Darwin Day Lecture 2003

2003 February 12, Conway Hall, London

The BHA’s first ever Darwin Day lectures were given by philosopher Stephen Law and scientist Robin Dunbar.  The event was chaired by author Andrew Brown.

Below follows a report of the event followed by Stephen Law ’s paper “Is Creationism Scientific?”

Report on the 2003 Darwin Day Lecture

The British Humanist Association celebrated Charles Darwin’s birthday by inviting a philosopher, Dr Stephen Law, and a scientist, Professor Robin Dunbar, to answer the question ‘What’s wrong with creationism?’ from their different perspectives.

The chair, writer Andrew Brown, author of In the Beginning was the Worm, and The Darwin Wars,opened the evening provocatively by suggesting that arguing with creationist ideas was pointless, and could even be counter-productive, making the tiny minority who believed and promoted creationist ideas in the UK feel even more beleaguered, and pushing them further into their corner. He also reminded the audience that mainstream Christians were not creationists, and that they could be enlisted as useful allies.

Stephen Law, author of The Philosophy Files and The Philosophy Gym, which introduces thinking for young people and adults, began with a clear summary of creationist beliefs and then focused on creationist claims to scientific thinking. It looks like science, and it uses one of the tools of science (hypothesising from the available evidence), but is it science? Stephen Law believed not, citing the increasingly baroque ‘explanations’ of the evidence put forward by creationists. Counter-evidence in never allowed to falsify or amend the story (as happens in real science) – it is simply absorbed into it. Controversially, he compared this way of thinking to the inability of people with certain psychiatric conditions to change their thinking when faced with reality. He also thought that creationism was more of a threat than many realised, quoting alarming figures from the US that showed that the number of  ‘young earth’ creationists had grown to around half the population, and worried that well-funded organisations were no where, preaching creationism to larger audiences than this one, and influencing schoolchildren. For more about Stephen Law visit his website. His full lecture follows below.

Professor Robin Dunbar FBA of Liverpool University, author of The Trouble with Science, Human Evolutionary Psychology, Cousins and The Evolution of Culture, gave a lucid account of evolutionary science, demolishing along the way many of the clichés of creationism – for example, that an organ as complex as the eye could not have evolved. He also pointed out the many imperfections of ‘creation’ – the human eye for example or the relics of the hip-bone in the whale – which made them improbable products of a creator god, though easily explicable in evolutionary terms. He finished by reminding the audience of the continuing importance of evolutionary theory; many contemporary problems such as the extinctions of species and the capacity of ‘bugs’ of all sorts to evolve quickly in response to attempts to fight them could only be addresses if we understood evolution. To read more about Robin Dunbar click here.

Questions and comments from the audience, which included BAH vice-president Professor Richard Dawkins, were many and various. Some questioners wondered about the connections between creationism and various religions, including Islam, and why it appeared to be on the increase as conventional religion declined. One question was about the adaptive value of creationism, and Andrew Brown answered by returning to the idea of creationism being a ‘badge’ that bonded and strengthened a generally despised minority.

Many robust additional points were made in support of the scientific worldview, including one contrasting the predictive power of scientific theories with the complete lack of such power in creationist ideas. But there was concern about shortcomings in the current school science curriculum, which tended to teach ‘other peoples theories’ rather than scientific method, and in the curriculum as a whole which still neglected thinking skills. Richard Dawkins’ proposal that evolution be taught at a far younger age than at present was supported by many in the audience including BHA representatives who had already raised this with Government ministers, but had got nowhere so far. There was a thirst for understanding and for convincing theories, which could be satisfied by clear and elegant expositions and demonstrations from scientists and science teachers. Richard Dawkins described how adult Americans, coming across evolutionary theory for the first time (!), are often fascinated by an explanation that is at least as amazing and beautiful as the creationist one. If the discussion had a conclusion, it was that education, especially of the very young, was the key.

Andrew Brown rounded off the discussion by thanking everyone for their stimulating conversations, and Hanne Stinson, BHA Executive Director, thanked him for chairing. The audience finished the evening by singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to Charles Darwin.

Is Creationism Scientific? by Stephen Law

Delivered at the Darwin Day Lecture 2003

What is creationism?

We are here to discuss creationism. So the first thing we need to be clear about is what we mean by "creationism".

The kind of creationism that I am concerned with here - the kind that, for example, is being taught in that State-funded school up in Gateshead that you may have heard about - is the form of creationism known as Bible Literalism.

Bible literalists don't just believe that God created the universe. After all, many reputable scientists are prepared to accept that.

No, they believe something much stranger. They believe that everything claimed in the Bible should be accepted as literally true.

So when it says, in Genesis, that God made the universe and every living species in just six days, creationists accept that this is literally true. The genesis story is not a myth or metaphor. It all really happened just as described in the book. That's the sort of creationism we're concerned with here.

Now let me say what I intend to do. I want to take a look at the question of why so many intelligent, well-educated people believe in creationism. Why is it, in fact, that around about a third of all Americans now believe that the entire universe was created only six thousand years ago? Why, indeed, do so many now believe that creationism is good science, the kind of science that should be taught in schools?

I am going to suggest that part, though not the whole, explanation for the extraordinary rise in the popularity of creationism is that what creationists practice does actually strongly resemble good science in certain important respects. I am going to suggest that, in order to deal effectively with creationist claims and arguments, it's not enough that we look just at the evidence for and against creationism. We also need to look at their rather peculiar methods. We need to understand why, despite the fact that the creationist's approach to dealing with evidence might look, to the layperson, very scientific, it's actually profoundly unscientific.

But to begin with, let's get a little clearer about exactly what it is that creationists believe.

Creationism entails that:

• The entire universe is about six thousand years old.
• Modern scientific cosmologies on which the universe is many billions of years old and began with a Big Bang are thus fundamentally wrong.
• No new species has ever evolved. All were created in the same week about six thousand years ago. So the dinosaurs (creationists don't deny they existed) walked the Earth along with man just a few thousand years ago.

So when did creation happen? According to creationists, the universe was created some time in the last ten thousand years. In fact, they typically insist that the entire universe is round about six thousand years old.

Now of course, the vast majority of contemporary scientists hold that the universe is much, much older than that. The universe, they say, started somewhere between eight and twenty billion years ago with the Big Bang. The Earth, on this orthodox theory, is approximately four and a half billion years old. The first embryonic life-forms emerged some three and a half billionyears ago. Evolution, via the process of natural selection, then produced more complex life-forms, including the first mammals about 200 million years ago.

Yet creationists believe that the entire universe is only 6000 years old ! So the kind of modern cosmologies developed by our scientists, on which the universe is between 8 and 20 billionyears old, are completely and utterly wrong. Wrong on quite catastrophic scale, in fact. According to creationists, the universe is actually less than one billionth the age attributed to it by cosmologists like Stephen Hawking.

And of course, it's not just Hawking that's deluded. So too are the vast majority of scientists from almost every branch of science.

Take evolutionists, for example. According to creationists, the theory that new species can emerge by a process of evolution is mistaken. So too is Darwin's theory of natural selection: the mechanism by which Darwin believed evolution takes place. These theories are totally, utterly, completely wrong. No new species has ever evolved. Ever.

We know that this is true, according to the creationists, because the Bible tells us that that every species that has ever lived was created in the same week just six thousand years ago.

To bring home just how extraordinary this creationist belief is, notice that it entails that the dinosaurs inhabited the earth alongside man just six thousand years ago. Creationists don't deny that the Brontosaurus and the Tyrannosaurus existed - we do, after all, find their enormous fossils buried beneath our feet. But, according to creationists, these extraordinary creatures were also created just six thousand years ago . But if that's correct, then the Garden of Eden must have resembled Jurassic Park!

According to creationists, dinosaurs roamed the surface of the Earth along with man only one and a half thousand years before the Great Pyramid of Cheops was built!

The rise of creationism

So that is what creationists believe. It is, truly, an absolutely astonishing theory. We are not just talking about the view that God created the universe (which, as I say, is something many reputable scientists believe). We are talking about a theory that is, frankly, completely cranky.

So who believes it? Well, here we come to an extraordinary fact: the fact that I want to make the focus of this talk. In the United States, over the last few decades, creationists have made terrific progress in convincing the pubic that their theory is at least as scientifically respectable as the Big Bang/Evolution alternative. Very many Americans - something approaching one hundred million Americans - now believe that creationism is true.

That's right: about a third of all Americans believe that the entire universe was created just six thousand years ago with the earth looking something like Jurassic Park.

And now I come to the most astonishing fact of all. Not only do huge numbers believe in creationism, they also believe that creationism is just as scientifically respectable as the orthodox Big Bang/evolution theory.

That's right: they believe that creationism is good science.

Indeed, in many American schools, creationism is taught alongside or even instead of the theory of evolution as good science.

Clearly, many creationists are highly intelligent people. Indeed, many are college graduates. Polls indicate that something like one third of college educated Americans believe that the Biblical account of creation is literally true.

Indeed, a Tennessee academic who recently surveyed his own students writes that scientists like himself are having to fight the battles of the Enlightenment all over again. He reminds us that:

Medieval ideas that were killed stone dead by the rise of science three to four hundred years ago are not merely twitching; they are alive and well in our schools, colleges and universities.

Now the question I want to address here is: How have so many intelligent, college educated people become convinced that creationism is good science?

After all, there appears to be overwhelming evidence that we inhabit a very old universe with life having evolved only comparatively recently (though, of course, still many millions of years ago).

Evidence of a very old universe

Here are five simple examples of such evidence:

1. Astronomers have observed objects from which it would take light many millions of years to reach us. Millions of years must therefore have elapsed in order for that light to reach us.

2. Look at the moon and you will see thousands of craters. Yet these craters are produced by impacts that occur only infrequently. In order for the moon to have that many craters, it would have to be many millions of years old, not six thousand.

3. The surface of the Earth is made up of continental plates that drift. We know, for example, Africa and South America were once physically connected. The very slow rate at which the plates drift means, again, that the earth must have been around for.many millions of years, not just six thousand.

4. The surface of the Earth is made up of rock strata. Given the rate at which strata are laid down, it would take many millions of years for that depth of strata to form. So the Earth must be many millions of years old.

5. These rock strata contain fossils. And the fossils are ordered in a way that shows evolutionary progression. For example, they show that man evolved from earlier primates. But if creationism is true, then all species were created at the same time just six thousand years ago. In which case we should expect to find creatures fossilized in a fairly random way throughout the strata, rather than in the very precise and specific way required by evolution. Yet even today, after countless millions of fossils have been discovered not one single well documented example of an out of place fossil has been found (for example, not one single fossil of a large mammal has been found down in the dinosaur layers). Isn't that, from the point of creationism, a quite unbelievable coincidence?

Well, these are 5 simple examples of counter-evidence to creationism. But as I say, countless other examples can be drawn from almost every branch of science.

So how do creationists deal with this sort of counter-evidence?

Why are so many intelligent, college educated people convinced that the scientific evidence supports creationism at least as well as it supports the view that the universe is billions of years old with life having evolved?

One reason that so many are convinced - though not the only reason - is that they believe that the kind of evidence we have been examining is actually entirely consistent with creationism after all.

Take the fossil record, for example. Creationists maintain that the layering in the fossil record can be explained by reference to the Biblical Flood, the flood on which Noah famously floated his ark.

The rains that caused the Flood were responsible for producing huge mud deposits that then hardened into the rock strata we find beneath our feet.

But what of the very specific way in which the fossils are arranged, a way which happens coincidentally exactly to fit the theory that life has gradually evolved? How do creationists explain that? In fact, creationists insist that the ordering of life-forms within these layers can also be accounted for on their theory. They suggest the reason we finds dinosaurs below the larger mammals is that dinosaurs are slow, cumbersome and relatively unintelligent creatures that are likely to have been buried as the faster, more intelligent big mammals ran to higher ground.

"You see?" says the creationist. "Problem solved! Creationism turns out to be consistent with the available evidence after all! It also fits the evidence. So it's just as scientific as the theory of evolution!"

A similar strategy is used to deal with other evidence. Take the craters on the Moon, for example. Given the craters are produced so infrequently, why does the Moon have so many?

Some creationists suggest that, at the time the Moon was formed, there was far more debris in space. This debris was quickly drawn to bodies like the moon, producing many craters over a short period of time. Most of that debris has now gone, which is why impacts are currently rare.

Why creationism looks "scientific"

We have been looking at the kind of moves made by creationist to defend their theory that the entire universe and all species of living thing were created in the same week just six thousand years ago.

They defend their core theory by developing and adding to it and developing it in various ways so that it continues to fit the available evidence. Each time another piece of apparently solid counter-evidence to creationism is produced - the fossil record, the craters on the moon, etc. - the creationists add a bit more to their core theory to protect it. So they can continue to insist that their theory still fits the available evidence. "See?" they can say "Our theory is just as scientific as yours."

In short, creationists have been busy developing:

A theory of increasing complexity and ingenuity to "fit" the available empirical evidence.

And isn't this exactly how good scientific theories are developed?

Well, I admit that what creationists practice does look like a bit like science. In fact, it does, in this respect, very strongly resemble what scientists do.

And that, of course, is one of the reasons why so many people - something like a third of all Americans - now believe that creationism is scientifically respectable.

Still, despite looking rather like genuine science, the creationist approach to dealing with the evidence is actually thoroughly unscientific. The easiest way to see why is by means of an analogy.

Are dogs Venusian spies?

Allow me to tell you about a pet theory of my own. Dogs are spies from the planet Venus.

That's right, Fido here might look like a harmless pet, but he's actually a Venusian spy. He's busy gathering information in preparation for an imminent Venusian attack.

I see you don't believe me. But why not?

Well, no doubt you would point out that the evidence just doesn't fit my theory. All the evidence indicates that dogs are pretty stupid creatures incapable of such treachery. After all, they can't even talk, can they? And they have small brains, which suggest they are pretty dim. Nor do we find transmitters hidden about our houses by which our dogs might transmit their secret reports to Venus.

So surely, you would no doubt say, the evidence overwhelmingly supports the theory that dogs are affectionate and faithful pets, not spies from another world.

Defending the dogs-are-Venusian-spies theory

But hang on a moment. What if, in reply, I claim that while dogs' brains may be small, they're peculiarly efficient. In fact, I suggest, dogs are highly intelligent creatures that do possess language. It's just that they cunningly hide their intelligence and their linguistic ability from us.

And the reason we don't find their radio transmitters secreted about the house is that the transmitters are actually embedded in their brains.

Now I have made my theory fit the evidence again! I have shown that all your so-called counter-evidence is actually consistent with my theory after all!

To this you might reply that an X-ray of a dog's head reveals no radio transmitter. Nor can we detect any transmission coming from their heads. And in any case, we know that Venus is a lifeless planet incapable of producing an invasion force.

To which I reply that dog transmitters are made out of organic material that resembles brain tissue, which is why they don't show up on X-rays or in dog autopsies. And dogs transmit via a mysterious medium we cannot yet understand or detect. And as a matter of fact Venus is inhabited. It's just that the Venusian dogs live deep below the surface in secret bunkers.

That's why we don't see them.

Notice that, yet again, by adding to my theory in various ways, I have made my theory fit the evidence again.

You can see how this rather silly game might continue on forever. I can keep on protecting my weird theory about dogs being Venusian spies by constantly adding on new bits to deal with whatever evidence you might come up with. It won't be long before I have you thoroughly tied up in knots.

The interesting thing about my dogs-are-Venusian-spies-theory is that I can continue to make it fit and explain what has been observed . I just need to keep on using my ingenuity to add on bits to deal with what might otherwise seem to be compelling counter-evidence.

But if a good scientific theory is one which fits and explains what has been observed, then surely, my theory that dogs are Venusian spies is just as "good" as the common sense theory that they are merely harmless pets. Isn't it?

Reasoning close to madness

Of course not. Pretty clearly, the kind of reasoning that I am using to defend my bizarre theory about dogs is not scientific.

In fact you can see that any theory, no matter how utterly mad, can be protected in this way forever, no matter how much seemingly compelling evidence might be brought against it. If this was a scientifically respectable way of carrying on, then we would have to say that all theories are equally scientifically respectable, including the theories that dogs are Martian spies, that cheese is made of fairy dust, and that Mexicans are the secret rulers of the universe.

It's true that reputable scientists do occasionallydefend their theories by making such "ad hoc" moves. However, you shouldn't make a habit of it. Once almost all your theory development is taken up with adding on further untestable bits to your theory in order to prevent it being falsified, that theory is no longer being approached as a scientific theory but as an item of faith. Your method more closely resembles the reasoning off the deranged than it does science.

For, interestingly, the kind of reasoning that I have been using to defend my dogs are Venusian spies theory is characteristic of certain sorts of mental illness, such as schizophrenia. If you have ever talked to a schizophrenic and tried to talk him or her out of one of their strange beliefs, you'll know just how deeply frustrating it can be. For it doesn't matter how much evidence you wheel out to show that their weird theory is just plain silly, they can always come up with more ad hoc moves to deal with that evidence. They tie you up in knots. And so they remain convinced that they are being just as rational as you.

Now you have probably noticed by now that this sorted of twisted theory building is exactly the sort of reasoning employed by creationists in defending their theory. They play much the same game that I played in defending my theory that dogs are Venusian spies. Every time we come up with a solid-looking bit of evidence against creationism, they just add a bit more onto their theory to protect it. Indeed, there are now many well-funded bodies, including the Institute for Creationist Science, that spend their "research" time endlessly churning out these kind of moves.

That's why the experience of debating with a creationist is very much like that of debating with a schizophrenic. It's deeply frustrating. You end up tied up in knots.

What creationists practice might looka bit like science to the untrained eye. After all, it's true that they are using their often considerable ingenuity to develop a theory that continues to fit the available evidence. But their method is essentially unscientific.

Indeed, it is a form of reasoning that is, quite literally, close to madness.

Dealing with creationist claims

I now want to draw a moral from my little story about dogs being Venusian spies. The moral is this. It's tempting, when faced with creationist claims, simply to wheel out contrary evidence: the fossil record, for example. The problem with this strategy is, as I say, that the creationists will soon tie you up in knots. Just like a defender of my dogs-are-Venusian-secret-agents theory, they continually confound and infuriate their critics by constantly adding to their core theory in order to protect it.

The important thing to notice, here, is that in order to deal more effectively with creationist claims and arguments one needs to take a step back and look at their method.

The bottom line is: if you want to convince those exposed to creationist claims and arguments that what they have been exposed to is bunk, it's not enough just to focus on the scientific evidence.

In order to get them really to understand why creationism is bunk, it's essential that they understand that, while the method employed by creationists might look what scientists engage in, it is actually thoroughly unscientific. In fact it's akin to a form of insanity.

Teaching children creationism

Now a state funded school in Gateshead has been teaching children has been eaching children that creationism is good science. Many more such schools are planned.

It should now, I hope, be clear why allowing creationsists access to our children - allowing them to teach our children that creationism is "good science" is likely to be educationally very harmful. Creationism is not, as some educationalists, including Chris Woodhead, have suggested, an optional, harmless "extra" that faith schools should be free to teach in addition to the national curriculum.

The real problem with allowing schools to teach children that the universe is only six thousand years old is "good science" is not that we are letting those in positions of power and authority over young minds teach them ludicrous falsehoods, though that is bad enough.

The problem is that the only way children can be taught that creationism is true and supported by the available evidence is by instilling in them such twisted conceptions of logic and evidential support that they are likely to remain gullible idiots for the rest of their lives. Teaching that creationism is respectable science means teaching children to think in ways that are, quite literally, close to lunacy. This is not an issue about religious tolerance and freedom. Let schools teach creationism in religious education, if you like. But don't let schools teach children that creationism is good science.