User talk:Silence/Creationism

The biggest source of confusion in creationist arguments is the definition of evolution&mdash;and word definitions in general. For example, one common claim is: "Evolution is just a theory." But evolution is a theory only in the same sense as "atomic theory," or "germ theory," the idea that germs cause disease. In science, a theory isn't just a hunch. It's a model that explains a large body of facts. The day-to-day process of evolution is also a fact, in that it's simply an observation: populations change, genetically, from generation to generation. That's it.

Evolution is: parents pass down traits to their children; these traits are randomized a little; and over time traits can become more (or less) common. Aside from random drift, one way this change (evolution) happens... is selection: Traits that are helpful for surviving and reproducing tend to become more common, simply because those traits will let their carriers have more offspring, so there are more copies of the helpful trait in the next generation. This fact is so obvious that, while some creationists say evolution can't happen, others actually say evolution isn't science because selection is almost true by definition.

Still others change the topic, appealing to an old distinction between micro-evolution (small change) and macro-evolution (big change). They say they accept "micro" change, like dogs changing into different breeds, but reject evolutionary biology's overarching explanation for life, which says that all life is related. We all descend from a distant common ancestor&mdash;not just humans and other hominids like chimpanzees, but humans and bananas too, are all cousins.

Although this theory in no way rules out a deity creating through evolution, and says nothing at all about the very beginning of life, creationists feel that this broad picture conflicts with their face. Neo-creationists, like advocates of 'Creation Science' and 'Intelligent Design,' seek to replace evolutionary theory "with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions."

They have an uphill battle, however. According to Gallup polls, some 99.85% of American earth and life scientists accept evolution and are not creationists. The evidence seems similarly overwhelming: every similarity between different species (like all birds having beaks, feathers and hollow bones) becomes a profound mystery if we scrap evolution, as does all the molecular evidence indicating, for example, that "macro" changes are just a whole lot of "micro" changes accumulating over millions of years.