend your belief by calling it ‘faith’, and anything less to be without virtue. This position that is held so firmly by the fundamentalist is so perplexing. When one requires nothing to justify their own beliefs, and yet nothing short of absolute ‘proof’ to justify those of others.
Pastor Bunch, people like you are the reason why it’s so important to teach evolution and science in schools. If blissful ignorance is your master then I’d definitely consider you his disgustingly willing servant Pastor Bunch. Thanks for the accidental humour!
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