Actually, what I was looking for is a short informative verbal response much less than ten seconds long. Creationists memorize "unanswerable questions" designed to stump us (eg, the list of questions in the Question Evolution campaign for creationist students to inundate their teachers with), so shouldn't we prepare informative responses with enough punch in them to shock their brains into starting to think? For that purpose, we would need no more than a few sentences (or a single extended sentence), not fifteen paragraphs; pack a lot into a small packet, like depleted-uranium rounds but with beneficial side-effects.
Here is basically what I was looking for:
quote:
Creationist: Well, evolution is just a theory!
Us: So then evolution is just a well-substantiated, well-supported, well-documented explanation for our observations which is supported by all the relevant observations and which, along with its predictions, has been constantly scrutinised and repeatedly tested for over 150 years and has survived all that testing to be our best explanation for our observations.
Then maybe, after the creationist has picked up his jaw from where he had dropped it, the discussion can proceed into those fifteen paragraphs.
BTW, another less informative response would be to point out to them that "The Bible is
just a book!". Less informative, but by pulling their own deceptive game on them might also get them to start to think. Or at least to discuss their claim, something that creationists seem to hate more than anything else.