I happened to catch an episode of “Penn and Teller: Bullshit” which discussed Creationism. For those who haven’t encountered it, this is a fundamentalist Christian belief that their Bible must be taken literally and applied to history. Amongst other things, they believe the earth is about 6,000 years old, was created by God and that Evolution is just mumbo-jumbo theory that doesn’t work. They also want Creationism treated as science and taught in schools as science, alongside (first of all, then replacing) evolution.
Well, I could buy the theory that the total balance present on the earth, where every tiny little thing (with the exception of mankind) works alongside and is compatible with, every other thing. I could buy that such a perfectly balanced situtation is the work of some kind of omnipotent, omnipowerful being.
But my question is this: Why the CHRISTIAN God? There are a lot of religions on the earth, none with any better evidence than any other that their religion is the one true religion. So why Christianity? Why point to the Bible and use that as the template – why not use another religious text? Hell, as Penn and Teller point out, Raelians believe exactly the same thing as Creationists, except for one thing – they believe that extra-terrestrials, aliens from another planet, are the ones with the plan, not an omnipotent invisible but still present God. Can someone definitively tell me why Christians are right and Raelians are not, in any way other than to say “the Bible says so”?
Because if Creationism is exclusively down to the God portrayed in the Bible – then this is a deliberate attempt to circumvent the Constitution of the United States by removing the separation between God and state. And if that is the case, the US is more in danger than ever of becoming the very radical fundamental religious state that it says is such a danger to the world as, say, Muslim states.
It’s a slippery slope.