Creationist website Creation Moments, thinks it has us evolutionists this time, leaving us no choice but to shout praise for Genesis 1:1. What sort of proof do they have? A Photoshopped cow. Don’t get me wrong; they know it’s Photoshopped, and that’s their point.
Here’s their clever reasoning. Be sure you’re sitting down:
While doing some research on the Internet recently, we came across this photo of a cow bearing a detailed map of the world on its hide. Was the cow born with these markings or are the spots the handiwork of a skilled Photoshop artist?
Obviously, this cow’s spots were put there by a designer. But our question for evolutionists is this: If you agree that the cow’s spots are designed, why won’t you agree that the actual cow – which is so much more complex than the arrangement of its spots – was designed as well?
Oh dear.
Okay, I have to admit, they’ve lost me already. Because somebody used a computer program called Photoshop to put a world map on the side of a cow, we are supposed to believe somebody designed the cow? Why not just show me a picture of a ’57 Chevy and say that proves Creationism? I mean, nothing says intelligent design like a ’57 T-bird:
But no, they gotta have their spots:
Evolutionists and atheists will agree that the pattern of the cow’s spots was designed, but they will not agree that the cow itself was designed. That’s because they are committed to their faith – yes, faith! – built on the premise that there is no Designer. Though they can see the complexities of nature all around them, they say that everything was the result of mindless, natural processes.
So somehow because we admit the spots were designed we have to admit the cow was designed? Again, I’m lost. Science aside, their argument is a nonstarter, as they’d know if they’d taken even a single course in formal logic.
And you absolutely have to love their insistence that evolution requires faith, as though its suddenly a bad thing, while Creationism, apparently, does not, when, of course, it is just the opposite. Faith is not required to accept the fact of evolution. The evidence for evolution is plentiful and all around us.
But they’re not done with their cow:
And that’s why Darwinists have a cow whenever they hear a Bible-believing Christian say that things which appear to be designed actually are designed! If they weren’t so biased against God, they’d know that the cow’s spots reveals the incredibly huge blind spot in their own minds.
Yes, we have blind spots in OUR minds. Right.
There is no need to launch into a lengthy rebuttal of such tripe because fortunately, Scientific American, way back in 2002, answered Creation Moments in its 15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense. The cow, after all, is just a new way of advancing an old argument we refused to be fooled by then and refuse to be fooled by now:
Living things have fantastically intricate features–at the anatomical, cellular and molecular levels–that could not function if they were any less complex or sophisticated. The only prudent conclusion is that they are the products of intelligent design, not evolution.
This “argument from design” is the backbone of most recent attacks on evolution, but it is also one of the oldest. In 1802 theologian William Paley wrote that if one finds a pocket watch in a field, the most reasonable conclusion is that someone dropped it, not that natural forces created it there. By analogy, Paley argued, the complex structures of living things must be the handiwork of direct, divine invention. Darwin wrote On the Origin of Species as an answer to Paley: he explained how natural forces of selection, acting on inherited features, could gradually shape the evolution of ornate organic structures.
Generations of creationists have tried to counter Darwin by citing the example of the eye as a structure that could not have evolved. The eye’s ability to provide vision depends on the perfect arrangement of its parts, these critics say. Natural selection could thus never favor the transitional forms needed during the eye’s evolution–what good is half an eye? Anticipating this criticism, Darwin suggested that even “incomplete” eyes might confer benefits (such as helping creatures orient toward light) and thereby survive for further evolutionary refinement. Biology has vindicated Darwin: researchers have identified primitive eyes and light-sensing organs throughout the animal kingdom and have even tracked the evolutionary history of eyes through comparative genetics. (It now appears that in various families of organisms, eyes have evolved independently.)
Today’s intelligent-design advocates are more sophisticated than their predecessors, but their arguments and goals are not fundamentally different. They criticize evolution by trying to demonstrate that it could not account for life as we know it and then insist that the only tenable alternative is that life was designed by an unidentified intelligence.
National Geographic tells us, with regards to this argument,
Creationists claim that life is so complex that it could not have evolved. They often cite the virtuoso engineering of the bacterial tail, which resembles a tiny electric motor spinning a shaft, to argue that such complexity must be the direct product of “intelligent design” by a superior being.
The vast majority of biologists do not share this belief. Studying how complex structures came to be is one of the most exciting frontiers in evolutionary biology, with clues coming at remarkable speed.It is difficult to understand how such simplistic and poorly thought-out arguments could work but they seem to think it does, and the numbers bear them out. According to Gallup in 2014, only 19 percent of Americans believe humans evolved with no help from a god, while 42 percent think God created humans in their present form (31 percent think humans evolved with God’s help).
Thank goodness for the scientists, because many of our friends and neighbors are only too willing to buy the silly cow.
Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen's Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.
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