Bill Nye warns: Creation views threaten US science

http://www.seattlepi.com/news/article/Bill-Nye-warns-Creation-views-threaten-US-science-3888451.php

by bcl • 14 years ago

49 95 14 years ago

To play devil's advocate, can anyone provide a clear, concrete example of how it hurts science if the man in the street believes in creationism?

This doesn't seem like an issue that it makes rational sense to get up in arms about. It seems emotion-driven to me, ironically.

scott_s• 14 years ago

Because that man's taxes fund scientific research.

cli• 14 years ago

Also, that man has some say in the direction of science policy through his (congressman? representative? What is the correct US term?).

siglesias3• 14 years ago

Perhaps the idea that God gave us the planet to exploit for its resources and animals to treat however we want, thus we shouldn't care about overtaxing the oceans and gas supply, granting animals rights, or concern ourselves with global warming, which God wouldn't let happen.

waterlesscloud3• 14 years ago

A lot of Christian churches actually support a type of environmentalism under the idea that God gave man stewardship over the earth, which comes with the responsibility to keep it up. It's His creation, after all (under this belief).

davidism• 14 years ago

The "man on the street" has a kid, a potential scientist. But instead of fostering curiosity about the way things work, instead of promoting the use of logic to understand his surroundings, the parent teaches the child "the Bible says so, and that's enough." Now we have one less potential scientist.

kazoolist• 14 years ago

... or the kid's parents believe in creation but don't fit some ignoramus stereotype, and the kid comes to believe that the creation reveals the glory of a Creator (eg. Psalm 19), and accordingly this fosters curiosity about the way things work, and the kid becomes a scientist.

Shenglong4• 14 years ago

It hurts science because it's wrong. I'm not trying to be a jackass here, but believing in creationism is the same as saying "I believe acceleration at the Earth's surface is exactly 10 km/s^2 because it says so in the Bible." (it doesn't... I hope)

It discourages scientific criticism of ideas. When you are taught a scientific fact or theory, you are always welcomed to, and often encouraged to question it. "Why is acceleration 9.81m/s^2? How do I know that it is true as of right now? If I carry out my own experiment, will I see this?" When you listen to the "word of god", this is no longer the case. You know it's right because someone, thousands of years ago, apparently said it is.

Yes, it can waste tax dollars - but we can always make more dollars. An innovative generation that can carry on mankind's survival? That's a little more important.

waterlesscloud3• 14 years ago

How many discoveries in the past (and even in the present) were made by people who believed in Creationism?

Why didn't that belief stop them from advancing science?

Why would it now do so?

siglesias3• 14 years ago

I wouldn't go quite that far. A belief in a creator can be tempered with rationality. Let's not forget that Newton, for example, devoted more of his writings to Christianity than he did to science and in fact sought natural laws because he believed that God would create a universe that behaved like clockwork. Einstein's intuition that a simple solution existed to the Michaelson-Morely paradox also derived in part from some kind of unempirical preconception about how "God" (his was impersonal) operated the universe.

stephenhuey3• 14 years ago

The other people replying to you are making some good points. Your claim is not right, actually. Reporting that phenomena such as acceleration are different from what is measured would be wrong--that is true. But you cannot claim that scientists who doubt theories such as macroevolution and lean towards some form of creationism are as wrong as that. The reason is that you cannot observe who caused the big bang, how they brought all the universe into being, etc. Physics keeps yielding surprises, and so do other sciences, and our models are constantly adapted. To me, biological theories are fuzzier than some of the others, but I'll admit I have not studied it much. Dr. James Tour mentions the creation versus evolution debate on his website, and while he doesn't feel like either side can make a strong scientific case, he did tell me a few months ago that he doesn't think the leading evolutionary biologists understand the chemistry that they claim led to the formation of life. Dr. Tour isn't the only intelligent person making great strides in the natural sciences who believes that, either. You can believe he and other researchers are wrong to doubt macroevolution, but you should be careful about making strong claims you cannot back up, because they do not promote constructive debate.

Pkeod• 14 years ago

Emotions are not in conflict with rational behavior; they cause rational behavior.

It hurts because it is not just one man out there who is willfully ignorant about reality. There are a very large number of people in the US who believe that the world is only 6,000 years old, that everything is going to end any day now, that the environment isn't really worth protecting because of that, and by extension that it's not really worth doing anything meaningful. The religious people still vote, and their votes shape our policy. If their churches tell them to vote one way, and they do, the authority of the religiously fueled motivations highly define the results.

gareim• 14 years ago

Because sometimes the man in the street has an effect on others. Consider textbooks. Sometimes (like in Kansas 1999), creationists can control enough of the governing body for state textbooks that they can eliminate core ideas of evolution. I don't care what someone believes, but they shouldn't push unverifiable beliefs on impressionable kids.

AJ007• 14 years ago

As a child I went to private schools that taught creationism. I can't speak for how creationism is taught in other schools, but in the schools I attended it was nothing but a complete denial of science. It took me a while to figure that one out.

Science fits together. When you deny the existence of biological evolution, decide the earth is under 10,000 years old, and say there is no such thing as the big bang, you end up with huge gaps in the scientific explanation of the universe.

Once you do this, the world and the universe it sits in transforms from a place of logic and explainable order to one of superstition and chaos. If the earth is 10,000 years old, how is the Milky Way galaxy 100,000 light years in diameter? If there is no biological evolution, is genetic science a pseudo-science?

Creationism taught in others ways is little better.

This type of thinking destroys IQs.

patio112• 14 years ago

It seems emotion-driven to me, ironically.

It is entirely a signaling/tribalism question. For example, I get asked whether I'm a creationist on a fairly regular basis by people who a) are aware that I'm religious and b) want to figure out whether that means I should be on the Enemies List. I'm not creationist, so I get marked down as Whee You're A Fellow Scientist (TM). It is not obvious to me that my views on, e.g., the Resurrection would merit that conclusion, but that is not the issue the two tribes picked to wage ultimately meaningless squabbles over.

(Ironically, actual creationists have been pretty tolerant of me not being creationist. My guess is this is because I do not go out of my way to soulcrush them while screaming "I am a threat to your entire way of life.")

ChuckMcM4• 14 years ago

I believe it is more nuanced than that, if you understand how science works, then you cannot believe a literal interpretation of genesis, thus if you do believe in a an earth that is less than 10,000 years old and humans appearing 10,000 years ago, then you didn't learn science correctly.

Then based on that reasoning, (and this is the nuanced part), you may find your self opposed to things which are based on scientific investigation and a risk to the community. The most popular example is vaccination risks and benefits.

One of the problems is that people are told that to believe in science means you cannot believe in God, and they have a strong belief in God so of the two they toss science rather than God out of their life. Its a poor choice.

EDIT: I, like patio11 apparently, believe in both God and science. So its possible :-).

patio112• 14 years ago

Observe: you have constructed a tribe out of whole cloth, described them as The Other, and made anyone who carries an arbitrary signifier of membership into that tribe into your automatic enemy.

Rationally speaking, if you're very vexed about vaccinations, you should ask whether someone is in favor of vaccinations, rather than attempting to guess their opinion on vaccinations by asking something orthogonal. If someone is opposed to vaccinations, it matters to you little whether that is because they're in the Tribe of UnScience (as evidenced by being biblical literalists) or if they're, e.g., against vaccinations because they're strict vegans and morally opposed to anything which might, at any point, involve an animal protein.

derleth11• 14 years ago

> believe in both God and science.

You're using the word 'believe' in two different ways here, I hope.

'Belief' in science means 'I have seen the evidence and it convinces me' or else you don't know how science works.

'Belief' in God means 'I believe because it is absurd' or similar; that's how religion works.

I really hate how the same word can have two completely opposite meanings like that.

thaumaturgy7• 14 years ago

I think I can provide a strong argument for it. Will that be OK?

First, can we agree that creationism is a religious doctrine, and thus it's OK to frame this roughly as a debate over the role of religion in science? Because, within that frame, Greta Christina has already made a more articulate argument against religion than I could [1]. The short of her argument is that because religion requires belief in improvable things, that makes it "uniquely armored against criticism, questioning, and self- correction".

And what are some of the most basic principles of science? Criticism, questioning, and self-correction.

If the man on the street were to believe, say, that relativity was wrong, that the world was flat, and that it was actually supported on the back of a giant tortoise, what would that imply about their ability to reason on other topics? Is it wrong to conclude that, for example, they would believe similar fairy tales in fields like economics, politics, social justice, and environmentalism?

The one thing that all of those fields have in common, which makes them more vulnerable to religious principles than other fields of science, is that their support is controlled almost entirely by a democratic population.

So, if you have a large population which believes in creationism -- and therefore can easily ignore all of the overwhelming evidence for evolution in a field of concrete scientific study -- then you likely also will have a large population which believes that the country should close its borders and wage wars against people of other faiths.

The default response to such policies is to try to overwhelm it with facts. You say, "these economic policies haven't worked in X, Y, or Z countries in time periods A, B, or C" ... but the problem is that you're dealing with people who place no stock in things like facts.

(If you're jumping to argue that I'm wrong to draw this correlation, you should be prepared to handle the example of Romney and one of the most fact-challenged campaigns in the history of U.S. politics.)

I think there are lots of other good arguments too, like the fact that it's hard to attract the world's top scientific and engineering talent to a country full of crazy people, which means that you can probably kiss your industrial leadership goodbye. But, honestly, that's not my argument.

For me, widespread belief in creationism is bad for society because it's a gateway belief system to lots of other really bad things.

(Aside: it looks like I get to take up the mantle of Science Evangelist this evening on HN; how much the poorer HN is for it.)

[1] http://www.alternet.org/print/story/143912/the_top_one_reaso... -- by the way, I am not at all a militant atheist. In fact, I don't even describe myself as an atheist any more due to the current religious-like fervor of New Atheism. I have no problem with people who hold religious beliefs. However, she makes a compelling point that is appropriate as a reference here.

vyrotek• 14 years ago

I've always been curious about how we date things so far back. It's one of those things which I wish I could understand better. Does anyone have a good resource on carbon dating or other modern techniques that are used today?

Also, has anyone ever scientifically argued that perhaps our dating techniques are incorrect? Could there be natural ways for the system to be thrown off?

toufka• 14 years ago

There are of course ways to argue about the accuracy of these techniques.

What's fun is that it doesn't matter which technique you use - the numbers turn up the same no matter what. That's why this 'science' thing is so cool.

Measure the error rate of polymerase in lab (the protein which makes your DNA). Calculate the percent difference ("error") between humans and chimpanzees and you can get a ballpark number for the length of time it took for the species to diverge. It's astounding that these numbers end up quite similar to the numbers you get when you find bones, compare the isotope of carbon in it with the known decay rate of Carbon-14, and the ratios of it in our ecosystem. And these numbers correspond quite well between any elemental analysis we know.

Have you ever told a lie? (we'll pretend you have for argument's sake) You know how quickly and difficultly it is to create a story that accords with the lie? And yet somehow telling even the most outlandish of true stories causes not even a momentary fluster? Everything just fits together. Were evolution or such things based on a single finding - then sure, be skeptical. But when evidence from a geologist, a physicist, a geneticist, a radiologist, a biophysicist, and many more all arrive at the same conclusion using wildly different techniques - then be much much less skeptical.

Each user of each technique knows its error and precision. Some techniques can get you +/- a million years out to 100 million years, some +/- a decade out 1,000 years - some +/- a second out 3 days. Or for polymerase - +/- an event every .0001 seconds. But while each idea may be tenuous on its own - they all work in tandem to draw something really powerful. The most robust of these concepts span from the picosecond to 13 billion years - from the picometer to 13 billion light-years. It's fantastic. 200 years ago it was more like the millimeter to the kilometer, from the millisecond to the century.

jff2• 14 years ago

In the case of carbon dating, plants take in carbon-14 from the atmosphere. Carbon-14 is radioactive and decays at a known rate. Once a plant dies, the carbon-14 begins to decay. By finding the ratio of carbon-14 to carbon-12 and carbon-13 in a sample, we can estimate how long it has been since the sample died. Since animals consume plants directly or indirectly, they also take in carbon-14 and can thus have their ages estimated in a similar fashion.

ars2• 14 years ago

Just so you know, in practice it's considerably more complicated than that.

The main limitation is that carbon dating only works to about 60,000 years (so older figures are never from carbon dating). This is well known.

Less well known is that it only works if the sample has never been soaked in water. This is because the CO2 in water will dissolve into the sample completely overwhelming the original carbon ratios. This probably causes a huge number of errors in the field, unfortunately. Because how many samples have been completely shielded from water for that long?

There are other datings though, but they are less accurate. Usually they are only able to date the rocks near the sample, but not the sample itself. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiometric_dating

Most commonly things are actually dated based on fossil and geological evidence, not any type of direct dating. But there is a bit of circular logic in those types of datings. First the rock is dated, and the sample is assumed to be of the same age. Next when other samples of the same type are found they are assumed to be of the same age as the first. The rock formations are then recorded and the appropriate layer is given an estimated age. Which is then used to date other things. Basically, things older than 60,000 years are dated based on what fits the theory best.

Shenglong4• 14 years ago

I had the pleasure of meeting Bill Nye about three years ago, where I told him that as a kid, he was my scientific inspiration. I never imagined at that point, that he'd still be fighting my battles, even now.

tonetheman• 14 years ago

What I would prefer is to have creationism taught in a religion class. I do not care if my kid knows about it.

I just do not want him to think that any real scientist even comes close to believing in it. And I know some people do not believe in carbon dating and that is fine too. But the facts as we know it point to us not being plopped down on the earth instantly as the bible suggests.

Teach the facts, let the other stuff be taught in a class on religions or mythology.

kefs• 14 years ago

The Creation Museum's response is laughable.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-AyDtD6sPA

Alex391711• 14 years ago

I've never understood why out of all the things broken in the US and in education specifically people get so worked up over this one issue. Evolution is one of the easiest concepts to understand in all of science. Literally all it takes is a ten minute YouTube video to explain it to a fourth grader.

As such, while clearly evolution should be taught in schools, I fail to see how students are significantly harmed if it isn't. The fact that these kids come communities where most of the parents are really dumb has to be hundreds of times more damaging than not getting a day or two worth of lecture.

(And as an aside, I would bet money that the percentage of religious folks who have a good understanding of the main arguments in favor of evolution is about 10x as high as the percentage of 'science-oriented' folks who have a good understanding of all the philosophical concepts referenced in the wiki article on intelligent design.)

pat2man• 14 years ago

Claiming that evolution is wrong implies that all science is wrong. If you don't teach the basic scientific principles to young students it gets harder and harder to convince them of more complicated topics. You get into a science vs religion debate where no one wins and the students always loose.

PakG1• 14 years ago

Whoah, whoah, whoah. Newtonian physics can be easily explained and understood without knowing anything about evolution. The same for basic chemical reactions. The same for mitochondria. And the same for various more complicated topics. Let's not debate the debate well, but let's not get hyperbolic.

Alex391711• 14 years ago

"If you don't teach the basic scientific principles to young students it gets harder and harder to convince them of more complicated topics."

First of all, the vast majority of US students aren't even proficient enough in reading and math to understand science regardless of what the curriculum consists of. Debating what the science curriculum should consist of is like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

But the fact that you hear 10x as much about this issue than about the shameful lack of reading ability in students suggests that this debate is as much about ideology as it is about pedagogy. That was kind of my point.

Yes, it's important, but the fact that people are spending so much time worrying about optimizing something that's largely irrelevant in the grand scheme of things says a lot about them.

jlgreco7• 14 years ago

Not understanding Evolution effectively locks students out from large swaths of science. The issue you see isn't merely that they don't understand evolution, but that the people preventing them from being exposed to it are also teaching them to be opposed to it.

The style of "creationism" in America that is seen as the opposition of evolution (versions of creationism that appear compatible with evolution exist. See: the RCC) is not defined merely by the absence of evolution but also by it's warped and twisted "versions" of it (strawmen) and often some healthy dose of conspiracy theory (evil scientist conspiracies).

This basically 'immunizes' children against what would normally be a trivial education in evolution. I say this from personal experience. In retrospect evolution is embarrassingly simple and obvious, but it took years for it to truly sink in for me. A quick 10 minute youtube video can explain it great, but once a certain degree of damage has been done it can suddenly take a lot more.

anamax8• 14 years ago

> Not understanding Evolution effectively locks students out from large swaths of science.

Large in what way?

How much of physics depends on evolution? How about chemistry? How about materials science? I can go on and on.

In fact, much of biology doesn't depend on evolution. (Who do you think did all the work on selective breeding pre-darwin?)

I don't know Knuth's views on evolution, but he is Christian. Can you tell me if he believes in evolution?

As someone else pointed out in this thread, evolution is being used as a tribal signal.

And no, believers in evolution are NOT more rational.

Alex391711• 14 years ago

"Not understanding Evolution effectively locks students out from large swaths of science."

The government, in their National Assessment of Adult Literacy, used to measure up to 'advanced literacy', which was roughly the level you would need to be able to read a scientific journal article. Such a small percentage of adults were able to read at this level (less than 3%) that they dropped it entirely, and now the literacy assessment scale only goes up to 'proficient'. This is the level of literacy you would need to compare and contrast two newspaper editorials, which are generally written at around an 8th grade reading level. 96% of high school graduates are unable to do this.

If you're worried about not understanding evolution locking students out of science then I would suggest that your concerns, while noble, are about 95% misplaced.

InclinedPlane• 14 years ago

I was going to respond, but this video highlights the issue better: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QBv2CFTSWU

derleth11• 14 years ago

> Literally all it takes is a ten minute YouTube video to explain

... and the destruction of a lot of carefully-laid religious indoctrination that claims Humans Are Special and therefore could not possibly be related to animals and plants.

That's it, really: Being able to teach evolution means being able to directly contradict religious dogma. Conversely, if you can't teach evolution, you are hamstrung because you cannot contradict religious dogma on any subject.

So winning the ability to teach evolution will be a victory against religion's hold on education, and religious groups obviously do not want to relinquish that hold. Hence the battle.

> The fact that these kids come communities where most of the parents are really dumb has to be hundreds of times more damaging than not getting a day or two worth of lecture.

We're, as a society, unable to make these kids parents not be dumb, or to give kids new parents who are not dumb. The most we can do is educate them.

> I would bet money that the percentage of born again Christians who have a good understanding of the arguments in favor of evolution is about 10x as high as the percentage of 'science-oriented' folks who have a good understanding of all the philosophical concepts referenced in the wiki article on intelligent design.

This is because the philosophical arguments in favor of ID are not relevant to anyone who isn't in a religious group that favors ID.

Also, I personally doubt most born-again Christians have any real idea of what the evidence in favor of evolution is, given how popular the "If apes turned into man why are there still apes?" argument is.

maqr• 14 years ago

> The fact that these kids come communities where most of the parents are really dumb has to be hundreds of times more damaging than not getting a day or two worth of lecture.

I think that's what the debate is actually about. The thing that needs to be "taught" isn't really evolution, it's that their parents/teachers/pastors/authorities can have very basic facts about the world very wrong, and as such kids should learn to think independently. This is why things like evolution and climate change are so threatening.

What's always confused me is that it seems like it would be a lot easier to change religious beliefs to be consistent with facts, instead of the other way around. I don't understand why people are choosing to fight evolution rather than just doing the usual hand-waving magic to explain what science told us, but with a bit of gods and fairies mixed in.

mbell• 14 years ago

Evolution vs Creationism is just a symptom of a deeper issue. It just happens to be the most easily and directly attackable symptom which is why it gets the most attention. The underlying issue (religious fundamentalism that rejects science) is far scarier and leads to crap like this: http://articles.nydailynews.com/2012-09-19/news/33957266_1_m...

sbochins• 14 years ago

Basically all of modern biology is based on evolution. If you don't understand or believe in evolution, then you don't understand biology. I don't think it's ok for kids not to have a basic science education. Additionally, you draw a false equivalence between intelligent design and evolution. Evolution is a scientific theory and intelligent design is a philosophy, usually pushed by religious people.

thaumaturgy7• 14 years ago

It is precisely because evolution is such an easy concept to teach and understand that it is so troubling that there is this huge effort to not teach it. Let us step back for just a moment from the pinhole view of this one subject and realize that the primary job of educators is to teach students how to think.

If a student is shown pictures (or, better yet, up-close-and-personal on a field trip!) of geological strata, and shown how the processes work that formed those features, and then they are given a counter-argument by other authority figures that everything that they've seen there is wrong because faith says so, what is that doing to those students' ability to reason?

Do you not think that a widespread disregard for the easy-to-understand concept of evolution would also spill over into a widespread disregard for other fields of study? Creationism is the color guard of anti-intellectualism; shame on anyone who would try to rationally argue that we should not run it out of our educational institutions with the broadswords of critical thinking and rational curiosity. [1]

Do you think that people who grow up believing that a religious book written nearly 3,000 years ago is more informative on the topic of natural sciences than all of the scientific efforts since will really have any opportunity in the world's science & technology arena? I don't.

Why should we not argue instead in favor of the principles of enlightenment? In the late 1600s, in an effort to defend its religion, the Scottish Kirk established schools around the country that would teach anybody -- no matter their social standing -- the basics of reading and writing. What followed soon after was a period of industrial and technological and economic development in Scotland that rivals any other enlightenment period in Europe.

It takes a remarkable ignorance of human history to argue against education.

If you want to change the communities that these kids come from, you have to teach them how to do it. And that includes teaching them evolution, and making sure that they understand why creationism is bad thinking.

[1]: Nothing personal; I'm not attacking you specifically here, but it is frustrating to see so many "what's the big deal?" comments -- this is precisely the sort of intellectual atmosphere created when 46% of the population rejects basic scientific principles.

ianb• 14 years ago

This is a good critique of the form of Bill Nye's anti-creationist screed: http://jasonlefkowitz.net/2012/08/bill-nye-demonstrates-how-...

The form of his argument only encourages the conflict. He clearly feels contempt towards creationists, and even towards those who sympathize with them. As soon as you've shown contempt you've given up on convincing anyone of anything, and are just cheering on your side.

A serious attempt at promoting evolution would emphasize how you can resolve the tension between the theory of evolution and a strong belief in Christianity and The Bible. (There's no reason to pretend this is a general issue, it's a Christian issue: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_of_support_for_evolution#...)

I'm not a Christian, so I can't write something more authentic than what Bill Nye might (though I damn well could write something less offensive). But I can imagine what the intellectual tensions are. I made an attempt (https://plus.google.com/104537541227697934010/posts/TnMt9Wgf...), something like:

To convince someone of evolution, as a Christian, I'd want to emphasize a reverence for the world as God created it, that He teaches us through the world around us, and that learning from and of that world could never be in contradiction with His word, in the Bible or as shown to us through our faith. The world is full of contradictory messages and lessons, we can't always expect to decide that one is right and another is wrong.

I'd want to probe how the person has chosen to resolve the tension between Bible-as-fact and Bible-as-historical-document. For example, the Bible in many places talks freely and without condemnation about slavery, and clearly this does not fit with a modern understanding of Christian morality. I would hope that the person has seriously considered this problem and come to a resolution. I would hope to find a way to fit evolution, and ongoing scientific discovery in general, into that intellectual template.

Some Creationists might claim, for instance, that something as complicated as the eye could not be made through the incremental changes of evolution – it had to be designed. But this is a terribly limited notion of God. Could not God create a mechanism that would lead to the design of His choosing? Is there a mechanism so complicated that He could not conceive of it and create it?

There is a story of creation in the Bible. It is not a recipe of how to create a world. It is a message given to us to explain the world, a world that we cannot ever fully know. We've found tensions in that story. Consider for instance dinosaur fossils. Some people have considered this and read Genesis, and decided that dinosaurs must have lived in the Garden Of Eden, or been wiped out by the Great Flood. Does the Bible say this? No. There is more in the world than is in the Bible. Does the Bible talk of electricity, or about germs? No. Would we try to create a Biblical basis for this phenomena? No. The Bible covers the entirety of the creation of the Earth in one chapter, would we expect it to be comprehensive? It is our burden to resolve the world we see with the Bible as written. Some decide to ignore the world. This is a lazy approach, God did not give us the world in all its fullness just for us to ignore it.

lotharbot2• 14 years ago

Your comment about contempt is right on. As soon as someone decides there can be no dialogue, only monologue [0], you've given up on convincing anyone and are now "preaching to the choir".

There's actually a much simpler Christian solution to the intellectual tensions between the creation account and science:

Recognize that the Genesis creation account (traditionally said to be written by Moses, to an audience that lived in Egypt) strongly parallels the Egyptian creation account. It's not a recipe to create a world, nor is it primarily a story about the world. It's a story about how this One God is different from those gods [1].

Some modern Christians have a problem with this response because they view it as a modern watering down of the Bible. Yet some highly respected early Christians, like Origen [2] and Augustine [3], expressed these views. The literalist/creationist view has only been in favor for the last century or so. Prior to that, it was common understanding among many Christians (as well as many Jews) that the creation account was about God's position as sovereign creator of the physical universe, not about the details of the universe itself. It's not literal history; it's a poetic description meant to highlight specific details.

[0] "sophisticated argument requires as an essential condition that you have the good manners to understand before you criticize" - from http://www.uky.edu/OtherOrgs/GainesCenter/Letter%20To%20Jerr... (the "only monologue" line comes from the debate he is responding to.)

[1] I wrote a short introduction to this concept at http://transformedthoughts.blogspot.com/2009/08/genesis-1-in...

[2] http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf04.vi.v.v.i.html

[3] http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf102.iv.XI.6.html

jlgreco7• 14 years ago

>Recognize that the Genesis creation account (traditionally said to be written by Moses, to an audience that lived in Egypt) strongly parallels the Egyptian creation account.

Some pretty strong emphasis needs to be placed on the "traditionally" there. There is absolutely no archaeological evidence for the Exodus. It, and necessarily Moses as he is known as well, are fictions.

The truth is far more interesting though. In fact the evolution of the religion that would come to be what we know today as Judaism is a fascinating topic in general.

benjohnson• 14 years ago

I'm a scientist and a Christian, and I've reconciled Genesis and the natural world with the belief that God is outside time and space; While his creation took him six days and comprised of six creative acts, those days don't necessarily correlate with the same time within our known universe.

drucken• 14 years ago

"...according to a June Gallup poll that found 46 percent of Americans believe God created humans in their present form about 10,000 years ago."

The rest of the world, even developing countries, look on with astonishment while the US undermines itself after more than 500 years since the Enlightenment!

Bill Nye warns: Creation views threaten US science

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