Edinburgh Professor Believes In Teaching Creationism

According to a recent Guardian poll a quarter of UK teachers believe that creationism is should be taught. Says the paper:

The Ipsos/Mori poll of 923 primary and secondary teachers found that 29% of science specialists agreed with the statement: "Alongside the theory of evolution and the Big Bang theory, creationism should be TAUGHT in science lessons.

Anyone with a scientific mind should be able to dismiss creationism and intelligent design as dumb without much difficulty, but demonstrating how far the reach of belief can distort the view of otherwise learned and intelligent people, we need look no further than Thomas Crowley, professor of geosciences at the University of Edinburgh.

Professor Crowley has, reports the paper, taught evolution in North America where fundamentalism is rife and young earth creationism is accepted almost as matter of fact. It doesn't state his credentials - so I can't say that he is (or is not) qualified to teach biological sciences, but nevertheless he feels there is an argument for creation. Writing in the Guardian, here, he says:

"... it [science] cannot in fact explain how 'something' (the energy of the universe compressed into a volume the size of a golf ball) arose from nothing beforehand."

This is entirely true - science has ideas, but no proof of anything prior Big Bang. The professor then disconnects the logical parts of his brain and by adding:

"This yawning logical gap leaves open the possibility that something else may be going on. The history of life is consistent with Darwinian evolution, although life's increasing complexity - including the very recent appearance of modern man - is also consistent with (but not proof of) the possibility of some special creative agent existing."

and, futher:

"It [intelligent design] is embedded in any Christian religion that continues to treat the promise of a messiah, the incarnation and the resurrection as historical fact (the reasoning being that, if God is responsible for creating the big bang, then the incarnation and resurrection would be child's play by comparison)."

This is the old and rather jaded "god of the gaps" argument: which goes, "you can't explain something so God did it."

He continues along a similar path by commenting:

"And it is essential for any teacher to point out that, even if 'soft [old earth] creationism' and 'intelligent design' are true, they cannot be considered science until they make predictions that can be falsified."

But surely this is a case of not just having your cake and eating it, but not even paying for the cake in the first place. If Intelligent Design (which is creationism wrapped in fancy language and complex straw man arguments) is true then we should be able to prove it.

We can show evolution to be true. On the microscopic scale it happens so rapidly that bacteria and other organisms are out-evolving the treatments we devise to protect against them. On a larger scale, things are much slower so we have to look to the fossil record - which is incomplete by its very nature. In some ways, we're lucky to have fossils at all - we burn a lot of fossil goo in our cars every day on the way to work!

The Christian faith and promises that Professor Crowley alludes to were developed from stories thousands of years old at a time when science was something of the future. Even Issac Newton, himself a great scientist, thought that God did everything and his job was just to unravel it all.

Yet there is no tangiable evidence of the supernatural anywhere. The further we walk down the path of enlightenment (scientific enlightenment that is) the deeper our understanding becomes and the more bleak things appear.

Why are we here? We just are.
What is my purpose in life? Life has no purpose - it's just blindly walking into the future.

Some of us, and I assume from what he writes, Professor Crowley is one of them, need to believe there is a higher purpose. This is what drives and ultimately probably buffers them from descent into mental illness. They cling on to the promise of something greater than they are in the hope of eternal life.

The rest of us accept our lot and get on with it. One of us is going to be wrong, but only one is in for a shock.

Professor Crowley can be reached here: thomas.crowley@ed.ac.uk