What is your take on creationism/creationists?

[Reasonable]

Rath said:

Hey hey hey, this is my kind of topic.

My point of view is that Creationists are free to believe whatever they want as long as it doesn't hurt anybody . Although from my point of view it does require the special kind of wilful ignorance that is shared by people who believe the earth is flat and the centre of the universe.

Creationism (and by that I mean all young-earth creation beliefs, I don't care if you call it ID or if it isn't a Christian belief) requires you to contradict half the major fields in science. Astrophysics, biology and geology all contradict it in fundamental ways.

Old earth creationism, specifically the belief that God started the universe with the big bang and then kind of guided it along, I'm even more ok with. It doesn't actually contradict anything in science and almost certainly never will, unless we somehow gain insight into what was (for want of a better word) before the big bang.

But note in my first paragraph I said 'as long as it doesn't hurt anybody'. I believe interference in science from religion is inexcusable. I also believe that using religion to justify discrimination against people (currently notably homosexuals), discouraging contraception (which is a major obstacle to stemming AIDs, especially in Africa) or criminalizing abortions is wrong.

 

Edit: Also why does a discussion of creationism always come down to evolution? It's only one of a multitude of scientific theories that contradict the Biblical account. For example light from stars millions upon millions of lightyears away reaches us. We can see cosmic background radiation from 13 Billion years ago. Landmasses on the other sides of huge oceans are made up of the same material (which is easily explained by plate tectonics but requires millions of years).

I thought that was obvious.  The reason for many religious groups pushing creationism is they don't like the concept we evolved from animals.  They're fine with God creating a Universe that's very old or that light takes a long time to get here from Stars, but they aren't keen on the idea we aren't 'special' creations above all other animals with a Soul rather than evolved simians.

That's the core element.  If the theory of evolution excluded us as special and only stated animals evolve I doubt there'd be much fuss at all.

Creationism is basically an attack on the Theory of Evolution and an attempt to push it from accepted fact (how I wish people would understand the difference between theory as generally - and wrongly - used and theory as it applies here) to an unproven concept of equal stature (or ideally less than equal) to Creationism.