Why Do They Bother?

I recently stumbled across an article on the internet presenting a new – at least to me – fallback position of the creationists of the sort who like to be called “creation scientists” in their attacks on evolution. It consists of grudgingly  accepting the evidence us of evolutionary change on short time scales within species (sometimes called microevolution) while rejecting the notion of evolutionary change on longer time scales producing new species (sometimes called macroevolution).  The article supported the assertion with a vigorous claim that neither laboratory observations nor fossil records provide  evidence of intermediate stages between species, and thus macroevolution is only a shaky hypothesis and wishful thinking.

I found this interesting, not because of the claims,  which are specious, but because I wondered why the people  bother to make them at all when I can see no gain for them in it.  Imagine for a moment that their objections are valid, and that the data provide insufficient evidence to support the present notions of mechanisms  for macroevolution. It wouldn’t do them any real good.

After all the same data, which by their using it to make their point  they can be  presumed to take as valid, show clearly  that the Biblical version of the origin of the species is false.  That leaves  the creationists who accept the data   in the difficult position of explaining why a god who must be presumed to know how he created the species decided to give his chosen people a false account of the way  it happened. While that might be capable of being finessed in some way, but there is a more serious difficulty.  All that a rejection of currently understood mechanisms  of macroevolution would mean is that something else goes on in the process of originating new  species which we haven’t found out about. It would not change the evidence otherwise, and it in no way  would require the intervention of gods of any sort, much less the particular god the creationists have in mind. They still would have no evidence for their “science”.

That’s why I wonder why they bother. They probably would be better off emotionally in some ways to throw in with  fundamentalists and  simply  say the Biblical version of things is correct, and evidence be hanged. Of course there is the hypothesis that that is what they are really doing anyway at some level, and all the so-called creation science talk is just a smokescreen.