My emphasis added (ie, bold not in the original):
I've noticed that non-Creationist don't take the position that Creation Science is not worth expending effort. At least the ones participating here do take time out to explore what Creationists think about astronomy, biology, paleontology, and geology. Many of them probably know more about what Creationist say on those subject than they know about real geology. That is because knowing the arguments and evidence from the other side is the minimum necessary for meaningful discussion.
On my
site (long over-due for a rewrite which won't come until late summer at the earliest), I quote from Sun Tsu's
Art of War:
quote:
Sun Tzu, Scroll III (Offensive Strategy):
- Therefore I say: "Know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles you will never be in peril.
- When you are ignorant of the enemy but know yourself, your chances of winning or losing are equal.
- If ignorant both of your enemy and of yourself, you are certain in every battle to be in peril."
(Sun Tzu The Art of War, translation by Samuel B. Griffith, Oxford University Press, 1963)
My point on my site is that the vast majority of creationists are indeed ignorant both of their enemy
and of themselves.
Their gross misunderstanding of evolution and the other sciences causes them to identify false targets that they concentrate their attacks against, all the while never coming anywhere close to engaging any real targets. I once used the analogy of a boxer claiming victory in the ring when all he ever did was shadow-box, never ever landing a glove on an actual opponent.
They do not know themselves in that they do not know their own history nor the history of the claims that they use uncritically, even when those claims have been proven to their faces as being false. Most of their claims date back to around 1980 and before, yet extremely few creationists know that. They are told that no "evolutionist" has ever been able to respond to those claims when in fact all those claims were refuted decisively within a few years of having been created (we have to have heard the claims before we could respond to them, after all), hence by the early 1980's, yet extremely few creationists know that.
Creationists who engage in street and peer proselytizing go to creationism classes and presentations in order to "gather ammo" with which to fight evolution. They have no clue that they're being given blanks. As former creationist Scott Rauch stated:
quote:
I still hold some anger because I believe the evangelical Christian community did not properly prepare me for the creation/evolution debate. They gave me a gun loaded with blanks, and sent me out. I was creamed.
Dr. Jonathan Sarfati of
Answers in Genesis also used a boxing analogy to describe this situation of creationists using false claims (
AiG Negative Feedback, 02 December 2002):
quote:
As said in the original Don’t Use page, the harm is in using something which is not true, because the cause of the one who is ‘the truth’ cannot be helped thereby. And your own recent experience reinforces something else we saidthat using discredited arguments can backfire on the user. So our aim was to help Christians to avoid arguments that are likely to backfire, and return their focus to the Word of God not ‘evidence’.
...
But more and more over the last few years, we have noticed tens of thousands of Christians excitedly using arguments over the Web, for instance, that are a plain embarrassment to those with scientific training. It was like watching your brother enter the ring thinking he had a killer punch, and watching him get cut to ribbons. Further, and most importantly, it had escalated to the point where it was a hindrance to soul winning, since it gave the hearers a ‘legitimate’ excuse to reject Christ. And all we did at that point was to publish an ‘advice’ article. The only time it became relevant to a specific creationist was when Kent [Hovind] himself decided to align himself publicly with a justification of false arguments. If it had been one or two minor points of disagreement, OK, but when it reinforces some of the most blatant fallacies, and even defends fraud, at what point does one NOT face one's responsibilities to the innocents being ‘slaughtered’ in the belief that they are getting sound ammunition?
...
... , we actually do know people who say they almost gave the faith away when they found out that a particular argument was fallacious, and who say that finding Christians with the integrity to avoid falsehood, no matter what the cost, helped restore it. Also, in the last day or so, a leading atheistic anti-creationist organization said that while they disagreed with almost everything we stand for, they said we were ‘admirable’ and ‘showed integrity’ in trying to persuade other creationists not to use bad arguments. Who knows what sort of witness this could be? We know of many people, outside and inside of the church, who will no longer even look at or consider the authority of the Bible in Genesis, in its history, cosmology, etc. because of bad experiences with blatant pseudo-arguments applied by enthusiasts who had been fed creationist non-arguments.
Anyone who has ever taken the trouble to listen to my position will know that I want creationists to be truthful and honest in their opposition to evolution and to stop all the lying, deception, and falsification that they choose to do instead. If you truly want to oppose evolution, then oppose
evolution, not some stupid strawman caricature of it. And be sure to do so honestly and truthfully!
But they cannot do that in large part because they do not know their enemy nor do they know themselves. They cannot possibly win. At best, all they can do is destroy their own faith and the faith of others.
And certainly Faith is the poster-child of those problems.
™ Version 4.2
