Nothing illustrates better Christianity’s unwillingness to loosen its ideological grip over people’s minds as the emergence of so-called a “scientific creationism”, which refers to the functional complexity of living organisms as such that proves the existence of God, and which in its turn, allows us to conclude that Creationism is nothing but one among many pseudo-sciences, spawned by Christianity throughout the history, solemnly for the purpose of strengthening its own conceptual credibility. However, one does not have to be a genius to understand a simple fact that, within a context of science vs. religion, science will always have an upper hand, simply because it is always religion that resorts to science, in order to substantiate its own dogmas, and not the other way around. Creationists strive to avoid discussing such Bible’s “pearls” as the “historical” accounts of Sun standing still, up in the sky, or donkeys talking to people. However, once they have heard of theory of “big bang”, they started to talk about it as such that prove the validity of Biblical story of creation. There are countless “experts” with diplomas of “Christian universities”, who enjoy a considerable success, while dispelling the “myth of evolution” before the audience of housewives. Their main argument can be simplified to sound as follows: living creatures appear as being intelligently designed; therefore, it is Jewish tribal God Jehovah who had designed them. In his article “Creationist Viewpoints”, John W. Klotz provides us with the insight on the level of argumentation, utilized by Bible thumpers, when it comes to defending their point of view: “What about the hand of God in the natural world? Let us turn our attention to this. God has arranged it that the plant should turn toward the sun so that its leaves may receive an adequate amount of light.
I know you can explain this on the basis of feedback mechanisms. I know that you can develop a mechanical explanation involving the synthesis of auxins, but I believe that behind this process is the hand of God” (Klotz, 1968). In other words – Christians think of extensive scientific evidence that proves the validity of evolutionary theory as irrelevant, simply because they “choose to believe”. However, while being aware that such stance can hardly win them new supporters among intelligent people, they do their best to add an artificial plausibility to their “theory”, by referring to science, in cases when new scientific discoveries seem to support the “good book”. Still, as we have mentioned earlier, it is metaphysically impossible to combine science and religion into a stable compound, because – whereas science continues to open up new horizons for people, religion’s main task is to close these horizons, by referring to them as “immoral”. Evolutionary theory explains the “intelligent design” of living organisms as the result of the process of natural selection taking place over the course of millions and millions of years. The organic life on this planet was not created – it evolved out of set of non-organic elements, and it took an unimaginably long time, before the most perfected product of evolution, homo sapiens, was able to realise this fact. As Richard Dawkins in his book “The Selfish Gene” suggests: “Intelligent life on a planet comes of age when it first works out the reason for its own existence. If superior creatures from space ever visit earth, the first question they will ask, in order to assess the level of our civilization, is: ‘Have they discovered evolution yet?’ Living organisms had existed on earth, without ever knowing why, for over three thousand million years before the truth finally dawned on one of them. His name was Charles Darwin” (Dawkins, p. 3). The “complexity” of living forms is nothing but the proof of these forms’ biological evolution being set on the right course from very beginning and there is no need to utilize the traditional concept of God, in order to explain biological life’s complexity. The only reason why “creationists” seem to have problems with evolutionary outlook on the very essence of organic life, is because these people are not overburdened with intelligence. As objective reality indicates, those who “choose to believe”, can hardly be reasoned with. In its turn, this does not allows us to consider even “creationists’” single argument seriously, as the lack of intellectual honesty, on their part, prevents them from relying on their sense of rationale, within a context of defending their point of view.
Bibliography
Dawkins R. (1976). The Selfish Gene. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
Klotz, John “Creationist Viewpoints”. 1968. Creationism.Org. 10. 2008. Web.
Menton, David “Making Monkeys out of Man”. 2000. Answers in Genesis. 10. 2008. Web.
Spencer, Lee “Apes, Apemen and Men”. 2004. Earth History Research Centre. 10. 2008. Web.
- Part one. In this part of the paper, we expose the conceptual inconsistency of Creationism, by revealing it as simply a semi-scientific tool of pushing Christianity’s agenda, which always remained the same, throughout the centuries – preventing people from broadening their intellectual horizons, in order for the Christian clergy to enjoy a steady flow of financial donations, as “representatives of God” on Earth.
- Part two. In this part of the paper, we reveal the evolutionary properties of life forms’ seeming “intelligent design”, by pointing out to biological complexity of living organisms as the result of them being subjected to Darwinian laws of evolution, thus depriving Creationists of the metaphysical foundation, upon which they base their argument.