Creationism for Kids

The point isn't to get sympathy. The point is to explain that when I was already feeling bad, and had some time on my hands, I decided to catch up on my reading. I knew I wouldn't be able to enjoy a good book, so I deliberately picked a bad book--namely, some creationist crap. As long as I was suffering anyway, I wanted to see what kinds of arguments the creationists are using in works for children.

From the selection of books in my personal library, I chose two that I thought would be a reasonable representation for the purposes of my reading. The first was a creationist--excuse me, intelligent design--comic book, that oddest of creatures, which as Dr. Eugenie C. Scott (Executive Director of the National Center for Science Education) once remarked is the only type of comic book with footnotes. The one I happen to have in my library is called What's Darwin Got to Do With It?: A Friendly Conversation About Evolution, by Robert C. Newman and John L. Wiester. The other, a book resembling a children's textbook, is called It Couldn't Just Happen: Fascinating Facts About God's World by Lawrence O. Richards. Let's turn first to the comic book.

My contention is that these books are not only laced with errors, but that they are inherently dangerous to science education. Sure, the comic book is a funny little story about a creationist who challenges a dogmatic (yet somewhat likable) professor. How could such a cute little story possibly be dangerous? Well, the story isn't dangerous per se. But the message it sends to children who read it could be devastating.

The first concern that rears its ugly head early on is the character of the professor. He's a likable old fart, to be sure. But he's a clueless old fart who can't seem to get past the creationist arguments. That's very much the point of the book, but it worries me. Perhaps I'm just reading too much into this…but is it not misleading to tell children that professors are dogmatic and can't respond to criticism? Incidentally, the professor in this comic book reminds me somewhat of the creationist (err…design theorist) Michael Behe--my impression of Mr. Behe (from what I've seen and heard of him) is that he seems like a nice enough, well intentioned fellow, who just can't seem to get his facts right. That's not to be taken as a defense of Behe's work, however. His work on "intelligent design" is very dangerous indeed.

But that's not my most important concern. What worries me are the "factual" arguments. One that struck me as particularly nasty is the brief discussion of the "irreducible complexity" of the bacterial flagellum, that old favorite in intelligent design. They even used the mousetrap analogy (all the parts of the mousetrap have to be in place or it can't work), which as far as I'm aware is a popular analogy originally proposed by Michael Behe, probably in his book, Darwin's Black Box.

Here's my concern about that. If a creationist mentions something like that to a scientist, he may be able to answer it. If they mention it to me, I'll be able to research it and get back to them. But children are impressionable. This book is telling the children who read it that the flagellum is irreducibly complex (and thus, that it couldn't have evolved through the process of mutation and natural selection). The argument is presented very well. If I were a child, I would fall for it in a minute because it's presented in terms just scientific-sounding enough to make it very convincing.

Is a child, who is reading a comic book for insights into the creation/evolution controversy (which I hasten to point out is only a popular perception controversy, not a scientific one), really going to turn to the scientific literature for all the info on how the flagellum may have evolved?

Though I won't go into it here, there are several explanations for the evolution of the flagellum. Creationists don't want to talk about that because it weakens their argument to the point that they no longer have one.

The book also makes certain points that are offensive to anyone with a decent understanding of science. For instance, when the professor, preparing for their debate, makes a rule that science cannot include un-testable supernatural entities or explanations, the other character accuses him of trying to outlaw any point of view other than his own. Of course, that's not how science works. Science is only concerned with natural explanations for natural phenomena. In other words, if we have no way of studying it or testing it or observing it--or even knowing if it exists!--we can't call it science. That's a fair rule, and has been a part of the scientific process for many years. For a book that's supposed to be an educational tool, do we really want these sorts of word games?

In the story, it does work out, because they finally settle on rules such as "stick to the evidence" and "use the explanation that best fits with the evidence." Those are, of course, very proper scientific positions to take. The problem is that creationists have to lie, twist the truth, and play word games to have any argument at all--because the evidence isn't on their side.

And speaking of word games, this book uses some very interesting word choices. For instance, defining both evolution and creationism as a "belief." Well, that doesn't really work, does it? Belief is interpreted by different people in different ways, but there can be no doubt that, for many people, it implies a blind faith. That definition only applies to one of these conflicting ideas, and I'll bet we can all guess which one.

But the point is, the creationists need to turn evolution into a religion rather than a science. They're not all completely stupid. They realize that if they're ever going to hope to win, they need either to prove that evolution is a religion, or that creationism is a science. Neither is true, but we need to be careful what we let them get away with, or we're going to have lots and lots of confused children turning into confused and dangerous adults.

Other suspicious definitions include requiring our poor professor to speak of "Darwinism" instead of "evolution." I've noticed that creationists will find it easier to attack evolution if they can simply attribute it to a guess that Darwin invented a long time ago, rather than the truth, which is that Darwin presented an imperfect but very well formed theory which has been refined over the many years since he proposed it.

Then a distinction is made between micro- and macro- evolution. A distinction that really doesn't exist. All evolution is "micro," within a single generation. But apply that "micro" evolution to a line of ancestry stretching back millions of years, and you get "macro." So-called macro-evolution is simply the accumulated changes of micro-evolution, collected over a longer period of time. Someone once asked me why, then, creationists try to make this distinction, and the answer is that we can observe evolution all around us. The changes are small, but they're there. The creationist, then, is stuck trying to explain why an observed theory doesn't work, and their answer is that there are two different types of evolution.

And the funniest part of all is that they try to make a distinction between creationism and intelligent design. Of course they do--it's unconstitutional to teach creationism in schools (and everyone knows that creationists are generally out of their minds). So they define creationism as I would define "young earth creationism": the belief that the earth is less than 10,000 years old, and was created in six calendar days. That is creationism, but it's not the only creationism. There are also Hindu creation myths, which this definition doesn't account for. They then define intelligent design as the belief that there was a purposeful intelligent creator (guess who). They don't point out that just about every "design theorist" is a young earth creationist. They're trying to sneak their religious stuff right past us. Interestingly enough, at one point in the comic book, the professor calls his opponent on it: "I think you're trying to sneak God into this discussion," he said after hearing about the so-called intelligent designer. The reply? Come on, you can guess: "Where? How?"

Alright, creationists--I mean, design theorists--I'll play your game. You're actually right about one small detail. There are a group of people who agree with you. They're called the Raëlians, and they believe in intelligent design, but don't think it was some god. Nope. To them, it was space aliens. So, if you're happy with the idea that intelligent design is equally valid with "space aliens" as it is with "god," then we're cool, and you've just lost even more credibility. Otherwise, fess up to what you really are and then leave us alone!

Personally, I think the comic book format is the best idea the creationists have ever had. It's a great way to get kids interested in their side of the story, without bothering to actually include little things like facts. Dangerous indeed.

Now let's go ahead and turn to the other book. This one is intended to be a more serious lesson for children. It's more dangerous than the comic book format in some ways, and less dangerous in many others. It's more dangerous because kids expect to find facts in "real" science books, and less dangerous because it's probably less interesting to children than the comic book format.

The careful blending of actual facts with Biblical lies is cleverly achieved in this book, but certainly not well masked. It doesn't need to be. It never claims to be anything other than a religious based science text. Still, we should examine a few examples.

On one page, the discussion is about the extinction of the dinosaurs. The author properly presents one of the most popular theories--that an asteroid killed the dinosaurs, as suggested by Luis Alvarez--and provides a very basic introduction to the evidence for that theory (namely, the iridium layer). However, it's also presented with an obvious bias, suggesting that any theory regarding a cataclysmic event has been shunned by science. In reality, this is not the case. Noah's Flood is shunned by science because there's no science to support it, but other great catastrophes are accepted by most scientists.

Brief mention of the "Nemesis theory" is given, to account for periodic mass extinctions (roughly every twenty-six million years), although it is falsely attributed to Raup and Sepkoski. Actually, it was Richard Muller who proposed the Nemesis theory, after reading some of Raup and Sepkoski's work. The author does properly explain that this is a "fringe" theory. It's consistent with currently available facts, but not widely accepted and certainly not confirmed. It would probably be better to call it the "Nemesis hypothesis," as a matter of fact.

The reason Nemesis is entered into the discussion at all is to lend credibility to the author's statement that something beyond the natural processes scientists can observe today may indeed be responsible for the fossil and geologic record. Of course, the author's intent is that "God" will be that outside force. Really, there's no need to postulate a god hypothesis at this point. We can indeed observe impacts on the earth, and the effects thereof. Just because it isn't "business as usual" doesn't mean it's beyond science.

Of course, the author is unable to mask his intent for long. Just a couple of pages later, he writes: "That Flood undoubtedly occurred. What is uncertain is just what effect the Flood had on Earth's crust." He's talking about the Noah's global flood from Genesis. The book continues in a downward spiral from there, including, in the next chapter, the assertion that scientists ignore mysteries, and claims that radiometric dating is unreliable. The author doesn't come right out and say how old he thinks the world is, but if he's trying to debunk scientific dating methods, I'm guessing it's in the range of thousands of years, rather than billions of years.

The book includes a fairly (though not completely) accurate description of how science works, which rather impressed me as I read it. Then it proceeded to collapse when the author tried (and failed) to properly define the word "theory" in a scientific context. He defined it as "a belief."

He correctly identifies a problem that occurs when a scientist becomes overly attached to a "pet theory," and continues to defend it even in the face of contrary evidence. He tries to compare this to evolution, however, when of course it's far more applicable to creationism.

The author at one point confuses evolution and abiogenesis--two unique theories that go hand in hand, but do not necessarily depend upon on another. If one fails, the other is left standing. However, the author also oversteps his bounds by trying to refute abiogenesis, and of course utterly failing to do so. He even suggests that the fossil record is evidence in favor of creationism! No educated person could take this seriously. However, to a child, his arguments will likely seem to be valid. Beginning to see why I say these books are dangerous?

We have a serious problem, here. Even with evidence and scientific knowledge on our side, the creationists have a foothold in popular culture. Though only somewhere between one third and one half of the American population are creationists, the number of Christians is astronomical--by most polls, somewhere between eighty and ninety percent! They have massive numbers, and tons of money. And they know how to get children on their side. Truly this is a worthy adversary.

Might I propose that what we need is stronger science education outside of the schools? Obviously, that's where the creationists are working. As long as we can keep them out of public schools (which we seem to be doing a decent job of right now) then the solution may be in a counterattack mimicking their own strategy. I think we need children's books and comic books with real science in them. If presented properly, modern science is not only more true than religious doctrine, it is also more fulfilling and more interesting. With a few good authors working on children's books, we may have some hope of winning back the minds of our nation's youth.

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