Why do Creationists not accept Evolution and vice-versa?

Answer 1

The notion that Creationists cannot accept Evolution and vice-versa is not as great an issue as some would have us believe. There are a few, the Young Earth Creationists and perhaps a small group of zealous fundamentalists, who have a problem with Evolution. Let's examine the two camps and see what they have to say, and then look at some braying instigators to uncover their intent.

Creation is the idea that God is the force behind abiogenesis. Man cannot demonstrate the mechanism wherein life began. The theory of biogenesis, that life only comes from life, represents limited understanding. Man, though he can procreate, cannot create life, cannot animate nonliving material. God doesn't have this problem. He can do anything! And He did. Just as is taught. Can science prove that God didn't do it? Didn't create us? No, it can't. Science stands mute before the idea. Creationists don't really have to "defend" God in this. Besides, they have the trump card! Science is powerless in the face of a supernatural event. Science and (by and large) its practitioners, as well as most of its followers and its users, don't really have a problem with Creation. Why should they? Evolution and Creation are largely compatible. Certainly they are not mutually exclusive.

Evolution, particularly as it is represented by Modern Evolutionary Synthesis (MES), is fact. MES is the "state of the art" construct that explains the progression of life on earth. The idea that there is a veritable mountain of facts, a plethora of hard data, that support MES should come as no surprise. In fact, the data wasn't collected to support the idea but vice-versa. Consider that a hill of facts was just so much puzzling data until some thinking people, notably Darwin, offered an explanation for the appearance of things. The tree of life was a brilliant conceptual stroke. After the foundations were laid, later evolutionary developers continued to sketch out the limbs and branches of the tree, filling in gaps as new information became available. (Any suggestions that Evolutionists are in any way having trouble supporting their ideas demonstrates a frightening lack of understanding on the subject. Remember that the evidence was already in place. Evolution is the name given to the process explaining what is already laid out. Suggestion to the non-believer in Evolution: face the music. Or, perhaps, answer to God as to why what is arguably His finest gift, the mind of man, was "switched off" when it needed to be fully applied. It's a "You give them eyes and they cannot see" kind of thing....) Science and MES don't have a problem with Creation and Creationists. God initiated the chain of life. It doesn't conflict with existing data, with existing facts. No problem.

The Young Earth Creationists and some zealots are the ones making all the noise. They tend to take The Bible literally. Surprising since there are obvious contradictions in Genesis. (The Qur'an, at least, offers a simple explanation for creation. Allah said, "Be." And it was. No details to slice and dice, or to fight over. The world slipped from His hand. End of story. On to other things.) The panorama of past life and the undeniable truth regarding its lengthy tenure here are ignored by these few cultists. Why? Who knows? Can illogic be explained? But there is method to their madness. It takes the form of Intelligent Design (ID). ID is their construct. It is a deceitful attempt to lay groundwork for the 'scientific' ideation of an "Intelligent Designer" behind the design itself. The Intelligent Designer (though He is unspecified) is God. ID is purely a scion of theological ideology. It's Bible teaching. But the smoke screen was put up so that the constraints keeping church and state separate as set down in the U.S. Constitution could be sidestepped, the objective being to get ID presented in public schools. And the zealous fundamentalists proved that they would lie in support of the deceit they intended to perpetrate on the people. Shame on them. There is an additional factor. Many Christians, though they are not Young Earth supporters, are actually subscribers to Evolution as presented in MES. And they, too, want ID taught in public school. This creates conflict. These folks, and there are a number of them, subscribe to ID to bring God into the classroom, and they seem to turn a blind eye to the lies and deceit practiced by those few Christian zealots to achieve this end. Shame on them. Does God need or even want His message leveraged by lies and deceit? Isn't there another individual whose stock and trade is lies and deceit? Yes, there is. He is the head of the third of the host who fell. Who are these zealots (and any Christians who, tho' they don't see a problem with MES, condone lies and deceit to promote the Bible) actually serving with their prevarication, their deviousness and fraud? Not God. That is the heart of the "problem" with the "opposition" between Creationism and Evolution. It isn't a battle of "scientific ideas" so much as an "issue" created and supported by those scurrilous fundamentalists to achieve a social and political agenda. That and the (O! so sad!) fact that some good God-fearing Believers were deceived by the methods of the radicals when they (the "good Christians") embraced the notion that ID could get the Bible into public schools.

Creationists and Evolutionists aren't that far apart. The vast majority of one camp is a member of the other. The clubs are not mutually exclusive, as some would have us believe. It's just that radical and deceitful minority that wants to create an issue. And they drag some good Christians down with them when the latter support the lies and the deception perpetrated (in His name) by the former.

As an aside, but on a related issue, the scientific community has, by and large, chosen to turn their backs on ID. Not because it isn't true science (which it clearly isn't), but because they feel that if they enter into debate with the myopic and politically motivated pseudo-intellectuals pushing it, they will give credibility to ID and the associated ideas (like irreducible complexity) that it offers. This is a mistake by scientists. Proponents of ID need to be "reeled back in" and "schooled" in what real science is and what it shows so conclusively about the history of the earth and the life on it. You are reading the first installment of the lesson. Here's one voice saying that ID is theory. A good theory. But it is no more supportable by science than the idea that intelligent aliens with advanced technology were the ones who animated mud on earth to start life. And, as it is just another hanging thought from the perspective of what can be proved by scientific method, it is philosophy. It belongs in a philosophy class. Oh, and because it was so clearly demonstrated that ID cannot uncouple itself from its theological beginnings, that philosophy class will have to be held somewhere other than in a public school.

[The saddest tale in modern Christian debate is unfolding. It is a battle of politics and ideologies pitting Christian against Christian. In a time when it is more important than ever for Christians to unite and stand together against those violently dangerous and radical ideologists who are turning the world into a killing ground, they want to quarrel among themselves. And, because the majority of the people in this country identify themselves as Christians (making America "mostly" Christian), we are becoming our own worst enemy. We are becoming just like those we struggle against, becoming them.] Answer Because if there's no Creation, there's no fall of man[kind]." If there's no "Fall" (sin), then there's no need for a "Savior." If there's no need for a Savior, then there's no need for an intermediary (Priests, Pastors, Immams, Rabbis, etc.). If there's no intermediaries, then there will be no followers. If there are no followers, then there will be no Thithes. If there are no tithings, then there are no .........

Answer

One problem Evolutionists have with creationism is that it is possible to test the theory of evolution. When such tests are carried out, they show that they achieved the result predicted by evolutionary theory.

On a basic level, evolution theorises that if a population is subjected to an outside influence that favours the survival of some members of that population over others, eventually all that will remain in the population is those who survived.

This seems to be a self evident truth.

If you remove from a field of sheep all the sheep who have black wool, then all that will be left is white sheep. Some new sheep will be borne with black wool. Remove them too.

If you do this every year, eventually there will be not black sheep borne. Look at the next field full of sheep you see. They are normally all white (or perhaps all black, the farmer removed the white ones). That's evolution. Answer this is a loaded question. evolution proponents don't accept creationism on the basis of evidence, given that creationism has none.

creationists not only reject evolution, but astronomy, cosmology, geology, nuclear physics, and critical thinking... on the basis of faith alone.

Answer 2

Creationists do not accept evolution While evolution and religion are not incompatible, many creationists consider evolution and creationism to be incompatible. Since many creationists beleive literally in the biblical account, which means that the earth is only a few thousand years old, it is incompatible to believe scientific evidence that shows the earth to be billions of years old.

Evolutionists do not accept the biblical account of creation

Geologists have conclusively proven that the earth is approximately 4.5 billion years old. That fact alone makes the biblical account invalid. But they have also shown that species have evolved over this span of time from single-celled creatures to the advanced species we see today. Paleoanthropologists have built up evidence of the evolution of man. No theology that claims to be incompatible with these facts could be accepted by the scientists.

For more information on these opposing views, please visit: http://christianity.answers.com/theology/the-story-of-creation

Answer 3

Here are some arguments for Creation or against Evolution.

These point to Divine Creation:

• The staggering complexity of every organ and every cell in the human body.
  
• The vastness of our minds and emotions.
  
• The fact that the universe has definite design, order, and arrangement which cannot be sufficiently explained outside a theistic worldview. (This is how Abraham, without benefit of teachers, came to reject the chaotic world-view of idolatry and the possibility of atheism.)
  
• The laws of the universe seem to have been set in such a way that stars, planets and life can exist. Many constants of nature appear to be finely tuned for this, and the odds against this happening by chance are astronomical.
  

See: More detailed evidence of Creation

Also:

1) The glaring lack of transitional fossils has been noted by the evolutionists themselves, such as this statement from the famous paleontologist and evolutionist George G. Simpson; quote: "The regular lack of transitional fossils is not confined to primates alone, but is an almost universal phenomenon."
"The lack of transitional series cannot be explained as being due to the scarcity of material. The deficiencies are real; they will never be filled" (Nilsson, N. Heribert).
"To the unprejudiced, the fossil record of plants is in favor of special creation" (Corner, E.J.H., Contemporary Botanical Thought).
2) Instances of falsifying of evidence by evolutionists, such as Haeckel's drawings, Archaeoraptor, the Cardiff "specimen," and Piltdown Man.
"Haeckel exaggerated the similarities [between embryos of different species] by idealizations and omissions, in a procedure that can only be called fraudulent. His drawings never fooled embryologists, who recognized his fudgings right from the start. The drawings, despite their noted inaccuracies, entered into the standard student textbooks of biology. Once ensconced in textbooks, misinformation becomes cocooned and effectively permanent, because textbooks copy from previous texts. We do, I think, have the right to be both astonished and ashamed by the century of mindless recycling that has led to the persistence of these drawings in a large number, if not a majority, of modern textbooks (Stephen Gould).
Dr. Jonathan Wells published a book in 2002 entitled Icons of Evolution. Dr. Wells states that the book shows that "the best-known 'evidences' for Darwin's theory have been exaggerated, distorted or even faked."

3) Creationists see the "survival of the fittest" and the dating of rock layers by fossils as being perfect tautologies.

4) The fact that some qualified, educated, normal scientists do not believe in evolution. Or at least question it, even if they still preach evolution: "Nine-tenths of the talk of evolutionists is sheer nonsense, not founded on observation and wholly unsupported by facts. This museum is full of proofs of the utter falsity of their views. In all this great museum, there is not a particle of evidence of the transmutation of species" (Dr. Etheridge, Paleontologist of the British Museum).
"To postulate that the development and survival of the fittest is entirely a consequence of chance mutations seems to me a hypothesis based on no evidence and irreconcilable with the facts. It amazes me that this is swallowed so uncritically and readily, and for such a long time, by so many scientists without murmur of protest" (Sir Ernest Chain, Nobel Prize winner).

5) The fact that there is a shared, worldwide tradition among every ancient society that the world was created.

6) Evolving of new organs or species has not been witnessed during known history.

7) Mutations are harmful, not beneficial. One of the tasks of DNA and of long-term breeding is to avoid or repair any changes brought about by mutations. This means that our genetic apparatus is programmed to resist change.

8) Mutations, even if beneficial, do not create new organs.

9) The fact that a great number of fossils have been found in the "wrong" rock-layers according to what evolutionary Paleontology would require.

10) The fact that you need DNA to make DNA. No genetic code can be demonstrated to have arisen by chance, together with the ability to read that code and carry out its instructions. Information does not arise spontaneously; and there is an incredible amount of information in even the tiniest cell.
"A living cell is so awesomely complex that its interdependent components stagger the imagination and defy evolutionary explanations" (Michael Denton, author).
"The astounding structural complexity of a cell" (U.S. National Library of Medicine).
Concerning a single structure within a cell: "Without the motor protein, the microtubules don't slide and the cilium simply stands rigid. Without nexin, the tubules will slide against each other until they completely move past each other and the cilium disintegrates. Without the tubulin, there are no microtubules and no motion. The cilium is irreducibly complex. Like a mousetrap, it has all the properties of design and none of the properties of natural selection" (Michael Behe, prof. of biophysics).

11) The problem of the impossibility of abiogenesis in general. "The concept of abiogenesis is not science. It's fantasy" (J.L. Wile, Ph.D.).

12) The fact that evolution was once used as support for the belief that Blacks (or others) are less than highly-evolved humans. "Darwin was also convinced that the Europeans were evolutionarily more advanced than the black races" (Steven Rose, author). He also "reasoned that males are more evolutionarily advanced than females" (B. Kevics, author).

13. The first and second laws of thermodynamics point clearly to a Creator, since things undergo entropy rather than get more orderly over time.

14. "Radiometric techniques may not be the absolute dating methods that they are claimed to be. Age-estimates on a given geological stratum by different radiometric methods are often very different. There is no absolutely reliable long-term radiological clock. The uncertainties inherent in radiometric dating are disturbing to geologists and evolutionists." William D. Stansfield, Ph.D., Instructor of Biology, California Polytechnic State University.

15. "Even total rock systems may be open during metamorphism and may have their isotopic systems changed, making it impossible to determine their geologic age." Prof. Gunter Faure (Department of Geology, The Ohio State University, Columbus.)

16 a). At current rates of erosion the amount of sea-floor sediments actually found do not support a "billions of years" age for the Earth.
b) The amount of Sodium Chloride in the sea, also, is a small fraction of what the "old Earth" theory would postulate.
c) The Earth's magnetic field is decaying too fast to extrapolate a long age for the Earth.
d) The rate of accumulation of Moon-dust has been measured; and the amount of dust on the Moon was found to be vastly less than what scientists had predicted before the Moon-landings.
e) Helium is generated by radioactive elements as they decay. The escape of this helium into the atmosphere can be measured. According to the Evolutionary age of the Earth there should be much more helium in the atmosphere, instead of the 0.05% that is actually there.Also see:

God's wisdom seen in His creations

More about God's wisdom

Dissent against Darwin

The facts

Discovering Creation

Understanding Creation