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Thursday, 10 July 2014

Understanding creationism: An insider’s guide by a former young-Earth creationist - 7

Part seven of David MacMillan's series of articles exposing how YECs deceive themselves when they confront the evidence for evolution is up at the Panda's Thumb blog. This article focuses on the alleged religious, moral, and ethical implications of evolution:
The assumption that “evolutionism” and “secular science” denies God’s existence applies not only to the suggestions that evolution might be possible, but more generally to any challenge to creationist arguments. While some creationists take pains to discard the more outlandish arguments, others will fiercely defend obsolete and ridiculous theories simply because of their perceived apologetics value. This stubbornness is the source of animosity and division between the various creationist movements; each group points to “concessions” and “compromises” the other groups make, because any compromise is considered a tacit admission that maybe the evidence for God isn’t quite as strong as it would otherwise be. Such arguments are all God-of-the-gaps arguments, of course, but this fact goes unnoticed.
While there are some YECs in our community who are simply impervious to reason and are very much the embodiment of the Dunning-Kruger effect, I know from personal experience that some are amenable to reason, and if this series can rescue them from YEC, it will have served its purpose. You can find the article here.