flinn@seismo.UUCP (E. A. Flinn) (03/01/84)
The arguments for creationism based on scientific evidence have at least one thing in common with those for ESP: extraordinary conclusions require extraordinarily strong evidence. Even the most thoughtful and open-minded scientists do not lightly shed the whole structure of their professional thinking in favor of some radically different paradigm without a substantial body of overwhelmingly solid evidence that cannot be explained as well by the old body of theory as by the new. Examples include gradualism and plate tectonics in geology, the quantum theory and relativity, and evolution itself. All the gush about the Paluxy footprints cannot avoid the possibility that something other than humans made the marks. Even leaving aside the fact that a paradigm that includes supernatural intervention is not science, the creationists will have to produce not one but several sites where identifiable fossils are found in formations very much earlier than they ought to be, according to standard paleontology. Human bones in the Cretaceous would do, but so would any vertebrates in the Cambrian, dinosaurs in the Devonian, etc. Until this happens, the creationists ought not to be surprised that no geologist or paleontologist takes them seriously.