Tuesday, July 24, 2007
The Tangled Web of Creationism
Creationist arguments sometimes create a real problem for those who craft them. Take for example, the argument advanced by young earth creationists that there hasn't been enough time since God created the world 6,000 years ago for the process of evolution to create the diversity of life we see around us today.
All of that life, they say, must have been a product of creation by God, or as those creationists who are familiar with court rulings would say, some intelligent designer.
But then a problem crops up. A problem moreover that the sort of mind that embraces creationism never seems to anticipate. How did all that diversity, all those animals fit on Noah's Ark? How were they fed? What was done with their waste? How did Noah's family manage it all?
Well, they have an answer for that too.
Noah didn't have two of every species we know today. He had two of every "kind" of land animal. "For instance," as some young earth creationists would have it, "two members of the dog kind walked off the Ark. Then, as the number of dogs increased, eventually the population split up and different groups formed."
"As the gene pool was split up, different combinations of genes—inherited from the original dogs—would end up in different groups. Thus, different species would form, such as dingoes, wolves, and so on."
So there was enough time for evolution to operate, after all. And even to operate in a Darwinian manner, but it's still scientists who have it all wrong: "Evolutionists have often insisted that such a process happens slowly, and therefore, the Bible can’t be right when it says that the land animals came off the Ark only about 4,300 years ago."
All of that life, they say, must have been a product of creation by God, or as those creationists who are familiar with court rulings would say, some intelligent designer.
But then a problem crops up. A problem moreover that the sort of mind that embraces creationism never seems to anticipate. How did all that diversity, all those animals fit on Noah's Ark? How were they fed? What was done with their waste? How did Noah's family manage it all?
Well, they have an answer for that too.
Noah didn't have two of every species we know today. He had two of every "kind" of land animal. "For instance," as some young earth creationists would have it, "two members of the dog kind walked off the Ark. Then, as the number of dogs increased, eventually the population split up and different groups formed."
"As the gene pool was split up, different combinations of genes—inherited from the original dogs—would end up in different groups. Thus, different species would form, such as dingoes, wolves, and so on."
So there was enough time for evolution to operate, after all. And even to operate in a Darwinian manner, but it's still scientists who have it all wrong: "Evolutionists have often insisted that such a process happens slowly, and therefore, the Bible can’t be right when it says that the land animals came off the Ark only about 4,300 years ago."
