Copyright 2002-2005 by Donald R. Tveter, http://www.dontveter.com, commercial use is prohibited. This material cannot be quoted at length or posted elsewhere on the net or included in CD ROM collections. Short quotations are permitted provided proper attribution is given.

By studying evolution and evolutionists it has come to my attention that they have many striking similarities with young Earth creationists. Not in doctrine of course, but in the way they approach the subject matter. So I think it is worthwhile to list them for everyone to see. I think this is especially worthwhile for evolutionists to see because so many of them (not all, obviously there is a normal distribution of such attitudes) look down their noses at young Earth creationists and view themselves as a sort of intellectual master race.

Both young Earth creationists and evolutionists are very good at ignoring the evidence that does not support their beliefs. Thus young Earth creationists ignore the evidence that the universe and the Earth are old and look for excuses to explain why the evidence is wrong.

On the evolutionist side they ignore all the mathematical analysis that says that evolution can't happen. Every analysis of evolution I have ever seen has the numbers going against evolution in astronomical or more than astronomical ways. In one case an evolutionist was not disturbed because he thought that things that are ever so unlikely COULD have happened "however unlikely" those things were. This prompted me to come up with a new joke:

Question: How many evolutionists does it take to change a light bulb?

Answer: None, evolutionists don't change light bulbs, they simply wait for the tungsten atoms to evolve back into a filament however unlikely that may be.

The joke is not really supposed to be nasty but it does clearly sum up the thinking of evolutionists. To them a million years or a billion years will solve any problem.

What's doubly eerie here is that on both sides they are doubting probability because the dating of artifacts by means of radioactive decay is based on probability as well. You measure the average decay rate of some substance and then you can compute the probability that a whole bunch of atoms decay over a million years or all at once. I told the evolutionist that the young Earth creationists might then be right about the dating of artifacts because there is always a chance - however unlikely - that radioactive decay rates could be so screwy that the world really is only 6000 years old.

On the young Earth creationist side they often say you can't be a true believer in Jesus and God and the Bible unless you believe THEIR own particular interpretation of the Bible. If you don't believe them then, you are going to Hell.

On the evolutionist side they will tell you that all scientists believe in evolution so you should too. They are liable to tell you that people who don't believe in evolution are ignorant, stupid, insane or wicked (Dawkins). I had one evolutionist say that scientists who don't believe in evolution are "mentally disturbed". This immediately brought to mind what they used to do to people in the old Soviet Union who did not believe that Socialism was obviously superior to Capitalism: they put them in "institutions" (slave labor camps) where they would get "psychiatric treatment" (torture).

The important thing to note is that both sides attempt to control people in a cult-like way. Why, if the evidence for a position is so good do people have to resort to intimidation?

The other day I heard a creationist mention the old vapor canopy around the Earth business. Some young Earth creationists made this up to show where the water for Noah's flood came from and they also think it shielded the Earth from cosmic rays in pre-flood times that damage cells. This is supposed to explain why lifetimes were so long before the flood. There is no evidence for such a canopy and no reason to think that there could have been one however it is necessary for some of them in order to preserve their theology.

Likewise on the evolutionist side they assume there must have been a pre-biotic soup from which life emerged. There is no evidence for the pre-biotic soup and no reason to think that there should have been one however it is necessary to preserve their theology.

Young Earth creationists are ever so proud of the fact that they have THE WORD OF GOD and THE WORD OF GOD is the only sure thing in the world. But they just don't stop to think that their interpretation of The Word of God could be wrong, no, they just go around figuring how SUPERIOR they are to those stupid atheistic scientists.

Of course it is no secret that evolutionists also regard themselves as superior to absolutely anyone (not just young Earth creationists) who doesn't believe in evolution. Science, does after all make progress. Scientists question everything, work out the details of everything and are modern and rational.

One of the great side-effects of this attitude is that it is easy to fool people who don't think they can be fooled. Thus young Earth creationists will tend to believe whatever Bible thumper comes along. They ignore Jesus' specific warning in Matthew chapter 7 that there are wolves in sheep's clothing. Likewise, the ever so modern and scientific evolutionists believe everything they hear from their own people even when they don't understand it at all. All it takes to fool an evolutionist is some scientific sounding mumbo-jumbo. It appears to me that most of them can't handle math so they can't figure out how reasonable the mumbo-jumbo is but if it reinforces their beliefs it MUST be right.

Both sides have emotional and psychological reasons to believe in their doctrine. It is certainly no secret that Christians (not just young Earth creationists) have fallen in love with the idea that there is a caring, loving God and a beautiful, meaningful future awaiting them.

Evolution is necessary for atheists because they need a way to explain away life as the product of random chance. They need it as their creation myth. This is because they do not like the idea that there is a loving caring God, they just want to do their own thing unhindered by any thought of God. They don't want to think that they will be held responsible for anything. As Dawkins has said, evolution makes it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.

A lot of people, maybe especially young people are eager to rebel against religion and tradition, mostly whatever religion they were brought up in. By embracing the idea of evolution they are modern, sophisticated, logical and scientific. By embracing the modern it gives them a reason to break with the old, traditional Biblical ideas. Rebellion is liberating, at least for a while. But also once you take up the modern idea of evolution you get the psychological satisfaction of thinking how superior you are to the old fashioned Bible believing people.

Both sides will give you incorrect information. Evolutionists have a whole set of incorrect information that they will give you:

• For over a hundred years they have been using the faked embryo drawings by Haeckel that are designed to show that all embryos go through the same stages and then slowly diverge. In fact, embryos immediately diverge, then start to converge again midway in the process and then diverge again.
• The peppered moth story is garbage and the photos are faked.
• Dawkins has his "METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL" example that is designed to fool people into thinking that evolution is easy.
• It's been over 25 years since multiple genetic codes were discovered but they keep telling you there is only one code.

Likewise from the young Earth creationists you can get nonsense like the second law of thermodynamics prevents evolution.

Number 6 begets number 7. Many of the foot soldiers for evolution and creation don't even understand what's going on but they repeat things they've been told. Creationists who don't understand the second law of thermodynamics say it prevents evolution and thereby create of army of followers that repeat the chant without even understanding what they're talking about. As an example from evolution there was the silly speculation that the "junk" DNA was a place for new genes to evolve. If evolutionists had run the math they would see that was impossible but since it was advantageous to their belief they preached it to the masses and the masses are still preaching it.

Many of the arguments you find from both sides are rather shallow and consist of arguments I call "wordy". In a wordy argument you use words or analogies to make your point and the words can be quite sloppy to the point where you can reach the wrong conclusions or be totally confused by what is going on. What's called for in any analysis is to go to the nuts and bolts level and proceed to calculate. It appears to me that this is why philosophers never make any progress, they just argue forever.

Now for young Earth creationists there is the Second Law of Thermodynamics argument. The Second Law has a purely technical meaning at the nuts and bolts level. When it gets translated into a natural language like English it often gets described as saying that the "universe is running down", that "things decay" and "get less organized". If you know the Second Law at the technical level then you can understand what the English REALLY MEANS but if you don't know it at the technical level the words can make you think other things. It makes young Earth creationists claim that the evolution of life from chemicals to single cells and and single cells to complex animals is prohibited by this law. Well, it isn't, of course but the statement of the Second Law in English gets interpreted to mean exactly this.

There is a second example from the creation movement, it is the claim that the statement of evolution is a tautology, a case of circular reasoning so that nothing is really being said. Sometimes evolution is stated as "the fittest survive and produce more offspring" but then everyone says that "the ones with the most offspring are the fittest" and so it all means nothing. I suppose this "survival of the fittest" is not the best natural language description of evolution but it can be translated into a meaningful statement at the level of nuts and bolts so there is really nothing wrong with this description of it provided that you don't take the words too seriously. Again, you're not supposed to get wrapped up in words, you're supposed to see the meaning at the nuts and bolts level. Evolution is describing a process much like a computer program. The process involves atoms, molecules, living things and the whole physical world and the questions that make a difference are what the process can do in in principle and how long it will take to do it's thing. You must sit down and calculate to get the result.

Now take evolutionists. Again, if you look at the statement of evolution in terms of words, it is not so bad, living things keep on changing to better fit their environment (and a changing environment at that), they try all sorts of innovations and the best ones survive. It is often compared to a programming technique called "genetic programming". Genetic programming was partially modeled on evolution to start with and it can indeed produce useful results on problems that are carefully specified. It all sounds good in words BUT TO FIND OUT IF EVOLUTION WORKS YOU MUST ANALYZE IT AT THE NUTS AND BOLTS LEVEL. In the beginning evolution could not be analyzed that way because the molecular details were not known, now that they are known people should be reasoning at that level. Every bit of reasoning ever done at the nuts and bolts level shows evolution is hopeless. Unfortunately most of the people who believe in evolution can't handle analysis at the nuts and bolts level, they can only handle analysis at the wordy level and at the level of words it all sounds just fine and dandy.

There are some other little examples of how evolutionists fail in this same manner. Once upon a time someone proposed junk DNA could be used to evolve new genes. It sounds good in words but when you analyze it with numbers you see it fails miserably. Another popular proposal to make evolution work is gene duplication and mutation. The numbers have never shown this could work but evolutionists invoke it all the time, again only at the level of words, not nuts and bolts. A third little example is the claim that a new structure can evolve by, "co-opting" existing parts to make the new structure. Again it sounds good in words but the people who tout this idea never do run the numbers. It is as if these people have never learned how science works at all (and maybe they haven't, even though they have PhDs in biology!). They constantly amaze me. They think they are giving a sound, rational answer. Or do they just pretend they are giving a sound, rational answer?

At any rate, arguing with words without understanding things at the nuts and bolts level is for the philosophers who just want to argue, it is not for real scientists.

Evolutionists and young Earth creationists are both giving you an INTERPRETATION. Young Earth creationists give you an INTERPRETATION of the Bible. Evolutionists give you an INTERPRETATION of the physical evidence.

People will believe all sorts of silly stuff. Young Earth creationists berate evolutionists because it is SO obvious that random chance can't produce life or evolution. But young Earth creationists believe all the animals of the world can fit in Noah's tiny ark.