How NOT to debate a Creationist

[Fifty]

To me, what is the worst (and I see it here on the forums ALL THE TIME) form of creation/evoulution debate is when an evolutionist essentially attempts to win a debate by being condescending. An example:

Creationist: I think that an argument for God's existence is everything seems to work so well towards life.

Evolutionist: pfft. When you gain some remote understanding of science, logic, and reason, and when you manage to pull your head out of your arse, let me know.



If I were on the fence, or attempting to learn about evolution, I would be forced to conclude by this dialogue that the evolutionist has no real substance to their argument. Sure, you could say that it gets tedious to explain evolution every time in detail, but I would consider not saying anything at all superior to the above dialogue. Consider as an evolutionist how compelled towards creationism you would be if you saw this dialogue:

Creationist: The bible proves God exists.

Evolutionist: What do you mean? I see many ways in which the Bible is inconsistent and vague, and further it does not constitute any form of scientific or rational analysis.

Creationist: Pleeeeeeeease. Why don't you let me know when you have gained the first clue about the Bible, and when your puny brain has gained some intelligence, and we can continue this discussion.


see what I mean?

 

[E-Raser]

It is impossible to debate an empirical and scientific subject with one who does not accept empiricism and science.

I don't feel adressed.
It is just not everything as clear and without contradictions. So in this cases where a reconstruction of an animal is made from the remainings of just some bones, I think you must see the difficulty of an authentic reconstruction just from some bones. I consider it quite hard to reconstruct a whole animal just from the remaings as a jaw and some teeth for example.
Even from complete sceletons you recieve different pictures. Almost as many as different ppl try to reconstruct. So it is obvious they may be not by conciousnes or bad will tendicious interpretated, nevertheless the drawing will reveal the ideas of the painter because he can't be completly objectiv. The smaller the remainings are, the more this influance will take place - willingly or not.
Only one example of misinterpretation is the Latimeria. As this fossile was found it was claimed an intermediate between fishes and amphibia. Meanwhile it is discovered not being exstinct but still alive. The presumed primitive lungs are in fact lipid filled organ with a completly different function than breathing. Furthermore this fish is living in depth beyond 180 meters. So far it wasn't cought or observed above this depth. How to presume this fish, adopted to an rather deeper sea environment, should have an clue to enter the dry land?

I do not deny that nevertheless amphibia may have been developed from fishes in general, neither I deny evolution. I am simply about the opinion that the chain of development may not be as waterproofed as often claimed. And I doubt Latimeria was part of this chain. This may indicate that with time there will be discovered other misinterpretations as well, as there have already others been proven. Although this doesn't disproof evolution in general it grows sceptizism as far as I am concerned.

I do not claim God made the species. I neither rely on the bible. Although I am born in a christian tradition I left church and I am not member of a certain religious group. I do not care at all weather you call God Allah, Jahwe, Budda, or whatever. Atheist? Welcome, so what? This is no topic for me.

But for my understanding the theorie of evolution basically makes sense in combination with abiogenesis. Because if god exsists, it doesn't matter anymore (so basically) weather the species were developed step by step or by complete creation or if the evolution is part of Gods plan.
But if you could bring evidance for abiogenesis as well as for evolution, than you could explain everything without god and establish a new materialistic "religion" as it was done by the national-socialists on the right and the communists on the left hand. Marx and Engels for example were convinced fans of Darwin.
And the so called "social-darwinism", well to what degree of perversion it led should be also well known.
... but this is already off topic, sorry.

 

[Mise]

Evolutionist: pfft. When you gain some remote understanding of science, logic, and reason, and when you manage to pull your head out of your arse, let me know.

I might have to use that sometime! (not on religious people necessarily)

Frankly, it takes a hell of a lot of work to explain evolution. If you spend 3 hours writing up how the first amino acid turned into a walking talking thinking human, only to get "yeah, but God could have done it too", wouldn't you be a little bit frustrated? Wouldn't you lash out at them, accuse them of not actually understanding the majesty and elegance of nature, and just dismissing the vast plethora of evidence with no real reason other than wanting to believe the less credible, more colourful theory of creationism?

 

[The Last Conformist]

What I know about the metabolism of cells makes it difficult to imagine how anything without proteins should be considered alive. But I am intersted in the scenario you'd consider reasonably possible.
DNA-RNA first? Even much more complicated molecule to develope by chance- not only AS but sugar and nucleotids. A C T and G are also quite complex I'd say.

I'm no expert on the subject, but a book I read back in december suggested a scenario where the first replicators were RNA-like molecules called PNA or TNA. The first one would be quite short, and copying quite imperfectly by simply picking up free-floating single bases, but natural selection would produce larger ones with autocatalytic effect. At some point a new more stable strain would be formed accidentally out of RNA instead, which would in turn accidentally synthetize amino acid changes, some of which would have helpful catalytic properties. When this complex ends up in a lipid droplet, you've got a protocell.

Viruses? They posses a hull of proteins, so still as above.

Viruses are parasitic on cells, so they must postdate cellular life.

(Well, unless God created them ex nihilo and kept them in His personal WMD cache till He got around to creating some higher life He could unleash them on.)

Sounds logical. But he life time of a proto-protein wouldn't be long. Against all the odds the appearances of proteins (or DNA, RNA, whatever you imagine as a starting point of life) does not seem to be as probable as that a continuous synthesis can be considered. Can it? Even Miller yielded only very small concentrations of AS, hardly enough to strengthen your argument.

The Urey-Millwer experiment is hardly relevant any longer; the early atmosphere was simply not like that.

The supply of the basic building blocks will have been continuous. The trick presumably was not jumping directly to modern-sized biomolecules, but starting with quite small autocatalyzing systems that gradually produced bigger offspring by replication error.

This is in fact all what is needed. But if you have brown and white bricks and you want to build them a house by change you would consider the house to be in two colours. Not?

Only if you can combine the two kinds of bricks freely. D and L forms are not biochemically interchangeable in many cases.

But bacause of your If it seems you're also not definetaly convinced about the abiogenesis or am I wrong?
Anyway, here it is not possible to bring indeed hard evidence, hence one must consider what seems to be the most propable.
One version might be that life can in fact not appear on earth but on another systems planet and the seeds were planted through a comet's impact? Also thinkable, isn't it? Theoretically bacterial spores may be able to survive such a travel.
This sounds even more reasonable than the spontanous origin of life under the presumed conditions on earth IMO.

It's still abiogenesis, tho, unless God created the first life in comets.

Basically, there are three alternatives:

i) Abiogenesis
ii) Divine intervention
iii) Life has always been around

Of these, (iii) can be justifiable discounted; it flies in the face of everything we know of cosmology, and has serious issues with thermodynamics. That leaves (ii), which essentially is God of the Gaps, and (i). To get anywhere in science, we must assume (i), and there are various hints how abiogenesis might work. But we can never know that (ii) is wrong, no more than we can disprove Last Thursdayism.

 

[The Last Conformist]

@Monk: I've, many times, invoked the "go learn some X" exhortation, but never, I believe, to the particular argument you mention. I usually level it at creationists who argue "X disproves evolution" from an obviously faulty understanding of X; Tyrus88's brief career comes to mind.

 

[Aphex_Twin]

But for my understanding the theorie of evolution basically makes sense in combination with abiogenesis. Because if god exsists, it doesn't matter anymore (so basically) weather the species were developed step by step or by complete creation or if the evolution is part of Gods plan.
But if you could bring evidance for abiogenesis as well as for evolution, than you could explain everything without god and establish a new materialistic "religion" as it was done by the national-socialists on the right and the communists on the left hand. Marx and Engels for example were convinced fans of Darwin.
And the so called "social-darwinism", well to what degree of perversion it led should be also well known.
... but this is already off topic, sorry.

ToE does not claim to be a theory of everything. It deals with a specific phenomenon and inevitably walks from a few axiomes (like: "Life exists"). If you say that for ToE to hold you have to explain Abiogenesis, I say, why stay there? Obviously, for life to come to Earth you have to have an Earth and a Sun to heat it. But the Earth is made up of heavy elements, byproducts of supernovae explosions. Do you need consistency all the way back to and before the Big Bang for the ToE to hold as a valid theory?

Creationists often argue that Evolution is a "religion of death", but since God is good, he could have come up with a nicer way for things to have developed. But Evolution is neither religion (it does not state the existance of a supernatural creature, nor does it appeal to mysticism) nor need it be "moral" or "ethic". Morality and ethics are human inventions, we developed them (or were handed down to us) to cope with life in a social environment. Morality intrinsicly refers to humans (be it created by humans themselves of by a God). Even if "survival of the fittest" is valid in the jungle, we as rational creatures do not need to transpose it into society ad-literam.

 

[Renata]

Another response to Monk's point --

I would agree with you that anyone who uses that "argument" as his or her first response to a creationist is doing no one any favors, and is quite probably a twit besides. Generally, though, that gets pulled out in sheer frustration after the creationist in question has repeatedly demonstrated both ignorance of both basic science and logic and an unwillingness to admit that even the most patently absurd idea could be incorrect, if it seems to support a non-evolutionary account of history.

Renata

 

[Neonanocyborgasm]

I think the best strategy to use in debates against Creationists is simply to avoid debates at all. Creationists are not only prone to logical fallacies, but they often present outright lies faster than they could be discredited. I also think that Creationist does not deserve to even be dignified with a response. The only people who believe it are either the ignorant or ultra-religious; usually the latter.

 

[Fifty]

@Renata, Mise, The Last Conformist

Believe me, I understand the frusteration. Try having a 5 minute discussion of theology (or politics) with my dad! I think, however, that it is better to say nothing at all as opposed to being condescending. Heck, if you (justifiably) don't feel like typing out a huge response, link to a good article or website, or cite a book.

For example, when (about a month ago) I started a thread that was essentially about the old watchmaker argument for a creator (I was still an evolutionist but was just curious about what the refutation of that argument was), I was told by Keirador to read The Blind Watchmaker, which I did. It helped much more than if he had said "I can't believe you are even asking the question you illogical nonsensical ******!"

 

[Mise]

The difference, Monk, is that a creationist already believes in creationism, so they aren't looking to read books (or even "learn" anything at all, most of the time), they're looking to convince the other side of their follies. And evolutionists are trying to do the same. So in such "debates" there is no real room for mind-expansion or enlightenment, because both sides are trying to convince the other side that they are wrong. That's why it's so important to understand the other side's arguement. If one side misunderstands the other, they will think that they are right and they have "won", whereas they haven't won, they just don't understand. The other side, of course, can't let them think that, so resorts to insults

 

[Gif Warrior]

Good point wise. I dont think there is anyway I can "prove" creationism. I just believe. I try to look at the facts I have been given and "fit" it in with my beliefs. Also some of the "proofs" of evolutionism is either written in such a way that I cant understand it or just doesnt prove the point. In case you havent read and earlier post I made; I do believe in evolution within a species, I just dont believe in cross species evolution.

 

[WillJ]

In case you havent read and earlier post I made; I do believe in evolution within a species, I just dont believe in cross species evolution.

And how do you define a species?

 

[Gif Warrior]

Basically, a group that can breed within itself if that makes sense.

 

[Keirador]

A group that can breed within itself and produce viable offspring. Horses and donkeys can mate, but the mules they produce are sterile.

 

[Gif Warrior]

There you go keirador thanx for helping there.

 

[ummmm........]

And how do you define a species?

I had a thread about this that was reasonably spam free.

 

[Perfection]

Well the biological species concept doesn't always mean that they can't produce viable offspring only that there's significant barriers, you get two groups of animals that can produce viable offspring when forced to mate in a lab but in the wild have nothing to do with each other it's acceptable to call them seperate species. Other times viable offspring can occur but it is rare, there has been recorded instances of verile mules, but the rarity of such occurance still makes both sides genetically isolated and worthy of the distinction as seperate species.

 

[WillJ]

I had a thread about this that was reasonably spam free.

Thank you.

There, Aphex Twin points out what I was going to ask Gif Warrior: If a species is a group of organisms who can produce fertile offspring, how can this classification be non-arbitrarily applied to organisms that reproduce asexually, which are incidentally the organisms that give us the best observations of evolution?

 

[Aphex_Twin]

You don't even have to think of it as a species turning into another. It's a group of animals that through inbreeding (or just ONE viable unicellular creature) that/which develops up to a point where one would classify it as distinct from other groups of creatures. ToE is about the change and not the names we give it. It's this point exactly that evo debaters should press: that the distinction between micro evolution and macro evolution is just as arbitrary as the biologic definition of species. The diference being that for evolution to hold a species can be defined however arbitrary, but for the creationist rebuttal to hold there has to be a clear disctinction between micro and macro evlution.

 

[ummmm........]

I think the reason it's an interesting question is becasue it brings into sharp relief the issue of how one type of organism can arise from another. To me, this only makes sense with the kind of geographic separation mentioned in the other thread.

Otherwise, it seems you'd need several organisms to change in all the same way at the same time (so they could pass on the change), or the one organism that changed would just get assimilated back into the pool.

BTW, the question of whether evolution is "real" or not isn't very interesting to me. It's much more interesting to ask "if it exists, how does it work?" just as it's more interesting to ask "if god exists, why (X)" than it is to ask "does god exist?"