Why do people support creationism when there is no factual basis for the claims made?

Answer 1

Some would say that people support creationism because of their faith. Their religion teaches the divine origin of man, and they believe it. That seems to be the crux of the argument by the creationists for creationism. "God did it. I believe it. Case closed."
Some creationists decry the work of scientists who have built and continue to build more and more links in the chain of evolutionary development. There is so much evidence for the theory of evolution. What is there for the creationist to hold up in the light of reason? It can get dicey.
Certainly there is a huge supply of scientific evidence for evolution. Science supports evolution far and away more strongly than it does creation. There is absolutely no scientific evidence for creation. None. Certainly science can't prove that God did not create man. But no one can prove by any testable means that He did. Arguments against evolution do not hold water scientifically. The earth is a very, very old ball of rock, and time can do things to the earth and life on it that are almost beyond the comprehension of men. Creation science is an oxymoron, and is almost a joke to the vast majority of the scientific community. But what of Creationism?

AnswerPeople certainly have different points of view on this subject. However to assert that there is no factual basis for the claims made would indicate a rejection of a large proportion of scientific fact, much of which has been produced by evolutionists.

Three major laws of science, with no known exceptions provide evidence which supports creationism and presents major difficulties for evolution. These are the Law of Biogenesis and the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics. Much evidence also points towards the earth and universe being young and not old as is claimed. Further to this, modern chemistry, specifically biochemistry as well as genetics is firmly against evolution.

Thus although faith is not something to fear, the facts of 'the world that is' strongly point towards creation and not evolution as being the best explanation to account for the evidence, although many reject it on philosophical grounds.

Answer
The answer to the question that was asked is this: A person who believes in creationism probably does so by faith.
And isn't that what religion is all about? Faith?

Answer
It should also be noted that certain arguments exist attempting to divorce evolution from science. Examples include the belief that evolution violates the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics (which defines entropy) and the Law of Biogenesis (modern organisms come from other organisms). These arguments are based in a fundamental misunderstanding of the applied laws. For example, entropy is commonly thought of as a measure of disorder in a system. Some creationists would argue that life itself defies entropy by being ordered. This, however, fails to acknowledge that a human concept of disorder is not the meaning of entropy, and that energy can be used to temporarily stay the effects of entropy (an action which in itself increases the entropy of the universe). This argument is further debunked by the known machinations of a living nerve cell, which maintains a concentration gradient at the expense of energy.

These misunderstandings, while little in and of themselves, may be used to steel the beliefs of whose whose faith already endorses a creationist philosophy.

AnswerIf you must completely remover faith from your analysis, then you must at least look at The Bible in this way: If Creation as depicted in the Bible occurred, then so did the events after it. I use the Flood of Noah as an example. Without having to enter faith into the equation, there is vast and substantial evidence of the flood. The fossil record shows us that either: 1. The Flood occurred, producing fossils, or 2. Evolution occurred, producing fossils.
If we accept #2, we must also accept that a "fossil" has to be millions of years old. If this is true, then why have man-made items been discovered in strata that are supposedly millions of years old? Also, the fossils that evolution states are millions of years old show that animals and plants have not changed in the slightest over these presumptive millions of years. Fossils depict the same animals and plants that are around today.

If we accept #1, we can attribute the formation of fossils (which by definition must be formed by rapid envelopment in sediment/tar/minerals/etc.) to a massive, worldwide flood. We can also explain why sea shells are found on the highest peaks in every mountain range in the world.


So from just analyzing the two cases, we can conclude the stronger case. If we conclude #2 is stronger, then we can also conclude the rest of the historical account contained within its source is correct, even without faith.

Answer 2

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

Answer 3

People support creationism in spite of the lack of evidence, by creating, in their own minds, reasons for believing in creationism. These ostensible can vary from imagining that only a deity can create the beauty or complexity of life, to attacks on scientific explanations for existence and long-disproved philosophical arguments. They support creationism because they fear that without creationism their belief in God would crumble.