I haven’t posted about politics in a while. I realized that everything I was saying was being said better and more thoroughly researched somewhere else. I also realized that half my game design audience may disagree with me. So I made a call after the elections – if it’s not about games, zip it.

The recent orgasm of Creationism-related news has forced me to pull my soapbox out from under the bed and tap on the microphone. Creationism is a topic that never fails to get under my skin. It is, ultimately, a plea to ignore science and logic, and an argument for us to move our children to the back of the science and tech bus.

First off, we have the attempts to establish Intelligent Design (ID) as a “scientific theory”, and the incorporation of it’s teachings into our classrooms. ID is essentially Creationism, only instead of saying “God created life”, you say “Someone Who Cannot Be Named created life”. Much like Creationism, ID is not actually a theory, but rather an attempt to repudiate Evolution via poorly thought out math. There is nothing you can test to invalidate ID, and therefore it’s not a scientific theory. I wasn’t terribly surprised when George Bush embraced ID, but I was downright depressed when ‘common sense politician’ John McCain drank the Kool-Aid.

Next we have the attempts to teach children that dinosaurs walked the earth with man, which is possibly the only argument that could be worse than “dinosaur bones were placed there by god/the devil to test your faith”. This includes finding proof that dinosaurs walked earth with man in the bible, as well as buying roadside attractions and full-on young-earth museums to spread their misinformation to children. Here’s an example of their logic:

[Do you believe t]hat dinosaurs lived millions of years before man. Existing in a violent death filled world? [This] is not possible because from a Biblical perspective, Dinosaurs could not have lived and died before man brought sin and death into the world.

These sites torture the book of Job until it proves that Dinosaurs existed. And the fact that no other ancient texts, religious or otherwise, seems to mention giant lizards eating the livestock?

As far as I know, no other religious books mention dinosaurs or dragons. This makes it even more convincing to me that the Bible alone is the inspired Word of God.

Ahh, the lack of any collaborating evidence simply establishes that none can measure up to the fundamental truth of the Bible! It’s not terribly surprising to see such a disregard for logic and the scientific process in general. However, the creationists have also proven that they’re quite willing to cherry pick the science they want, and attempt to discredit any that disagrees with their world view. They claim carbon-dating is flawed because it doesn’t account for the great flood. On the flip side, scientific evidence which supports their theory is not critically examined, no matter how flawed it may be.

By contrast, the Theory of Evolution has drastically changed since Darwin first suggested it. It has been endlessly examined and refined, as new evidence comes to light challenging earlier assumptions. Scientists using peer-review bring us, inch by inch, closer to the truth of the origin of life on earth. For those who want a good read on Evolutionary Theory and how it’s changed over the years, I’d recommend The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins.

The big problem I have with ‘young-earth creationism’ is that, ultimately, it’s wholly unnecessary. Many christians, including those who work in Evolutionary Biology on a daily basis, have no problem reconciling evolution with their faith. Evolution, to them, was god’s tool towards the creation of life. While I am not religious and don’t hold that point of view, I certainly can respect it.

Young-Earth Creationism asks us to disregard Evolutionary theory, as well as anything suggesting the world was created more than 6000 years ago, because it disregards a purely Fundamentalist reading of the bible – i.e. the idea that the bible is literally true. What may surprise many people who have lived in the modern era where Fundamentalism is widespread is that its a relatively young idea, having really only emerged in the late 19th, early 20th century.

Before this, Christians didn’t ascribe to a literal view of the bible. Sure, they were capable of having all sorts of strange and kooky ideas (who isn’t?), but they also understood that the bible was an imperfect book written by imperfect men using allegory and poetic license to describe their relationship with God. They had no problem with Genesis having two obviously different creation stories. The subtext was understood as being more important as the literal meaning.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the Industrial Age. As science came and gave more and more answers to more and more questions that were previously answered via myth and allegory, the religious elite saw their fiefdom of ideas that could only be answered via “God did it” to shrink. Painted into a corner, Fundamentalism emerged as a ‘Custer’s Last Stand’ against secularism taking over the world. In truth, it’s a last stand against the bible becoming purely a work of poetry and subtext. Which is how people of faith used the bible, at least partially, for thousands of years.

But for a Last Stand, it’s doing very well. According to a Harris Poll cited in Time Magazine, 54% of Americans believe that humans did not evolve from an earlier species – up from 45% in 1994 (9% in 10 years!). Scientists have been ignoring Creationism for too long, hoping that they would lose credibility if ignored, as have the Flat Earth advocates and those who don’t think we’ve been to the moon. Given these numbers, though, and that Biotechnology is the largest growth industry of the next generation economy, scientists and other clear-thinkers owe it to America to attack these misguided theories head-on.

Original comments thread is here.