[RD] What motivates creationism?

[Tani Coyote]

Well, this I'm not sure about. We did a bit of evolutionary bio in my high school class and I don't remember the unit being particularly big on the philosophy of it all. I can't even remember whether my teacher was religious or not.

The question is what are the philosophical implications. If you basically concede that magic is not real, evolution should be pretty philosophically inert. It is simply a physical process explaining how life diversifies in the course of adapting to its environment. It asks, and answers, no metaphysical questions.

It's only if you are unwilling to dismiss the existence of magic that evolution becomes a philosophical hot potato.

I think the problem lies in that evolution establishes you don't need any sort of cosmic cause for it to happen; it will just occur naturally over the course of many generations in response to survival situations. This removes the idea that something has to be guiding it all.

Now, the creationist who simply believes God created the universe and everything went from there with possible minor interference will have no issue with this (or, as you phrase it, doesn't really believe in magic). The creationist who is a literalist and/or stresses God's guiding hand, on the other hand, will have plenty of issue with evolution.

So, in any society with a large literalist population, as in the United States, we'll see much more support for intelligent design, so as to counteract the idea of evolution happening in a vacuum.

There's also the broader implications of evolution. If we keep going back, we can assert the first life was created through perfectly scientific means. If we rewind from there and discuss the evolution of the universe itself, we can likewise come to the conclusion the universe doesn't have a cause either, and just came into being.

Now granted, I don't see why one can't just assume God created the Big Bang and otherwise let things run their course, from the largest cosmic body to the smallest organism, but literalism is a strange beast. After all, I distinctly recall even some of the greatest scientific minds couldn't help but contemplate if there was something greater when they thought about the beginning of the universe, as the idea of something simply popping into existence is hard for our finite-focused minds to comprehend.

 

[Lexicus]

Yes, ID is a philosophical tool designed to integrate modern science with religion...but just as a side note that doesn't mean it's an illegitimate or wrong tool.

I don't think ID, itself, is illegitimate or wrong - it's the uses ID is always put to that I think are illegitimate and wrong.

The beginning of the universe is a fundamentally magical event, as science simply cannot explain it. Evolution only describes what happens afterwards; intelligent design simply assumes God guided the evolutionary process in some way. What ground has been conceded?

I am not sure but I think you mean science cannot now, and will never be able to, explain the beginning of the universe. If that is indeed what you mean I have no idea what would lead you to such a conclusion. Throughout history people saying 'men will never know x, only the gods can know x' have been wrong almost every time.

To my mind in order to be magic something must be unexplainable by science even in principle. If a phenomenon follows consistent rules that we can figure out, it's not magic, it's physics.

Also, evolution doesn't explain what happens after the emergence of the universe- it specifically explains what life does.

I'm not going to drag the thread this far off topic. If you'd like to discuss it further I'd be happy to in a different thread.

As I said, I don't agree it's off topic. The OT's god, like so many patriarchal men on Earth, is petty and vengeful, so insecure that to remind himself he's cool he has to dominate, torture, and kill others. Similarly, for the patriarchal societies which produced and sustained the OT, a constitutive element of 'manhood' as such was the ability to dominate, even unto torturing and killing, one's offspring and wife.

I think this is an important explanation for why the God in the OT has appealed to people. Add in a nice dose of brainless reaction and creationism in the face of modern science shouldn't surprise anyone. Consistent with my theory is the fact that most present-day creationists are generally also virulently and violently patriarchal. Most of the YEC folk I've argued with online for example are also Dominionists and open sexists who believe women need to be subordinated to men for the good of both, because that's what it says in the Bible.

 

[timtofly]

I think the problem lies in that evolution establishes you don't need any sort of cosmic cause for it to happen; it will just occur naturally over the course of many generations in response to survival situations. This removes the idea that something has to be guiding it all.

Now, the creationist who simply believes God created the universe and everything went from there with possible minor interference will have no issue with this (or, as you phrase it, doesn't really believe in magic). The creationist who is a literalist and/or stresses God's guiding hand, on the other hand, will have plenty of issue with evolution.

So, in any society with a large literalist population, as in the United States, we'll see much more support for intelligent design, so as to counteract the idea of evolution happening in a vacuum.

There's also the broader implications of evolution. If we keep going back, we can assert the first life was created through perfectly scientific means. If we rewind from there and discuss the evolution of the universe itself, we can likewise come to the conclusion the universe doesn't have a cause either, and just came into being.

Now granted, I don't see why one can't just assume God created the Big Bang and otherwise let things run their course, from the largest cosmic body to the smallest organism, but literalism is a strange beast. After all, I distinctly recall even some of the greatest scientific minds couldn't help but contemplate if there was something greater when they thought about the beginning of the universe, as the idea of something simply popping into existence is hard for our finite-focused minds to comprehend.

I think that you mean physical observable means. Up until Darwin, the scientific community held that the universe was deterministic, not chaotic, and it was the philosophers, who rationalized the need for a creator. Religion already accepted God. Not because they contemplated God like the philosophers, but that was what all humans accepted from the first conscious thought. The reason that the universe was thought to be deterministic was from astrology and astronmy, and the fixed motions of the planets, and the predictably of comets, and eclipses. Sure animals and agriculture was domesticated and change happened, but it was the study of biology that gave humans the theory of evolution. It describes what had been going on since the first humans. That is a literal account of history. That does not conclude that every single human thought or still thinks the same way, because of what literally happened.

 

[Old Hippy]

The way that Scientific Creationism has been portrayed and subsequently rejected is because it was viewed as a new belief to reconcile Genesis to science.

just on this point.
was it not rejected because it wanted to reconcile God to science with intelligent design.Genesis being the undisputed(?) word of God it never really engaged in scientific argument relying on things like how could eyes evolve naturally without an intelligent creator. Which is another way of saying we have eyes because God wants them.
it was never a way to reconcile God to science, but a way to reconcile God to Genesis seeing God under attack because people were attacking Genesis . If someone (a scientist) rejects genesis it is not rejecting God, only the narrative that was accepted as true in the past, which most of the new testament dose as well.

 

[Lexicus]

I think the problem lies in that evolution establishes you don't need any sort of cosmic cause for it to happen; it will just occur naturally over the course of many generations in response to survival situations. This removes the idea that something has to be guiding it all.

Now, the creationist who simply believes God created the universe and everything went from there with possible minor interference will have no issue with this (or, as you phrase it, doesn't really believe in magic). The creationist who is a literalist and/or stresses God's guiding hand, on the other hand, will have plenty of issue with evolution.

So, in any society with a large literalist population, as in the United States, we'll see much more support for intelligent design, so as to counteract the idea of evolution happening in a vacuum.

There's also the broader implications of evolution. If we keep going back, we can assert the first life was created through perfectly scientific means. If we rewind from there and discuss the evolution of the universe itself, we can likewise come to the conclusion the universe doesn't have a cause either, and just came into being.

Now granted, I don't see why one can't just assume God created the Big Bang and otherwise let things run their course, from the largest cosmic body to the smallest organism, but literalism is a strange beast. After all, I distinctly recall even some of the greatest scientific minds couldn't help but contemplate if there was something greater when they thought about the beginning of the universe, as the idea of something simply popping into existence is hard for our finite-focused minds to comprehend.

The idea of Deism (universe as clockwork, God as watchmaker) was already around before the theory of evolution entered the historical stage, which is kind of interesting if you think about it. In fact, people have been arguing for the existence of the divine based on the supposed incredible complexity of nature at least since Cicero if not earlier, which I think is also really interesting.

The problem as I see it with the God-as-First-Cause explanations is that they boil down essentially to special pleading. Everything needs a cause, so we're just going to posit this Uncaused Cause as a special exception to the rule.
Well, if they can do that why not just discard "everything needs a cause" completely, or even more elegantly, simply posit the universe itself as the exception instead of adding a God step in there? God is even more complex than the thing He is invoked to explain, but asking where God came from just gets you dirty looks from the religious types.

 

[thecrazyscot]

I am not sure but I think you mean science cannot now, and will never be able to, explain the beginning of the universe. If that is indeed what you mean I have no idea what would lead you to such a conclusion. Throughout history people saying 'men will never know x, only the gods can know x' have been wrong almost every time.

To my mind in order to be magic something must be unexplainable by science even in principle. If a phenomenon follows consistent rules that we can figure out, it's not magic, it's physics.

The problem is that we're trapped within our universe. Science quite simply cannot answer what sparked our universe because we would never be able to observe the beginning of our universe from without.

Sure, there's all sorts of strange theories as to what our universe actually is, but unless we figure out a way to go beyond the bounds of our own universe (which I don't think will ever be possible) none of those theories will be anything but thought exercises.

The beginning of the universe is ultimately a philosophical question, even if we can date it with some certainty.

 

[Lexicus]

The problem is that we're trapped within our universe. Science quite simply cannot answer what sparked our universe because we would never be able to observe the beginning of our universe from without.

Sure, there's all sorts of strange theories as to what our universe actually is, but unless we figure out a way to go beyond the bounds of our own universe (which I don't think will ever be possible) none of those theories will be anything but thought exercises.

The beginning of the universe is ultimately a philosophical question, even if we can date it with some certainty.

*shrug* never say never. We can do things now that, even 50 years ago, would have been thought absurd. Extrapolate from that and it's difficult for me to see why the bounds of the universe should be any different.

 

[thecrazyscot]

*shrug* never say never. We can do things now that, even 50 years ago, would have been thought absurd. Extrapolate from that and it's difficult for me to see why the bounds of the universe should be any different.

I guess we'll just have to disagree on that

 

[timtofly]

just on this point.
was it not rejected because it wanted to reconcile God to science with intelligent design.Genesis being the undisputed(?) word of God it never really engaged in scientific argument relying on things like how could eyes evolve naturally without an intelligent creator. Which is another way of saying we have eyes because God wants them.
it was never a way to reconcile God to science, but a way to reconcile God to Genesis seeing God under attack because people were attacking Genesis . If someone (a scientist) rejects genesis it is not rejecting God, only the narrative that was accepted as true in the past, which most of the new testament dose as well.

Perhaps now, but I am not sure what incerting it as an unconscious thought would do, for previous attempts. The first attempt was just to get equal time in the class room. Biology as introducing evolution as a mechanism of change hardly means that it is the answer to how life began. The issue is, if you do not accept how life began, you can come up with all sorts of reasons philosophically or rationally in an observational manner. Religion does not question, but unfortunately neither does it refrain from speculation depending on how inclusive it wants to be. Life and reality does not hinge on religion, science, nor philosophy. Those are just tools to help form our belief systems and test whether a concept is viable or not.

The idea of Deism (universe as clockwork, God as watchmaker) was already around before the theory of evolution entered the historical stage, which is kind of interesting if you think about it. In fact, people have been arguing for the existence of the divine based on the supposed incredible complexity of nature at least since Cicero if not earlier, which I think is also really interesting.

The problem as I see it with the God-as-First-Cause explanations is that they boil down essentially to special pleading. Everything needs a cause, so we're just going to posit this Uncaused Cause as a special exception to the rule.
Well, if they can do that why not just discard "everything needs a cause" completely, or even more elegantly, simply posit the universe itself as the exception instead of adding a God step in there? God is even more complex than the thing He is invoked to explain, but asking where God came from just gets you dirty looks from the religious types.

No human knows where God came from. God just is. Trying to get past that point is also special pleading. It is quite natural for humans to just accept the observable, that is science. It is natural for humans to be skeptical, that is philosophy. It is quite easy to accept the unknown, that is religion.

 

[Lexicus]

No human knows where God came from. God just is.

No human knows where the universe came from. The universe just is.

 

[timtofly]

No human knows where the universe came from. The universe just is.

God did a mature universe that can "just be", and still allow humans to rationalize "what is".

 

[El_Machinae]

*shrug* never say never. We can do things now that, even 50 years ago, would have been thought absurd. Extrapolate from that and it's difficult for me to see why the bounds of the universe should be any different.

It's also reasonable to have a theory be capable of handling unknowns. I see no reason to expect to ever know what Alexander the Great ate for his 13th birthday. Some information is just fundamentally obscured too much.

But we know it was McDonalds.

 

[uppi]

Up until Darwin, the scientific community held that the universe was deterministic, not chaotic [...]

I would say the scientific community held this until Bohr. It is a common misconception that Darwin's theory requires randomness. He just observed that differences in one species are there and did not concern himself where these came from. I guess, from a information theoretic point of view you need a way to add entropy to the inheritable information to keep on generating new species, but that entropy could as well be pseudo-random. It is also a misconception that even in the face of a non-deterministic universe, the outcome of an evolutionary process is random - it can be quite deterministic: If a trait is hugely beneficial in producing surviving offspring, it will be carried on.


To answer the OP: It is not only that literalist fundamentalists want the Bible to be literally true, they need it to be true, or their worldview implodes. If you ever hear of the hilarious, convoluted explanations there are for minor, yet obvious inconsistencies in the Bible, you understand that admitting the Bible might be wrong in a minor detail is not an option.

As for the fraudsters who should know better: That is the free market at work - if there is demand it will ensure that someone will try to come up with supply.

 

[timtofly]

I would say the scientific community held this until Bohr. It is a common misconception that Darwin's theory requires randomness. He just observed that differences in one species are there and did not concern himself where these came from. I guess, from a information theoretic point of view you need a way to add entropy to the inheritable information to keep on generating new species, but that entropy could as well be pseudo-random. It is also a misconception that even in the face of a non-deterministic universe, the outcome of an evolutionary process is random - it can be quite deterministic: If a trait is hugely beneficial in producing surviving offspring, it will be carried on.


To answer the OP: It is not only that literalist fundamentalists want the Bible to be literally true, they need it to be true, or their worldview implodes. If you ever hear of the hilarious, convoluted explanations there are for minor, yet obvious inconsistencies in the Bible, you understand that admitting the Bible might be wrong in a minor detail is not an option.

As for the fraudsters who should know better: That is the free market at work - if there is demand it will ensure that someone will try to come up with supply.

Bohr may have cemented the non-deterministic aspect on the molecular level, but I am not sure that randomness is that compulsory to the notion. In fact it would seem that science has taken a strong turn back into the predictive deterministic aspects of existence. It may not have been just Darwin, but allowing change did seem to finally free the scientific method from any mystical and religious ties that had dominated the sciences. Not even philosophy had managed that. Humans realized that nature itself could produce change and that seems to be the last chain that needed to break.

Cause and effect seem to me to be philosophical arguments, and for the most part humans figured out that they could govern themselves when science was in it's infancy. It has always been recording patterns and cycles, and "what" or "whom" causes "what" seems immaterial as long as the end result justifies the means it took to get there. We are now back once again exploring the predictive deterministic aspect of nature and how we can use it to change who we are even as humans.

 

[uppi]

In fact it would seem that science has taken a strong turn back into the predictive deterministic aspects of existence.

No, it has not.

 

[timtofly]

No, it has not.

Seeing as how science does not have a mind of it's own, it may not want to, but it has no choice in the matter. I am not sure how you are going to remove "predictive" from the scientific method. I do not see much else driving research than how to better ourselves. As far as I can see, humans want to shy away from randomness and gain comfort in determinism, be it good or bad.

 

[Lexicus]

Look up something called quantum mechanics timtofly.

 

[timtofly]

It runs in the family. ; )

 

[uppi]

Seeing as how science does not have a mind of it's own, it may not want to, but it has no choice in the matter. I am not sure how you are going to remove "predictive" from the scientific method. I do not see much else driving research than how to better ourselves. As far as I can see, humans want to shy away from randomness and gain comfort in determinism, be it good or bad.

Predictability is something very different from determinism.

 

[Lohrenswald]

Quote OP:

Please don't divert the discussion to discuss creationist beleifs themselves versus science

As for the whole deal about creationism and intelligent design being different things, this isn't really central, because the real point of the discussion is the question of why someone goes to great lengths to try and convince as many people as possible of like creationism religion something (mostly christianity, but I think muslim variants exsist), and trying to do so more or less with (quasi-)sceintific terms, rather than "faith alone"

I'm pretty bad at keeping up with threads, if anyone wants me to reply to something specific do let me know