Moron of the Month: Steven Robinson

Steven Robinson runs the website earthhistory.org.uk. As you might expect, it's intellectually vacant drivel with the usual moribund creationist arguments, but at least it has some originality. Here's his theory:

In this website it is suggested that the world, although created, was subsequently destroyed and thereby metamorphosed, so that its ultimate origin was hidden. This is inferred from both rocks and fossils. We cannot go all the way back to the beginning, but what has been preserved and can be investigated points back to a creation.

So God is covering his tracks?

If all the evidence suggests that the Earth and life arose by natural processes, what should we conclude? That indeed they did, or that God made them look that way? Ever heard of Occam's razor, Steven? He goes on:

‘Life’ is something different from molecules. Life has to do with consciousness. Although bacteria and plants use the same DNA language as other organisms, they are not life in the sense that animals are. Our own experience as conscious beings tells us that there is more to reality than can be accounted for by molecules, however complex their organisation.

“Life has to do with consciousness.” It should be obvious to a child that defining life in this way can't work. First, is an unconscious person dead by this definition? Second, how do you know animals are conscious in the same way that we are? Granted that cats and dogs seem to be conscious on some intuitive level (which is already difficult to define), but what about a worm or a clam? Are these animals "less alive"? There is no clear line one can draw to separate organisms that seem conscious from those that appear not to be. And if Steven concedes that plants are material objects that could have come about by natural processes, then why not animals too, since they are made from exactly the same building blocks.

This is a classic example of how creation science is invariably wordy, superficial and lacking in any real substance once you probe beyond the surface and start asking about the details. Where is the evidence for this claim? Where is the data? Steven has none, just his own ill-conceived opinions.

Certain ancient oral traditions about the beginning could be an important part of the total evidence. Unless we assume at the outset that the world is billions of years old, these might go back a long way and represent an authentic collective memory of how things originated. Science seeks to build up a historical explanation that is independent of this memory, but since it addresses the same questions (‘How did the world come into being? Where did man come from? Where did animals come from?), might not each throw light on the other?

Ah here we go. Now, Steven, why only certain ancient oral traditions? How would you discriminate between the countless thousands of ancient stories, texts and traditions? Surely not based on your own particular religion? That wouldn't be very scientific, would it?