Viewpoint

The Bible is not a Science Textbook

A recent article in The Listener (April 22) highlights how New Zealand science teachers who teach cosmology and evolution are sometimes challenged by creationists who try to disguise their religious agenda behind a veil of pseudo-science.

Dr Simon Pollard

Fanatics have their dreams, where they weave,
A paradise for a sect

From The Fall of Hyperion by John Keats

The spiritual security of some Christians depends on their worldview fitting into a literal interpretation of the Bible. For one of these groups, commonly called creationists, the Bible is read not only for its spiritual message, but also as an accurate explanation for the origin of the universe and the origin and evolution of life on Earth. Creationists believe that the universe, including the Earth and all the organisms on it, were created in a week about 6,000 years ago, and that God then decided to destroy most of his creation with a world-wide flood.

While some people hold religious beliefs others may consider bizarre, they do not usually try to impose these beliefs on others. However, many creationists do. People calling themselves creation scientists believe they have "scientific" evidence to support the biblical account of cosmology and evolution. They believe their creation myth story is an alternative scientific explanation to the current view that the universe and Earth are billions of years old and that life on Earth evolved. And they believe it should be taught in science classrooms.

Of course, the key questions here are what is science and what constitutes evidence? If somebody tells me they have been abducted by aliens, recently seduced by Elvis or have a new cancer cure that uses bark extracts, my first reaction, like that of most people, is "show me the evidence". And we expect that evidence to be judged with our current scientific knowledge of the world.

Most people do not read the Bible to understand natural phenomena. Treating the Bible as a science textbook means accepting a book full of contradictions and inaccuracies that would be unacceptable in a textbook. For example, few people would believe today that the Earth rests on pillars (1 Samuel 2:8), does not move (1 Chronicles 16:30) and that bats are birds (Leviticus 11:13,19).

Over 100 years ago, some religious groups claimed the Earth was flat (the Bible alludes to it in a number of places), and would travel around schools presenting evidence to support their claim. Even today, there is a Flat Earth Society in the US whose members still believe the Earth is flat; most are also creationists.

Can you imagine a science schoolteacher allowing a guest speaker to teach their students that the world was flat or that the Sun revolves around the Earth as a scientifically valid alternative to the prevailing wisdom that the Earth is round and revolves around the sun?

Yet some New Zealand teachers allow "creation scientists" who are no different from the "flat earthers" into their classrooms to sell their brand of religion, which has no place in a science classroom. Creationists often use eloquent rhetoric and scientific-sounding terminology in an attempt to undermine any field of science that challenges their preconceived views. They often ask simple questions which have complex answers and then ridicule the answer purely on the basis of its complexity.

Science is about coming up with a theory to explain the evidence and testing it by observation and experimentation. Evolution is an incredibly successful theory. It is almost 150 years ago that Darwin challenged the biblical account of creation, and we are still finding evidence to support his theory. Scientists may argue the details, but they do not deny it has happened. We don't need a supernatural explanation to explain how a fertilised egg can grow in to a baby in nine months. Why should we believe a supernatural explanation for the evolution of life on Earth when all the evidence from every relevant field of science suggests otherwise?

The scientific understanding of the history of the universe and life on Earth is like a huge jigsaw puzzle. While the picture is far from complete, we are as confident as we are of any phenomenon in science, that the emerging picture is correct. This confidence comes from the coherence among many different fields of science that provide empirical support for one another. For example, evidence that the Earth and the life on it is millions of years old comes from geology, plate tectonics, fossils, radioactivity, tree rings, ice cores, corals, supernovas etc.

However, creationists never provide any empirical evidence to support their claims. They just look for pieces in the "jigsaw puzzle" of conventional science that may have been put in the wrong place or upside down at some time and use this as proof that science is wrong and creationism is right. This is in spite of the fact that their own pieces fail to match any in the scientist's puzzle. Because they believe the Bible is infallible, no amount of evidence, no matter how compelling, will ever change what they believe.

Scientists publish the results of their research as papers (experiments, observations, reviews etc) in scientific journals. Often these results trickle down to into general interest articles like those seen in National Geographic or in documentaries like Walking with Dinosaurs.

Of 135,000 papers sent to 68 major scientific journals over a four-year period, only 18 were on "creation science". Not one of these was accepted for publication because they did not provide empirical data that stood up to scientific scrutiny. Before a paper is published in a scientific or peer-reviewed journal, appropriate experts review it. If I sent a paper to a journal saying that I had found Noah's Ark I would need some very impressive proof before my paper would be accepted for publication.

I have always liked the story of Noah's Ark. When I was a child, I remember thinking that a lot of the animals must have felt very seasick because in pictures they often had their heads sticking out of the portholes!

It is easy to imagine somebody writing in the Middle East where the stories in the Bible originated, and where there are relatively few species of animals, thinking all the animals that lived on Earth could be put on a boat. I wonder whether the same story would have arisen if the Bible had been written in Amazonian rainforest where an unimaginable number of different species live.

However, because it is in the Bible, creationists believe in a global flood and that all the animals we see today were carried on Noah's Ark for one year. Since they also believe that humans and dinosaurs co-existed until quite recently we may reasonably ask how did all the dinosaurs fit on the Ark? They claim fossils are from animals that did not survive the flood. Why are there so many fish fossils?

Given the sophistication of modern geological techniques why do we find no evidence of such a catastrophic event such as a global flood that was meant to occur about 6,000 years ago? In Greenland layers of ice accumulate like tree rings. The ice is so thick, ice cores can show layers that go back 40,000 years. You would think a global flood would show up on the layers, but it does not.

Where did the extra 4.4 billion cubic kilometres of water that needed to be added to the oceans to cover the Earth up to Mt Everest come from? Creationists talk about a "vapour canopy" without any evidence and without considering things like the increase in atmospheric pressure making the air unbreathable. Any water in the vapour canopy would have been superheated and Noah would have been poached.

Where did all the water go afterwards? How did eight people on the ark accommodate, feed and clean all the species on the earth. Who carried the AIDS virus? What did the termites eat? The Bible and the creationists forget to mention plants. Did they all last underwater?

Creationists claim that Noah's Ark landed on Mt Ararat in Turkey. Apparently, all the animals left and walked off to live where we find them living today. The moas and tuataras walked to New Zealand, the Emperor penguins to Antarctica, the koalas to Australia and the sloths to South America. Why did so many animals walk back to the countries where we find their fossil ancestors? Where were they all living before the flood? Obviously, the lions were very restrained when they walked to Africa with the antelopes.

Recently, through pressure from creationists, the Kansas State Board of Education rewrote its school curriculum and deleted all references to evolution and cosmology. Tom Willis, who is head of the Creation Science Association in Mid-America masterminded the changes in the school curriculum. When he was interviewed recently by New Scientist, he was asked whether he believes that the sun goes around the Earth (as stated in the Bible) or that the Earth goes around the sun. He replied that he did not know and how "every physicist who's looked at it seriously has realised that we don't know for sure". I imagine that is news to most of the world's physicists and worrying for astronauts. However, his reply does encapsulate how creationists deal with the real world when it contradicts their mythical one.

Three hundred years ago, Galileo was accused of heresy because he correctly challenged the biblical view that the Sun revolved around the Earth. During that debate he was supported by Cardinal Baronius who said, "The Bible teaches the way to go to Heaven, not the way the heavens go". It's a pity creationists don't have the spiritual security to take his advice.

Dr Simon Pollard works in the Department of Zoology at the University of Canterbury.