Talking to Creationists (or: A Reply to "Bill")

Once more unto the breach, dear friends...

In my line of work, and amongst the crowd with whom I've found myself running around, it's inevitable that I'd meet and come into contact with Creationists. The first time that blatantly happened, it was with a handsome young chap named 'Tom', who offhandedly remarked about how "the evidence for Creationism was overwhelming". At seminar I'd attended on prayer, one of the talks took a subtly anti-intellectual bent, encouraging prayers for people to "accept the research of learned Christians" (read: that Atheistic Darwinian university/college biology departments would start teaching Intelligent Design/Creationism). At a wonderful talk given by a speaker at VCF, the speaker was a big fan of Stephen Jay Gould, but thought he was "out to lunch when it came to Creation-Evolution", and didn't hesitate to lump him in the same crowd as Richard Dawkins (!? - Sorry, but that's like lumping Jim Wallis or John Shelby Spong with Pat Roberson and Jerry Falwell). All this left me with an important question: how do I react to this? How should I react to this?


Anger Management

As I've alluded to in posts I've made in the past, back when I was but a young caterpillar resting on some grass at Joker's Hill (U of T's field station where I first got my taste for field biology), I was filled with a lot of anger at Creationists. I'm passionate about my faith, and I'm passionate about my science, so you can only imagine how I'd feel to see my fellow Christian brothers and sisters attacking science and scientists, labelling it as morally bankrupt, inherently atheistically biased, anti-religious, anti-Christian, and downright intellectually dishonest. Never mind the fact that scientists are among some of the most honest, and hard working people you will ever meet, and many of them are quite open to the idea of religion (sure, a lot of them are hostile to religion, but hey, who can blame them?). And of course, there's the little contradiction of people following a religion of love filled to the brim with emotions that are anything but filled with love.

I've realized now that it doesn't get me anywhere being so angry, and if anything, it just gets me more depressed. I've talked to and seen enough Creationists to know that nine times out of ten, a Creationist simply won't budge from their position. You can show them all of the evidence in the world and it won't register with them. The only thing I think I can do is to just shrug my shoulders, say, "live and let live" and hopefully reach a happy compromise. Contrary to popular belief, Creationist Christians aren't all terrible monsters who would damn you to hell for what you think - in fact, on the whole, they're fairly nice people with all sorts of wonderfully humane and progressive attitudes on a lot of different topics. If there's one message I have to give to scientists, especially biologists, it's this: Creationists are not your enemies.

And here's why - at the talk at VCF I'd heard earlier, I noticed two fundamental things which a lot of Creationists do, things which are at the heart of the reason as to why there's so much negative sentiment between Creationists and science. But guess what? They are all mistakes of which we are all guilty, Creationist and "evolutionist" alike...

1) Assumptions: You only need to read my posts about my experiences with my friend Alan then and now to see just what kind of problems making assumptions can get you into. Assumptions are easy to make, but they're hard to break down. It's all too easy to trot out Richard Dawkins as the face of Evolutionary Biology, but look closer - how many evolutionary biologists does he speak for? He doesn't speak for me, or for my supervisor, or for many of the profs I've worked with both here and in Toronto; in fact, many of them downright hate him for being a total asshat. Even atheists think he's total nutbar for acting like a downright dickstick with others who disagree with him.

My first point being: don't assume things about a group of people you don't know. You wouldn't assume that Christians are murderers because of people who go out shooting abortion doctors or advocate total war with Iraq, Afghanistan, or Iran. Likewise, it would be equally unfair to assume that evolutionary biologists are a bunch of atheists who want to destroy Christianity.


2) The Limits of Your Expertise: A short talk I had with this speaker revealed just how much he actually knew about Gould's writings - he had conflated the "Punctuated Equilibria vs. Phyletic Gradualism" debate with the disputes that Dawkins had with Gould over "The Selfish Gene" and Sociobiology...two topics which are related, yes, but in a deeper sense are actually very different. Oh yeah, and Gould actually argued for a peaceful coexistence or even harmonious synergy between science and religion, unlike Dawkins. I asked him if he had read Gould's papers on Punctuated Equilibrium (in which he would have known that Gould actually wasn't as critical of "Phyletic Gradualism" as many people usually claim). He hadn't.

My second point being: if you are going to make statements on something...anything really, what you need to do is inform yourself. Go straight to the source. What did person X really say to person Y? See it for yourself, and not what other people want you to see. Do the primary sources confuse you, or are they overwhelming for your level of understanding? Contact someone else and get them to help you out. For Christians, this shouldn't be too hard to comprehend - we do it already, all the time...it's called Bible Study.


You'll see I'm not the enemy/Just a prisoner of society

It'd be foolish of me to not hold people on the other side accountable for this too. For all of the senseless and needless wallowing in the "oh, woe is me" Persecution Complex that more than a few Christians love to immerse themselves in, it's hard to argue that there isn't a similar prejudicial attitude of condescension, ridicule, and suspicion of Christianity and religion as a whole. People like P.Z. Myers and Larry Moran (A biochem prof at U of T who I've tangled with on several occasions) are guilty of these same sins - the only difference is that they do it for the side of evangelical Atheism.

I don't want to give the impression that this speaker was a horrible little ignoramus of a troll. He was a genuinely wonderful man with a whole set of interesting and refreshing insights on things, and I truly enjoyed talking to him about other things. (Hey, he shares a rather dim view of Ann Coulter with me, so you know he's a pretty cool guy just based on that alone.) His mistakes are not egregious sins leading unto death, but rather, common errors universal to all humans regardless of their religious background. How many times have you instinctively cast snap judgments or made quick prejudiced assumptions about people based on first impressions? God knows I have, many, many more times than I'd ever care to admit.

That to me, is what Christianity is about. Allowing our belief and faith in the divine to help us to rise above the mistakes we make as beings of flesh, towards a higher state of being - working against our instincts to judge and bear grudges against people, to be arrogant and hateful with each other...so we can be better people than what we were before.

To my Christian brothers and sisters: I am an evolutionary biologist. But I am not your enemy. As a scientist, I come to you not with a clenched fist, but with an open hand seeking dialogue and friendship. What you choose to do with that however, is ultimately up to you.