Posted by Mark Creech, head of the Christian Action League, has replied to an article in Seed Magazine about the Clergy Letter Project and continued to spread the nonsense that I fisked a few weeks ago. In fact, some of it is even worse. He also defends the DI’s infamous list of scientists, most of whom are not in relevant scientific fields. He writes:
Moreover, West argues the single largest group of the signers was biologists (154 of the 514). He adds: “Of course the list also includes many scientists specializing in chemistry, physics, engineering, mathematics/statistics, and related disciplines. But since Darwinists continually assert that their theory has implications for many scientific fields, why shouldn’t scientists from these other fields have the right to speak out?”
It is of course true that evolution is the unifying theory of many fields of science, not merely biology. But none of the fields he lists – chemistry, physics, engineering, and math and statistics – are among them. Evolutionary theory is certainly the unifying theory in paleontology, physical anthropology, genetics, geology, and a few other fields, but not the ones he lists.
Creech then gives the answers he gave to the questions sent to him by a Seed writer, and when he gets into the science of evolution…well, let’s say he falls flat on his face. He lists all the usual bad arguments:
Evolution is not supported by the majority of scientific laws, such as the laws of first cause, the First and Second Law of Thermodynamics. In short, how can evolution be science if it is not supported by science?…
What is more, the Second Law of Thermodynamics constitutes an incredible difficulty for evolutionists. Creationists are often baffled at the way evolutionists seem to dismiss it. This law states that there exists a fundamental and universal change in nature that is downhill and not uphill, as evolution claims. In order for an organism to advance or evolve, energy must in some way be introduced, gained or increased. The Second Law, however, says this will not happen in any natural process unless external factors enter in to produce it.
Yikes. You gotta love those creationist paraphrases of the 2nd law of thermodynamics; they’re so rigorous and detailed. According to creationists, the 2nd law says that “things” – not heat or energy, but “things” – go “uphill, not downhill”; they “get worse, not better”; they “fall apart” rather than “come together”. Of course, his understanding of both the 2nd law and the basic natural facts is below that of a relatively bright 5th grader. What does he think the sun does if not impart energy to the earth, energy that causes plants to grow and work to get done in a myriad of ways? His understanding of the scientific method is no better:
Neither evolution nor creation is, in fact, a valid scientific theory or hypothesis because neither can really be tested. When this is the case, that is that neither can be confirmed experimentally, then the usual practice is that the system or model that correlates the greatest number of data, with the smallest number of unresolved contradictory data, is favored as the model most plausible to be correct. So both evolution and creation are essentially faith systems with claims of evidence to be considered.
Like most creationists, he has about a 12 year old’s understanding of how science operates. He thinks all science happens in a laboratory and that only experiments can confirm or disconfirm a theory. This, of course, will come as quite a shock to the thousands of scientists around the world whose fields of study are not open to simple experimental verification. Perhaps they should close up shop and go home. Then again, he is clearly ignorant of at least one such field, geology:
The evolutionist’s interpretation of the geological formations, for example, has caused many to think in terms of slowly accumulated strata. The evolutionist describes the earth as millions of years old — such is the heart of evolutionary theory…But all of what the scientist sees is not what it seems. A scientific examination of geological processes reveals that something cataclysmic occurred that transformed the world into the way it appears today. What we currently see in geological features is primarily the result of the Noahic flood as described in the book of Genesis and not evolutionary processes. The earth is still relatively young as the Bible reveals and not millions of years old as evolutions contend. Thus, I suggest it is the scientists’ interpretation of the data that often misleads.
Well, he is of course free to suggest that until he is blue in the face, but finding evidence to support it is quite another matter. The earth is not millions of years old but billions, 4.55 billion to be a bit more precise. If Mr. Creech has some way of explaining how all of the world’s limestone formations could have formed in a few thousand years, I’d love to hear them and I’m sure many geologists would as well. Or how to explain burrows and nesting sites that appear right in the middle of what is supposed to have been deposited by a raging flood.
April 3, 2006