So after finding myself drawn into one of those irritating creationism debates I decided, momentarily, that America is doomed. It's no wonder our economy is tanking, the dollar is wretched, China is catching up in the space race (with Europe caught up, Russia set to surpass us when we discontinue the shuttle and replace it with...nothing), medical research is stagnant, we're still dependent on fossil fuels (with viable alternatives more and more apparent with each passing week), etc. etc.
Science is failing us. Or rather we are failing at science.
Over half our country claims to be creationists, rejecting evolution entirely, embracing young earth creationism, and sending their money to that farce of a museum up in northern Kentucky (the creationism museum). Well that's no big deal right? It's only one tiny branch of science ("evolutionism") balanced against the entire field.
Well, not exactly. What follows is a list of other sciences that are rejected by this argument. The Yecs (young earth creationists) aren't just singling out one small "controversial" group amongst the scientific community. They're opposite nearly all of science. I'll arrange them roughly alphabetically.
Anthropology: multiple fields of science for this one, as follows:
Archaeology: My field, but I'll not spend too much time on it. Obviously there are artifacts that go back more than 6,000 years.
Physical Anthropology: This includes the paleoanthropologists (the Leakeys; Lucy et al.) It goes without saying that the ones working on human evolution, uncovering modern human remains 200,000 years old and transitional human fossils millions of years old that are rejected by the Yecs.
Linguistic Anthropology: Back in the day these were the rebel cowboys...able to track human migrations and movements through the current language trends and locations. They linked India to Eurasia (they're a people with cultural and biological origins in the Eurasian steppes (Caucasian, as in the Caucus region of the world, not Anglo-white) with a language related more to Greek than Chinese), showed how many tens of thousands of years ago the Americas were populated , and can trace back the origins of language to roots 50+ thousand years ago (ooops that's more than 6,000!).
Astronomy: By charting the stars and their locations, using devil telescopes as well as the naked eye, the universe has proven to be massive...stars we see are many many light years away. I believe the furthest that we can see with the naked eye is around 15,000 light years away, to say nothing of how far Hubble can see. However if the Yecs were right we wouldn't be able to see it. We'd only be able to see stars 6,000 light years away. After all if the Universe were created 6,000 years ago a star 7,000 light years away would not be visible for another 1,000 years. Maybe the devil makes light go faster to fool us.
Biology: Huge field, multiple areas in conflict...to name a few
Genetics (think the concept of their tracing humans back to an "eve" ~ 200,000 years ago), of course
Evolutionary biologists: (I'm pretty sure we're all fairly familiar with these conflicts) Fossil records...DNA testing...the fact that it makes predictions based on observations that are then proven through experimentation, all that.
Molecular biologists working on cancers or diseases that evolve and mutate. If mutations and change to our DNA didn't occur I'd never have to put on sunscreen (as a simple example) as the UV radiation wouldn't cause a mutation: a kink in the DNA chain interfering with vitamin B production causing cancer. If viruses couldn't evolve we'd have a working vaccine for HIV, MRSA wouldn't exist, nor would drug resistant strains of TB.
Plant Biology: This is a favorite of mine...who the heck picks on plant biologists? Well apparently the Yecs have a big problem. Why? Dendrochronology. In a simpler word? Tree ring dating. Using slow growing wood, like the bristlecone pine (the oldest individual was found to be 4,000+ years old) from a single region a pattern emerges from the rings. In wet years the trees grow more ( depositing a thicker ring) in dry years they grow less (thinner ring). I'm simplifying it as binary for sake of argument. Now with a 4,000 year sample they'll come up with a pattern. 0110001101110011101101. Or whatever. With a couple overlapping specimen they've determined that yes, this is an accurate "calender," and rings do correspond to calender years. Okay, that's great, but so what? A 4,000 year old record of weather doesn't stand in conflict with the Yecs. Oh, but it does. Using overlapping tree lives found in preserved wood they've managed to project this pattern back some 10,000 years in some regions, creating a "master pattern" for the region. Basically with sufficient overlap you can keep extending your calender backwards. So you have 3 trees:
001111001101010101011
1001011010
->100101101001110110
101101 -->10110110110111001010101101
This is a very useful tool to have, as if I find a piece of preserved wood I can look at the pattern and determine what year it is from by matching it along the pattern.
There's another problem besides the trees proving the world is over 6,000 years old. Dendrochronology was used as the control against which to calibrate Radio Carbon Dates. Take a piece of wood you know is 5,000 years old thanks to the tree ring time line, and see what sort of carbon decay has occurred. Contrary to Yec arguments C-14 isn't an assumption...it is tested against a solid and proven dating calender.
Geology: It's crazy to think that back during the 17th and 18th centuries it was the geologists who were the crazy radical scientists taking on the institution. They were the ones being "tricked by the devil" into thinking the world was old. By looking at things like erosion, land formation, and more recently plate tectonics, they were the ones who realized the world was old. Very old. Enlightenment era geologists concluded the earth had to be at least a million years old, formed through uniform change (though slight) over a very long time period. Yeah they vastly underestimated the age, but it was a start.
Paleontology: A double whammy here. First the usual very old earth argument. Secondly they find no evidence of "the flood." In fact while dinosaurs were initially argued to be evidence
for the flood (they missed the boat, so to speak), and they claim all the oil in the world is from the animal matter being created (quickly) from that die off. Well that and there are records of several periodic die offs, the KT die off only being the sexiest...but not the largest (that would be the P-TR extinction: the Great Dying, where 96% of sea life died, 70% of land life, and the only known mass extinction where insects were also among the victims). I guess there were a bunch of floods...that killed fish too...so apparently God had to restart a lot. He must have been working on Vista. Secondarily the paleontologists test the predictions of evolutionary biologists. For example the big theory is that life began simply and has become more complex through time, as evolution adds new mutations and changes that prove beneficial. Sure enough you have fish with gills before amphibians with lungs. You have simple 3 chambered heart cold blooded creatures before warm blooded 4 chambered hearts. Lizards before mammals. Fish before amphibians. Etc. Also paleontologists find transitional fossils. Fish with robust fins/simple legs. Bats with wings but no echolocation abilities. Reptiles with feathers and bird-like pelvises. Apes that stand upright, but can't speak. The record is, while not abundant or overflowing with these fossils, filled with examples of "missing links."
Physics: C-14 dating, Potassium Argon Dating, Thermoluminescence, etc. etc. Additionally with astrophysics: the speed of light (ties into the Astronomers), and all of their work with an
old universe. I'm no astrophysicist, so I'm hardly qualified to take up their torch, but it's fairly apparent that they don't think the universe was created a couple millennia ago, and have their own science to prove their observations. Just remember that the work of physicists allow your cell phone to work (imagine if light didn't travel at a constant...how would your conversation be transmitted if some words were transmitted at different speeds than others? Or if part of the data didn't travel the same speed as the rest resulting in a garbled signal). Nuclear power, the atom bomb, cell technology, satellite communications, lasers, the list goes on. I guess the Yecs would like to keep a couple of Physicists in the closet hidden away to keep all that stuff working.
Zoology: Okay, it's hard to separate them from biologists. But I just had to have a Z in here as well. A-Z and all that. Zoologists, thanks to cladistics, link animals based on their relatedness. Dolphins and whales belong to the same Order, Cetacea,
because they are related. Not because they're roughly physically similar, built off a similar model by some creator, but because they share common ancestors. (I think ~ 50 million years ago). If physical similarity were the only requirement it would be Elephants and Rhinos that would be the Hippopotamus's closest relative, not the whales and dolphins.
So, in the last 20 minutes and off the top of my head that's a quick list of all the groups of science that are "at war with Christianity." Of course no such war exists...there are many Christians who are scientists, and believing in a biological ancient origin of our planet in no way means you can't have faith. But apparently, according to the Yecs, all these branches of science are evil. The only "war" is to keep your damn ignorance out of the scientific discussion. If and when you have a scientific, sound, reviewed, experimental observation that you can present in a civil manner in keeping with the rules of academia, you are more than welcome to come on in. Dissent is welcome and essential to the scientific process.
Is it any wonder that when we elect a fundamentalist Christian to the highest office that our science budget gets slashed? And I mean for
all science, not just evolutionary biology or paleoanthropology. Is it a shock that suddenly scientists encounter a hostile environment that doesn't appreciate their contributions, their intellect, and the benefits they offer our country?* Is it any wonder that other nations close the gap that at one time put us head and shoulders above the rest of the world when it came to science, technology, and the production benefits of both?
In our country, "science" has become a bad word. As if they are trying to ... I don't know what. Seduce our children and make them become gay pedophiles who sodomize animals while burning the American flag. I guess that's what we want... Visiting a cave in Missouri a tourist asked the park guide how old the cave was. She smirked and looked at the other guide and said "Well, if you believe the scientists..." You know what, screw you. If you don't
want electricity, medicine, a thriving economy, a technological edge over the rest of the world, or a strong dollar...you don't have to "believe the scientists."
Look, science is no magical happy unicorn that will fix everything and make the world a better place for ever and ever. It can be used to do terrible things, at the risk of Godwinning my entire entry, one needs look no further than the 1930's in Germany for an example of this. But science itself is not inherently evil. That was science
being used for evil. It wasn't the science that was making decisions in the Reichstag. And just so you don't think I'm too full of myself: it is also not inherently good. It is simply a means at which we can gain understanding and control over the world that surrounds us.
A perfect example is nuclear physics. The split atom is neither good nor evil. It has the potential to either create clean, inexpensive, nearly unlimited power to the world...or it can be used to terrorize the world, vaporize innocents and poison the land for generations. Does that make the scientists working under the football stadium at the University of Chicago good men or evil men? Perhaps they were both good and evil at the same time...and until their work is used by the world they are simultaneously good and bad. Kind of like a cat in a box...alive and dead until you open it to see.
*Case in point, NASA was studying a supernova that had gone off, and were preparing to release their report. Doing good science, observe, document, publish for scrutiny and education. The white house controller (I can't remember the exact name of the position...PR something or other probably) told them not to release the report. Why? It dealt with the death of a star, and our sun is a star. And the thought of our own star dying some day would be a downer...and the American people don't need to think about that. Wow, no one tell them about cancer...that's such a downer it makes people cry! Someone stop those damn depressing scientists from writing about it!
