Creationists

I've got my rant on today.

Creationists. Man these guys piss me off! They try to use the logic of empirical science to reason that God created the universe, but the way they use said logic is so flawed!

Like saying that the world and life on it is so complex, that it can't be a mere accident that it was created. Well of course it's not an accident! Organisms evolve and if the change is well suited to the environment at the time, then the organism lives for long enough to reproduce and pass on that change. It's not at all random or chance, it's natural selection.

And I don't know about the infinite wisdom or power or knowledge of god -- I won't even pretend to. But 6 billion years is a LONG period of time. I don't even really know what my life will be like in a year's time, so 6 billion years is close enough to infinity for me to accept that a vastly complex ecosystem can be acheived through myriad small changes.

Plus, when we look at the world around us, we're essentially looking at a world of (for want of a better word) winners -- plants and animals with traits that are successful in this environment. Of course everthing seems sublime if you only ever take note of the successes, but that's taking an unbalanced view of things. If we take into account all the evolutions that were unsuccessful or the species that became extinct because they didn't adapt to a changing environment, does everything seem instataneously perfectly and wrought by the hand of a god? (Or did god make mistakes with those organisms?)

The only thing that creationists have over scientists is faith, the belief in something where there is no evidence for that belief. You can't argue logically with faith, that's it's very nature. It's therefore pointless to argue with someone who believes that a god made the world, because no matter how logically structured the arguments are, faith is meant to exist without evidence and flying in the face of logic.

But by the same token, I think it's reasonable for the faithful to accept that to the scientifically minded, there's no evidence of god and therefore no reason to believe in his/her/its existence, beyond a wistful need perhaps to lessen one's own responsibility in the grand scheme of things.

By the way, existence of this universe (and us in it) is not evidence of a god. It's perhaps evidence of how particles interact with each other to form atoms into molecules and into larger structures and organisms.

I neither believe nor disbelieve in a god. At best, I wonder if there is a one.

And the only thing worse than a creationist is someone who promotes intelligent design. I mean, those guys are supposed to be trained scientists.