Guy Brandon

Creationism vs. Science

Why it's Pistols at Dawn for The Beginning.

The battle between Science and Religion emerged from the primordial soup of opinion and has left us with a choice: faith in God or belief in a rational scientific approach. But how did it come to this and what happened to trying to settle our differences?

While the silent majority beard-scratch and ponder

a peaceful solution to these problems, the vocal

camps of Creationists and Evolutionists have committed

themselves to dogged attempts at proving each other

wrong. But does the Creation debate really come

down to who's right and who's wrong? Does the light

at the end of the tunnel really have to shine exclusively

from Light of God or the Enlightenment of Science?

Putting the debate under the spotlight reveals

that Creationists and Evolutionists are actually

fighting on different battle fields. Evolution addresses

the how of the matter; Genesis cares more

about the who. In short, the two sides are

speaking in different languages and defending completely

different subjects.

Figure 1: The Bombardier Beetle. When threatened, this amazing insect produces an explosive mixture of hydrogen peroxide and hydroquinones, which mix with peroxidases in a reaction chamber. The boiling-hot, high-pressure result vents through a special duct in the beetle's body.

The problem is that expecting a theological text

to answer scientific questions is no smarter than

expecting a scientist to offer theological insights

(which is not to say that a scientist is incapable

of such insights, only that it can't be expected

from the job description). This rule extends across

all walks of life, and we never question it. No

one goes to a lawyer for advice about dental hygiene,

or a plumber to resolve a computer problem. Why

then do we single out scientists to prove that God

didn't create the world, and theologians to explain

the Bible in evolutionary terms?

Douglas Adams - who owed his own conversion to

"radical atheism" from Christianity to

an experience listening to a street preacher and

Richard Dawkins' book The Selfish Gene - made some

incisive points. It occurred to him that the rigorous

standards of logic and proof employed in scientific

matters simply don't seem to be applied when it

comes to religion. In answer to the argument by

design - that the earth (and universe) fit us so

well that they must have been designed with us in

mind - he gives the example of a puddle, which wakes

up one morning and thinks to itself that the hole

it lives in fits it so staggeringly well that it

must have been made especially.

He makes a good point. We humans are easily tempted

into parading evidence that supports our beliefs

or preconceptions, while giving less weight to evidence

that refutes them. Selectively ranking the importance

of data in this way is something statisticians call

the Confirmation Bias. In the case of the creation

debate, it seems that evidence for or against creation

and evolution is being used to support an existing

outlook, rather than building one from scratch.

An often-touted, and misrepresented, example from

biology is that of the Bombardier Beetle. When attacked

or threatened, this amazing insect produces an explosive

mixture of hydrogen peroxide and hydroquinones,

which mix with catalases and peroxidases in a reaction

chamber. The boiling-hot, high-pressure result of

this mixing pot vents through a special duct in

the beetle's body and (hopefully) scares the predator

away. Creationists have often used an argument of

"irreducible complexity" to contend that

such a creature could never have evolved in stages.

If any one step had failed to work properly, then

the overall system would cease to function. How

many of these insects would have met an untimely

end before the current, successful version came

about?

Dawkins and others counter the "irreducible

complexity" argument for the Bombardier Beetle

with a viable model of microevolution. However,

the realm of science has produced its own intriguing

suggestions for creationism. Professor Martin Rees's

book 'Just Six Numbers' describes how life and the

universe can only exist if six fundamental physical

constants have the correct values (article

on 'Just Six Numbers' by Martin Westwell). The

chances of all six being spot on are so small that

someone must have been around at the beginning of

time to fix them, right? On these terms, however,

Creation vs. Evolution can (and has) been debated

until the cows come home. The fallacy arises because

we look to religion for scientific truths, which

works little better than asking, say, Steven Pinker

to take a carol service. They speak different languages.

This is doubtless the kind of answer that hard-line

fundamentalists on either side of the debate will

regard as ridiculously illogical and liberal. "If

the text says man was made out of mud," they

say, "then that's what it means, right or wrong."

The crux of the matter is that Science deals with

the Created. Theology deals with the Creator. Perhaps

they speak about the same thing, but they do so

from very different points of view. If science sticks

to answering the "how" and theology to

the "who and why", then maybe the brawl

about The Beginning will hear the final bell.

 

- April 2006

About the Author

Guy Brandon completed a PhD in Theology at Cambridge University in 2004 and is now involved in counselling and writing.