Are You Missing that Creationist Barcode? Me Too!

Most all designs and objects, tools and physical items that are made are tagged with a serial number or barcode to show their origin and maker or to describe their function.

We use this technology to respect patents and ownership, and functionally to support things like inventory control, management structures and even recalls.

So, I must ask, if a divine maker produced everything that we can see within the known universe, wouldn’t you think that they, at some point, would label or barcode things to be sorted and maintained?

I mean if Intelligent Design (ID) were true and irreducible complexity correct, wouldn’t the “Maker” leave a telltale signature? A label of some sort? Perhaps even a logo on all their creations? Rather than just rely on biased biblical passages that are open to interpretation which has led to numerous faith practices and sectarianism as well as dozens upon dozens of creation mythologies.

According to the Bible, the guy creationists claim started this all has a major ego. Bigger than both Elon and the Donald combined. I mean if he’s watching and killed hordes of people, or will put you to death for mixing fabrics, and has even drowned the entire human population at least once, don’t you think he’d leave a calling card in our genes…or somewhere?

But nothing scientifically-identified within the human genome, or any carbon artifact from plant, animal, mineral or space object proves a universal maker. You can’t without any hope of honesty say science shows a divine source, a force that made everything, and then rely on faith rather than science to draw conclusions regarding the evidence for your claims. If you do, then you’ve taken way too many Dunning-Kruger pills and should sit out the next several decades until you come to your senses.

Therefore, we must assume that all existence is part of and the processes of nature, being as wondrous and at times frightful as a divine magical force but lacking any consciousness or ego. Nature being the cause for the context as well as the consequence of our entire cosmos.

That is, not a divine all-knowing father or mother deity, but a cold and indifferent universe. A universe that does not acknowledge us or even care how we conduct ourselves throughout our lives. A reality where only we humans can decide and act for the betterment of our species with no help coming from the outside to coddle or guide us.

As my dear friend and co-author, the late Abby Hafer, wrote in her wonderful book, “The-Not-So-Intelligent Designer,” why in the world would an all-knowing being require primate testicals to remain outside of the body (they dangle because sperm would burn up in the body), or why give salamanders and axolotls the ability to regrow limbs and not his alleged favorite creation, us humans, that same amazing ability? Or why design us with the potential for bad backs? Choking and windpipe failure, diminishing eyesight and hearing? Faulty organs and limbs?

Is it because the divine is tied to big pharma? Perhaps taking secret donations from chiropractic organizations or the medical industrial complex? Our bodies decay, as does every element, because all of nature decays. And is ultimately reborn, lives and dies again. An endless cycle, perhaps the best recycling program ever developed. This allows us to exchange our carbon at the end of every lifespan. Be it a fly’s twenty days, a human’s eighty years or a Galapagos tortoise’s one-hundred and sixty years.

Perhaps this bad creationist design is another form of divine spite? The truth being if we are designed, that the designer didn’t care much to improve on our features. Is it an apathy that leads us to a legitimate end brought about by an illegitimate creator? Or, as I would suggest, just entropy?

Or maybe this is all just ineffective planning and creation done at an amateurish level rather than us being designed and put together by an all-knowing, all-powerful and infallible creator? Just look at anyone with cancer, heart disease, organ failure or obesity and it’s plainly obvious that our creation is based on fallible nature working within the construct of natural selection. Rather than us being uprooted from dust and given a divine spark in which humans are made in the image of a non-existent mythology.

In all actuality, we have more in common with chimpanzees than with the divine. More allied to apes and mammals and all the carbon atoms existing than a connection to an often-weaponized theological presence. A divinity whose existence is impossible to prove. And as all faiths demand, we must ignore such absence and go on believing without any evidence.

Perhaps this is also why science has been prolonging and saving our lives more than billions of prayers could ever? Imagine praying for an injunction to a deity who already knows the outcome and would not change it or their “divine plan” to spare your loved one, not even for babies born with diseases or suffering through starvation!

Why is it that even the most religiously devout will seek medical intervention than stay home and ask for divine guidance. God may be out, but the doctor (and science) is always certainly in. Conversely, there are religious rank-and-file or whole sects which would rather pray than seek medical attention. If such lack of care was not afforded under religious freedom, then many of the families within these sects would be considered perpetrating a vast amount of child and elder abuse.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, while many people of faith wore masks and helped maintain social distancing, many more severe and radical faith traditions made such mask wearing a Scarlet Letter and spoke out vigorously against science and taking any protection because, in their view of faith, those actions would offend god. It would be interesting to know how many people who advocate for Creationism and Intelligent Design received COVID-19 vaccinations.

Would they even admit it if they did? To say “yes” would mean the design is faulty and incongruous with the rest of one’s ideas about the nature of the divine. To say “no” would mean one’s religious identity flies in the face of public health and places one’s belief atop our best medical science. But in the second case, since one is already a creationist, denying science isn’t really that hard to do.

Personally, I see ID and Creationism as a Potemkin village. A lie is essentially told as truth. As the story goes in the 18th century, a Russian aristocrat wanted to impress visiting royalty, so he set up phony villages along the riverbanks of his land and moved them as he and his guests traveled up the river. But it was all a façade. No matter how elaborate the exterior, there was absolutely nothing behind the front of these “houses” and “businesses.” It’s the same analogy with Creationism & ID.

The “complexity” of their pseudo-science belies actual facts and truth, making their claims science adjacent rather than actual science. Another analogy I’d like to offer is the idea that Creationism and ID are essentially square tires on a bicycle.

Charles Darwin’s and Alfred Russel Wallace’s work was revolutionary for its accuracy regarding the biological process of natural selection, change and the extinction of organic life. It is elegant in its simplicity by revealing nature’s operation without the need for a divine presence. Their idea served as a lightning rod gob smacking organized religious doctrine, and as T.H. Huxley boasted, Darwin “killed god.” For the most part as science was advancing evolutionary thought since the Enlightenment, Huxley was “cheeky” but not wrong.

ID and Creationism is the opposite of Darwin’s and Wallace’s work. It is terribly inelegant, inefficient, and not scientifically documented. Its “god of the gaps view” lacks both reason and peer review. Legally in the United States, ID and Creationism are deemed nothing more than a form of theology. It is essentially giving up riding of a bicycle on round wheels for square wheels.

And to make matters worse for the ID/Creationist cause, here are six points at the core of their beliefs which they demand you accept: One, the Bible is also a science textbook; two, that the Earth is 6,000-10,00-years-old; three, that there is divine purpose and cause for the universe; four, that evolution & natural selection are inspired by the devil and are lies; five, that the tale of Noah’s flood explains geology and dinosaur history; and finally, six, the universe and humans were created through a magical divine act by a particular god, and that we have not, cannot and will not change over time.

For these reasons, we humanists must be advocates for science and rationality every day and in every way possible. Because it is not just about protecting science as much as it is about protecting reason, humanism and secular democracy from those who would choose to be governed by pseudo-science, theology and theocracy.

And it’s OK to admit there are flaws in our human understanding of nature. That will always be the case, but that doesn’t mean we give up the scientific method. We don’t replace biology with Intelligent Design just as we would not replace chemistry with forms of alchemy. Nor replace astronomy with astrology.

Finally, it’s important to remember that the Scopes Monkey Trial didn’t end the attempt to put Creationism in our public-school science classes. Bad legislation has cropped up for decades and always will, because undistinguished politicians are frequently led by religious masters. So, we must be politically and legally active to ensure creation myths are not taught as equal to what we know is sound science.