A creationist

Meet Tim, a Young-Earth Creationist, who examines the scientific evidence and finds it supports his theory. How?

First, humanity is bad. He produces several bible verses to show this. For him, this presumably refutes my Creationism argument. We are to blame, not God, and by sending us a saviour God did more than we deserve. If life evolved, suffering entered the world other than through Adam’s sin, and so God must have designed it.

What does he think of the Bible? It is more reliable than science, because its account does not change. In 2011, he cited a 1995 article from Time magazine which discussed an observation that the Universe was expanding unevenly, to claim this. I was aware that a star cluster in our galaxy was calculated to be 16bn years old when the Universe was thought to be younger, and Tim points to estimates (in 1995) ranging from 8bn to 20bn years old, not acknowledging that by 2011 the consensus was for 13.7bn. Now, it is 13.8bn. The Bible is clear- the world was created in six days- but scientists disagree and keep changing. The oldest known star, according to current models of stellar evolution, is 14.46 ± 0.8bn years old. For Tim, all stars including the Sun were created on the fourth day, three days after Light was divided from the darkness.

Tim, why stop in the 1990s? At one point, some scientists believed in Phlogiston, and some disputed that theory. Come on, Tim: scientists dispute- Therefore Creationism!

Poor man. The delight of increasing knowledge through dispute, argument and evidence is lost to him.  Though how wonderful, to mock, and belittle, and feel superior to those who achieve far more than he!

He collects facts and articles and tries to make them fit his falsehoods. Often, he pretends that they do. For him almost any discovery can be pressed into that role, and his blog could be treated as an eclectic mix of scientific curiosities, if you could ignore the constant refrain of “Therefore Creationism!”

He believes that natural selection of the fittest, and slow change by genetic mutation, cannot work. To argue this he says humanity is degenerating genetically. Our random mutations generally make us less fit, but do not prevent us from breeding and maintaining those mutations. He asserts that if bears move into the arctic, and become white, that is a loss of information rather than a gain. Some strains of H5N1 flu are less effective at multiplying than others- Therefore Creationism!!- yet flu still infects people, and any flu vaccine is a gamble, a choice of which might be the most troublesome strains that winter.

He is incorrigible. Too much in love with his own cleverness, he will not listen to those who could free him from his folly. Like those opposing equal marriage, or climate change deniers, he can only change by realising how stupid he has been, which is so painful as to be unimaginable for him.