Creationists, especially the ones coming up with this tripe to feed the sheep, do not care about whether science is correct or not. All they care about is whether people believe in their religion.
So why not be direct with people who post on internet boards making creationist claims? Time and again, we rational thinkers are put in the position of defending evolution, archaeology, astronomy or what have you against a group who really couldn’t care less about our arguments.
What if we used another approach?
Decades ago, evangelists noticed that church attendance was dropping. This meant less church revenue, less donations. They identified the ‘culprit’ as science and rational thought. When I was a kid some evengelists came to the door and said ‘don’t believe science, God is real!’. This attitude has since evolved into attacks on mostly evolution, since it contradicts their creation story.
So, instead of trying to convince them of something they have been trained not to accept, why not try to convince them that the whole reason they’ve been taught that ‘science is bad’ is to protect the church? The church just wants their money and will stoop to anything to get it.
I think all approaches can be valid. Some creationists (mostly the younger folks) actually believe creationism is science, and often they are capable of actually learning once exposed to rational thought. Others have no interest in learning.
So I don’t think any approach should be shut off- reasonable and patient explanations work for some, exposure to the “harsh truth” works for others, and even mockery has its place.
That probably won’t work because it would be perceived as a direct attack on their faith (which makes you the bad guy - and if you’re the bad guy, there’s no need to listen to anything you say).
In order to expose creationism as a bunch of lies, you have to convince someone to critically examine one or more of its claims and discover them false. Once that is done, it’s possible to start asking “and why are these people telling you lies?”
ETA: in the experience of the average creationist (at least as far as I know) the people promoting creationism aren’t necessarily the ones asking for money. People pay their tithes to their church, but learn their creationism from popular figures such as Gish and Hovind, not necessarily via their churches.
It’s the same with other kinds of antiscience woo. Demolish their claims, then look at the motivations and behavior of the woo-ist leaders.
You don’t want to fall into the trap of back-and-forth name-calling with such people (a tactic they encourage when their arguments predictably fail). Fence-sitters will not be impressed, and may even equate you with opponents.
I do not agree with your premise. Sure; “the Church” needs money to propagate itself. Like any institution, it has mechanisms to promote its ongoing existence.
But your last statement is unequivocally incorrect, in my opinion (and I come from a long foundation of protestant thinking and training).
The average person–leader or parishoner–in the average protestant/catholic church (add the Muslims, for that matter, b/c their Creationist views are just as backward) is there because they fundamentally believe in their theological paradigm. They aren’t there because “the church” is a great way to scam people out of money.
Their average anxiety is not losing money if “science” wins. It’s losing credibility. If Creationism is completely wrong, then for Creationists, there is a direct loss of all “Truth.” For the average Creationist, it’s not the money that’s lost when Creationism is accepted as silly; it’s an entire theological paradigm around which their entire daily code of living is built–not to mention an eternal salvation. If “Evolutionism” is correct, then atheism wins. It’s as simple as that.
If you attack Creationism using the incorrect premise that it’s a money grab, Creationists will simply use that false accusation as proof that you are so far off base you don’t carry any credibility.
The answer, purely and simply, is ordinary education. Science will win the day. It won the day for a round(ish) earth, and it will win the day for an old(ish) universe and for all of the ordinary progression of life and evolution over the last couple of billion years that is so obvious to anyone with a brain and a science education. Ken Ham and his fruitcake pardners will crap out all on their own.
It’s just too nutty to start 4,500 years ago on Mount Ararat with all land-based life, have a bunch of water just disappear (not to mention the survival of sealife through that particular cataclysm) and have diverse life forms truck off to their present day locations without obvious breadcrumbs leading back to the ark as a point source for all modern land-based flora and fuana.
I suggest the most productive conversation with a Creationist is to have them articulate their belief. Don’t defend “Science.” Start with the Ark 4,500 years ago, day one. What did the dinosaurs eat to survive? How about the rabbits? How did giant earthworms get to Australia but not be distributed at every other waystop between Ararat and Australia? And so on. You get the idea. Start with Ark as a putative point-source of what we see today, and forget sucking them into evolutionary theory right away. Make them see how silly their position is; not defend yours.
You will get one of two responses. 1: “I don’t know, but God must have done it.” This sort of person is not interested in learning science, and so for them, an introduction to Last Tuesday-ism is the best approach. 2: “Hmmm…I never thought about it.” This sort of person is salvageable.
But then again, it’s really not that big a deal, is it? I’m not nearly as interested in destroying silly beliefs as I am in how we treat one another, and “the Church,” in my experience, has done a better job of promoting altruism than any other large-scale institution in recent times (another debate, perhaps, if Der Trihs is listening)…
Some of the problem is with the hardcore creationists is that if they “disprove” a scientific fact or theory that it somehow “proves” a creationism statement.
Yet the converse is not true. Interesting. I think that what goes on with most creationists is that the world is a very, very, very complex place. It’s way too much for any one person to comprehend. Yet they want to be just as smart as just as good as anyone else. So they figure if they adopt the Bible, they only have one book to study to be “equal”, and they don’t need to study it because it is right in and of itself. They also seem to miss the teachings about feeding the poor and healing the sick, being against these things politically.
Also it is not merely a conversation between fundies and skeptics.
There are many others who aren’t particularly invested in discrediting evolution, but nonetheless find statements like “Evolution is just a theory” or “Microevolution is testable, macroevolution is not” convincing.
So I think it’s good to firefight the specific points, at least for the benefit of these people.
Time and again, we rational thinkers are put in the position of defending evolution, archaeology, astronomy or what have you against a group who really couldn’t care less about our arguments.
Why do you feel the need to defend your position? People that believe in creation know as much as you do about evolution, archaeology, etc. They choose to believe that man was created by God, and that man is essentially a spiritual being that will live forever.
Nothing has changed over several thousand years, people will always find a reason to believe or not to believe in God. These days the big thing is science.
I don’t really get why people with your mindset are so concerned about making others think like you. You don’t understand what faith is. It is a spiritual thing, and all the science in the world won’t make it go away.
Sheep as you call them are every bit as smart as you are. Believing is a choice.
In general, those who reject evolution know very little about it. They say things like “if man came from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?” or “I’ve never seen a crocodile evolve into a duck”, which demonstrates a gross misunderstanding of evolution.
Lots has changed over several thousand years- one of the big things was the development of a rational and scientific way to examine the world around us.
You’ll notice this is the “Great Debates” forum- meaning people come here if they like to have debates. If you post here, people take it as an invitation for challenge and debate. If you don’t want debate, this is not the place for you to be.
This is an overly cynical view of evangelical thought which ignores the complexities of religious belief. Though it is true that any institution needs financial resources to survive, it’s ridiculous to say that money is the only goal (or even the most important goal) of organized religion. You suggest that the folks in charge propagate “facts” which they know are false for the simple purpose of tricking people out of their money. I don’t think you’re going to get anywhere by denying that evangelical Christians at all levels of the church do actually believe what they espouse.
While I appreciate how infuriating that is, ignoring it is going to make it that much harder to convince anyone of the truth.
Chief Pedant made an excellent post and covered a lot of thoughts I have about this. The most important point, I think, being that thought a lot of atheists seem to propogate this idea that because they see religion as a scam, that the average believer also sees that. That argument really isn’t all that different from how a lot of religious people believe that atheists deep down really believe in God but are just pretending not to. In both cases, it’s a projection of one’s own fundamental beliefs as a base truth on the other.
This is why this sort of argument, as proposed by the OP, just generally doesn’t go well. Pretty much everyone has fundamental core beliefs, that they axiomatically build their world views around. When these beliefs are challenged, even for open-minded people, it’s often difficult to look at the issue from a truly unbiased perspective.
Personally, I think the whole problem is this false dichotomy that it’s science or religion. Sure, there are some pretty loud believers who fight science, and atheists who fight against religion, but it seems to me that most people fall between those two extremes. I know a huge number of believers who accept evolution as scientific fact and take the creation story as allegory that God did it, to a group of people who couldn’t have possibly understood evolution anyway. Similarly, I know plenty of atheists who don’t believe in God, but don’t think that evolution necessarily precludes the possibility.
So, if the goal is to break down the wall, why don’t see try to kill this false dichotomy, that evolution and religion are somehow incompatible. Hell, even the Pope himself (JP2, I think) has even said evolution and science are not at odds. Admittedly, the problem mostly exists in the US, where most Christians are protestant and thus don’t care what he says, and tend to be more fundamentalist. Still, I think we’ll make a lot more progress in furthering both science and general humanity.
Have you ever been in a discussion with a creationist? This is demonstrably false. My first question is always “define evolution” and they seldom can.
Actually a lot has changed. Thousands of years ago god was as good an explanation for the world as anything. Not any longer.
Plenty of people have faith in god while accepting evolution. Faith is belief in things not seen, not belief in things demonstrably false. To use a favorite example, it is good to have faith that your wife loves you, but keeping that faith after you’ve found her in bed with half the football time makes you a schmuck. Creationists have done worse than this to the truth.
I’ve had the misfortune to encounter higher-functioning creationists, who have managed to learn the truth, but who then hare off on a Gish gallop, swerving all over the road, tossing out anecdotal rebuttals (“You can create a barrel of oil out of vegetable waste in only a year, so why should I believe that it takes nature millions of years?”) without ever pausing to listen to the response. The ones I’ve met really have made at least a superficial study of “the enemy” but still maintain their disbelief, and enter into rhetorical fallacies to defend them.
(This isn’t always the case. Astonishing ignorance also pertains. I once heard Gish himself claim that scientists are foolish because they believe in invisible, odorless, colorless gases. Gosh! Invisible gases! Doesn’t that just take the wind out of your sails!)
Yeah, there were a few people in talk.origins who worked by questioning the evolution of some very miniscule molecular structures, abstruse enough so that only a few biologists could address it. I’m sure Philip Johnson was smart enough to understand evolution (Gish I’m not sure about.) I suspect they were lying for God, if not intentionally unintentionally to preserve their basic principle that the Bible is correct no matter what.
But they are pretty rare. Most have strawmen views from their church bulletins. The last time a JW dropped in, I confronted her (politely) on this, and while she was not totally ignorant, and had a few canned responses, she didn’t really get it.
