Discussing the evidence that support creationism

My emphasis What the hell is "evolutionism"? Look at the quote again: Evolution, not evolutionism! Why did you just pull a bait-and-switch there? We were talking about evolution, but you switched it to a creationist invention, a manufactured scapegoat. A lie, a deception.Define that term! Then justify your having injected it into discussion of something entirely different, evolution.

Laudable intentions. I do hope that you are sincere.Sun Tzu, Scroll III (Offensive Strategy):

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31. Therefore I say: "Know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles you will never be in peril.
32. When you are ignorant of the enemy but know yourself, your chances of winning or losing are equal.
33. 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)

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So you see, you have two tasks before you:
1. learning what evolution and science are
2. Learning what "creation science" is and its claims and the history of those claims, including their repeated refutation.A big problem you need to overcome is that so far you've only been fed {mis}information by creationist sources. They're not going to tell you the truth about evolution and science and they most certainly are not going to tell you the truth about their claims. They present you with strawman caricatures of evolutionary and scientific ideas, such as "evolutionism", and then make a big show of demolishing those strawmen, all the while stay well clear of evolution itself.To state it explicitly, my position is that I oppose "creation science" because it is thoroughly dishonest. I do accept evolution because it's the best explanation that we have for life as we find it, but I am not opposed to people rejecting evolution, just so long as they are honest about it. It's when people reject evolution for the wrong reasons, because of the lies of "creation science", and they then seek to spread those lies to others that I voice my objections. You want to reject and oppose evolution? OK fine, but do it for the right reasons and be honest to yourself about those reasons. And reject and oppose evolution, not some creationist strawman deception like "evolutionism".You have already encountered the acronym, but do not appreciate it yet. I've only seen it used here and I'm not quite sure what the "P" stands for, but PRATT means "previously refuted a thousand times". I've also seen it described as "slaying the slain". A PRATT is a creationist claim which newbies keep posting here even though that claim has already been refuted a thousands times before during the past few decades. Even the professional creationists keep using them, because they're not interested in the truth, but rather only in convincing you.That's an important thing to remember and one of the biggest differences between science and creationism. In science, the goal is to discover all we can about the natural world. Since scientists rely on the research of others, they have a vested interest in ensuring that that research is sound. So they will repeat the experiments of others and test their results, just as they know other scientists will repeat and test their own experiments and results. And if a scientist is found to have lied or to have faked something or to have perpetrated a hoax, that scientist's career is over; he/she will be rejected by the scientific community.On the other hand, the goal of creationism is to convince. A creationist's claims are not tested for being accurate or true, but rather only on how convincing it sounds. And if that creationist is exposed as having lied, then the creationist community does nothing about it, but rather continues to use his claims just so long as they still sound convincing. True, he may back off from the claim for a while, but then when he figures that everybody's forgotten about it -- or a new batch of suckers have arrived -- he'll trot that claim out again as "new" evidence, even though it's already decades old.And the followers don't care about truth; they just want more convincing-sounding "ammo" to proselytize with. Read the story of fundamentalist Christian Carl Drews at No webpage found at provided URL: http://www.theistic-evolution.com/mystory.html. He had to leave his church because they sided with using lies and deception. In one incident where his pastor had him attend a "creation science" class, he returned the next week with a list of the lies in the previous lesson's tape and corrections, but none of the other "fine Christians" would even look at it. They wanted proselytizing "ammo", not the truth. As former creationist Scott Rauch said: "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."On my site I relate a similar event which demonstrates the danger of using PRATTs:

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Here is a true story to illustrate that point. Back around 1991 at The City mall (now completely rebuilt as The Block) in Orange, California, creationist Scott Alexander was hosting a series of amateur-night creation/evolution debates in which the members of the audience were invited to get up and make presentations. One young creationist (I would judge him to have been about 18 to 21 years old) got up and announced that he had some new hard science that would blow the evolutionists away: the speed of light has been slowing down! The pro-evolution half of the audience immediately burst into uncontrollable laughter. That claim of Setterfield's had already been known to them for a decade, it had been refuted many times, and they started to explain to the poor hapless creationist exactly why that claim was false. He didn't know what had hit him.

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A good source of information and history on claims is the Talk.Origins Archive at TalkOrigins Archive: Exploring the Creation/Evolution Controversy. They also have FAQs which explain a lot about science and evolution. If you really want to learn, then dig in.I also have an outline for a presentation I gave at my church: No webpage found at provided URL: http://members.aol.com/dwise1/cre_ev/EarlyBird.html. Part of it deals with the history of the anti-evolution movement, whose hey-day was in the 1920's when they got "monkey laws" enacted in four states. Yes, they melted out of the public eye due to the press coverage of the Scopes Trial and the subsequent death of their leader, but those "monkey laws" remained in force for the next four decades, until they were struck down by Epperson vs Arkansas (1968). Now because evolution could not longer be barred from public schools for religious reasons, the anti-evolution movement invented a new deception called "creation science", whose deception, "The Two Model Approach" (a classic "false dilemma", AKA "false dichotomy"), was then used to push for "balanced treatment". Another name for "creation science" was playing the game of "Hide the Bible". This deception was exposed when the Arkansas and Louisiana "balanced treatment" laws of the early 1980's were challenged in court and struck down as being religious. At that point, the anti-evolution movement switched to playing a new game, "Hide the Creationism", as they then employed the rhetorics of "intelligent design". Same game (except ID stays well away from "creation science's" weakest link, its young-earth claims).Let us know how your studies go.Edited by dwise1, : No reason given.

Another good place to start, as I had already suggested, is the Talk.Origins Archive (talk.origins is a well-known newsgroup that has been discussing creation/evolution for many years; don't post there unless you're really ready, because they don't pull their punches). Start at this page, The Talk.Origins Archive: Must-Read FAQs, which links to their must-read FAQ files. Includes FAQs on what evolution is, what creationist misconceptions about evolutions, and some of the evidence for evolution.Please remember the Sun Tsu citation. If you ever want to oppose evolution, then you must know everything you can about evolution. You say that your school doesn't teach it. My impression is that you're starting college (please correct me if I'm wrong) and that you're attending a Christian school which is why it doesn't teach evolution. Consider how anti-evolution forces are shooting themselves in the collective foot by not teaching their kids evolution: how could they possibly expect those kids to fight against evolution effectively if they keep them ignorant of their enemy? Ironically, if they do teach their kids evolution, then they completely shoot both collective feet clean off, because then their kids would see through the lies that they had been raised on. Creationists don't dare learn evolution.Kent Hovind quotes an anti-public school film, "Let My Children Go", in his claim: "75% of all children raised in Christian homes who attend public schools will reject the Christian faith by their first year of college." (No webpage found at provided URL: http://members.aol.com/dwise1/cre_ev/quotes.html#75_PERCENT). Of course, both he and the film he quoted interpret that to mean that public schools are anti-Christian. However, I have read the testimonials of several ex-creationists who went through that experience. What happened is that they started learning for the first time what evolution and science and the evidence really are and they discovered that their parents and their religious leaders had lied to them all their lives. I've also read and heard the testimonials of several atheists: one of the most prominent reasons they had for becoming atheists was either having been betrayed by their religious leaders or else discovering that their religious leaders were lying to them.Glenn R. Morton is a practicing petroleum geologist whose original geology training was by creationists. Having to work daily with hard geological facts that creationism had taught him did not exist and could not exist if Scripture were to have any meaning, he was driven to the verge of atheism. Not by geology, but rather by creationism. On his web site, he offers several personal testimonials (No webpage found at provided URL: http://home.entouch.net/dmd/dmd.htm#pers), along with his own, such as one by Steve Smith (No webpage found at provided URL: http://home.entouch.net/dmd/ssmith.htm) who entered a small church college thoroughly hooked on "creation science" and "Flood Geology" and took a geology class:

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I went to that first Geology class prepared to meet the Devil on his own ground. I knew every argument for a young earth and flood geology backwards and forwards. However instead of meeting the Devil, I met a man with a deep love for God and for teaching Geology. He started every class with a devotional thought and a prayer and then he began to teach Geology. He didn't argue Creation/Evolution. He simply taught Geology. I listened to the history of Geology and began to study all the methods and the knowledge accumulated by generations of geologists (many of whom were devout Christians). Bit by bit the evidence for an old earth became overwhelming and with it was a lack of any real evidence for a young earth and the type of Flood described by Henry Morris and others. I didn't even have a chance to argue Creationism in that class, every argument was destroyed by what I could see and demonstrate in the rocks themselves. By this time, I was very confused as to how I would ever reconcile my science and my Christianity.
. . .
{expresses his firm belief as a Christian}
. . .
Having said this, I'm not real concerned that everyone becomes a Theistic Evolutionist like myself. However, I am very concerned about movements within the Church that want to rewrite science to make it fit their interpretation of the Bible. I am concerned when people have to check their mind along with their hat at the door of a church and are asked to accept statements as truth without testing them. I am concerned about Christians who see scientists as engaged in some humanist conspiracy to destroy the Bible and Christianity.
. . .
When one bases their faith upon the rise or fall of a scientific theory, they are on real "sinking sand." When I left for college, I believed these sorts of either/or statements - many people do. If I had learned the facts of geology or biology or physics or astronomy or anthropology or geochronology or ... under the teaching of someone other than a godly professor, the crisis to my faith would have been much more severe. I feel it is very unlikely that I would be a Christian today. I would probably be a bitter agnostic and not because of science but because my Christianity set me up to fail.
. . .
I suppose that is why this Creation/Evolution issue is so important to me. I know that I sometimes talk about this topic so much that others get tired of hearing it. I know my wife does and I'm sure that my pastor does too. But when one has a close call with spiritual death, it becomes a critical issue. Every year, I see young Christians go away to college with the idea that science, in one form or another, is some sort of Satanic conspiracy. Sooner or later they end up struggling with their faith in the light of new knowledge. Some will survive because their faith is strong enough to overcome any evidence - many do not. I have met some bitter people who left the church because they believe that their religion "lied to them". I hate seeing this when I believe that it is so unnecessary. We as Christians need to be real clear about what is important to our faith and what is not.

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It is important that you learn what evolution really is and what science really is. It is our considered consensus that you will not be able to learn that from creationist sources. Edited by dwise1, : added link

Well, consider his source, a fundamentalist propaganda film. I haven't asked them (Jeremiah Films) where they got that statistic from, since they'd probably just tell me to buy the video -- I don't even have the stomach anymore to wade through all of Hovind's crap seminars. BTW, if you have the videos he provided on-line about 5 years ago, that quote was in Tape #4 at about 42 minutes and 55 seconds in.Also, we don't know just what do they mean by "reject the Christian faith". Become atheists? Join a different faith? Become mainstream Christians? Just reject "creation science"?It certainly is tempting to hope that the 75% figure is correct. It certainly bolsters the observation (for which I quote Conrad Hyers) that creationism is a major contributor to the spread of atheism:

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It may be true that scientism and evolutionism (not science and evolution) are among the causes of atheism and materialism. It is at least equally true that biblical literalism, from its earlier flat-earth and geocentric forms to its recent young-earth and flood-geology forms, is one of the major causes of atheism and materialism. Many scientists and intellectuals have simply taken the literalists at their word and rejected biblical materials as being superseded or contradicted by modern science. Without having in hand a clear and persuasive alternative, they have concluded that it is nobler to be damned by the literalists than to dismiss the best testimony of research and reason. Intellectual honesty and integrity demand it.
(Conrad Hyers, The Meaning of Creation: Genesis and Modern Science, John Knox Press, Atlanta, Georgia, 1984, page 26)

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One way you could approach this would be take one PRATT (claims "previously {?} refuted a thousand times") at a time, research it, research its refutation (eg, by searching for it on Talk.Origins Archive, starting in their "An Index to Creationist Claims" at An Index to Creationist Claims, and then present it here for further discussion and/or explanation of the refutation. That index's refutations are necessarily cursorary, but links to more complete refutations are usually provided as well.I advise that you only present one PRATT at a time. If you were to list a dozen of them, then you would be engaging in a "Gish Gallop". The "Gish Gallop" is named after one of the ICR's pioneer master debators, Dr. Duane Gish, who practiced it. The trick is that in your summation, you start spewing one nonsensical, but convincing-sounding, claim after another. The more glib and practiced you are, the more nonsense you can spew within a minute. Not only will it overwhelm an inexperienced opponent, but it will be virtually impossible for even an opponent intimately familiar with every one of those claims to be able to expose them all which the few minutes that he's afforded by the debate format. For example, let's say that it would take at least 10 minutes to refute one creationist claim and you spew forth 10 claims. Your opponent would need 100 minutes to respond, more than 1.5 hours, and he's only given 5 minutes. Even though your claims are pure crap and he knows exactly why they're pure crap, the debate format's time constraints (that the creationists had established) make it impossible for him to explain that to the audience and the audience goes away believing the creationist claim that no "evolutionist" can answer their questions.Please note regarding debates that while creationists make a show of being ready to debate anyone anywhere (with some exceptions, like Walter Brown explicitly refusing to debate anyone who's not a PhD), Gish has repeatedly refused to debate on specific questions (eg, age of the earth, what the the fossil record really shows) since that would require him to stick to the subject and would prevent him from unleashing the Gish Gallop, which would spell death for his presentation. Similarly, most creationists insist on verbal debates and avoid written debates like the plague, since a written format gives their opponents time to respond to a Gallop.Go here, gish gallop site:www.talkorigins.org - Google Search, for links to references to "Gish Gallop" on Talk.Origins Archive. The first link, No webpage found at provided URL: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/debating/globetrotters.html, is to an excellent article that examines how creationists structure their debates. In case you don't know, the way that "creation science" built itself up during its first decade (the 70's) was through the public spectacle of their debates.Most new creationists here start off by posting PRATTs that they copied from some creationist site somewhere. And they get roundly reprimanded for it and rightfully so. So just post one at a time and be ready to discuss it.Edited by dwise1, : more on debatesEdited by dwise1, : Modified subtitleEdited by dwise1, : No reason given.

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{When you search for God, y}ou can't go to the people who believe already. They've made up their minds and want to convince you of their own personal heresy.
("The Jehovah Contract", AKA "Der Jehova-Vertrag", by Viktor Koman, 1984)And we who listen to the stars, or walk the dusty grade,
Or break the very atoms down to see how they are made,
Or study cells, or living things, seek truth with open hand.
The profoundest act of worship is to try to understand.
Deep in flower and in flesh, in star and soil and seed,
The truth has left its living word for anyone to read.
So turn and look where best you think the story is unfurled.
Humans wrote the Bible; God wrote the world.
(filk song "Word of God" by Dr. Catherine Faber, No webpage found at provided URL: http://www.echoschildren.org/CDlyrics/WORDGOD.HTML)

Doppler shifts are well understood. In my software career, I've had occasion to work on radar systems. Radar systems routinely use the Doppler shift of returns off of targets (a "radar return" is the radio-wave signal that the radar set had transmitted having bounced off a target and has now returned to the radar antenna) are used to determined the velocity at which the target is moving toward or away from the radar set. The speed at which the return is travelling is the same as the transmitted signal; the Doppler shift is in the signal's frequency, not in its speed.The person whom you quoted is only demonstrating ignorance of physics. As was stated by Saint Augustine, if we observe them making such false statements about things we know quite well, then we're certainly not going to believe them about things that we cannot check them on.When will they ever learn?

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{When you search for God, y}ou can't go to the people who believe already. They've made up their minds and want to convince you of their own personal heresy.
("The Jehovah Contract", AKA "Der Jehova-Vertrag", by Viktor Koman, 1984)And we who listen to the stars, or walk the dusty grade,
Or break the very atoms down to see how they are made,
Or study cells, or living things, seek truth with open hand.
The profoundest act of worship is to try to understand.
Deep in flower and in flesh, in star and soil and seed,
The truth has left its living word for anyone to read.
So turn and look where best you think the story is unfurled.
Humans wrote the Bible; God wrote the world.
(filk song "Word of God" by Dr. Catherine Faber, No webpage found at provided URL: http://www.echoschildren.org/CDlyrics/WORDGOD.HTML)

I've seen this assumption made before, that just because Mr. Hovind would always refer to himself as "Dr." -- even in the phone book, I've heard -- that he's a scientist. That's simply not true, as anyone could see if they were to check his education.His PhD was in religious education, as was his MS. Not in any science, but rather in religious education. As I recall, he got both degrees from Patriot University, a diploma mill.He did get his bachelor's from an actual college, a Christian college, and I believe it was also in religious education -- double-check that one, please. Before that, he had spent a year or two in a community college where he did follow a science curriculum. And at some point he founded his own private Christian school where he taught science and math; in his seminar tapes he repeatedly boasts that he knew all about science and math because he taught it for 15 years.So while you assume that "Dr." Hovind is a scientist, all he knows about science he learned in the first and second year of community college. In other words, just basic introductory knowledge.Common sense tells us that what Hovind describes is true. Common sense also tells us that a when a ball rolling down a spiral track falls off the end, it would continue to move in a spiral motion through the air. But when you actually try it, you immediately find that the ball would exit that spiral track in a straight line. Hovind's deception is to play on the audience's "common sense" understanding -- assuming, of course, that he even had any clue of the real science.I wonder if what he was describing was the dizzy kids getting off the merry-go-round and trying to walk in a straight line, but could not because they were dizzy. Which is not at all analogous to spinning galaxies.

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{When you search for God, y}ou can't go to the people who believe already. They've made up their minds and want to convince you of their own personal heresy.
("The Jehovah Contract", AKA "Der Jehova-Vertrag", by Viktor Koman, 1984)And we who listen to the stars, or walk the dusty grade,
Or break the very atoms down to see how they are made,
Or study cells, or living things, seek truth with open hand.
The profoundest act of worship is to try to understand.
Deep in flower and in flesh, in star and soil and seed,
The truth has left its living word for anyone to read.
So turn and look where best you think the story is unfurled.
Humans wrote the Bible; God wrote the world.
(filk song "Word of God" by Dr. Catherine Faber, No webpage found at provided URL: http://www.echoschildren.org/CDlyrics/WORDGOD.HTML)

No, I don't. It was in a column many years ago either in Scientific American or Science '80-something (the magazine title changed each year to match the year; ceased publication somewhere around 1986). It was something like the science-literacy polls we see. In this question, they were shown four drawings of a spiral track and each picture showed a different trajectory that the ball would take. Most respondants chose the one where the ball continued to corkscrew through the air.Edited by dwise1, : No reason given.

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{When you search for God, y}ou can't go to the people who believe already. They've made up their minds and want to convince you of their own personal heresy.
("The Jehovah Contract", AKA "Der Jehova-Vertrag", by Viktor Koman, 1984)And we who listen to the stars, or walk the dusty grade,
Or break the very atoms down to see how they are made,
Or study cells, or living things, seek truth with open hand.
The profoundest act of worship is to try to understand.
Deep in flower and in flesh, in star and soil and seed,
The truth has left its living word for anyone to read.
So turn and look where best you think the story is unfurled.
Humans wrote the Bible; God wrote the world.
(filk song "Word of God" by Dr. Catherine Faber, No webpage found at provided URL: http://www.echoschildren.org/CDlyrics/WORDGOD.HTML)

Also:
My very earnest mother just served us nine pickles
or,
My Very Educated Mother Just Sent Us Nine PizzasAlso for the Linnean classification system: Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Genus, Species:
"Kids Pour Catshup Over Green Spiders" (the classic)
"Kindly Purchase Cookies Only from Girl Scouts"
"Kings Play Chess On Fine Grain Sand"

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{When you search for God, y}ou can't go to the people who believe already. They've made up their minds and want to convince you of their own personal heresy.
("The Jehovah Contract", AKA "Der Jehova-Vertrag", by Viktor Koman, 1984)And we who listen to the stars, or walk the dusty grade,
Or break the very atoms down to see how they are made,
Or study cells, or living things, seek truth with open hand.
The profoundest act of worship is to try to understand.
Deep in flower and in flesh, in star and soil and seed,
The truth has left its living word for anyone to read.
So turn and look where best you think the story is unfurled.
Humans wrote the Bible; God wrote the world.
(filk song "Word of God" by Dr. Catherine Faber, No webpage found at provided URL: http://www.echoschildren.org/CDlyrics/WORDGOD.HTML)

Thanks for the correction. I had gotten it from somebody else and had missed that.There's a WikiQuotes page on English Mnemonics at English mnemonics - Wikiquote.

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{When you search for God, y}ou can't go to the people who believe already. They've made up their minds and want to convince you of their own personal heresy.
("The Jehovah Contract", AKA "Der Jehova-Vertrag", by Viktor Koman, 1984)And we who listen to the stars, or walk the dusty grade,
Or break the very atoms down to see how they are made,
Or study cells, or living things, seek truth with open hand.
The profoundest act of worship is to try to understand.
Deep in flower and in flesh, in star and soil and seed,
The truth has left its living word for anyone to read.
So turn and look where best you think the story is unfurled.
Humans wrote the Bible; God wrote the world.
(filk song "Word of God" by Dr. Catherine Faber, No webpage found at provided URL: http://www.echoschildren.org/CDlyrics/WORDGOD.HTML)

In the glaring absense of any evidence that supports creationism, we got bored and drifted.I do hope that some creationist will present some actual evidence so that we do not stray again.Hey, Beretta claimed that he has an actual creation model and "voluminous" evidence for it. Gee, why does he refuse to deliver?

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{When you search for God, y}ou can't go to the people who believe already. They've made up their minds and want to convince you of their own personal heresy.
("The Jehovah Contract", AKA "Der Jehova-Vertrag", by Viktor Koman, 1984)Humans wrote the Bible; God wrote the world.
(from filk song "Word of God" by Dr. Catherine Faber, No webpage found at provided URL: http://www.echoschildren.org/CDlyrics/WORDGOD.HTML)Of course, if Dr. Mortimer's surmise should be correct and we are dealing with forces outside the ordinary laws of Nature, there is an end of our investigation. But we are bound to exhaust all other hypotheses before falling back upon this one.
(Sherlock Holmes in The Hound of the Baskervilles)Gentry's case depends upon his halos remaining a mystery. Once a naturalistic explanation is discovered, his claim of a supernatural origin is washed up. So he will not give aid or support to suggestions that might resolve the mystery. Science works toward an increase in knowledge; creationism depends upon a lack of it. Science promotes the open-ended search; creationism supports giving up and looking no further. It is clear which method Gentry advocates.
("Gentry's Tiny Mystery -- Unsupported by Geology" by J. Richard Wakefield, Creation/Evolution Issue XXII, Winter 1987-1988, pp 31-32)

I must disagree. I have seen creationists learn. At which point they began to stop being creationists.{DISCLAIMER: by "creationist", we mean "creation science" believing YECs. Statemens here are not at all intended to say that loss of "creation science" YEC beliefs must also include loss of belief in creation or in God, though solely because of creationist lies that is all too often the result. }

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{When you search for God, y}ou can't go to the people who believe already. They've made up their minds and want to convince you of their own personal heresy.
("The Jehovah Contract", AKA "Der Jehova-Vertrag", by Viktor Koman, 1984)Humans wrote the Bible; God wrote the world.
(from filk song "Word of God" by Dr. Catherine Faber, No webpage found at provided URL: http://www.echoschildren.org/CDlyrics/WORDGOD.HTML)Of course, if Dr. Mortimer's surmise should be correct and we are dealing with forces outside the ordinary laws of Nature, there is an end of our investigation. But we are bound to exhaust all other hypotheses before falling back upon this one.
(Sherlock Holmes in The Hound of the Baskervilles)Gentry's case depends upon his halos remaining a mystery. Once a naturalistic explanation is discovered, his claim of a supernatural origin is washed up. So he will not give aid or support to suggestions that might resolve the mystery. Science works toward an increase in knowledge; creationism depends upon a lack of it. Science promotes the open-ended search; creationism supports giving up and looking no further. It is clear which method Gentry advocates.
("Gentry's Tiny Mystery -- Unsupported by Geology" by J. Richard Wakefield, Creation/Evolution Issue XXII, Winter 1987-1988, pp 31-32)

Not grammatical correctness -- grammar being the structure of a language -- , but rather semantic correctness -- semantics dealing with meaning. Each of those sentences are grammatically correct, but half of them are semanticly wrong and don't make any sense.Evolutionism is not the same thing as evolution. To try to claim that they are the same thing is both false and misleading.Besides the usual problems that creationism has with the truth and truthfulness -- which creationism very often violates through their practice of "semantic shifting" -- , the confusion this particular semantic shifting generates works directly against creationists.As best as I can gather from creationist rants about "evolutionism", it is supposed to be a philosophical position that is atheistic and anti-God and that bases itself on evolution and uses evolution and science to attack religion. Note that evolution, which is a scientific idea, is none of those things. The only connection between evolution and this "evolutionism" is that "evolutionism" claims to base itself on evolution.Now, there is no real reason for believers in divine creation to be threatened by evolution. Evolution is the natural results of how life works. The only reason for a particular theology to have a problem with evolution is if that theology's teachings are contrary-to-fact, but then evolution would be least of such a theology's problems.However, there is real reason for those same believers to have a problem with an anti-religion philosophy that makes the false claim that science disproves God. And it is both right and justified for them to oppose such a philosophy.But in their self-inflicted confusion, creationists attack the wrong target! Instead of addressing the claims of "evolutionism" and the very real problems with any claim of using science to disprove God, they instead attack evolution and science.is the

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{When you search for God, y}ou can't go to the people who believe already. They've made up their minds and want to convince you of their own personal heresy.
("The Jehovah Contract", AKA "Der Jehova-Vertrag", by Viktor Koman, 1984)Humans wrote the Bible; God wrote the world.
(from filk song "Word of God" by Dr. Catherine Faber, No webpage found at provided URL: http://www.echoschildren.org/CDlyrics/WORDGOD.HTML)Of course, if Dr. Mortimer's surmise should be correct and we are dealing with forces outside the ordinary laws of Nature, there is an end of our investigation. But we are bound to exhaust all other hypotheses before falling back upon this one.
(Sherlock Holmes in The Hound of the Baskervilles)Gentry's case depends upon his halos remaining a mystery. Once a naturalistic explanation is discovered, his claim of a supernatural origin is washed up. So he will not give aid or support to suggestions that might resolve the mystery. Science works toward an increase in knowledge; creationism depends upon a lack of it. Science promotes the open-ended search; creationism supports giving up and looking no further. It is clear which method Gentry advocates.
("Gentry's Tiny Mystery -- Unsupported by Geology" by J. Richard Wakefield, Creation/Evolution Issue XXII, Winter 1987-1988, pp 31-32)

Aquila, what part of PRATT do you not understand? The distinguishig featuer is that they have been "refuted a thousand times". Actually, that is a gross underestimate. Others refer to it as "refuting the dead". Someone else long ago on another forum refered to it as "beating a patch of grass where ten years ago there laid a dead horse."How old are you? I have the impression that you're around 20 years old. That means that the vast majority of PRATTs were not only concocted long before you were born, but they were also refuted long before you were even born. I've been studying and following this "creation/evolution" nonsense (the only "controversy" is pure creationist invention) since about 1981, which by my estimate is also long before you were even born. To you, those PRATTs are probably new and exciting, but to those of us who have studied "creation science", they are just the same old lying crap that the creationists have been dishing out since Day One. They are PRATTs! They are pure crap. They are lies and deceptions.I mean, just look at how Buzsaw just tried to foist the "Bunny Blunder" on us. That's what the creationist human population model claim is better known as, since the current world population of rabbits can be accounted for by two bunnies way back about 100 years ago, which "proves" that the earth can be no older than 100 years old. Way back around 1990, I wrote an article about it based on the early 1980's refutation of it, though I also research Dr. Henry Morris' writings about his claim (oh yes, he's the one who developed it). You can read it at No webpage found at provided URL: http://members.aol.com/dwise1/cre_ev/bunny.html. You can also read how the introductory texts on population modelling warn against Morris' and Buz' over-simplistic "pure birth" model.Now, I do understand that you are not in a very good position to spot PRATTs on your own. That is because the creationist community just keeps recirculating all the old PRATTs and never tells you about their history, most especially they never tell you about their refutations. You think that they're handing you good stuff, while they're really only handing you pure crap. As one former creationist (oh, yes, there are a lot of former creationists who had been burned by "creation science's" PRATTs), Scott Rauch, had put it:

quote:

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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.

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Similarly, around 1990 I witnessed a young new creationist get up in an open debate format and with complete and utter confidence told the "evolutionist" half of the audience that he had brand-new scientific evidence that would blow them away: the speed of light was slowing down. He was himself blown away when half the audience burst into uncontrollable laughter because they were already very familiar with that decade-old claim of Setterfield's and he almost visibly melted as they informed him exactly why that claim was so false.Now, I know that we are supposed to be as respectful of other people's beliefs as we possibly can, but we have heard and seen that PRATT crap presented so many times, we just cannot help but laugh at it. Because it is so completely and utterly false. And we just cannot believe that anyone can be so willfully ignorant or so utterly dishonest as to still be hawking that crap. And to insist that Christianity depends on that contrary-to-fact crap being true.OK, you're new the fray. You're the proverbial "sucker born every minute" who gets fed creationist PRATTs and believes them to be true. Well, sorry, but they are not. And in this forum they get far too much more respect than they deserve.Now, if any real evidence were to be presented for creation, then it would need to be considered. But we're getting ready to wrap up this topic and all that anyone has been able to present are PRATTs. Which we can only view as creationists' admission that all they have are PRATTs. No real evidence, just PRATTs. In other words, absolutely nothing.

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{When you search for God, y}ou can't go to the people who believe already. They've made up their minds and want to convince you of their own personal heresy.
("The Jehovah Contract", AKA "Der Jehova-Vertrag", by Viktor Koman, 1984)Humans wrote the Bible; God wrote the world.
(from filk song "Word of God" by Dr. Catherine Faber, No webpage found at provided URL: http://www.echoschildren.org/CDlyrics/WORDGOD.HTML)Of course, if Dr. Mortimer's surmise should be correct and we are dealing with forces outside the ordinary laws of Nature, there is an end of our investigation. But we are bound to exhaust all other hypotheses before falling back upon this one.
(Sherlock Holmes in The Hound of the Baskervilles)Gentry's case depends upon his halos remaining a mystery. Once a naturalistic explanation is discovered, his claim of a supernatural origin is washed up. So he will not give aid or support to suggestions that might resolve the mystery. Science works toward an increase in knowledge; creationism depends upon a lack of it. Science promotes the open-ended search; creationism supports giving up and looking no further. It is clear which method Gentry advocates.
("Gentry's Tiny Mystery -- Unsupported by Geology" by J. Richard Wakefield, Creation/Evolution Issue XXII, Winter 1987-1988, pp 31-32)