Is New Earth Creationism as bad as Holocaust Denial?

DID THIS POST GO TOO FAR?: Maybe 'alternative theories' aren't so bad after all. If you get your knickers in a twist because of this post, read this follow up.

Two revisionist movements have been gaining alarming strength over the last few decades - and they share worrying similarities.

Their agendas are very different, but their origins, methodology and outlook run parallel to each other. New Earth Creationists and Holocaust Deniers.

Thirty or forty years ago, Creationism and Holocaust Denial were both fringe lunacy - the domain of idiots and fundamentalists who received well-deserved scorn and the contempt of mainstream society.

Flash forward four decades: A New Earth Creationist just ran in the Presidential Primaries, while representatives from 30 countries attended a two day conference in Tehran to "Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust."


What the hell is going on? When did the arena of whackjobs, nutcases, idiots and bigots start spreading into civilised society?

Crazy, crazy people...

Let me introduce you to the Holocaust Deniers - people who believe that the murder of 6 million Jews by Hitler's Nazi regime never took place.

They started out as rednecks and skinheads - 'white pride' idiots who made up conspiracies about how Jews controlled America. They denied that the holocaust ever taken place - and argued that it was all a 'Zionist conspiracy' to demonise Germany.

For the most part, these people were derided and ignored - as were their crackpot theories. However, over the course of the past couple of decades, a movement in the Middle East cropped up that mirrored and gave weight to their denial of the Holocaust.

The governments of fundamentalist Islamic countries like Iran and Syria started publishing statements denying the holocaust, arguing that "the so-called Holocaust is an alleged and invented story, with no basis."

With the spread of Islamic fundamentalism, this movement has grown. Recently, Iranian President Ahmadinejad declared:

"The Zionists have fabricated a legend under the name Massacre of the Jews, and they hold it higher than God himself, religion itself and the prophets themselves...If somebody in their country questions God, nobody says anything, but if somebody denies the myth of the massacre of Jews, the Zionist loudspeakers and the governments in the pay of Zionism will start to scream!"

On December 11th 2006, Ahmadinejad hosted a conference for representatives from 30 countries, under the title "International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust."

What began as a disgusting delusion, maintained by only by the most contemptible of lunatics, has now become a 'legitimate' revisionist movement. So popular has the denial of the Holocaust become that some religious schools in Great Britain have even stopped teaching Holocaust History in class, for risk of 'offending' their Muslim students.

Creationist Cretins

Now let me introduce you to a similar group of crackpots - the New Earth Creationists. People who believe that the Earth was created in exact, literal accordance with the Bible: 6,000 or so years ago.

Like Holocaust Denial, modern society was largely free of New Earth Creationists thirty or forty years ago. New Earth Creationism had never been a particularly convincing theory - even Saint Augustine, the 4th century Bishop of Hippo, argued that the creation story was allegorical.

Yet towards the end of the 20th century, a revival movement started, with Christian fundamentalists across America uniting behind the idea that fossils, geology, history and astronomy were all wrong about the age of the Earth.

They argued that 'The Great Flood' (of Noah's Ark) swished around the geological strata and made it appear older than it was - leading creationist Henry Morris to declare "the last refuge of the case for evolution immediately vanishes away, and the record of the rocks becomes a tremendous witness... to the holiness and justice and power of the living God of Creation!"

The development of the Internet gave an even greater voice to these fundamentalist Christians, leading to the development of websites like Ken Ham's 'Answers in Genesis' and the popularity of homeschooling with a 'Christian curriculum' which neatly avoids theologically troubling (i.e. scientifically accurate) concepts like evolution.

The result? And entire generation of kids and young adults brainwashed into believing the fictional fantasy that is New Earth Creationism.

Similarities

On the surface of it, the similarities between New Earth Creationists and Holocaust Deniers might not seem obvious - but they're there. Consider:

Both movements step from religious fundamentalism.

It's no coincidence that the popularity of Holocaust Denial and New Earth Creationism match the explosion of fundamentalist religious movements - which seek 'wisdom' from religious documents like the Koran or the Bible.

Like it or not, fundamentalism Islam and evangelical Christianity share an alarming number of similarities - not least of which is a stubborn insistence of finding answers in old books, rather than science, history and fact.

Both theories are just wishful thinking.

The Islamic fundamentalists really want to believe the Holocaust never happened, because then residents of the state of Israel would stop having the moral authority to aggressively defend their existence. [How dare they! - Editorial Bear]

New Earth Creationists, on the other hand, really want to believe the Bible is true, so it gives them divine justification for hating gay people, shooting abortion doctors and banning people from having sex. Ever.

Both theories ignore mountains of evidence.

The reason Holocaust Denial was such a derided movement forty years ago was because there were thousands of concentration camp survivors around to tell them they were talking crap.

As they died out, it opened the window to 'suggest' that the genocide had never even occurred. After all, there was nobody left around to argue about it.

That still left thousands of documents, photos and the camps themselves to prove than the Holocaust was real (plus that fact that six million Jews mysteriously vanished between 1933/1945.) Nevertheless, Holocaust Deniers claim that the evidence was faked, the numbers made up and the eyewitness testimony is a lie.

As for New Earth Creationists? Well, they use similar methodology to defend their position in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Despite the fact that radiometric dating, ice-core data and even the rings on trees prove that the Earth is older than 6,000 years, they stubbornly refuse to accept it. As Creationist Henry Morris argued: "When science & the Bible differ, science has obviously misinterpreted its data."

Both New Earth Creationism and Holocaust Denial rely on shameless, stubborn, stoic refusal to accept any and all evidence disproving their beliefs.

Both theories rely on disinformation, brainwashing, manipulation and outright lies to further their cause.

Holocaust Denial has graduated from lunacy to 'revisionist history' by misrepresenting evidence, denying the facts and brainwashing the ignorant.

Across the Middle East, for example, schools and television stations declare that the Holocaust was a hoax - so poor, ignorant children grow up believing that to be the truth. They simply don't know any better.

Likewise, New Earth Creationists rely on homeschooling to fatten their ranks - with unscrupulous hacks like Andrew Schlafly and Ken Ham creating misleading home school curriculums that teach theories like New Earth Creationism as if it was a scientific fact.

In scientific debates, Creationists lie, bully and manipulate in order to make their silly stance sound more believable. Interviews with notable skeptics like Richard Dawkins have to be brutally edited to discredit them, quotes have to be taken out of context to support the theory and in the absence of all other options, Creationists are more than willing to out-and-out make stuff up.

Both theories are just plain wrong. Holocaust Denial and New Earth Creationism share one overriding similarity - both 'theories' are complete rubbish.

The Holocaust did occur. During Hitler's reign, six million Jewish people - and an equal number of gypsies, homosexuals, communists and other 'social undesirables,' were taken off to camps in central Europe and exterminated in gas chambers.

We know this has happened because people survived to tell of it: Concentration camp inmates themselves, along with the American and Allied soldiers who 'liberated' those camps.

Likewise, a mountain of irrefutable evidence proves that the earth is four and a half billions years old - and that life evolved from single-celled organisms into the current menagerie of mammals, reptiles, birds, insects and bacteria.

The Bible is not an infallible, literal history of the world. It's just a book. Or, at a push, a reasonably effective paperweight.

Are New Earth Creationists as bad as Holocaust Deniers?

On the face of it, of course not.

Holocaust Deniers are trying to deny the systematic extermination of six million people.

Not only does that defame the memory of those who have died, it's a slap in the face for the people who survived - and their descendants.

Most terrifying of all, by trying to eliminate the Holocaust from society's collective memory, it leaves the world vulnerable to letting it happen all over again.

As for New Earth Creationists - all they want to do is believe their silly little fairy tale about the world being sixty centuries old.

On the surface, it doesn't do anybody any harm. In fact, I recently spoke to a brilliant, dynamic young lady who just happened to be a New Earth Creationist - and she said: "I don't care what others believe, so long as I'm allowed to believe what I want to."

Advocates of New Earth Creationism aren't really fighting for anything more than the right to believe what they want to - even if that believe is idiotic, irrational and founded in fantasy.

But nevertheless, I find the similarities between the two groups troubling. Advocates of Holocaust Denial and New Earth Creationism are fighting for different things using the same troubling methods.

Blissful Ignorance

A very disturbing trend I've noticed regarding the upcoming Presidential Election is the enthusiastic embrace of ignorance.

Some people don't like the horrible truth, so they resolutely refuse to accept it - despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

I'm afraid to say it's the conservatives who are the most enthusiastically ignorant. Many conservatives claim that their refusal of rationality is a 'political choice' whereas really, it's just bloody mindedness tinged with stupidity.

The most obvious example of this is Evolution.

Many conservatives - including presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee - reject the 'theory' of Evolution. Some prefer to consider 'intelligent design' - which is a not-mutually-exclusive theory in which the development of man was overseen by some 'higher power'

But others, like Huckabee himself, prefer 'Creationist' theory. This is the belief that the world was created exactly as described in the Bible - over the course of seven days, a little more that seven thousand years ago.

The problem with this 'theory' is that it's bunkum. Utter, preposterous rubbish.

Because 'Evolution' is not just a theory. It's also a fact.

Evolution is Here to Stay

The 'theory' of Evolution was not just invented by Charles Darwin while he was in a drunken stupor aboard The Beagle. It was a theory pieced together through objective examination of the evidence.

Further research - which yielded carbon-dating figures and the bones of dinosaurs and woolly mammoths - proved conclusively that animals have changed and developed over the course of the millenia and the world is considerably more than 7,000 years old.

Now whether you believe mankind developed from monkeys via random selection or the work of some 'higher power' is up to you - but it's a fact that humanity as we know it has walked the earth for 33,000 years before the Bible claimed it did.

Evolution is only a 'theory' in the same way that gravity is a 'theory.' We theorise why a ball thrown into the air will be drawn inextricably to the ground. The fact that it happens - each and every time - is a incontrovertible fact.

So people like Huckabee - who refuse to accept concrete, inarguable facts that blow their religious dogma out of the water - are just willfully, gleefully ignorant. And is that the sort of person we want running the country?

But leaving aside Evolution - which at least has the armour of religious dogma to protect it - let's examine some of the other incontrovertible facts conservatives blissfully ignore.

Global Warming

In the past century, the temperature of the world has gone up by a little more than a single degree centigrade. This is an astonishing rise in temperature and has been linked directly to the increase of so called 'greenhouse gases' accumulating in the atmosphere since the mid 20th century.

Given the industrialisation of the world, it is estimated that the planet's temperature could rise by as much as 6 degrees centigrade in the 21st century.

The world is getting hotter. That's a fact.

Unless, of course, you're a conservative.

Because a large number of conservatives refuse to believe the 'theory' of Global Warming and the mountain of scientific evidence linking man-made greenhouse gases to the rise in temperature.

One of the major reasons to be skeptical of the 'theory' of Global Warming is because it's convenient not to believe. If Global Warming is real, we're in trouble. It will take an expensive and inconvenient revolution to transform the world's industries to be environmentally friendly.

No more gas-guzzling cars. No more smoke-churning factories. It will take research and investment and - worst of all - we might have get up off the sofa to take part in it.

So plenty of people choose to be skeptical - and the conservative right (linked to oil industry investors desperate for us not to believe in Global Warming) are happy to swallow up the cynical propaganda pumped out to keep us skeptical.

I stole this cartoon from CK's Blog and I hope he doesn't mind!

I recommend reading Wikipedia's post on the subject of Climate Change denial. It's pretty scary reading.

Is there any credibility to the Global Warming skepticism? Well the most knowledgeable person I know is a friend of mine, energy conservationist Margo Bettencourt - who says: "Denying that global warming/climate change is real is akin to saying evolution is 'just a theory'. In both cases, those who don't know how to deal with the consequences of an issue deny it's truthiness. We'd all be better off if these naysayers could accept that we came from monkeys and are changing the climate."

Margo is the dictionary definition of a 'smart cookie' and if her opinions are good enough for Colombia University and the city of New York, they easily trump any of the cynical oil-industry funded 'strategic studies groups' [Or SUV owning laymen from the midwest - Editorial Bear.]

Why so dumb?

With things like Evolution, we just have to take the scientist's word for it (the thousands of scientist's words for it, backed up with mountains of incontrovertible evidence.)

For something like Global Warming, the evidence is right there in front of us.

I was born on a snowy day in February in 1978. In recent years, England can go for years without snow appearing. The bookies have even stopped running odds on a 'white Christmas' because what was once a reasonably common occurrence has now simply ceased to happen.

In 2002, I spent Christmas day in a New York snowstorm. This Christmas, I was walking around without a jacket on. Global warming is HERE. It's a FACT and we're all living it and witnessing it with our own eyes.

It just boggles the mind why people would make a conscious decision to ignore what they see right in front of them and instead live a fantasy of political expediency.

The problem the conservatives are creating for themselves with this 'embrace of ignorance' is clear. They're pouring their credibility down the plug hole.

If somebody chooses to ignore a fact, like the parallel between greenhouse gas emissions and rising temperatures, or carbon-dating proving that rocks are millions of years old, it makes you wonder what other incontrovertible truths they're willing to ignore.

I mean, the conservatives tell us that the 'War on Terror' is helping to make America safer. It's the cornerstone of the Republican presidential campaign (have you heard the presidential nominees talk about anything else?)

But are we any safer? And can we take the conservatives' word for it, even if we are?

The economy is another issue. Most conservatives would never vote Democrat because they're the 'party of big spending and tax increases.' Yet history has illustrated through the five recent terms of Republican presidency that Elephants can't balance a chequebook.

Right now, the Republican nominees are bleating about the wonders of Reaganomics. This 'golden age' of the American economy was a balloon that got popped on Black Monday.

Reaganomics is a myth.

In reality, Ronald Reagan plunged America into three trillion dollars worth of debt. While the President delivered tax cuts to the super-rich (slashing a 70% income tax to just 28%) payroll taxes for the average working man actually increased.

His Republican successor, H.W. Bush, similarly won the election on the promise of 'no new taxes' - but reneged on his promise as soon as he'd got his expensive loafers into the Oval Office.

Yet people keep buying into the dreary dogma!

In Conclusion

The embrace of ignorance has got me deeply worried about the upcoming election.

It's a well known fact that most of America votes on blinkered party lines - it's single percentage points of 'swing voters' who make the difference and tip the scales towards a Republican or Democratic president.

But Democracy is a system vulnerable to stupid voters - and there seem to be more of them than ever!

Maybe it's because I have liberal pretensions, or I'm a writer, or I occasionally watched Will & Grace and therefore contributed to the 'pro-gay biased liberal media' or some such rubbish - but I live with a dream of an election fought through open debate, rationality and logic.

Sure, some of our reasons for picking the president are going to be illogical. Some people aren't going to vote for Hillary because she's a woman. Some people are going to vote for Mitt Romney because they mistakenly believe he's really Evil Dead actor Bruce Campbell.

But the big issues? It would be nice if policy was dictated by an objective appreciation of the facts. Unfortunately, there's a powerful movement in conservative America that would happily ignore the inconvenient 'facts' in order to embrace a much more comforting fantasy they call the 'truth.'

As historian Indiana Jones said in The Last Crusade:

"FACT."

"History is the search for fact. Not truth."

"If it's truth you're interested in, Doctor Tyree's Philosophy class is right down the hall."