Young-Earth Creationism vs. Evolution Archives

In 2013, Lawrence Krauss was interviewed. He was asked about his claim that teaching creationism is child abuse. In a video, which has since been taken down from richarddawkins.net, Lawrence Krauss said, “If you think about that, somehow saying that, well, anything goes, we shouldn’t offend religious beliefs by requiring kids to know – to understand reality; that’s child abuse. And if you think about it, teaching kids – or allowing the notion that the earth is 6,000 years old to be promulgated in schools is like teaching kids that the distance across the United States is 17 feet. That’s how big an error it is.”[ref]

If you look at Krauss’s words, it is clear that he thinks that teaching Creationism is child abuse because it’s false. Well, if that’s the case, isn’t teaching the dynamo theory for magnetic fields child abuse? After all, a creationist, Russell Humphreys, devised a model of planetary magnetic fields that was based on a six-day creation and a young universe. It predicted the strength of magnetic fields for Mercury, Uranus, and Neptune whereas the dynamo model got almost every magnetic field wrong [ref] (It is worth noting that Humphreys got the magnetic field for Jupiter incorrect because he underestimated the effect that the size of Jupiter would have on the magnetic field). Since Creationists have a model that works better, isn’t withholding this successful model from children a form of “mild” child abuse?

Furthermore, if Krauss’s assertion is based on teaching a claim that is false, it follows that scientists and teachers have been abusing children for years. This is because science is in a state of constant change. For instance, we have gone from Newtonian Physics, to General Relativity, to Quantum Mechanics. Sure, parts of all of these theories are accepted by scientists, but there were central tenants of Newtonian Physics and General Relativity that were done away with. If teaching falsehoods to children is child abuse, teaching ANY falsehood is child abuse.

One thing you can count on about science is that it will change. All conclusions reached in science are tentative; this means that we don’t really know if the conclusions that we reach on the basis of the scientific method are true. Because of this, there is no way to discern the state of affairs of “reality” because we cannot discern a true proposition from a false one in the scientific method.

In essence, Krauss can’t support his claim, and by his logic, he and other scientists have been “mildly” abusing children for years. Krauss can either admit that his claim cannot be supported and doesn’t make any sense, or he can admit to “mildly” abusing children and remove the log from his eye before pointing out the splinter of someone else’s eye.

Footnotes:

1. Bennett-Smith, M. (2013, February 14). Lawrence Krauss, Physicist, Claims Teaching Creationism Is Child Abuse And ‘Like The Taliban’ (VIDEO). Retrieved February 01, 2018, from https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/14/lawrence-krauss-physicist-creationism-taliban-child-abuse_n_2687808.html

2. Beyond Neptune: Voyager II Supports Creation. (n.d.). Retrieved February 01, 2018, from https://www.icr.org/article/beyond-neptune-voyager-ii-supports-creation/%20and%C2%A0https%3A//creation.com/mercurys-magnetic-field-is-young

My Book on Apologetics:

Those who hold to universal common descent will repeatedly say that most scientists accept evolution as a fact.[ref] I always find this to be amusing. If most people in the US are educated by the government (who endorses evolution), what do they think is going to happen? After all, many children go into school believing that everything they learn there is going to be the truth. Public education also teaches them that there is such thing as ‘objectivity.’ Those two things together will certainly cause a lot of people to believe that evolution is true.

In essence, bragging about being on the same side as a majority of scientists is like Kim Jong Un bragging about winning the North Korean election when he is the only candidate. No alternative theories of origin are given in school, and kids are conditioned to believe that every cause for an effect is natural (there is no basis for this claim whatsoever).

Kids learn about secular theories of magnetic fields yet they never hear about Dr. Russell Humphrey’s magnetic field model that was able to predict the strength of the magnetic fields of Uranus and Neptune.[ref] Kids also learn about radiometric dating, but they are unaware that there is significant evidence against the assumptions that these dating methods make. Scientists will readily admit that just because there is evidence for a claim doesn’t make it true, but it is clear that creationists are given an impossible standard to meet by scientists and atheists because the standard also involves solving epistemological issues (such as experimentation phase of the scientific method being structured in a fallacious way). Atheists and secular scientists need not be concerned about these philosophical issues that leave the scope of science because they don’t have to solve them in order for their theories to be respected.

Frankly, the double standard here is ridiculously obvious yet a majority of the public isn’t aware of it. Even though the evidence for creation is far superior to the evidence (truthfully, a lack thereof) of evolution, most people don’t hear about it because they have been indoctrinated by public education.

Footnotes:

1. In this article, ‘evolution’ is defined as the theory that teaches that all organisms came from a common ancestor.

2. Humphrey’s magnetic field model also predicted the strength of Mercury’s magnetic field.

Teaching Creationism is Not Child Abuse

Why do a Majority of Scientists Believe in Evolution?