Best way to fight creationist pseudoscience?

When those who claim to support the fight against ignorance expend their efforts fight the ignorant, Evoloution is not advanced.

There is a lot of difference between winning a debate, and making a point.

Tris

I hate to say it, but this is starting to look like a Troll. He comes into the thread and innocently says every stock phrase that pushes the buttons of evolutionists:

  1. What difference does it make what people believe?
  2. Evolution and creationism have equally good evidence
  3. confusion over fact vs. theory
  4. etc, etc.

As is, this would indicate that he’s merely as ignorant as the average believer in creation science. However, there’s a certain annoying edge that he puts in here and there, like “Why not tell the scientists to use proper reading vocabulary?” or his misstatement about being called a racist.

Caveat lector.

Plus, he’s one of the acronym people.

SADMM, if you sincerely want to learn about evolution, I suggest that you go, as was suggested earlier, to http://www.talkorigins.com. Let me also say that I am a professional molecular biologist, and would be willing to answer any questions you may have about the information at talk.origins.

Suffice it also to say that my position vis-a-vis evolution is like that of an astronaut or a mapmaker vis-a-vis the round earth theory. I simply would be unable to do my work without the theory of evolution. I have described aspects of my work to creationists, even to the authors of creation science textbooks, and asked them to explain it in terms of creationism, and all of them failed just as surely as a flat earther would be unable to explain to an astronaut why the earth looks round out the window of his spaceship.

-Ben

MeBunckner, et al., we know that you are trying to present evolution as fact, but if you are testifying for atheism while doing it, count those who have faith in the Divine out. Just as others are not receptive when those like Friend of God testify for their God, so do we with faith regard with askance those who try on this board to use science to prove God doesn’t exist. The statements are more more subtle, but the sentiment is still there. Calling faith ‘ignorance’, well, that will make us convert to atheism just like that, wouldn’t it? The point is that if you request us of not separating faith from science, we request that you separate no-fath from science as well. Then we can look at the evidence as evidence.

Sorry, I thought I pressed preview.

The phrase “you request us of not separating faith from science” should say “you request us to separate faith from science”

If we might return to the regularly scheduled OP in progress…

I’d like to synthesise together some of the points made with my own thoughts on this. I think that creation science can best be dealt with using a three-pronged attack:

  1. Theological. While this isn’t as much a problem with “fence-sitters” who have been swayed by creationist rhetoric to think, “Maybe there’s a little something to this,” it’s a big, big issue with die-hard creationists. Plenty of people need to be taught that evolution is compatible with Christianity. Moreover, it would be desirable to show them that learning about evolution is much more Christian than taking refuge in creationist “porn”. To deal with the theological issue, it doesn’t suffice to say “plenty of Christians are also evolutionists,” since that just brings about the old “going to church doesn’t make you a Christian” response. Instead, I think that a lot of the time one would need to lay out an evolutionist theology which preserves the following points which are of vital importance to fundies:

A.) Biblical infallibility.
B.) Original sin
C.) Substitutive sacrifice.

A. and B. are the most obvious conflicts, since fundies typically feel that the Bible expressly indicates that evolution didn’t happen, and without Adam and Eve there can be no original sin. I’m afraid I’m not theologically well-versed enough to resolve this problem.

  1. Educational. As has been pointed out, belief in creationism drops precipitously with education. Unfortunately, we can’t send everyone off to get a PhD in biology. While talk.origins does a good service, I think one problem with it and with many evolutionist books is that they forget the reading level of their potential creationist audience. Creationists write books with titles like The Handy Dandy Evolution Refuter, and Jack Chick comics are certainly intended for people without a lot of education.
    My favorite creationist webpage is one from AnswersInGenesis which a creationist sent me to, promising that it would explain the Earth’s magnetic field in terms of creation science. The page in question had an interview with a creationist geologist who had devised a young-earth model for geomagnetism, but nowhere was the theory explained at all. Instead, the interview consisted of statements like, “So, I hear you have an exciting new Biblical model for the Earth’s magnetic field?” “Oh yes, it’s very exciting, because now we see that the Word of our Lord and Savior explains exactly why the Earth has a magnetic field.” And so on, and so forth, but not once do they even give a hint as to what the model might be. Plus, there’s a photo of the world’s largest laser in the middle of the page. Why? It has nothing to do with the article! Lasers aren’t even mentioned once in the course of the interview. The caption for the laser has nothing to do with creationism. But the photo nonetheless gives a veneer of scientific respectability to the page, and that’s all that a lot of creationists are looking for.
    While it would be self-defeating for evolutionists to try to get creationists to believe in evolution as mindlessly as they believe in creationism, I think we need to understand the mindset of the people involved. Any attempt to educate creationists needs to start with a theological argument that God wants them to be educated, coupled with us providing them with tools for self-education which they can actually use.

  2. Satirical. Creationists have made a lot of headway against evolution in part because of their constant mockery: how many times have you heard creationists talk about Piltdown man? I think the time has come to harp on some of the more amusing creationist follies, and that includes the more embarassing lies of Gish and company.
    Remember, ten years ago evolutionists were told to avoid debating creationists, because the creationists are professional debaters. But in the Saladin-Gish debate, Saladin caught Gish in a lie and managed to totally destroy his credibility. Gish was reduced to screeching about “ad hominem arguments.” In the question-and-answer session a number of audience members asked him to provide a more substantial rebuttal… so he screeched at them, too. In the end, he was reduced to a shambles. If the creationists got reduced to a shambles every time they held a debate- if they were exposed for the liars they are every single time- then it wouldn’t matter so much when they play dirty and pack the house with creationists. Sooner or later, they would start warning creationists not to tangle with evolutionist debaters, and one of their biggest weapons would have been turned against them.

Thoughts?

-Ben

In my experience, a good thing to do in these discussions is to nullify the whole faith issue right from the start: this simplifies the debate and gives the creationest a graceful way out. When I used to get into this, I would preface my first post with a disclaimer like this:

Sometimes people discover that their faith is enough, and they go away and everyone is happy; for the ones that stay, you can refer back to this disclaimer if they start saying things like “My faith is valid! you are insulting my faith!”.

It also helps to remember that just because they don’t “see the light” ala Jack Chick dosen’t mean the discussion has been worthless: alot of the questioners we get here are realitivly young, and perhaps have never even been exposed to intelligent arguements refuting Creation Science. In these cases, you have planted ideas, which may grow over time. If that happens they aren’t gonna look you up and say “Oh yeah, five years ago we argued about creationism? Well, I changed my mind now and you won. Guess your dick is bigger than mine after all!”

Capacitor, where have I been “testifying for atheism” in this thread?

The best way to convince the die-hard creationist is in his own game. The Bible or Koran to one such is more valid to his life, as it is written by God or Allah, than any scientific text written by humans. One who is well-versed on both biology and theolgy has a better chance to chart the correspondence of the theories of evolution to passages in the Bible.

BTW Ben, your separation of the theological from the educational will get seminary students on your butt, so be careful.

Debating then in public is also very essential to advance the theories of evolution. However, when you debate your points on evolution, one from the other side will trick you into making what sounds like an anti-Divine argument, such as life occuring ‘totally by chance’. Avoid the bait at all costs; deflect and stick to the paths observed, analyzed and replicated. Otherwise, it becomes totally a religion argument you most likely will not win.

Another thing, don’t insult the other side. Creationists are used to it and won’t be fazed at all.

This is from a person who doesn’t care for the extremes from both sides.

I didn’t say that you did here. I am just saying that words have to be picked more carefully in these types of arguments, and not tread into faith or anti-faith if it is so desired; otherwise the discussion will bog down to topics totally unrelated. Faith is not necessarily out of ignorance. Faith can also be based on observation.

First of all, faith, by nature, cannot be questioned scientifically. The problem lies in a definition of terms. You must first ask your audience if they define faith as “belief in the Bible” versus “belief in God.” All, except the biblical literalists, will come down IMHO on the “belief in God” side of the fence.

For these good folk, it is easy. Science tells us about the world around us. Faith (using their definition, which I will call faith[sub]G[/sub]) does not. Science does not tell us about God, while faith[sub]G[/sub] does. I believe most liberal Christians and reform Jews and the like have successfully shown that one can accept the Love of God on one hand and all the tenets of evolution on the other. When the Bible is looked at allegorically, things like Genesis 1 become a perfectly concilable with evolution. Tell your audience to view it as a parable of an inherent purpose in the universe.

The “faith in the Bible” lot (heretofore represented as faith[sub]B[/sub]) are a more nefarious lot, IMHO. These are the people that drive me somewhat batty. This faith[sub]B[/sub] directly states several testable things about the universe. It is my job as a scientist to test such things. For the last hundred years at least, we have consistently shown things in direct contradiction to this so called faith[sub]B[/sub]. Creation pseudoscience aims to distort science in order to “prove” their faith[sub]B[/sub].

They tread on my science, I tread on their faith[sub]B[/sub].

I am not a Biblical scholar by any stretch of the imagination, but there are several questions any creation pseudoscientist should have to answer. The ground rule is, that if they are going to call it a science, they cannot handwave this away as “God did it and I don’t ask questions.” Many of these are covered on Stumper Questions for Creationists. Most are just rattled off the top of my head at 2 AM.

  1. Reconcile the two conflicting creation stories in Genesis 1 and 2.
  2. Where is the evidence for a firmament?
  3. Where is the evidence that plants were created before the sun?
  4. Where is the evidence that the earth is younger than the sun?
  5. Why did God create male nipples and other vestigial organs?
  6. Where is the evidence for a global flood?
  7. Explain protein homology without using evolution.
  8. Explain conserved endogenous retroviruses and other junk DNA conservation between species.
  9. Explain why most phylogeny is recapitulated by both genetic and paleontologic methods.
  10. If you have to resort to miraculous events to explain any of natural history, when and why did these miraculous events stop? Are there current events which are miraculous?
  11. How do you explain observed instances of speciation?
  12. Why does creation science’s interpretation of data consistently differ from those of mainstream science?
  13. Why would God give misleading evidence about the world around us? Why would He create a world that would lead us to formulate evolution?
  14. Explain the distribution of animals in the modern world.

And lastly, and most importantly :
15) How is creation science a science? In order for it to be science, it must be based on theory. It must advance hypotheses based on evidence. Name one creation science hypothesis or theory. Can one make predictions based on this?

Be sure to point out that evidence seemingly against evolution is not proof of creationism.

edwino said:

It’s easy enough for creationists to name off what they call theories/hypotheses, but the problem with these “theories” is that, in scientific context, they aren’t theories at all. A theory starts with observation and the gathering of facts, followed by the analysis of those facts, followed by the creation of a hypothesis in attempt to explain them. Creation “science” is not science, because it attempts to look for facts to support a preconcieved notion. Science, by definition, looks at evidence to form conclusions; “creation science” takes a conclusion and tries to find evidence for it–so they have the scientific method precisely backward. Whether pointing this out to a creation scientists would be an effective argument or not, however, I wouldn’t bet on.

Capacitor, I hate to say it, but it seems like every single time you post to a C/E thread, you complain about evolutionists “testifying for atheism” and not letting people believe in both evolution and Jesus. Every time you do this, the evolutionists protest that they haven’t been testifying for atheism.

Can you come up with even one example where evolutionists in a C/E thread were engaging in the kind of behavior you complain about?

-Ben

Those interested in learning about effective ways to advance the learning of scientific methodology might visit the National Center for Science Education, a group, “Defending the Teaching of Evolution in Public Schools” http://www.natcenscied.org/

Off of their resources page, I found an interesting leaflet, Twelve Tips for Testifying at School Board Meetings.

In defense of a certain advocate of laissez-faire, tip 9 notes that, “The religious issue must be addressed in order to resolve the controversy successfully…” My understanding is that National Center for Science Education especially likes call upon religious scientists to testify in front of school boards.

TalkOrigin’s Debating Creationists: Some Pointers

Opus1 wrote:

Except for The Tychonian Society.

tracer:

Yes, I realize that some people still accept a fixed Earth, virtually all of them Biblical literalists. I meant to incorporate that into my point somehow, perhaps as an example of the absurdity of extreme literalism. But I ended up not including it and looking like I didn’t realize that geocentrists still exist. Thank you for pointing this out. Here are some even crazier people.

I’ve decided to take Libertarian’s false accusations to the Pit, particularly in light of some of his recent comments on other threads:

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=71973

-Ben

Back to the OP. Right off the top of my head, here are 4 pragmatic ways to make people see reason:

1- Lobby Congress to stop tax-exempt status of religious organizations, churches, mosques, temples, synagogues, etc.

2- Lobby (or threaten boycott) of main stream TV advertisers so that they allocate equal time to science-based soap operas and serials rather than “Angels”

3- Convince Jay Leno (by contributing to his anti-Taliban cause) to show what percentage of his “Jay Walkers” believe in Creationism, God and Religion.

4- Finance creation of TV programs to demonstrate how “Eradication of Ignorance” has historically and systematically been hindered by religion.

I solicit other down-to-earth, doable and effective suggestions to help OP’s dilemma.

Hmmm… I don’t think it will fly. Although I do remember Carl Sagan praising “Scooby Doo, where are you?” for its relentlessly naturalistic worldview.

-Ben

You’re conflating Theism with Creationism. There are many, many religious people who don’t believe in the Creationists’ viewpoint. Possibly a majority, though I don’t have numbers. This thread is not about making the US an atheistic society and helping religious people “see the light”. It’s about refuting a very specific and relatively small subset of Christian belief.

jayjay