Creationism, that eternal weeble of lies, misinformation and stupid ideas has cropped up in a number of places this last few weeks, for example Harun Yahya that crazy Turkish Bond villain lookalike (see photo above) is taking a band of "Muslim creationists" on tour around France visiting "faith schools" preaching lies and ignorance. One interesting tactic in this story is that he's clearly trying to align himself with the equivalent loons on the Christian side, pointing out the Genesis myth and how "6 days" really means "6 long periods of time". Of course, using much the same epistemological slight of hand us Atheists understand that "6 creationists" really means "6 idiots". He even claims that Jesus will return to the Earth soon as a Muslim and convert everyone to that faith, I'm wondering what Christians would want to say about that? Although unfortunately for them they have as much evidence that this won't happen as he has that it will.
Closer to home we have a controversy brewing over the increasing influence of creationism in UK schools, the NSS reported on a case in St. Peter's state secondary school, Exeter, where a creationist was introduced to kids as a "scientist" and allowed to
Back in March we had death threats issued against a London Imam Usama Hasan because he advised Muslims to "grow up and accept evolution", once again police are having to monitor the situation in case some followers of the religion of peace reach the conclusion that violence against Mr Hasan's family is the best way to settle intellectual disputes in the 21st century.
From top to bottom it seems that religion abhors evolution, even those religious leaders that claim they support it occasionally let the guard slip to reveal an abiding dislike for evolutionary biology and genetics in particular, here is Rowan Williams, the Arch Bishop of Canterbury on the subject in a recent book review,
"The gene has been presented as the irreducible monadic agent for biological science, but this begs important questions. We need to remember that the gene itself is part of the evolutionary story, not its sole motor (I was reminded of a passage in C. S. Lewis’s letters where he describes with relish hearing of a passionately enlightened schoolteacher who insisted to her students that all life forms descended from apes). If the only model for evolutionary logic we possess is the mythology of the selfish gene, we leave unanswered and unanswerable the question of the gene’s own history; quite apart from the problems in speaking of “selfishness” as the sole generator of development."
It's not clear which evolutionists in particular don't recognise that the origin of genetic information, and how it interacts with proteins, is an intriguing but unsolved puzzle? But how does this denigrate evolution, which begins only after the first replicator has evolved? Of course all biologists recognise C.S. Lewis as a reliable arbiter of such scientific matters.
Clearly the Pope wouldn't want to be left out of this select group of science manglers, as previously reported he seems to drift in and out of acceptance for the idea of evolution, not quite denying it but not quite accepting it either, depending on who is listening I expect.
Creationism is the intellectual equivalent of athlete's foot, usually not a serious handicap (unless you happen to be a London Imam!) and easy to defeat in open debate but ever present, lurking just beneath the surface ready to reappear on those that neglect their basic reasoning hygiene. Once infected it causes a nasty itch and has the ability to spread rapidly among the ignorant. All us scientists can advise is that, like most parasitic diseases and bad meme's, prevention is usually better than cure.
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