Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Creationism has no consistent, coherent theories for anything

Creationism does not have a consistent, coherent, comprehensive explanation for things.

There is no place you can go to get a consistent theory of everything. That’s one of the reasons that it is not scientific.

As an example, consider the speed-of-light.

The speed-of-light in a vacuum is one of the most basic and fundamental physical constants in the universe. There are a number of others and they all happen to work together very well.

Many creationists argue that the very precise interaction of these constants implies the existence of God. (This argument is called the “Anthropic Principle”.) For example, here is what the Answers in Genesis web site says about this[1]:

"The laws of physics (along with their associated constants) are fine-tuned in just the right way so that life, particularly human life, is possible. This fact is called the “anthropic principle.” God created the fundamental laws of physics in just the right way and gave the constants just the right values so that the other constants and derivative laws of physics would come out in just the right way, so that chemistry would work in the right way, so that the elements and compounds would have the right properties, so that life would be possible!"

Then the same web site says this about one of those constants – the speed-of-light[2]:

"Well over a decade ago, AiG’s Creation magazine published very supportive articles concerning a theory by South Australian creationist Barry Setterfield, that the speed of light (‘c’) had slowed down or ‘decayed’ progressively since creation.

"In one fell swoop, this theory, called ‘c decay’2 (CDK) had the potential to supply two profound answers vitally important for a Biblical worldview.


"One was, if stars are really well over 6000 light years away, how could light have had time to travel from them to Earth? Two logically possible answers have serious problems:

"God created the starlight on its way: this suffers grievously from the fact that starlight also carries information about distant cosmic events. The created-in-transit theory means that the information would be ‘phony’, recording events which never happened, hence deceptive.

"The distances are deceptive: but despite some anomalies in redshift/distance correlations (see Galaxy-Quasar ‘Connection’ Defies Explanation), it’s just not possible for all stars and galaxies to be within a 6000-light-year radius—we would all fry!

"But if light were billions of times faster at the beginning, and slowed down in transit, there would be no more problem."

You can get both of these arguments from nearly any creationist source. Note that on the one hand they argue that the fundamental constants of the universe are “fine-tuned” and have “just the right values”. Yet they also argue that at least one of those primary constants – the speed-of-light – may have been billions of times higher in the past than it is now. Moreover it has diminished at no apparently important rate since then.

That hardly implies any fine-tuning.

There are numerous other examples. The flood account in particular provides the opportunity for differing and often contradictory claims.

As I say creationism has no consistent, coherent theories explaining anything in science.

[1] http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/nab/creationists-deny-laws-of-nature, referenced on December 23, 2008.
[2] http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2002/0809_cdk_davies.asp, referenced on December 23, 2008

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