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

[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the creation "scientists" are still relying on discredited pseudo-scientific assertions that are thirty or more years out of date.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.