March 2009

The Hong Kong Education Bureau showed their usual decisiveness by entertaining the idea that creationism is taught as an ‘alternative’ to evolution. The dispute that followed this even
appeared in the journal Nature, with local complaints that this had made the city a laughing stock. The Concern Group for Hong Kong Science Education mustered the support of hundreds of academics to lobby the Legislative Council to change guidelines.
  In the world of science, when people refer to a ‘theory’ it means that it’s been vigorously tested and all unfounded objections eliminated. For all intents and purposes it’s a fact. Newton’s conclusions on gravitation and the concept plate tectonics are ‘theories’ except there are no populist attempts to refute them. When Copernicus first dared to suggest that the earth orbits around the sun, this was ‘merely’ a theory. When by vigorous testing and observation a theory is found to be true, as in evolution, it should no longer be a theory. Creationists instead obsess over the fact that the concept of evolution is a ‘theory.’
  The absurdity of the creationists’ argument that creationism be taught as an ‘alternative’ to universally accepted hypotheses is excruciatingly clear if we extend the reasoning to consider flat earth theory being taught as an ‘alternative’ system in geography, chemistry lessons including the concoctions of magic potions and investigations of alchemy and the reading of animal intestines a different means of speculation about the economy and the future of society.
  Man and the earth being centralities to a rotating cosmos, and the earth reposing at the centre of the universe was a consistent feature of many outdated scientific and philosophical systems. Copernicus started one of the earliest scientific revolutions that dared to dethrone man from his hitherto sacred place in the cosmos, and every other scientific upheaval furthered this procedure until today’s mostly well-informed and educated people acknowledge that mankind is a quite well organised and highly successful species, who is trying not to make too much of a mess, and most importantly, is very far from having everything revolve around us. The delusion of thinking on the contrary is immediately present in creationist thinking.
  The desperate need for the creationist to elevate a lucky hominid species from an obscure corner of the universe to instead repose at the centre centrepiece of all creation and a pinnacle of a supreme being’s work betrays a deep and abiding insecurity. The creationist faces a desperately lonely existence in a vast, amoral and heartless universe, where, even if there were a Creator, he or she only cares as much for the life of a single human as he or she would for a single barnacle on a rock. The most basic knowledge of evolution, or of most other scientific knowledge, brings home the terrifying reality that people are just animals, helpless at the mercy of the unpitying forces of the cosmos, and tiny, insignificant parts of it.
  The creationist, in urgent denial of this dislodgement of humankind from the centre of the universe, clings to geocentric notions. Man not occupying a central position, watched over by an omnipotent being who has happened to create the entire universe in accordance with human ethical directives is unbearable. The creationist desperately needs a comfortable and well-ordered universe, a simple one-dimensional one where certitudes are plain and easily understood, where an omnipotent being personally intervenes in individuals’ lives. In this world there is none of the discomfiture and amorality of the harsh real world, no academic rigour, and none of the unease when cold hard facts challenge preconceptions. Lovers of science thrive on reevaluations and challenges; they terrify the creationist.
  The creationists’ rational and emotional weakness causes profound unwillingness to research basic information allied with an extreme gullibility for the con artists that propagate creation and its bastard offspring, intelligent design – though it’s hard to see what’s ‘intelligent’ about a design system that leaves 99 percent of all species dead – are all characteristics of the creationist.
  The internet, sometimes described as a ‘democracy of idiots’ is a great help to the dirty war that the opponents of evolution are still fighting. It is hardly a coincidence that the recrudescence of creationism is concurrent with epidemic of conspiracy theories, half-baked new age claptrap, post modernism and cults. Facts close in on all sides, the creationist is becoming increasingly beleaguered as scientific discoveries daily add to the vast inertia of evolution’s truth and new configurations reveal alignments that agree with the evolution’s elegant design.
  It takes real intelligence to explain complex ideas simply. Conversely the opposite is equally true for making a straightforward entity into a convoluted tangle, and that’s what creationists have done with their junk science and ‘intelligent design.’ This confounded jumble and disorder of ill-considered narrow-mindedness is so tortuous that the creationist can easily get lost in it, quite unaware that he or she is confronted with baloney.It is an interesting symptom of ‘motivated reasoning’ which is the adeptness of certain human brains to dispense with facts that get in the way of beliefs.
  When the issue of creationism versus evolution emerges, people call it ‘debate.’ It is not debate. It is the embarrassing phenomena of the letters page displaying ill-considered missives hacked out by the thumbs of individuals displaying levels of reasoning fitting for illiterates. They are a useful benchmark though, as these letters usually show the common level of intelligence the creationists can muster. The Hong Kong letters pages were no exception in this instance.
  Terry Scott’s unwelcome contributions to the letters page show him as a master of the kind of correspondence cranked out by a thankfully almost extinct species, a type of long-suffering expatriate bigot so utterly beleaguered by Hong Kong society that they periodically need to articulate their misanthropy by directing sarcastic, intercultural sniping against the local Chinese. He is also prone to splutter forth homophobic rants in response to anyone daring to mention the rights of sexual minorities. Scott’s contribution to the evolution ‘debate’ was a mostly sardonic note of unconnected sentences, the gist of which declared evolutionists cannot disprove the existence of God, neatly missing the point that the controversy over evolution need not concern God at all, as many evolutionists are also deists.
  Another good example of creationist drivel was from a certain Steven Stringer in Queensland who probably thought he was being cerebral when he regaled us with the ‘If man evolved from apes, why do we still have apes?’ argument. Humans did not evolve ‘from’ apes. Humans and apes evolved from a now extinct ape-like ancestor, and by some fortunate quirk of efficacious DNA, adaptation to circumstances and ingestion of protein, evolved a higher form of intelligence, but humans essentially are still apes. This argument is akin to inquiring why zebras exist in the world alongside horses; and indeed even a fundamentalist agency, ‘Answers in Genesis’ which, incidentally mentions in some detail the practicalities of feeding dinosaurs on the Ark and claims that light travelled slower in the past, maintains the ‘why do apes exist alongside humans?’ argument as one so inapt creationists should avoid it. But creationists dislike research and factual information, even that given by their own ministries. Stringer concluded by tossing in complete irrelevances, indicative of an incompetent completely out of his depth, grasping at randomness instead of marshalling an argument: ‘Medical science has not been able to cure sickness or disease, heal crippled limbs, make the blind see or the deaf hear without using medicine, drugs or operations.’
  In one pan of the scales we now have General Relativity, the Hubble Telescope and the entire imperfect but painstakingly collected accumulated knowledge of the human race, and, in the other we have the Book of Genesis. To the creationist, the scales balance. It was obviously this conviction that moved a certain Kwen Ip to claim that this accumulated knowledge was ‘banal and simplistic reasoning’ that was ‘taking the challenge and choice out of education.’
  This reminded me of Jerry Coyne, author of the beautifully written Why Evolution Matters who once gave a lecture to a group of rich Chicago businessmen. One audience member said ‘I found your evidence for evolution very convincing - but I still don't believe it’. As Charles Caleb Colton said ‘The soundest argument will produce no more conviction in an empty head than the most superficial declamation; as a feather and a guinea fall with equal velocity in a vacuum.’
  While it is not possible to grasp the idea of evolution as readily as the fact that the earth circles the sun, understanding it is not excessively difficult. All it requires is to understand the precepts and ideas step by step. It is merely the process of systematically absorbing pieces of assimilate able data, each piece of which is logically derived from the other. The evolutionary schemata then forms in all its beauty.
  Any evolutionist will tell you that there are gaps in the theory, as there must be in any complexity theory. As in economics, evolution is a complex adaptive system that emerge from bottom-up processes and not top-down design.
  With each new scientific discovery about evolution, the gaps in the theory become smaller, meaning that the concept becomes increasingly coherent. Creationists though like to jump at these gaps, and are fond of writing letters to the editor pointing out who this particular, small breach ‘demolishes’ the entire structure. What is particularly ironic here is that the multitude of gaps and shortcomings that religion has, the multitude of issues that faith fails to answer does not cause the creationist the slightest ruffle.