QUESTIONS  FOR  CREATIONISTS

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These questions are posed for any creationists in the audience to answer.  Adapted from http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/stumpers.html.  I wish to humbly thank Tom Scharle for originally posing these questions.


These questions are intended to clarify the debate about creationism versus conventional science. Many of the questions are intended to explore what creationists think about the issues in a way that allows each side to understand better what is involved. I believe that they are fair questions to ask in achieving that end, but if anyone has objections to the content, tone or presuppositions, comments are certainly welcome.

(1) Can you give a comprehensive statement of creationism? (There are questions below about conventional science, so please restrict your discussion here to the positive aspects of creationism.) This is the one question of over-reaching importance, so much so that you might consider many of the following questions merely asking for certain details of what makes up a comprehensive statement of creationism. It should be noted that many people prefer quantitative details where appropriate.

(2) Include the evidence for creationism (please remember that merely finding problems with conventional science does not count as support for creationism, as there may be other theories which differ from both conventional science and creationism). A good example of evidence for creationism would be some observation which was predicted by it. That is much better support than merely giving an explanation for observations which were known before it was formulated. Far less convincing is evidence which has an alternative explanation.

(3) Can you suggest principles for deciding between conflicting theories and evaluating the evidence for them?

(4) Distinguish your theory of creationism from some of the alternatives ( 'theistic evolution' and 'old-earth creationism', for example)  and give some reasons for it rather than the others.

(5) Describe features of creationism which are subject to modification. Another way of phrasing it is: is there any kind of observation which, if it were seen, would change creationism? Is it open to change, and if so, what criteria are there for accepting change?

(6) Explain what you think some of the terms used in conventional science mean. Here are some which seem to lead to misunderstanding:

(7) It would also be helpful if you could give a brief description of your understanding of conventional science. Please do not state here what your objections are to conventional science - that can be talked about later. Just say what conventional science says.

(8) It might be helpful if you explain why you think that conventional science came to its present position, and why people hold to conventional science. (And once again, please restrict this to a description, as debate can come later.)

(9) What are the consequences of accepting conventional science?

(10) Why is there the coherence among many different dating methods pointing to an old earth and life on earth for a long time - for example: radioactivity, tree rings, ice cores, corals, supernovas - from astronomy, biology, physics, geology, chemistry and archeology? These methods are based on quite distinct fields of inquiry and are quite diverse, yet manage to arrive at quite similar dates. (This is not answered by saying that there is no proof of uniformity of radioactive decay. The question is why all these different methods give the same answers.)

(11) Explain the distribution, seemingly chronological, of plant and animal fossils. For example, the limited distribution of fossils of flowering plants (which are restricted to the higher levels of the fossil record). Here we are considering the distribution which conventional science explains as reflecting differences in time - the various levels of rock.

(12) In the contemporary world, different animals and plants live in different places. Why is there the present distribution of animals and plants in the world? For example, how is it that marsupials are restricted to Australia and nearby islands and the Americas, monotremes to Australia and nearby islands, and few placental mammals are native to Australia? Or why are tomatoes and potatoes native to the Americas only? (This is not a question merely of how they could have arrived there, it is also of why only there.)

(13) There is a large body of information about the different species of animals and plants, systematically organized, which is conventionally represented as reflecting genetic relationships between different species. So, for example, lions are said to be more closely related to tigers than they are to elephants. If different kinds are not genetically related, what is the explanation for the greater and less similarities between different kinds of living things? That is to say, why would special creation produce this complex pattern rather than just resulting in all kinds being equally related to all others?

(14) If you feel that the events of the Bible must be explained as the normal operation of natural phenomena, please explain why.

(15) Why is there all the evidence for an earth, and life on earth, more than 100,000 years old, and for the relationships between living things, and why were we given the intelligence to reach those conclusions?