Rant on.

 

I mentioned in some earlier post that I have a co-worker who is a Creationist.  Well, this past Saturday we had an opportunity to talk more about his beliefs.  It still astounds me that somebody who otherwise seems as bright as he does rejects science so strongly.  He not only believes the Earth is six-thousand years old and was created by God, but he also believes the Ark story as the literal truth.  All while acknowledging the Bible was written by human beings.

 

Look, it’s simple:  Humans are flawed.  Humans wrote the Bible.  The Bible, therefore, is not the direct Word of God as some like to claim.  Its authorship is imperfectly documented, but it is agreed by most men wrote it.  It’s pretty universally agreed men copied it over and over, thus introducing the possibility for more flaws.  As I told my co-worker–I’ll call him Disciple–the Bible is intended as a book of inspiration, not science.

 

On top of that, he spouted off the arguments I know have been disproved over and over again.  For example, concerning the ark story, he mentioned sea shells and the like have been on mountaintops and asked me to explain that without using a flood.  That was easy:  Mountains are made, in part, by the Earth pushing against itself.  What was once at the bottom of a sea collecting shells might be pushed up slowly until it’s sitting on top of a mountain.  It’s basic geology, folks.

 

I asked him how the ancient Egyptians could be around more than six thousand years ago, and he didn’t have an answer.  It’s a sticky question, as there is not only scientific evidence of it, but there’s also a paper trail of sorts.  Much of what the ancient Egyptians did is lost to history, but not everything.  Some of their written records–not technically on paper, mind you–survive to this day.  Those records form a chronology which leads into other civilizations’ records, etc., right up to modern day.  I don’t personally know how long that written record extends, but it goes back farther than six thousand years.  There is also scientific evidence–dating of artifacts and such–to back this up.  Or perhaps the written records back up the paper trail.

 

Somewhere during the conversation, specifically on the subject of evolution, he used the phrase “irreducible complexity” and even pointed out that a car can be broken down to individual parts, and that a human is far more complex.  I am not sure what he meant by that, but I did tell him our bodies, however complicated they might be, are not irreducibly complex.  That’s a convenient phrase for “I don’t understand it.”  It’s something which cannot be proven.  It’s garbage the Intelligent Design folks feed to their flock, and the sheep spew it back out.  The sheep can’t even see how silly what they’re saying is.  How can something be irreducibly complex?  The answer is that it can’t.  Everything can be broken down into pieces which can be explained.  No, the eye did not suddenly develop fully-formed as an eye.  Nobody has claimed that.  It’s the result of a long, drawn-out evolution of its parts.

 

I suppose what bugs me most is the garbage in, garbage out bit.  The common folks giving these arguments don’t think about what they’re saying, really think about it, or they would see how damned silly it is.  My friend even got into the Big Bang, asking where did all of matter come from.  Why must it have a source?  Why can it not have simply always existed?  He could not accept that, or that his beliefs claim God did magical things.  He stated God wouldn’t use magic, because where would the magic come from?  Disciple wouldn’t see that creation, as described by Christian and other belief systems, is a magical act.  The sudden coming into existence of everything cannot be described in a scientific way; it is magical.  God may be the source of that magic, but it is hocus pocus stuff nonetheless.

 

I am really starting to ramble now, I know, but this is how riled bullshit like this gets me.  Evolution is a well-proven fact.  The age of the Earth is proven to be billions of years, not thousands.  The Big Bang…well, there’s some controversy still about the specifics, but the age of the universe and most of the concepts of the Big Bang are well-proven.  The problem with these things, and with science in general, is there are a lot of unanswered questions and more than a few blanks on specific items.  We humans don’t like questions without answers, so some fill in the blanks with theological beliefs rather than conduct research to find the real answers.  It’s easier to take garbage in and put garbage out than to apply thought.

 

Rant off.