Dog with a Bone? Theories that didn't pan out...

I think went too far comparing New Earth Creationists with Holocaust Deniers. [British tabloid journalism strikes again? - Editorial Bear.]

Although the similarities I pointed out were awkwardly accurate, perhaps it was shotgun journalism... I apologise.

But it DID get me thinking...

I'll admit it... Recently I've been like a dog with a bone (a dinosaur bone) when it comes to creationism and intelligent design and all this other religious babble trying to muscle in on rationality, science and history.

Maybe I should take a deep breath, sit down and relax.... Chill out, as they say.

I mean, what does it matter if somebody believes that the world is 6,000 years old? By the same logic, what does it matter if somebody believes the holocaust didn't take place? I find the first suggestion stupid, the second suggestion offensive - but neither of them really affect my life in the slightest way.

This is America. We have the First Amendment, which says (short of shouting 'fire' in a crowded theatre) that you have a constitutionally protected right to claim whatever you want, no matter how stupid or offensive the rest of us find it.

And the First Amendment is an important one. If people didn't have the freedom of speech, what sort of nation would this be? I'm already sick to death of our 'moral superiors' trying to tell us what we can and can't watch on television, or banning sex toys and naughty DVDs in the deep south.

Freedom of speech is a two way street. If we argue that the moral majority have to respect our freedom of speech, we must respect theirs in return. So consider my wrist smacked.

Besides, some open minded discussion is always good.

I mean, look at the theory of the creation of the Earth... Sure, it's a proven scientific fact that creation doctrine isn't correct. The world wasn't created in six days...

On the other hand, despite a mountain of evidence supporting it, the jigsaw puzzle of evolution isn't totally complete. There are still some missing pieces and it's entirely possible that newly discovered evidence might drastically change the way we view the early history of our planet.

That's why it's such a good theory. More important than being provable, the theory of evolution is unprovable. It is possible to imagine evidence that disproves it.

The ability to disprove a theory is what makes it scientific and open to discussion. The problem with doctrine like Intelligent Design is that it's a theory that cannot be proven wrong, because you can't prove it right, either. Therefore it's not a scientific theory at all (and that's why it belongs in a theology or philosophy classroom, not a science lab.)

All that being said, it's always important to keep an open mind. Look at other theories we've seen in the past that have been blown apart by later discoveries:

Spontaneous Generation

Look back at the early days of science, back in the 17th century when people were first seeing the living organisms we'd later describe as bacteria. Scientists observed little squirmy creatures in people's wounds and came up with the theory of 'Spontaneous Generation.'

This theory claimed that living organisms were spontaneously generated by decaying matter - it matched something Aristotle himself had said over a thousand years earlier: "It was a readily observable truth that aphids arise from the dew which falls on plants, fleas from putrid matter, mice from dirty hay, crocodiles from rotting logs at the bottom of bodies of water, and so forth."

So mainstream was the theory that bacteria (and fleas and mice) spontaneously arose from rotting matter that when Sir Thomas Browne published his contradictory theory in 1646, "Enquiries into Very many Received Tenets, and Commonly Presumed Truths," he was universally mocked.

His contemporary, Alexander Ross scoffed: "To question spontaneous generation is to question reason, sense and experience itself."

It wasn't until 1861 that Louis Pasteur finally proved conclusively that the theory of spontaneous generation was complete rubbish, through a series of complex experiments.

The Solar System

When I was a kid, we studied the planets in school - and there were nine of them.

Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto.

Today, kids are being taught that there are eight planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

So what happened? Did one go missing?

Far from it - in fact, scientists discovered another four planets in the last five years, or so. Ceres, Haumea, Makemake, and Eris. But they're small planets - roughly the size of the 'ninth planet' Pluto, so scientists reclassified them all as 'dwarf planets.'

It's another example of how established fact gets superseded by a different established fact. Knowledge isn't black or white (like some Creationists believe) but a constantly moving roller-coaster ride where nothing is to be taken for granted.

Creationism

Just like Spontaneous Generation and the nine-planet Solar System, the idea of Biblical creation is also a theory that's been discredited by further scientific discoveries - the age of the Earth and fossils tracing the evolution of life on this planet.

Does that mean that our current theory is infallible? No, of course not. But the fact that the modern theory isn't infallible doesn't give the discredited theory any sudden legitimacy.

It's like one of the other widely discredited theories of our time - The Flat Earth.

The Flat Earth

It's a popular myth that people believed the Earth to be flat right up until Columbus crossed the Atlantic and discovered the Americas. In fact, that was just a story popularised by Washington Irving's 1828 book "The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus."

The idea of a spherical Earth is as old as civilization itself. Pythagoras believed that heavenly bodies were spherical as far back as the 6th Century BC. Eratosthenes of Cyrene calculated the Earth's spherical circumference in 240 BC.

In fact, even Biblical scholars from the early Middle Ages believed that the Earth was a sphere, contrary to popular belief.

When Bishop Vergilius of Salzburg was persecuted by Pope Zachary for his theory of a spherical Earth, the shape of the planet wasn't the origin of the heresy - it was actually his suggestion that other men existed beneath the Earth who weren't descended from Adam (and therefore were free of Original Sin.)

Observational evidence had always discredited 'Flat Earth Theory' - but that didn't stop people believing in it. In fact, an organisation called the Flat Earth Society still promotes their belief in a 'flat earth' today.

They have, astonishingly, thousands of members (and, unsurprisingly, strong historical links with a fundamentalist "Christian Catholic Apostolic Church," which later gave birth to the pentecostal movement. )

The BBC recently ran an article about how many 'flat-Earthers' still stick by their beliefs today.

New Earth Creationists and Flat Earthers

Perhaps a more politically correct version of my New Earth Creationists/Holocaust Deniers article would have been to compare them to modern Flat Earthers.

They're both preposterous, discredited beliefs - but unlike Holocaust Denial, they don't really do anybody harm if dumb people want to stick with them.

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.

How old is the Earth?

Some Christians believe the world is about 6,000 years old, in accordance with the creation doctrine outlined in the Bible.

These people are wrong.

The world is actually about four and a half billion years old.

Why do I believe this?

Well, I'm not scientist - but if I go to a museum, I can see rocks that are 3.9 billion years old. Some of these rocks contain minerals that are up to 4.2 billion years old.

If the Earth consists of rocks that are over four billion years old, the Earth itself must be at least that old.

But how do we know how old these rocks are?

Through a system called 'radiometric dating.'

Although the science of radiometric dating is very complicated, the concept of it isn't. It's based around measuring how much the radioactive isotopes in the object being dated have decayed.

The principle's much like a candle: Take a ten inch high candle made of wax. If you light that candle and leave it for an hour, it will burn one inch of wax in that time.

Therefore, if you opened a door and found and same type of candle burning, but seven inches of it were melted, you'd know that it had been burning for seven hours.

With radiometric dating, you take a rock and measure how much of the radioactive isotope within it has decayed. Based on the rate that type of radioactive isotope normally decays, you can work out the approximate age of the rock based on the result.

Scientists have found minerals on the Earth that they can prove, conclusively, are 4.2 billion years old. Therefore, the world is at least that old.

B-b-but....?

Some Christians argue that the world is not four and a half billion years old. It's actually six thousand years old, like the Bible said.

They have two common theories to 'support' this:

1: Radiometric dating is inaccurate. Since the science doesn't support their belief, the science must be wrong. This is a fine theory, except it's not true and isn't based on any factual evidence whatsoever. Just because you don't like something doesn't mean you can make it 'not true' by refusing to accept it.

Radiometric dating is just as real and observable as the wax candle I mentioned. We know that this hypothetical candle burns down one inch in one hour. Therefore, if it had burnt down seven inches, it must have been lit seven hours earlier. If you can explain how that candle could have burnt any faster (yet keep your answer within the boundaries of scripture) you might have a shot at convincing me about radiometric dating.

2: God created the Earth 'as is.' Some Christians argue that God did create the world six thousand years ago - except he created it to appear as if it was four and a half billion years old. That's a fine theory too, except it trips up.

First off, if God exists, WHY did he make the world appear older than it was?

Secondly, if God had the power to create an 'already old' world six thousand years ago, how do we know he didn't create the world (and all our memories) five seconds ago? Like the best irrational theories, this one can be neither proven nor disproved - but ultimately belongs more in the realms of philosophy than science.

Conclusion

The only rational conclusion, based on the evidence, is that the world has to be at least over four billion years old.