Although this thread has been dormant for quite some time, and it was derailed before it became dormant; I have noticed that it is still one of the most popular. For lack of any obvious alternatives, I attribute this to the catchy title.
It does rather grab the imagination, I suppose. What single belief could unit so many disparate people? I would have to say it's the belief that truth is worth seeking and holding. Implicit in this belief is the principle that there is a truth not subject to being altered by mere imagination.
Having answered the title question, it seem proper that I get around to the original post, which departs from the catchy title question rather quickly.
I'm wondering if people could clarify here for me. If you classify yourself as a creationist and an anti-evolutionist, what does that essentially mean you believe?
This is a fairly unusual approach. I hope folks don't often up'n say "I am going to be a creationist; now I need to find out what I'm supposed to believe." That's textbook
putting the cart before the horse.
In every case I know, people have established what they believe first; then they have been classified according to a somewhat inadequate and inaccurate system of labels.
Do you believe that the earth is a few thousand (rather than a few billion) years old, that there was actually a global flood in which 2 of every species was saved by Noah, that everything was ceated by God as it is with no evolution occurring?
These aren't even viable candidates for "the backbone of creationist beliefs". Broadly defined, creationism consists of admitting the possibility that life was created. Evolutionists label anyone who openly argues that life could've been created a "creationist". Period.
If this is so, then how do you square these beliefs with what science says?
How does one square the observation that triangles have three sides with what geometry says?
How do you explain a young earth? Do you believe that radiometric dating, for example, is wrong somehow? If you believe in Noah and the flood, do you also believe, as some creationists appear to do, that the whole fossil record was laid down during the flood? To be honest I find it difficult to understand how these things are explained to people's satisfaction. Would anyone like to choose one or two creationist tenets and enlighten me? Please don't just give me links or videos to watch, I'd like to hear about what the creationists here honestly think.
None of that is directly concerned with creation; these are all age arguments.
I'll propose a kind of answer to this, and anyone who disagrees is welcome to say so.
Creationists' best arguments for creation are the "apparent design" in the natural world, and the Bible.
So we see that the age issue isn't directly involved, and cannot be the "backbone". I know there are quite a few creationists who do not accept the Bible. Those who do have little choice but to believe life was created.
Most anything else they say seems to attempt to explain why evolution is "wrong.," thus setting up a false dichotomy seeming to say that because one is wrong, the other must necessarily be right.
The founders of evolutionism set out to establish a belief system which was incompatible with the Bible. If they failed, how is that anyone else's fault?
However, the Bible's testimony is rendered unreliable by independent evidence;
False. The Bible has withstood many centuries of petty, pathetic slander, and stands firmly to this day. No man can count the scoffers who have been confounded in their attempts to gainsay the truth contained therein.
and the conjecture of a designer to explain the appearance of design is enormously contradicted by a vast weight of evidence from many different scientific fields.
Conjecture? All known designs of even trivial complexity are the work of intelligent designers. There are no exceptions. One has to quibble and equivocate over terms to even claim natural processes produce the even very simplest designs.
And there is
no known way for randomness to produce coded information, or even the language in which to do the coding.
So neither of the creationists' two best pieces of evidence amounts to anything. The appearance of design in nature is better explained by a natural process that results in the appearance of design -- a process we have abundant, independent evidence for.
This argument confesses that design is apparent in nature. Blindness is no longer an excuse.
Design exists. Scientific laws are founded upon universal observations, just like the universal observation that design is always the work of an intelligent designer. I do not know that this particular case has been recognized as a law of science, but it meets the standard of being universally observed without exception.
The burden of proof in this case falls squarely upon those who maintain that such designs have been produced without recourse to any intelligent designer whatsoever. It will not do to just make these claims; they need concrete evidence to back them up.
Richard Dawkins says he sees design, but it's "just an illusion". Well, if this is so, just as in the case of any other illusion, it needs to be proven. When magicians pull rabbits out of apparently empty hats, the trick is exposed by actually showing how the illusion was accomplished - not by making empty claims.
Until some hard evidence is presented, the claim that design is not the result of a designer is nothing but a statement of (dis)belief. Such an attitude is not just unscientific; it is antiscientific, for science is the systematic pursuit of knowledge - not ignorance.
Rather than quibble over terms, I suggest any who may wish to debate this issue see
this thread. I don't think any creationist of any stripe would have a problem with the level of complexity I specified, and this is a far, far lower level than what is observed in life.
