RadMod.com » Fighting back against dishonest creationists: Pointers & Resources

I’ve found another great resource in the creationism debate.

A diarist on DailyKos has collected cogent simple arguments to throw in the face of the “flat earth” creationist hucksters.

[side note1 — A “flat earth” creationist is a deliberate term of disrespect for the type of creationist who disregards basic science, uses proven illegitimate arguments, and refers to his opponents by prejudicial and derogatory terms likening them to satanists or atheists, to try to sway an audience and win arguments — see the article below for much more]

[Side note2 — Flat earthers try to confuse, not enlighten. For example, flat earthers mix discussion of the origin of life with discussion of how species evolve from other species. In other words, they falsely claim evolution theory says things like that man is ultimately descended from rocks (life from non-life). Evolution of species says nothing about the big bang, or about the rise of life from non-life. But by mixing these widely disparate theories, flat earthers use weaknesses in one theory to destroy the credibilty of all theories with which they disagree, which is intellectually and scientifically pure nonsense and is bullshit under the guise of reasoned debate.]

[side note3 — Not all creationists are of the “flat earth” type. For example, visit AnswersInGenesis]

The flat earth creationists are those who tend to appear on the talking heads TV shows. The TV preachers are flat earthers, in my opinion.

The flat earthers have a huge following among right wing politicians.

The flat earthers appeal to the masses, because their arguments do not require any self-study to understand fully, and they cater to the hopes and prejudices of people who worry about their eternal souls. It’s very interesting that all high profile flat earthers (that I know about) are also proud of their commitment to conservative Christianity or other conservative religious movement.

The flat earthers are the ones who preach the gospel of creationism without using real scientific arguments. They point out issues in the scientific community, and try to show that the presence of unanswered questions invalidates entire lines of science, which is nonsense. They are excellent at propagandizing and at making mountains out of molehills.

Here are a few facts as I understand them from a long time watching this issue and a long time reading actual science books (books that have been dumbed-down for the non-specialist like me), just so we are clear:

The big bang could have been caused by God, for all scientists know
God could have chosen to organize the universe using evolution as a way to differentiate species
God could have sparked the first life, for all we know
If God exists, then God’s creation is an elegant universe that follows laws of mathematics and science that God established
There does not exist any credible evidence that God created the universe 6,000 years ago. But God may have created evidence showing the universe to be older than 6,000 years, just to fool us, but we can’t know that for sure, because God did not choose to create evidence of His deception.
In a few thousand years, Man has transformed wolves into poodles and weiner dogs using selective breeding. God’s elegantly designed universe has had millions of years to work, enough time to transform early whales into humans.
The REAL reason for the evolution-creationism argument is that Biblical fundamentalists believe that the Bible and their own faith require a 6,000 year old creation. Therein is the problem, in a nutshell. There is NO scientific basis for a 6,000 year old creation, and the various branches of hard science are thoroughly incompatible with a young creation, so all manner of real science must be rebuked by whatever means can be mustered, because faith demands it.

That’s enough for now.

See the article below and please check out the internal links.

Daily Kos: Dealing with Creationists: Pointers & Resources
Dealing with Creationists: Pointers & Resources
by DarkSyde [Subscribe]
Tue Aug 2nd, 2005 at 17:28:36 PDT

Lots of blogscussions on evo vs creationism the last couple of days due to Bush’s misguided comments about Intelligent Design Creationism (IDC). Let me say upfront that as someone who has been involved in this issue for several years, creationists are a lot more savvy than you might think. If you aren’t comfortable in a wide range of scientific fields, they will eat you up in a face to face to debate. While you were learning about biology, they’ve been talking in front of cheering congregations.

While you may have read Dawkins or Gould or Zimmer, they’ve been perfecting multimedia presentations. While you’ve been learning science, they’ve been learning how to do one thing and one thing only: Make you look like an idiot. That being said, I have a few suggestions and resources from right here on Dkos you may be unaware of which might help you avoid the classical traps creationists lay. For some light reading in between OH updates, read on.

(To see a real evolutionary biologist disussing this, check out today’s post on Pharyngula.)

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