Believing Bullshit: How Not to Get Sucked into an Intellectual Black Hole (8 page)

While this sort of appeal to mystery to deal with the evidential problem of evil may be intellectually rather more sophisticated and respectable than that considered by Smith, I can't see that it ultimately fares much better than the cruder version. First, notice that when loving parents inflict suffering on the child for that child's good, the parents will do their very best to explain to their child that they do care for them and that this suffering is for their own good. They will even make
some
sort of attempt to explain why they are causing this suffering, even if only in the kind of oversimplified terms a child might understand. A parent that did not do these things would rightly be considered callous and uncaring. Yet our cosmic parent figure, if he exists, fails to
make himself clearly known, fails to provide any such reassurance to those he makes suffer appallingly, and fails to provide any kind of explanation at all for the horror he unleashes. Surely we do, then, have excellent evidence that even if there is an all-powerful god, he is not particularly caring or benevolent.

In reply, some may insist God does provide these kinds of reassurances and explanations—they are all in the Bible. But it's hardly clear to me, or indeed to the majority of humans currently suffering on this planet, that such explanations and reassurances are to be found there—why didn't God make them clearer? In any case, what about the countless generations of humans that suffered before the Bible was written? Why did God unleash millions of years of agony before finally getting around to providing us with some reassurance that, actually, it is all, in some mysterious way, for the best?

Second, notice that there are presumably
limits
to how much evil can be put down to God's mysterious ways. Suppose the world contained even more evil and hardly any good at all. Suppose it resembled a vast Hieronymus Bosch–like vision of hell: a landscape of endless torture and despair with not a jot of beauty or happiness. Would it still be reasonable to say, “There's no compelling evidence here that the world was not created by a supremely powerful and benevolent creator. It's still entirely reasonable for us to believe in an all-powerful, all-good God!”? Surely, as the level of evil increases, we do eventually reach a point where we can justifiably say, “There may be
a
creator god, but it's not
that
one.”

Third, and most significantly, notice that
precisely the same immunizing strategy can be employed to defend belief in an evil god against the evidential problem of good.
Someone who believes in an evil god can say: “Evil god's fiendish intelligence is boundless. So we should
expect
there to be many goods his evil reasons for which lie beyond our ken. In which case, the amount of good that exists is not good evidence that there is no such evil god!”

Clearly, this won't wash. We know we are justified in supposing
there is no evil god on the basis of the amount of good we observe. There are limits to the amount of good that can be put down to an evil god's mysterious ways, and those limits are clearly exceeded by what we see around us. There are vast amounts of good in the world, far too much for it to be the creation of an evil god. But then there are also, very obviously, vast quantities of evil—seemingly far too much for this to be creation of a good God.

THE MORAL OF THE UNSOLVED CASE

An example of one last dodgy “appeal to mystery” worth nailing before we end this chapter runs as follows:

Why does the universe exist? You cannot answer this question. You must admit that it is a mystery that has not been solved. But if you do not know the answer to this question, then you cannot know that my answer—that it was created by God—is incorrect. You must admit that, for all you know, I'm right!

This is a bad argument. Suppose Sherlock Holmes is having a bad day. He just can't figure out whodunit. Does it follow that he cannot reasonably rule out certain suspects?

Of course not. Holmes may not know who did it, but he might still know who didn't. He might be able to pretty conclusively rule out certain suspects (the butler, for example, who has a cast-iron alibi). Similarly, someone unable to explain why the universe exists may nevertheless be able to use their powers of reason to rule out certain answers. Even a religious person will typically admit that there is overwhelming evidence the world was not created by an
evil
God. But then they must admit there
could be
overwhelming evidence that it was not created by a good God either.

This point is by no means restricted to religious beliefs. Many
belief systems often start with a mystery—they offer to explain what might otherwise seem rather baffling. Those who believe there's a family of plesiosaurs (snake-necked dinosaurs that went extinct sixty-five million years ago) living in Loch Ness, that the world was once ruled by aliens who still visit occasionally, or that there's a ghost in their attic will point to peculiar shapes on the surface of the loch, or the extraordinary ancient Nazca drawings in Peru (huge images visible only from high in the sky—some say they were created for the benefit of passing aliens), or exquisitely constructed crop circles, or the weird rattling sound coming from the attic, and say, “Explain
that
!” They challenge us to explain how such things were formed, or how or why they were made. When we can't, they conclude their beliefs, which we may be forced to concede
do
explain these things (even if rather badly), can't be so unreasonable after all. But of course, whether or not we can explain such things, we may still have excellent evidence that there is no family of plesiosaurs in living in Loch Ness (for a start, the loch has been frozen solid top to bottom many times over during the ice ages that separate us from the age of the plesiosaurs).

CONCLUSION

Mystery, as such, is no bad thing. Pointing out mysteries can be a valuable exercise—firing up our curiosity and getting us to engage our intellects. Nor is there anything wrong with acknowledging that some things may forever remain a mystery, and might even be
in principle
unknowable.

Sometimes it's also reasonable, when faced with a problem case for an otherwise well-established theory, to put it down as a mysterious anomaly. If on countless occasions an experiment has confirmed water boils at 100 degrees C, the fact that on one occasion it appeared not to may quite reasonably be put down to some unknown factor. If we can't discover what went wrong, it can be reasonable to just shrug and move on—putting the freak
result down to some mysterious problem with the set up (a faulty thermometer, perhaps).

It's also often reasonable, when we have a theory that works but we don't fully understand why it works, to say, “
Why
this happens remains, for the moment, a mystery. But we know it does.” We might have strong evidence that smoking causes cancer, say, long before we understand why it does so.

So the appeal to mystery has its proper place, even in science. What I object to is the way in which the appeal to mystery is increasingly relied on to deal with what would otherwise appear to be powerful evidence or arguments against certain beliefs, particularly beliefs in the supernatural. Whenever mystery is erected as a barrier to rational inquiry, a barrier that says, “You scientists and philosophers may come
this
far armed with the power of reason, but
no further
—turn back now!” we should be concerned, particularly if no good reason is given for supposing science and reason cannot, in fact, take us further. The more we appeal to mystery to get ourselves out of intellectual trouble—the more we use it as a carpet under which to sweep inconvenient facts or discoveries—the more vulnerable we become to deceit: deceit by both others and by ourselves.

“B

YOUNG EARTH CREATIONISM

Young Earth Creationism is a theory based on a literal reading of the Old Testament. Young Earth Creationists maintain that the entire universe is less than ten thousand years old (a typical estimate is about six thousand years). They claim that the universe, the earth, and every living species were created literally as described in Genesis, over a period of six days.

So, according to Young Earth Creationists, the theory of evolution, which says that new species have evolved over many millions of years, is false. So are current cosmological theories that
say that the universe came into existence several billions of years ago (between thirteen and fourteen billion years ago).

Young Earth Creationism is popular. Polls fairly consistently indicate that about 45 percent of US citizens believe it.
¹
Nor is it restricted to the uneducated. A 1972 Gallup poll suggested that about a third of US graduates believe we are all descendents of Adam and Eve. For many, creationism is a moral crusade. According to H. M. Morris, a leading proponent, “Evolution is the root of atheism, of communism, nazism, behaviourism, economic imperialism, militarism, libertinism, anarchism, and all manner of anti-Christian systems of belief and practice.”
²
Young Earth Creationists typically see themselves fighting a battle over the souls of coming generations, and are particular keen to have their beliefs taught in schools.

Extraordinarily, not only do many millions of Americans believe the universe is only about six thousand years old, many also believe that Young Earth Creationism is good science. They consider the biblical account of creation to be
at least as scientifically well confirmed as the theories of evolution and a billions-of-years-old universe.

How, you may be wondering, can any sane, reasonably well-educated person believe that Young Earth Creationism is just as scientifically credible and well confirmed as its more orthodox scientific rivals? After all, isn't there overwhelming empirical evidence against Young Earth Creationism? What about the fossil record, which reveals that the species currently living on this planet have evolved from common ancestors over many millions of years? And of course, we might add that the fossil record is merely one piece of evidence for the theory of evolution. The theory is also powerfully confirmed by, for example, discoveries in genetics (indeed, an overwhelming case for evolution can now be made without appealing to the fossil record at all).
³

Surely there's also a mountain of evidence that the universe is much older than ten thousand years. For example: What of the light from distant galaxies, which, given the speed of light, would have taken hundreds of millions of years to get here (and even that from stars within our own galaxy can take tens of thousands of years to arrive)?

What of the movement of tectonic plates, which we know to be very slow but that also have succeeded in separating the Atlantic coasts by thousands of miles?

What of the seasonal layers of ice found at the poles, the drilled-out cores of which reveal a seasonal history dating back hundreds of thousands of years?

What of radio-carbon and other forms of dating that reliably date objects to be much older than Young Earth Creationists claim they must be?

What of the chalk beds revealed by the White Cliffs of Dover, which are over hundreds of meters deep? Under a microscope, chalk is revealed to be made of the compressed shells of tiny microorganisms. They died, and their shells sank to the bottom producing a sediment that finally solidified into the chalk beds we see today. At current rates of deposit, the deepest beds would have taken tens of millions of years to produce. According to Young Earth Creationists, the entire universe is less than
one-thousandth
as old as that.

We might go on and on. There's hardly a branch of science that doesn't supply us with evidence that the universe is vastly older than Young Earth Creationists claim it to be. These sciences together provide a consistent, coherent, and increasingly detailed history of life, the earth, and the universe that is almost entirely at odds with the biblical account.

How, then, do so many Young Earth Creationists convince themselves that their theory is not falsified by the empirical evidence? How are they persuaded that it is in fact scientifically confirmed? Let's begin by looking at how they approach the fossil record.

THE FLOOD THEORY

Most Young Earth Creationists appeal to one or more catastrophes to explain geological features—mountain ranges, sedimentary layers, and so on—that might otherwise seem far older. There's nothing wrong with catastrophe theories as such. Even orthodox scientists suppose catastrophes—comet strikes, volcanic eruptions, floods, and so on—have played an important role in shaping this planet and the life on it. According to most contemporary Young Earth Creationists, the key catastrophe involved in shaping our contemporary landscape was the biblical flood: the flood on which Noah famously floated his ark. They believe that Old Testament story is literally true: Noah really did build an ark onto which he was instructed by God to put seven mated pairs of every clean kind of animal and every kind of bird (Genesis 7:2). The waters then rose, drowning the rest. The current inhabitants of the land and sky are descendents of those who boarded the ark.

So how is the flood supposed to account for various geological features, such as the fossil record? It's claimed that, when the waters rose, they produced huge amounts of silt and mud. This material settled and solidified, eventually forming many of the sedimentary rock layers we find today. Many of the fossils we find within these layers are fossils of creatures drowned by the flood. The flood supposedly also explains other geological features, such as the Grand Canyon, which was carved out when the flood waters subsided.

Perhaps you are wondering why creatures are not buried randomly within the sedimentary layers but are arranged in a very specific order? Why, if the flood theory is true, do we never find the fossils of large mammals within the same layers as dinosaurs? Why do the lower layers contain fossils of only simple sea creatures? Why do humans only appear in only the very topmost layers? Why, if they were all buried by the same catastrophic flood, aren't their remains jumbled up together?

Young Earth Creationists have their answers. They say we should expect the simple sea creatures living at the bottom of the ocean to have been buried first. Birds would be restricted to the higher layers, as they would be able to fly from the rising waters. Humankind, being the smartest, would probably have found ways to avoid being drowned until the last moment, so it is not surprising we find human remains only in the top layers. We should also expect to see some order in the fossil record due, for example, to the fact that different ecological zones were submerged at different times, and also because of the different rates at which the corpses of different species bloat and then sink. “So you see?” say Young Earth Creationists. “The fossil record
is
, after all, consistent with our theory! It all fits!”

We might say in reply, “But these moves made by Creationists only postpone their difficulties, as they generate a myriad of further puzzles. What about flightless birds, such as penguins and ostriches, which would not have been able to delay being drowned? Why do their fossils never show up in layers lower than other birds? Why do we find sharks, but no dolphins in the lower sedimentary layers, given they occupy similar ecological zones? Surely both would have been buried in the early stages of the flood? In fact we could go on and on and on, citing a mountain of fossil evidence that contradicts the flood theory.” Still, Young Earth Creationists continue to work on developing flood-friendly explanations for these observations.

Of course, it's not just the fossil record that generates puzzles for Young Earth Creationism. Let's think for a moment about the logistics of Noah's expedition. Genesis 16:2 says the ark was 300 × 50 × 30 cubits—that's about 460 × 75 × 44 feet. Not a particularly large vessel (a cross section of 75 by 44 feet is, coinciden-tally, not very much greater than that of my four-bedroom Victorian terraced house). How did at least two of every kind of animal fit aboard this comparatively small vessel? Remember, Noah didn't just need specimens of today's creatures such as African elephants, rhinos, and giraffes. If dinosaurs were
drowned in the flood, then Noah must also have put dinosaurs on board his ark. Young Earth Creationists accept this. But then how did Noah get two T. rexes, two stegosauruses, two bronto-sauruses, and so on, safely aboard? These aren't even the very largest dinosaurs. What about, for example, two argentino-sauruses, at 120 feet long and 100 tons each?

Other questions arise. What did Noah feed his creatures during their voyage? How did Noah round up the known 900,000 insect species from around the planet, and how did he ensure they weren't trodden on during the voyage? Also, how did Noah acquire polar bears from the Arctic and possums from Australia—how did they cross the vast oceans and continents to reach the ark?

But Young Earth Creationists don't give up easily. They have constructed answers to all these and other obvious questions about Noah's voyage. For example, the website of Christian Information Ministries suggests that Noah did not need at least two of every named species of dinosaur, merely two of every “kind” (whatever that is, exactly): “Some creationists believe there may have been far fewer animals if Noah only took on board pairs of ‘kinds' as the word is used in Genesis 1. God created these ‘kinds' with potential for rich genetic diversity.”
⁴
Creation Ministries International endorses this explanation, adding, “Although there are about 668 names of dinosaurs, there are perhaps only 55 different ‘kinds' of dinosaurs.”
⁵

The same source also suggests that Noah did not need full-sized adult specimens—young examples would do:

Furthermore, not all dinosaurs were huge like the
Brachio-saurus
, and even those dinosaurs on the Ark were probably “teenagers” or young adults. Indeed, dinosaurs were recently discovered to go through a growth spurt, so God could have brought dinosaurs of the right age to start this spurt as soon as they disembarked.
⁶

So how did Noah feed all his creatures while they were at sea? Christian Information Ministries suggests they hibernated:

How Noah and his small family could have cared for this large menagerie is unknown, not to mention the sanitation problem! What we must remember is that this event, i.e., the Flood, had supernatural elements. For instance, the animals came to the Ark against their natural instincts (Gen. 6:20). It is therefore reasonable to assume, as some creationists do, that the animals' metabolism may have been slowed down during their confinement, even to the point where some of the animals may have gone into a state of hibernation.
⁷

Of course, once we allow “supernatural elements” to play a role, we could just say that God
shrank
the dinosaurs to pocket size during their journey. That would deal with many of these problems.

How do Young Earth Creationists explain how polar bears and possums made it all the way to Noah's Ark across the great oceans? According to Ken Ham and Tim Lovett at Answers in Genesis, there were no separate continents at that time. There was a single continent that the flood subsequently broke apart, as they here explain: “As even secular geologists observe, it does appear that the continents were at one time ‘together' and not separated by the vast oceans of today. The forces involved in the Flood were certainly sufficient to change all of this.”
⁸
Really? The forces were sufficient to push vast continents around the face of the planet, but not enough to sink a wooden vessel with a cross section of 75 by 44 feet? I guess God must have somehow protected the ark from these extraordinary forces.

Even setting aside ark logistics, the flood theory raises a host of other questions, such as, where did all the water sufficient to cover the earth's great mountain ranges go? Answer: there were no great ranges at that time—they were created by the flood. Because the surface of the earth was relatively flat, there was, and
still is, more than enough water to cover the land, as Ham and Lovett also explain: “Simply put, the water from the Flood is in the oceans and seas we see today. Three-quarters of the earth's surface is covered with water.”
⁹