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Theories of creation
?You’ll note from this issue’s cover story, carried to page 15, and from the advertisement on page 13, that Uxbridge has become something of a hotbed for those who take the story of creation in Genesis fairly literally. First we have the establishment of a Creation Science museum in Goodwood. Then, as a direct result of a column in the Cosmos by Vince Winder (and the response to it by various letters to the editor), a couple of local advocates will be delivering a lecture on the fundamentalist response to Darwinism, in a lecture at the Arena community centre this coming Monday evening. We hope they pack the house.
Although the exact date varies among different denominations, the founder of the Goodwood Museum, Martin Legemaate, pegs the date of creation at about 7,000 years ago, or some five millennia before Christ. That’s a considerable difference from the 4.5 billion years that most geologists estimate as the age of the earth, give or take a few hundred million. The advent of life on earth, most scientists say, occured about a billion years after that, and then plants and animals developed over a long period, until a creature more or less resembling man appeared about four or five million years ago.
In case you’ve only been exposed to high school or university biology textbooks, and in case you thought the debate between evolution and creationism ended with the Scopes Monkey Trial in Tennessee in the summer of 1925 (made famous by the stage and movie versions of Inherit the Wind), you haven’t been paying attention to the increasingly loud calls (principally in the U.S.) for creationism to be re-introduced into science curricula as a legitimately scientific alternative to Darwinian evolution.
Evolution, after all, is “just a theory”, say the creationists, an unproven theory, while creationism is backed up by a Supreme Authority. Well, the law of gravity is also just a theory, but it’s pretty strongly supported by even casual observation. Darwin backers would say the same for evolution.
Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, in fact, who is undoubtedly the current president of the Charles Darwin Fan Club, goes so far as to call creationists “history deniers”, on a par with those who would deny the Holocaust. Both groups, he says, fly in the face of overwhelming evidence against their arguments.
His opponents point out that Dawkins is also a strong atheist. He could hardly be expected to be objective about the evidence for creationism, they say, when he denies the existence of a Supreme Intelligence. Good point.
We tend to agree with Mr. Legemaate when he says the two camps just look at the same evidence from differing perspectives, and so come to different conclusions. That seems a very enlightened approach to the debate, and a debate is perhaps exactly what Uxbridge could use. Monday’s presentation by the Brandons will be very interesting, no doubt, but how much more interesting if it were followed by a similar presentation by a Darwinist, who could then engage in a debate with questions from the audience.
There are few questions more fundamental to a reasoning person than where her species, or others, came from. We deserve to hear all sides of that question.
