Random Things Creationists Believe, Despite Being Conclusively Disproven By Science (13 items)

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  (#11) The Great Flood Formed the Grand Canyon

  Given that the earth is full of geological structures much older than 6,000 years, creationists have had to find ways to explain each one away. Most are simply written off as having been created by the receding waters of the Great Flood. The Grand Canyon is given as a perfect example of something carved by the Flood, as they claim it to be so much higher than the Colorado River that it must have either been formed by uphill-flowing sediment (which is impossible) or weak material being swept away by rushing waters. Moreover, the rock layers that make up the canyon are from vastly different eras in some places - proof they were dumped there by raging water.

  Naturally, this isn't true, and grossly misunderstands geology. The Grand Canyon is an intricate, winding chasm that runs 277 miles of lazy, slow-rolling curves, not a straight spillway that a huge flood would form. The inconsistencies in the rock layers are easily explained by two billion years of upheaval, plate tectonics, and weather - all taking place as the Colorado Plateau rose up.
  
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  (#9) Radiocarbon Dating Doesn't Work

  The process of measuring the decay of naturally occurring radioisotope carbon-14 to estimate the age of carbon-bearing materials (called radiocarbon dating) has given us a window into determining the true age of fossils around the world. Naturally, creationists must find a way to sweep aside the findings of radiocarbon dating - so they simply claim it doesn't work.

  Among the made-up ways creationists use to discard carbon-14 are that decay rates aren't constant, meaning dating can't be trusted; that it's inaccurate because of atmospheric conditions or cosmic rays; or that it simply doesn't work with anything older than 5,730 years (the half-life of the isotope). Some Biblical literalists simply claim the Great Flood disrupted the amount of carbon-14 on Earth, meaning it's useless to measure it.

  Carbon-14 dating is actually a process that's been constantly improving since its discovery in the late '40s, and has determined the age of objects going back 60,000 years. While it can produce errors, it's been extremely important in scientific discovery, dating everything from fossilized forests to the Dead Sea Scrolls.
  
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  (#3) No Transitional Fossils Have Ever Been Found

  Creationists believe that if evolution were true, life forms would constantly be "transforming" into other life forms, and that fossils of such transitional creatures would be found everywhere - yet none have. This principle is best seen in prominent creationists Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort's "crocoduck" meme - a "genuine species-to-species transitional form" with the head of a crocodile and the body of a duck.

  The "crocoduck" was a joke intending to raise a common creationist argument - that no transitional fossils have ever been found.

  This is simply not true. Transitional fossils don't need to be "half-this/half-that," and dozens of fossils have been found that show characteristics of two different creatures, yet are not wholly one or the other. Examples include invertebrates with bones, ancient jawless fishes with primitive jaws, fish with amphibian characteristics, semi-aquatic whales, dinosaur fossils with bird-like bone structures, and innumerable primates with humanoid features. Creationists usually explain these away as being either fraudulent, misinterpreted, or simply made up.
  
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  (#7) The Speed of Light Isn't Constant

  If God created the heavens and the Earth 6,000 years ago, how can light from distant galaxies be millions or billions of years old? Creationists have come up with a convenient explanation: the speed of light isn't constant, but was actually much faster in the past. So the light from these stars must have traveled much faster, in order for early man to have seen it. A number of explanations have been given by creationists to solve this "starlight problem," but none of have survived scientific scrutiny, nor do they hold up against basic logic.

  While there is some evidence of the existence of a variable speed of light in a vacuum, this is based mostly on theoretical research, and would explain only the movement of photons at the very beginning of the universe - a time now known to be rife with rapid expansion. The concept is nowhere near as simple as "God made the light go faster" and that belief depends on breaking some of the fundamental constants of the universe.
  
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  (#10) DNA Is God's Signature on Living Things

  Given that DNA is an information-carrying molecule that can be opened and read by humans, creationists believe it's a divine message - a code directly from God that He put into all of us. This belief was exacerbated by a 2013 hoax story from website The Daily Currant that claimed scientists at Harvard had examined a "little-explored" section of coding and found a 22-word message from God written in Aramaic - a story that was picked up by religious newspapers and websites around the world.

  The hoax story aside, this is an example of special pleading - an attempt to explain away something complex with a celestial explanation. DNA is complex, the thinking goes, and only God can do complex things.
  
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  (#12) God Designed the Universe "Intelligently"

  As more and more evidence has piled up to disprove Young Earth Creationist claims, new strands of creationism have appeared. The most prominent is intelligent design (ID) - the theory that life, or the universe, cannot have arisen by chance, but was designed and created by some intelligent entity. While ID discards much of the Bible-based belief of Young Earth Creationism (e.g., God made the world in six days, the Earth is 6,000 years old, etc), it still relies on an unscientific principle - that God made anything that's too complex to have simply evolved by accident.

  ID might have more of a scientific bent, but it's not anywhere close to accepted by mainstream science. It's still creationism, just with less Biblical literalism.
  

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