While Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species and the theory of evolution have made waves in the scientific community, there are still many people who support creationism. This article compares the logic of evolution and creationism and points out the problems with creationism based on scientific evidence.
In 1859, a book was published that changed the world. British biologist Charles Robert Darwin published The Origin of Species, an explanation of how different species of living things came to be, and it sold out the same day, causing a huge social ripple. Darwin’s treatise on evolution, written with Willis, was widely criticized in scientific and theological circles, while also being defended and praised by many scholars. Considered to be the book that shook up the Bible, The Origin of Species’ central argument is the theory of evolution, which is now accepted as orthodoxy: that living things constantly differentiate into different species through a process of natural selection. In the 1930s, evolutionary theory was combined with Mendel’s genetics to form modern evolutionary theory. This led to various branches, including population genetics, Gould’s theory of punctuated equilibrium, and Dawkins’ theory of selfish genes. However, hardline religious people still refuse to accept evolution as truth and advocate a pseudoscience based on religion called creationism. I want to emphasize that these arguments are demonstrably false.
First, let’s take a look at their pseudoscience, creationism. Creationism is a pseudoscientific hypothesis that gives scientific color to the religious doctrine that God created everything in the universe. Although it”s often referred to as ‘creationism’, the word ‘theory’ is actually used to refer to a scientifically proven theory, so the argument for calling it creationism has been gaining momentum in recent years. Creationism is divided into two schools of thought. One is the young-earth theory, and the other is the old-earth theory.
The young earth theory is the most powerful branch of creationism, as it accepts the Bible’s interpretation of the age of the earth and explains the process of creation. Based on the Bible, they estimate the age of the earth to be approximately 6000-10000 years old and claim that creation took place in six days. Their main evidence is the following quote
“Following Ockham’s razor principle, we prefer simple scientific theories to complex ones. We don’t want to endlessly complicate science with unnecessary elements. This same logic should be applied to biblical interpretation. We should choose the simplest interpretation of the Bible. By simplest, I mean the one that is most natural or has the most linguistic support.”
– Three Views of Creation and Evolution, Chapter 1, Young Earth Creationism (P. Nelson, J.M. Reynolds)
They cite the scientific principle of Occam’s razor to justify their claims. However, there is no adequate explanation for interpreting the Bible and science on the same logical line. There is no evidence that the literal interpretation of the Bible is the most rational. There are many logical contradictions in the Bible itself, and the fundamentalist position of interpreting it literally does not account for these contradictions, so it cannot be the simplest explanation. In fact, this is a problem with creationism itself. Creationists rely solely on the authority of the Bible, and they make the crucial error of assuming that every word of the Bible is true. In other words, their argument can be summarized in the irresponsible statement, “The Bible says that God created mankind this way, so we’re right.” Unfortunately, according to their argument, Jesus is the 29th and 42nd descendant of King David.
Old-earth theories, on the other hand, offer a more flexible interpretation of the Bible. They accept the age of the earth and the universe as determined by scientific measurements, but they don’t accept the theory of evolution. They use the principle most often cited by creationists to criticize evolution: irreducible complexity. The theory is that the existence of complex, finely regulated organs like bacterial flagella, animal eyes, and the immune system negates evolution. Darwin himself was clear about this.
“If it were proved that any complex organ could not have been formed by a large number of, successive, small modifications, my theory would be completely destroyed” (Origin of Species, Chapter 6).
Unfortunately for creationists, no such organ has been found. Crucially, even if evidence were to emerge to support such irreducible complexity, it would only prove evolution wrong, not creationism right. Just as being Charles Darwin doesn’t make you Richard Dawkins.
Everything we’ve discussed so far suggests that creationism is a farce, and that creationists act like 21st-century Sophists. Nevertheless, it’s clear that they still have followers who don’t back down from their claims. In fact, surveys show that 37% of Americans support creationism, especially young earth theory. The main reason they don’t support evolution is ignorance and misunderstanding of the theory. I’ve read books on creationism to try to understand it, but I’ve found that creationists use the same repertoire of arguments, and it doesn’t change my mind at all. The problem is that creationists lack the effort to read and understand evolutionary theory. Perhaps if they read Richard Dawkins’s The Selfish Gene, it would test their violence.
To elaborate on the point that their ignorance leads them to disbelieve in evolution, the basis for their vilification of evolution comes from their lack of understanding of the theory. A typical criticism of evolution is, “Humans evolved from monkeys, which doesn’t make sense,” which is a slander without knowing the “truth” about evolution. Humans did not evolve from monkeys, but rather diverged from the same common ancestor. Similarly, the Korean Society for Creation Science gives three reasons why evolution is not true. The first is that evolution is probabilistically impossible, the second is the lack of examples of increased genetic information, and the third is fossil evidence that contradicts evolutionary theory. The first and second are misunderstandings of evolutionary theory, and the third refers to the Cambrian explosion, which is actually good evidence for punctuated equilibrium and does not contradict evolutionary theory.
Despite the slander against evolutionary theory caused by creationists’ ignorance and misconceptions, the scientific community accepts evolution as a fact, and it is taught in school curricula. In fact, very few academics take creationism seriously. This is because there is ample evidence in favor of evolution. No, there is more than enough. First of all, biologically, evolution is natural. In order to “survive,” organisms must constantly adapt to their environment. The most common examples are the size of the beak of the finches that Darwin discovered, and the size of the ears of the arctic fox and desert fox. When these adaptations to environmental changes manifest themselves at the level of speciation, they become (macro)evolution, and there’s plenty of fossil evidence to support this. The evidence that humans are apes, that is, that we share a common ancestor with monkeys such as chimpanzees, comes from fossils. The flexible relationships between species, a fundamental principle of modern taxonomy, are all found in fossils. And not a single fossil has been found that contradicts the theory of evolution. Statistically, the absence of a single fossil out of so many contradicts the theory of evolution and disproves the null hypothesis of creationists that “all living things evolve.”
In ancient Greece, there was a profession called “sophist”. Originally meaning “wise man” or “man of knowledge,” the term was used to describe the Athenian intellectual class, but by the time of Socrates, it had become synonymous with those who spouted sophistry for money. Radical theists who advocate creationism are no different from these Sophists. After dozens of rebuttals, they try to win the argument by saying, “You can’t prove us wrong completely.” When they are legally prohibited from teaching under the term creationism, they resort to the term “intelligent design,” which has been called “creationism in a cheap tuxedo. There is no better way to deal with these fanatical Sophists than with a quote from a scholar.
“They can’t understand what I’m saying, so I honestly don’t expect to win.”
But logical, rational, modern people who truly love the truth will be able to recognize what is true and what is a false idea.
