A Scientific Creation Story (Try Not To Laugh!)

From Michael Shermer's Why Darwin Matters


TO THE CITIZENS OF KANSAS (along with those from Ohio, Georgia, Michigan, and a dozen other states contemplating the teaching of “Intelligent Design” creationism as a “balance” to the theory of evolution in public school science classes), I present you with a small literary sampling of how the opening chapters of Genesis will have to be revised to accommodate modern scientific theories and data. I call it Genesis Revisited.

In the beginning — specifically on October 23, 4004 B.C., at noon — out of quantum foam fluctuation God created the Big Bang. The bang was followed by cosmological inflation. God saw that the Big Bang was very big, too big for creatures that could worship him, so He created the earth. And darkness was upon the face of the deep, so He commanded hydrogen atoms (which He created out of Quarks and other subatomic goodies) to fuse and become helium atoms and in the process release energy in the form of light. And the light maker he called the sun, and the process He called fusion. And He saw the light was good because now He could see what he was doing. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

And God said, Let there be lots of fusion light makers in the sky. Some of these fusion makers appear to be more than 4,004 light years from Earth. In fact, some of the fusion makers He grouped into collections He called galaxies, and these appeared to be millions and even billions of light years from Earth, so He created “tired light” — light that slows down through space — so that the 4004 B.C. creation myth might be preserved. And created He many wondrous splendors, including Red Giants, White Dwarfs, Quasars, Pulsars, Nova and Supernova, Worm Holes, and even Black Holes out of which nothing can escape. But since God cannot be constrained by nothing (can God make a planet so big that he could not lift it?), He created Hawking radiation through which information can escape from Black Holes. This made God even more tired than tired light, and the evening and the morning were the second day.

And God said, Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together unto one place, and let the continents drift apart by plate tectonics. He decreed sea floor spreading would create zones of emergence, and He caused subduction zones to build mountains and cause earthquakes. In weak points in the crust God created volcanic islands, where the next day He would place organisms that were similar to but different from their relatives on the continents, so that still later created creatures called humans would mistake them for evolved descendants. And in the land God placed fossil fuels, natural gas, and other natural resources for humans to exploit, but not until after Day Six. And the evening and the morning were the third day.

And God saw that the land was lonely, so He created animals bearing their own kind, declaring Thou shalt not evolve into new species, and thy equilibrium shall not be punctuated. And God placed into the land’s strata, fossils that appeared older than 4004 B.C. And the sequence resembled descent with modification. And the evening and morning were the fourth day.

And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creatures that hath life, the fishes. And God created great whales whose skeletal structure and physiology were homologous with the land mammals he would create later that day. Since this caused confusion in the valley of the shadow of doubt God brought forth abundantly all creatures, great and small, declaring that microevolution was permitted, but not macroevolution. And God said, “Natura non facit saltum” — Nature shall not make leaps. And the evening and morning were the fifth day.

And God created the pongidids and hominids with 98 percent genetic similarity, naming two of them Adam and Eve, who were anatomically fully modern humans. In the book in which God explained how He did all this, in chapter one He said he created Adam and Eve together out of the dust at the same time, but in chapter two He said He created Adam first, then later created Eve out of one of Adam’s ribs. This caused further confusion in the valley of the shadow of doubt, so God created Bible scholars and theologians to argue the point.

And in the ground placed He in abundance teeth, jaws, skulls, and pelvises of transitional fossils from pre-Adamite creatures. One he chose as his special creation He named Lucy. And God realized this was confusing, so he created paleoanthropologists to sort it out. And just as He was finishing up the loose ends of the creation God realized that Adam’s immediate descendants who lived as farmers and herders would not understand inflationary cosmology, global general relativity, quantum mechanics, astrophysics, biochemistry, paleontology, population genetics, and evolutionary theory, so He created creation myths. But there were so many creation stories throughout the land that God realized this too was confusing, so he created anthropologists, folklorists, and mythologists to settle the issue.

By now the valley of the shadow of doubt was overrunneth with skepticism, so God became angry, so angry that God lost His temper and cursed the first humans, telling them to go forth and multiply (but not in those words). They took God literally and 6,000 years later there are six billion humans. And the evening and morning were the sixth day.

By now God was tired, so God said, “Thank me its Friday,” and He made the weekend. It was a good idea.

 

That's brilliant!

 

lol

 

If I'm not supposed to laugh, why post comedy?

 

Unfortunately according to the calculated age of the earth from biblical science, it was created before the invention of beer by the Sumerians. These are not the suds you're looking for.

 

If don't laugh means take it seriously then

I like the idea...but it is not executed with scientific rigor. Leave it to me to ruin a good joke

As far as coming to definite detail as much a reach as the original or not an improvement.

Technically this is not revising the book but commenting upon it, and much posited is in addendum.
In the book in which God explained how He did all this, in chapter one He said he created Adam and Eve together out of the dust at the same time, but in chapter two He said He created Adam first, then later created Eve out of one of Adam’s ribs. This caused further confusion in the valley of the shadow of doubt, so God created Bible scholars and theologians to argue the point.

How must this be included in a revision according to modern scientific theories and data, In the beginning — specifically on October 23, 4004 B.C., at noon? Emergence dates are proximate and change frequently as we follow the source of light and uncover evidence in the dust that can be dated such as stone tools.

A more likely rewrite at this stage probably wouldn't include the word god although it invokes some authority. Not including the fact that a scientific review of the story would probably begin with anthropology which may render physics and biology not the proper field for comparison.
In the beginning nothing was observable but there existed probability/potential.
Then potential emerged as probable and there was light which allowed for making observable distinctions...

To amplify absurdity multiplies it. To recognize absurdity dispels it.

 

We recognize absurdity better when it's multiplied; like using a lens.

 

I hate to spoil the punchline, but Intelligent Design and "Scientific Creationism" are two different things. Neither explicitly endorses the creation myth of Genesis, although "scientific creationism" comes close and has been declared by the U.S. Supreme Court to be a violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. Scientific Creationism came out of the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) founded by hydraulic engineer Henry Morris (he became a Hydraulic engineer to prove the Biblical flood. "Intelligent Design" is a far more sophisticated theory coming out of the Discovery Institute founded by retired University of California at Berkeley law professor Philip Johnson, and featuring among its stable of scientists Dr. Michael Behe, biochemist, and Dr. William Dembsky, mathematician and philosopher. Behe embraces a theory of evolution that accepts common descent of chimps and humans, but thinks it didn't happen by natural selection alone but had help from an intelligent Designer. Dembsky maintains that the "specified complexity" of biological development can only be explained by guidance by an Intelligent Designer, although he coyly suggests that Designer might be an extraterrestrial alien. One problem with teaching these theories as science is that neither has been involved in the enterprise of developing and testing empirically refutable hypotheses or publishing findings in scientific journals refereed by the general community of scientists. The focus of ID has been on critiquing of natural selection instead of promoting new scientific research. Both theories have come under attack from scientists such as Dr. Kenneth Miller and Dr. Francis Collins, both evolutionists and devout Christians who defend evolution by natural selection and believe that God doesn't intervene in the process. I'm with Miller and Collins. In 2006, Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano published an article by Professor Forenzo Facchini, evolutionay biologist at the University of Bologna, defending Darwins' theory as "the interpretative key of the history of life on earth and said ID was ideology, not science.

 

We'll just have to disagree on this point. Also, impressive name dropping. It really doesn't make any of this sound more plausible or respectable however. I'm more after the meat of ideas, not who proposed them.

 

So you're not interested in the fact that you satirize two different theories by conflating them and reducing both to biblical literalism? I can see why you don't want to be confused by the facts. It gets in the way of your sound bite. Read closely; you'll see that I was agreeing that scientific creationism and Intelligent design are both objectionable in public school science courses, but intelligent design is the more formidable opponent because it largely accepts much of the scientific case for human evolution while making criticisms of Darwinism that seem reasonable even to some scientists. I think it's useful in discussing ideas to cite the authors, especially when they represent important variants. You can then consult their ideas in context and learn something. I'm sure you're not interested in the fact that the two scientists I mentioned as challenging both creationism and ID are both devout Christians. That would really spoil your simple story line that religious folks are ignorant rubes. It was Kenneth Miller who was the star witness against Behe in the Dover School Board trial that defeated one of the most serious efforts to get ID into the schools. Complexity is the enemy of propaganda.

 

Read closely: We'll have to disagree that ID is sophisticated. It may have more bells and whistles than the more truly infantile variants, but it doesn't make a difference, because its rotten at the core.

 

The Sophists in ancient Greece were philosophers who were skilled in rhetoric and noted for their subtle and often specious arguments. I think the term suits Intelligent Design to a tea. Philip Johnson, the godfather of ID, was a Berkeley law professor who develops quite ingenious arguments to attack natural selection. Whatever you might think of the validity of Behe's "irreducible complexity" argument or Dembsky's "specified complexity" argument, they are accurately characterized as "sophisticated' in the sense of being "highly developed and complex". See http://www.macmillandictionary.com/dictionary/british/sophisticated
By calling ID sophisticated, I'm not calling it true, compelling or correct. In fact, the word conveys a kind of deviousness. But whatever it is, it is highly developed and ingenious, especially in comparison to creation science. rottenness per se doesn't speak to its sophistication.