If Kirk Cameron wants to believe that the universe is a tad over 6,000 years old and that evolution and cosmology and most of science are elaborate demonic hoaxes, then who am I to stand in his way? Belief is involuntary, so he doesn’t really have a choice in the matter, and I reckon that the marketplace of ideas can handle this one just fine. Besides, it’s not as if the world has lost a great scientific mind to creationism. Kirk Cameron was never going to be a scientist, and folks who believe as Kirk believes wouldn’t make good scientists, either. In a way, Kirk and his ilk are doing the world a favor by helping us identify folks who should be discouraged from scientific endeavors.
I suppose that an agnostic creationist could be a passable scientist. By this I mean a person who believes in the whole 6,000 year old universe thing but who acknowledges that it is not susceptible to scientific proof. That person could apply the canons of science and do scientific work without necessarily believing in the metaphysical truth of falsity of the results, and he wouldn’t be looking to make his observations fit into his young earth paradigm. This could conceivably happen, provided that the agnostic creationist could get past the gatekeepers of the profession, which he couldn’t. He would likely be relegated to some fringe institution where any effort to do science independent of the preferred creation myth would not be well received.
Let’s suppose that I believe that the entire universe, with its appearance of great antiquity and everything in it pointing to a history, spontaneously came into being last Thursday. This is highly improbable, but it is not entirely impossible that this is so and that all my personal memories from before the creation of the universe are just so many false patterns in my newly minted brain. Kirk Cameron never really acted in “Growing Pains” even though I think that I remember his artistic oeuvre as actually happening. No. He came into being last Thursday just like everyone else complete with a fabricated past that will fool him into thinking that the universe is at least several millennia old. Poor deluded sap.
What harm does my Last Thursday Creation idea do? I’m not a professional scientist. I’m pretty sure that I can’t prove that the universe came into being last Thursday, so I’m not going to advocate any kind of Last Thursday Creation Science or demand that it receive full attention in government schools. Others may insist on the teaching of LTCS (it already has an acronym!) and be publicly and vocally skeptical of the 6,000 year old universe theory and those other theories that rely on the appearance that the universe is billions of year old. Even then, what harm could come of the adoption of the belief in LTC by a substantial number of people? None, as long as they don’t become so numerous that they endeavor to impose this belief on others by force.
I reckon that LTC will never become such a potent force as to overwhelm the marketplace of ideas. It has to compete with Last Wednesday Creationism, 3/15/1992 Creationism, Biblical Creationism, and science. Even the adherents of LTC will break into schisms, based on which hour of the day creation took place. The Last Thursday Morning Creationists won’t even be on speaking terms with the Last Thursday Late Afternoon About Sixish Creationists.
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2 comments:
this would now make you a sixth day inventist. LTCS may have many other application for explaining away any phenomena that we wish.
however - the scientific method(s) approach requires that we build our structures on viable infomation and that inaccuracies get magnified by distance from their origen. The economic and social framework of life today was built without application of higher mathematics - derivative and integral calculus, and with the exclusion of most professions who were too busy doing what they do to legitimately govern ourselves. We had best question our knowledge base and look to extract obvious delusions and falseties that have passed muster due to unanimity of thought.
That is if we are interested in a representative republic of, for and by the people. My preference would be to Balkanize to individual states or statelets and let self determination realign the political regions. Or mebbe anarchy.
Your blog about the Kirk Cameron and the Universe only being six days old is hilarious. I am assuming you were trying to be funny.. Unfortunately Kirk and Ray Comfort aren't and that's sad. Oh well. Now, you need to write a book (like a Bible, Koran (sp?) or the Scientology book) about LTCS and then sell it and come up with a system to collect money then it would be a real religon.
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