Evolutionism And Creationism Essays - Pseudoscience, Creation Myths

Evolutionism And Creationism "The Creationist battle cry can be stated thus: Public ignorance is Creationist bliss." This is just one of the many attacks made against Creationist in Richard Young's article, "Why Creation ?Science' Must Be Kept Out of the Classroom." Throughout the article he uses many hasty generalizations about creationist theories. The first hasty generalizations Young makes are untrue statements about the Bible. He then uses states beliefs that are true for only of a few Christians with extremist ideas, not the common Christians view of Creationism. Young continues attacking Creationist by making more hasty generalizations, and begging the question on why Creationism is a weak argument compared to evolutionism. Finally, he tops all this off by attacking the Creationist theories in using false analogies. The first hasty generalization that Young makes is an attack on the Creationists' views. He claims that Creationists are extremists because they take the Bible literally. The reason why he has a problem with taking the Bible literally is because of his accusations of the Bible. He claims that the Bible says "that the earth is flat, that all space flight has been hoaxed, that the Sun orbits the stationary earth," and other statements of this nature. The problem with this accusation is that the Bible never makes any of these claims. Young then continues attacking Creationist by saying: It is precisely this loss of faith [not taking the Bible literally], alleged to have been caused by the proliferation of ?evolutionary thought,' that the creationist hold responsible for all the evils of the world, including ?sex education, alcohol, suicide, women's liberation, terrorism, homosexuality, inflation, socialism, racism and dirty books.' Judge Braswell Dean, a Georgia lobbyist for Creationism, lays an equally comprehensive spectrum of crimes on the doorstep of evolution: ...this monkey mythology of Darwin is the cause of abortions, permissiveness, promiscuity, perversions, pregnancies, prophylactics, pornotherapy[sic], pollution, poisoning and proliferation of crimes. These so-called "Creationists" may have made these statements, but it is obvious that they have misunderstood what the Bible says. The Bible states that sin originated from Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and problems have existed ever since then. The problems in our society have nothing to do with the "monkey mythology" that the judge states. From these points of hasty generalizations, Young continues making more hasty generalizations and even begs the question of the validity of creationism as a science. First he says that Creationism does not offer any explanatory or predictive capabilities that the theory of evolution has. This is not true. In fact, Creationism has a great explanation for where the earth came from and how it will end up; the book of Genesis explains how God created it and the book of Revelations predicts how it will end up. After this statement, Young says that "What the Creationists present as a science are in fact pseudoscience[sic], much like palmistry, astrology and the alchemy of old. As a scientific alternative to evolution, Creationism is a dismal failure." Young does not give any reasons why; he leaves that question up to us to figure out. Creationism has no similarities to the things to which Young compares them. Creationism is not some cheesy science used to predict the future of somebody's life, and it is not some old science that has been proven wrong. As a matter of fact, Creationism has many valid arguments. For example, Ken Clark, writer of the Creation Outreach web-site, makes the point that billions of fish are found in the fossil record with scales, fins, intact. They were trapped suddenly and did not have time to rot or get eaten by scavengers. This does not happen normally. The great Genesis Flood of Noah and the Ark is a good explanation for these happenings and is one of many arguments for Creationism. Later on in Young's article he uses false analogies to argue against Creationists problems with evolutionary theory. He questions the Creationist understanding of the word ?theory' and then compares the evolutionist theory to that of the theory of music and Newton's laws. Young says that the only difference between the evolutionist theory and Newton's laws are that in Newton's time it was more fashionable to call theories laws. This use of comparing theories is illogical; there is a huge difference between the theory of music, Newton's laws, and theory of evolution. The theory of music is a term for the study of musical concepts and is accepted because it can be proved, same with Newton's laws. Newton's laws are not called laws just because that was more