Index to Creationist Claims,  edited by Mark Isaak,    Copyright © 2005

Previous Claim: CA601.1   |   List of Claims   |   Next Claim: CA602.1

---

Claim CA602:

Source:

Response:

1. For a claim that is so obviously false, it gets repeated surprisingly often. Evolution does not require a God, but it does not rule one out either. In that respect, it is no different from almost all other fields of interest. Evolution is no more atheistic than biochemistry, farming, engineering, plumbing, art, law, and so forth.
   
   
2. Many, perhaps most, evolutionists are not atheists. If you take the claim seriously, you must claim that the following people are atheists, to give just a few examples:
   
   
   • Sir Ronald Fisher -- the most distinguished theoretical biologist in the history of evolutionary thought. He was also a Christian (a member of the Church of England) and a conservative whose social views were somewhere to the right of Louis XIV.
   • Pope John Paul II -- a social conservative.
   • Pierre Teilhard de Chardin -- a paleontologist and priest who taught that God guided evolution.
   • President Jimmy Carter -- a devout and active Southern Baptist.
   
   More than 10,000 clergy have signed a statement saying, in part, "We the undersigned, Christian clergy from many different traditions, believe that the timeless truths of the Bible and the discoveries of modern science may comfortably coexist. We believe that the theory of evolution is a foundational scientific truth, one that has stood up to rigorous scrutiny and upon which much of human knowledge and achievement rests." (Clergy Letter Project 2005)
   
   
3. Anyone worried about atheism should be more concerned about creationism. Creationism can lead to a crisis of faith when people discover that its claims are false and its tactics frequently dishonest. This has led some people to abandon religion altogether (Greene n.d.). It has led others to a qualitatively different understanding of Christianity (Morton 2000).
   
   
4. By saying that only one religious interpretation is correct and universal, creationism typically is a rejection of every other religious interpretation. For example, young-earth creationists reject the religious interpretation that the universe is more than 10,000 years old (Sarfati 2004), and design theorists reject the idea that God has guided evolution (Dembski 1996). For people whose beliefs about God differ from those of a creationist, that creationism might just as well be atheistic.

Links:

References:

Further Reading: