Like any scientifically-minded atheist (and like a good many intelligent Christians too, it must be said), I’ve had my fair share of discussions with fundamentalist Christians about creationism and evolution. I’m lumping “intelligent design” in with creationism here, because as far as I’m concerned ID is simply creationism covered in a thin veneer of scientific language.

I was once a young-earth creationist, but that didn’t last long. For most of my time as a Christian I couldn’t swallow creationism because I knew too much about geology and palaeontology. I knew that the evidence in favour of evolution was overwhelming, whereas the scientific evidence in favour of the biblical creation story is precisely zero.

One thing that still strikes me as odd is the way creationists always frame their arguments as an attack against evolutionary theory. Huge amounts of money, time and effort have been expended in trying to disprove Darwin. What these people don’t realise, though, is that if Darwin’s theory could be disproved scientifically, that would have already been done and someone would have won the Nobel Prize for doing it.

More to the point, though, especially where their beliefs are concerned, they are shooting at the wrong target.

Even in the extremely unlikely event of evolution being conclusively demonstrated to be false, the creationists would still have the same huge problem that they have now, namely that there is no evidence for their hypothesis at all. Creationists seem to think that disproving Darwin would prove creationism, but all such an event would prove would be that Darwin was wrong. It would say nothing at all about creationism. The burden of proof would still be on them to prove that their hypothesis is any better.

If any creationists read this, please take note and stop attacking Darwin. If you want your creationism hypothesis to be taken seriously outside of fundamentalist Christianity and Islam, you need to provide scientific evidence for it. You need to demonstrate that your hypothesis fits all the known facts about the development of the various species of life on earth. Attacking the currently dominant theory gains you nothing; you need to prove your own hypothesis. As a wise person once said, you’re entitled to your own opinions but you are not entitled to your own facts.

Oh, and the book of Genesis is inadmissible as evidence. Saying that a proposition is true just because someone wrote it down in a book during the Bronze Age is patently absurd. Instead, just show us the evidence.

(Originally posted 12 February 2011.)