The bible is not a book

In a debate in Skypeland, one creationist pounded away at a couple of us about our acceptance of the theory of evolution. When the other man made the mistake of calling the bible a book, the creationist became quite upset. He said the bible is not a book. He said the bible is the holy word, not a book. Ah, I see...Well, he really got us there with that zinger. How stupid of us to think that something that has pages and a cover and looks like a book, is actually a book.

The creationist started by talking about the Big Bang. I immediately stopped him and pointed out that the Big Bang is NOT part of evolution. He then became a bit flustered and claimed he had never said it was, although he just had (a common debating "tactic" he employed over and over; how honest). I also told him that the creation of life was also not part of evolution. He claimed he had never said it was, although he had just said it (don't you just love people like this?).

He was a bit taken aback when I described gravity as a theory, and the difference between scientific theories and theories as described in everyday language. He was even more flummoxed to hear how gravity is going to probably be replaced by a new theory, and probably sooner than evolution. He did not like to hear that gravity was less certain as a scientific theory than evolution.

He did not understand the basics of creationism, which is always funny. He did not know the Ussher Chronology or the Omphalos hypothesis. I made sure to tell him that the Big Bang was a theory created by a Belgian Catholic Priest, Georges Lemaitre. Sometimes this rattles creationists a little, but other times they just chock it up to Catholics being evil / devil worshippers / idolators / nonChristian / atheists etc.

Eventually the conversation focused on why people felt they had to dictate to God how He made His creation, when we had evidence direct from Him of how He did it. The question was posed, "why would God make creation in a way that left evidence of creation processes which at odds with those described in the bible?" This creationist had no good answer to this of course, since there is no good answer.

I told him that 99.9% of all scientists in relevant fields accept evolution as the most reasonable theory for how the diversity of life that we observe came to be. He said this could not be true since 99.9% of all the scientists he knew did not. I asked him what kind of scientists he knew that did not accept evolution, and he said they were biologists and molecular biologists. I asked "where did you meet these scientists?" He said they are at the University of Kentucky (is this a surprise to anyone?) He asked for evidence that so many scientists subscribed to evolution and I tried to give it to him, including petition information and poll information as well as proclamation by scientific societies and other groups:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_of_support_for_evolution
but he did not want to hear it and cut me off frequently when I attempted to describe the information. He also wanted to quibble about whether the relevant figure was 99.9% or 99.85% or 99.92%, etc. Yes, the numbers after the decimal point are sure important, aren't they?

Finally, after a bit of probing, I found out that only about half of the scientists he knew were creationists and rejected evolution, and these were not biologists (and how many scientists does he know? two?) Ah, now it becomes clearer, doesnt it?...He also claimed that I had mislead him initially by not specifying what kind of scientist I was talking about. After I mentioned the word "paleontology", he dismissed all my statements, saying no creationist would ever enter that field anyway. He also said I had mislead him by not specifying that the scientists I was referring to were actually in fields relevant to evolution, and were not political scientists or computer scientists or engineers or mathematicians or engineers. Well, this is one way to get the upper hand in an argument I guess...

We talked about common descent (a term which he had never heard of before; interesting, since he had been talking about evolution and creationism for almost 20 years, he said), and he said there was now published evidence for 4 species which did not have DNA as their genetic basis. I said I would be extremely interested in hearing about them, since this would be the biggest discovery in biology in centuries. It would earn someone a Nobel Prize for sure. He dug and dug for it, but he did not find his references, as I was sure he would not. Something this big I would have heard of, for sure.

He was pretty peeved when I said there were many things which science does not have answers for, such as where the material for the Big Bang came from, or how life began. He was frantic to prove the superiority of creationism since science did not describe a purpose for man, and describe how man has to have a personal relationship with God. It was pointed out to him that you could have science and still have your religious or spiritual beliefs, like many do, and I think this bothered him. He had been spoonfed the nonsense about how science is akin to atheism and forces people to be atheists. We told him this was wrong, and perhaps he accepted this...

I made sure to state clearly what my biggest objection to the creationist movement is. That is, rejecting materialism and materialistic reasoning in favor of magic and miracles will destroy science. The Muslim world tried this already around the year 1050, when Al-Ghazali published his book "Incoherence of the Philosophers" which decreed that mathematics was satanic and forbidden, and scientific laws should be rejected, since they tied the hands of Allah, preventing him from doing miracles. Within a few short years, the society with the most advanced medicine, astronomy, mathematics, navigation, science and technology went into a scientific and technological Dark Age from which it has not emerged, even 1000 years later. He was pretty speechless at this point, since if there is one thing these fundamentalist Christians cannot stand, it is being compared to Muslims in any way. But if the shoe fits...

It is always amazing to me how people who are supposedly "experts" in creationism and the debate with evolution, do not know much about creationism, do not know much about evolution or science or anything related. I would think one would want to really know this stuff, if they were going to preach it...