We're a Bunch of Idiots: The Extent of Vanity Fair's Argument Against Creationism

We're a bunch of idiots.

That's the argument put forth by a recent Vanity Fair article regarding the Creation Museum in Petersburg, just outside of Cincinnati, OH. Though Vanity Fair is primarily a magazine of fashion and cultural dialogue, it apparently thinks it is qualified to tackling a difficult issue of immense implications and proportions as origins. Should we really take such a resource, with no qualifications in this area, serious on matters of truth, origins, science, theology, revelation, faith and God? Is Vanity Fair really the best place for such a debate?

The answer become obvious in the the magazine's sophomoric understanding of the issues. Of course, to borrow Alvin Plantiga's famous critique of the New Atheists, such a statement would be an insult to sophomores. The author, A. A. Gill, presents no real defense of evolution. Instead, he only assumes evolution to be true thus spending the all of his time mocking all views contradictory to his. That is bigotry and closed-mindedness. His aim of attack is young-earth creationists. This seems to be the only way to win an argument these days. Rather than give your opponent a platform, it would be better to mock them and make them look like a buffoon instead. This way you'll be protected from actually having to defend your own beliefs and plus it prevents others from hearing your opponents. That seems to be the goal of the Vanity Fair article.

Take for example these early paragraphs from Gill:

The next things I noticed were the very illiberally accoutred security guards. They are absurdly over-armed, overdressed, and overweight. Perhaps the museum is concerned that armed radical atheists, maddened by the voices of reason in their confused heads, will storm in waving the periodic table, screaming, “I think, therefore I am!”

The Creation Museum isn’t really a museum at all. It’s an argument. It’s not even an argument. It’s the ammunition for an argument. It is the Word made into bullets. An armory of righteous revisionism. This whole building is devoted to the literal veracity of the first 11 chapters of Genesis: God created the world in six days, and the whole thing is no more than 6,000 years old. Everything came at once, so Tyrannosaurus rex and Noah shared a cabin. That’s an awful lot of explaining to do. This place doesn’t just take on evolution—it squares off with geology, anthropology, paleontology, history, chemistry, astronomy, zoology, biology, and good taste. It directly and boldly contradicts most -onomies and all -ologies, including most theology.

I am left wondering if Mr. Gill actually went to the museum. I have been there myself and I can only wonder if the author is trapped in his blind devotion to Darwin to at least consider the argument and worldview of the museum seriously. The museum is not just about the first eleven chapters of Genesis but in fact covers the entire Bible. Furthermore to say that the museum and the ministry that runs believes and promotes what is contrary to "most -onomies and all -ologies, including most theology" is equally absurd considering that the ministry itself is ran and influenced by Ph.D's scientists experts in fields like "geology, anthropology, paleontology, history, chemistry, astronomy, zoology, biology, and good tastes."

Furthermore, I am left wondering if this article is more of a hit piece, like a drive-by shooting, than an actual critique and review of a museum. By the punch of his keyboard, Mr. Gill manages to pop off many smartelic remarks regarding a worldview he knows nothing about nor takes seriously enough to at least critique as would be expected from a major magazine editor. Why am I bothering with this again?

Here are the facts. Evolution is not written in stone as its many proponents suggests. To say, believe, and assume so is foolishness to say the least. The book is not closed. The debate is not over. For one, the fossil record remains incomplete and presents a serious challenge to Darwinism. Darwin himself knew this but trusted that through further discovery, the fossil record would validate his beliefs. So far his wishes have not come true despite the many efforts of scientists and the media who print front page reports on fossils who are trumped as proof of the missing link, but always turn out to be complete jokes (Ida and the Hobbit are two great recent examples).

Despite the fact that the fossil records show major gaps in evolution (which evolutionists simply pencil in to make it appear there are no gaps), there are a number of fossils that clearly suggests that fossilization took place immediately; not over a period of thousands of years as evolution demands. Take for example the two pictures on the left. There we see fossils of fish in the process of eating or digesting another fish. This clearly demands that fossilization is not the result of million of years, but the result of a cataclysmic event. Christians point to the Flood as Biblical proof that such an event took place. But again, instead of critiquing such an argument with facts, Vanity Fair just laughs it off and moves on.

Another hole in the "science" of evolution that Vanity Fair beholds is the elephant in the room it refuses (because it can't) to address: the origins of species. It is interesting that the holy grail and Bible of naturalism is a book with a title whose thesis never gets answered. Darwinism has yet to answer the question, "how did life begin?" When did we go from inorganic to the organic? At what point, after the great cosmic belch by which (millions of years later of course) we crawled out of a cest pool of organic vomit, did living cells spring into existence?

The answers proposed by many evolutions are more laughable than Intelligent Design or Creationism; the very worldviews that Gill mocks. ID and Creationists believe that God is the originator and creator of life. Period. Evolution on the other hand is left grappling for the wind. There is no way to explain the existence of life scientifically because living organisms can not come from inorganic matter. No matter how hard you try, a rock will never produce a cell or photosynthesize.

This does not mean that Darwinists haven't tried. Nobel prize winner Francis Crick proposed that aliens brought life to the planet (Richard Dawkins has also suggested similar things). Aliens? Where's the proof? What evidence does Crick and others have for such nonsense? They don't. They make it up. The same mockery Gill directs towards Creationists could just as easily be directed to his fellow believers in naturalism. Instead of offering proof, Crick and company offer an unsubstantiated theory. In other words, they are making it up because they do not have an answer. Much of what constitutes as fact in the evolutionary theory is really a guess or a pencil drawing to give the illusion of fact.

The alien theory poses yet another problem (despite its lunacy): where did the aliens come from? How did they go from the inorganic to the organic? Dawkins admits that they likely arose from a similar Darwinian process but fails to explain where the aliens came from. But aliens aren't the only proposed answer to this riddle. Some have suggested that life sprang off the backs of crystals which is just as foolish. And the list goes on and on. The riddle remains unanswered, as it always will. The question that evolution has claimed to answer from the very beginning remains a mystery; at least to the Darwinist.

The reason I bring all of this up is to make the point that Creationism is not as foolish as Gill suggests. But that is the point of the article. Instead of allowing open debate, secular Darwinists ban any talk of creation, God, or the Bible. It is not banned because they do not present serious arguments or that evolution does not have holes, but because evolution is a worldview and a theology first and foremost. The reason persons like Gill and magazines like Vanity Fair go out of their way to mock creationists, Christians, and places like the Creation Museum is because they understand the implications of the Christian worldview. If Christians are right, then secularism is an absurdity.

But a pleasant absurdity it is. Secularism allows intolerance and open bigotry against those that challenge their worldview. It promotes rampant immorality and licentiousness which explains their devotion to the sacrament of abortion. It undermines any religious institution and calls it process. And the greatest gift of all, secularism is without God. The debate over evolution and design is not about science or interpretations of ancient texts; its a debate over a worldview. Evolution is a worldview and always has been. Creationism is a worldview and always has been. And when the established religion of Darwinism is attacked the gloves come off. Rather than debate the issues, secularists drown out all opponents out of fear that their worldview might be undermined and their numbers might dwindle under the pressure. Therefore, rather than debate fossils, they mock museums. Rather than listen to serious critiques of their theory, they write tasteless articles in tasteless magazines about matters that they don't understand.

But at the end of the day we should not be surprised of such foolishness. And it seems to me that even the secular left have acknowledged the short end of their stick by placing such an article in a magazine called Vanity. I would call it Asinine.

For more:

Vanity Fair - Roll Over, Charles Darwin!
World Magazine Blog - Vanity Fair Visits the Creation Museum