While I was helping to tend the Michigan Atheists’ booth at the Allen Park Street Art Fair on August 8, 2015, a young man wearing a “Grace College/Univ” tee-shirt stopped to talk, and asked us whether or not Atheists “believe in” evolution. I told him that Atheists do not “believe in” evolution the way that theists “believe in” the existence of one or more gods. Most Atheists accept evolution as the best-supported explanation put forward, so far, to explain the observed similarities between species.
The young man’s follow-up questions indicated that he believed the Earth to be a mere 6000 years old, and that he knew little about the extent of the fossil record. The final nail in evolution’s coffin was supposed to have been his “gotcha” question, “What about the missing link?”
I informed him that there are many known “missing links,” such as Lucy and homo habilis, but he seemed to shrug that off.
His doubts about evolution seemed to center on his belief that evolution couldn’t have happened because, during the Earth’s 6000 year history, no one had ever reported seeing any such thing happen. Most of the species that humans knew at the dawn of written history still exist, looking much as described in written history. When I explained that various radioactive decay processes have allowed us to determine that the Earth and life are far older than 6000 years, he replied that he’d heard that carbon-14 dating had been disproved.
This is a claim that young-Earth creationists have made before, based on the fact that the carbon-14 dating scale has been adjusted to account for variations in the rate at which carbon-14 is formed in Earth’s atmosphere.
I explained that the carbon-14 dating scale had been calibrated by measuring carbon-14 in individual annual rings from long-lived Bristlecone pine trees, starting with the living ring still growing during the year the samples were taken and counting back from there, one year per ring. The calibrated scale was extended back beyond the 6,000 year oldest age of living trees by matching the pattern of wide and narrow rings between the living trees and nearby dead trees. That study produced samples with known ring-count ages and carbon-14 contents going back tens of thousands of years.
The young man walked away saying that he would look up Bristlecone pine trees, but didn’t sound very convincing. The overall impression he gave me was that he had seized upon his own ignorance of science as a valid reason to dismiss the science that backs evolution, and possibly science in general.
I’ve gotten that same impression from most of the creationists, and especially young-Earth creationists, that I’ve heard of, talked to, or debated on-line. They don’t know how things work, and assume that scientists don’t know how things work either, because scientists keep revising science all the time. They believe that that justifies a “God did it” explanation.
That is what is known as the “Argument from Ignorance.” The proponent uses his ignorance of how life, the universe, and everything came to be as an excuse to invoke the “God did it” explanation. In doing so, he makes the unstated assumption that one or more gods must exist in order to fulfill the creative function. It is an effort to turn human ignorance into evidence that one or more gods exist.
It’s also a prime example of a circular argument. The assumption proves the conclusion, and the conclusion supports the assumption, with no external evidence used. The hypothetical gods must exist because we observe what is assumed to be the “product” of their creative “labor.”
Another down-side of the “Argument from Ignorance” is that it supports only a “god of the gaps,” a “god” which exists only to paper-over the gaps in human knowledge, a “god” whose existence gets smaller as the gaps in human knowledge get smaller.
Ignorance of science does not prove science wrong.
Just because evolution doesn’t occur at the pace of a half-hour sitcom, for our observing convenience, that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t happen.
Science is always a work in progress. Its knowledge cannot be stated as an eternal absolute because it is subject to revision as new fossils and other discoveries come to light. Creationists who believe that revision of scientific knowledge makes science false need to confront the fact that the Bible has also been revised. Many times. If revision equals falsehood, then the Bible must be false.
Our knowledge of nuclear materials and processes allow us to create everything from smoke detectors and luminous-dial wrist watches to weapons that will produce a nuclear BANG only when we want them to and power stations that will NOT produce a nuclear bang even under the worst failure conditions (the Chernobyl containment structures were ruptured by a steam explosion). Despite so much daily evidence that we understand nuclear materials and processes, some people absolutely cannot accept the idea that those same nuclear processes allow us to tell how old things are.
Some igneous rocks contain uranium, which decays to lead at a known rate. Volcanic magmas contain potassium-40, which decays to argon-40 at a known rate. Measurements of the progress of those decay processes in a sample allows us to determine how long it has been since the last time such rocks were in a molten state. Melting allows the decay products to separate out, resetting the age “clock.”
A few rock samples from the Canadian Shield and Marble Bar in Western Australia have been dated to about 4 billion years ago; that volcanic lava layers can be dated, allowing us to date any fossils found between two such layers; and that remnant organic tissues can be dated directly.
Other species also have known “missing links,” like a 120 million year old fossilized snake with four vestigial, lizard-like limbs (Science News, Aug. 22, 2015, pg10), and a 90 million year old, horse-sized T. Rex ancestor whose skull showed “brain and ear features of later tyrannosaurs.” (Science News, Apr. 16, 2016, pg 9)
The main thing they seem to know about science is that it has been revised quite often. The message they take from that is that scientists don’t actually know ANYTHING.
That kind of believer sees the world in black and white. Either a statement is absolutely true, or it is absolutely false. There is no middle-ground. The mere fact that the carbon-14 dating scale had been re-calibrated had apparently proved to this young man that carbon-14 dating is absolutely false. It makes me wonder how he, and those like him, deal with the modern world and the science-based technology that is part of everyday life -- cell phones, computers, jet aircraft and so on.
Since scientists don’t know anything, a god must have done everything.
One problem with absolute-certainty, black-or-white, all-or-nothing thinking is that it can’t accept any claim that isn’t stated as an absolutely certainty. Anyone who isn’t absolutely certain is absolutely ignorant. Science is not black-or-white and science never states its conclusions as absolutes, so science is incomprehensible to the black-or-white thinker. This is also why believers say Atheists don’t have morals -- they think that acceptance of the “Ten Commandments” is an all-or-nothing proposition, and can’t see that those rules are a hodge-podge of universal, basic morality and tribal cultural rules.
Theocrats and fundamentalist zealots show intense fear of the idea that their assumptions, beliefs and opinions may be wrong. But their fear of the idea that there is no afterlife cannot justify suppressing that idea by taking the lives of or imprisoning the questioners. The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike. Produce credible, OBJECTIVE evidence or admit that “God” does not exist
Believers dismiss any claim that isn’t stated with absolute certainty, which is why they just don’t get science in general. They dismiss life’s uncertainties as “God’s will,” but they’re taught to feel absolutely certain in their beliefs about the existence of “God” and “His works,” an afterlife, and “salvation.”