Creationists getting their comeuppance

[velvetpage]

Wow. This exchange is an excellent example of a creation "scientist" being put in his place by a real scientist. The second reply is the fun one.

I especially liked the postscripts where the scientist impugned the creationists' practice of Christianity, first on the grounds that creationists seek to put the same limits on God's ability to create the world that they have on their own ability to understand that creation, and then on the fact that they are practising deceit on several levels throughout the exchange. Nice.

(Note: though I'm pretty sure I don't have anyone on my friends list who is both a Christian and a Creationist, please be assured that my scorn is directed solely at the latter. Anyone who is content to see the creation story as a myth told to a pre-scientific society, that is spiritually rather than literally true, does not come in for it.)

Comments

[dagoski.livejournal.com]

Check the link. Something didn't get closed and you've got a run on. I think...

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

Yep - Claire was pulling at my arm, resulting in typing a q in place of an a in the link code. The joys of small children and uncaffeinated brains. . .

[wyldraven.livejournal.com]

Excellent. Thanks for the link.

[used_songs]

Hi! I'm here from pyat.

I really enjoyed the Lenski letters. I think my favorite part was when he explained that he was making an allusion and then provided a link. I had read about this exchange, but hadn't yet taken the time to read the actual documents. Thanks for prodding me into doing so.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

No problem. I lol'ed at that part, too. :)

[stress-kitten.livejournal.com]

In other words, it’s not that we claim to have glimpsed “a unicorn in the garden” – we have a whole population of them living in my lab! [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unicorn_in_the_Garden] And lest you accuse me further of fraud, I do not literally mean that we have unicorns in the lab. Rather, I am making a literary allusion. [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allusion

Yeah, that was a lovely move on the part of the writer. :-) The undertone of "ok, I'm going to treat you like a retarded duckling, because that what your responses inform me you are..." is wonderful.

[ladyperegrine.livejournal.com]

Anyone who is content to see the creation story as a myth told to a pre-scientific society, that is spiritually rather than literally true...

This is what I believe, but I'm not sure what it makes me. :-)

[the-af.livejournal.com]

that guy did get his butt handed to him, pretty much. i don't see why 'scorn' is necessary, though.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

The wilful dishonesty, the oversimplification of something that should be beautiful in its magnitude, and the effort to stunt the intellects of young people by calling what they do "science," all disgust me.

[the-af.livejournal.com]

ok, so that one guy and his buddies get the scorn, not 'creationists'.

I don't think it 'stunts' intellect to believe that a creator made the world in 7 days, whether you think it was a literal 7 days or some other number that was symbolised by that.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

1) I do think it stunts intellect to believe, against all evidence to the contrary, that the world was created in a few days. Believing that seven days is a symbolic way of representing a much longer time frame, however, is a totally different thing. It's accepting an element of myth in the story that is not present in a literal interpretation.

2) By "creationists," I don't mean people who believe God created. There are days when I believe that myself. I mean people who attempt to find scientific "proof" that a literal, six-day creation story is the correct one, especially since most of them have to throw out much better science in order to find that "proof."

3) Most people who espouse a young-earth creationism are going to come in for some of that scorn, unless they've never been exposed to any other possibilities. The ones who run websites and create homeschool or private school curricula, the ones who spend their time tearing down good science and slandering good scientists - those ones come in for a lot more of it.

[the-af.livejournal.com]

i probably don't have 'all the evidence to the contrary', though i'd be interested in seeing it if i knew where to find it

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

I'm not a scientist. I have an armchair, layperson's understanding of science, including the mechanisms by which scientists investigate, write about, publish, and accept criticism of their findings. I know enough to look for peer-reviewed studies, experiments that include control groups and seek to eliminate circumstantial "false positives," and studies that lead to more questions.

The body of evidence is heavily in favour of the universe evolving over a period of millions of years. While people like this scientist continue to conduct experiments showing that evolution really does happen, the creation "scientists" are still relying on discredited pseudo-scientific assertions that are thirty or more years out of date.

I respect honest intellectualism. I respect people who say, "I don't know the answer, but i can find out," and I respect people who say, "I don't know the answer, and I can't think of a way to find that out with our current technology." The Creation "scientists" don't say those things. They say, "These are the answers, right here in this millenia-old story from a pre-scientific era, and we're going to set out to prove it." Science doesn't work like that.

[quaero-verum.livejournal.com]

;-)

[kisekileia.livejournal.com]

I liked this, too.