Creation: "Where's the proof?"
Michael Suttkus

This piece of nonsense was written by Ken Ham and first published in Creation Ex Nihilo 22(1):39–42, December 1999 – February 2000

Over the years, many people have challenged me with a question like:

"I've been trying to witness to my friends. They say they don't believe the Bible and aren't
interested in the stuff in it. They want real proof that there's a God who created, and then they'll
listen to my claims about Christianity. What proof can I give them without mentioning the Bible so
they'll start to listen to me?’

Briefly, my response is as follows.

Evidence

Creationists and evolutionists, Christians and non-Christians all have the same evidence - the same
facts.

Note that Mr Ham presents the dichotomous fallacy. There are Christians, good creationists, and non-Christians, anti-creationists. Like most creationists, he ignores the vast majority of Christians who are not creationists (like myself). He certainly isn't going to admit that there are innumerable alternate ideas presented by innumerable alternate religions. No, the whole world is "us" and "them", and there's only one group of "them".

Think about it: we all have the same earth, the same fossil layers, the same animals and plants, the same stars — the facts are all the same.

And that annoying fact that we've seen new species evolve. Explain that one without evolution.

The difference is in the way we all interpret the facts. And why do we interpret facts differently?

Well, some of us interpret them in consistent ways, and creationists make things up as they go along.

Because we start with different presuppositions.

Flatly false. The people who began the studies that led to evolution, old earth, etc., were all dedicated
creationists. They eventually realized that literal creation simply couldn't explain the evidence and sought other ideas. You see, their presupposition towards creationism didn't stop them from realizing that the evidence couldn't be interpreted to support a literal Genesis.

Science works to avoid presuppositions. That's why we do experiments. Creationists glorify their presuppositions and refuse to do any experiments for fear that those experiments might contradict scripture.


These are things that are assumed to be true, without being able to prove them.

That's creationism, not science. Nothing in science is presumed to be true.

These then become the basis for other conclusions.  All reasoning is based on presuppositions (also
called axioms).

False. Science uses experiments to demonstrate the validity of conclusions, it does not simply accept
them.

This becomes especially relevant when dealing with past events.

Past and present

We all exist in the present

If I wanted to be snippy, I'd say that creationists are living in the past, since most of their "science" is at least 300 years out of date.

— and the facts all exist in the present. When one is trying to understand how the evidence came about (Where did the animals come from? How did the fossil layers form? etc.), what we are actually trying to do is to connect the past to the present.

However, if we weren't there in the past to observe events, how can we know what happened so we can explain the present?

I didn't observe the sunrise this morning, so I can't conclude that it happened simply because when I woke up the sun had risen.

I don't observe electrons flowing in wires, so the "theory" of electricity is unknowable.

I have never observed Archomai's brain, therefore it doesn't exist.

In short, direct observation is not necessary for knowledge. Conclusions can be drawn from indirect evidence.

For example, nobody has ever observed an atom splitting into two atoms, yet the theories that claim this is what is happening accurately predict the amount of energy that will be produced by a fission reactor. Lacking any conflicting evidence, we can conclude that the atoms really are splitting, and that nuclear theory is correct.

Likewise, evolutionary theory allows us to reach all manner of demonstrable conclusions, from predicting that creatures Archaeopteryx and Diargnathus existed, to understanding the development of antibiotic resistant bacteria, to finding oil based on fossil deposits.

Creationism has yet to have even one validated prediction.

It would be great to have a time machine so we could know for sure about past events.

Absolutely. Nobody has ever observed the Roman Empire, so it probably didn't happen. Nobody's ever observed Jesus, so he didn't happen....

Oooops, can't extend that logic there, can we! Nope, nope! Bad bad bad bad!

Christians of course claim they do, in a sense, have a "time machine".

No, creationists claim that. Funny, creationists can't manage to use any terms correctly, can they?

They have a book called the Bible which claims to be the Word of God

No, it doesn't. No part of the Bible claims to be the word of God, only to have been indirectly inspired by
God. More evidence that creationists don't understand theology any better than they understand science.

who has always been there, and has revealed to us the major events of the past about which we need to know.

Note the implication that there are lots of events that we don't need to know about. This anti-intellectualism tendency runs deeply through creationism. "There are things man was not meant to know" vies with "God works in mysterious ways" as the most commonly used creationist explanation for the world around us. Let's see how well science would have progressed if these were taken as scientific axioms:

Lyell: The fossil record apparently can't be explained by creationism. Oh well, God moves in mysterious ways, I can ignore that.

Newton: Things fall down, but God hold's up the planets. That's good enough for me, there are things man wasn't meant to know.

Kepler: The planets don't look like they orbit the sun in circles, but circles are Holy Perfection, so
that must be true and any theory about ellipses is heresy.

Galileo: The world is at the centre of the universe, as revealed in the inerrant Bible by the Word of God, so all of my telescopic observations must be wrong. There are things man wasn't meant to know, so I'll destroy my telescope.

At the link below is a wonderful little picture displaying the creationist mindset.

Past and Present

There's this poor little guy staring at a diagram of the present world, but he can't figure out the past.
Poor guy, he's really sad. Then there's this other guy, who sees the present world and the Bible, and
he's happy because now he can figure out the past (which you can't do without the Bible, naturally, so
all those Celts didn't exist since the Bible doesn't mention them) and he's happy! He knows that there
were four legged grasshoppers and rabbits that chewed their cud and unicorns! Oh happy day!

And the rest isn't any better than that. Nowhere in this document is there any evidence presented.

There is much lying about presuppositions, some hilarious diagrams, but not one shred of evidence.

If anyone wants me to review the rest of it, ask, but frankly, it doesn't seem to be worth the time.

"Creation: Where's the proof?" Got me, it's not in this article.

Michael Suttkus could only manage to stomach a small portion of Mr Ham's strange views on science.  After responding to the few paragraphs above he needed to go on a long walk in the fresh air.