Worst Creationist Argument Ever?

In the search for the worst creationist argument ever, I think it is useful to look at the meaning of 'bad'. Most of the arguments nominated until now are examples of ignorance and stupidity or, in other words, of bad reasoning. The most ignorant and the stupidest idea is therefore the worst argument in terms of reasoning.But there's another meaning of 'bad', namely 'malign intent'. However stupid the reasoning employed by creationists, if it is used in an attempt to deceive, it is doubly bad. For example, the Wedge strategy is proof that the reasoning behind Intelligent Design is bad in this respect. Since Intelligent Design is also bad scientific reasoning... you can connect the dots yourself.Therefore, my candidate for "Worst Creationist Argument Ever" is actually a whole class of arguments: all those stupid, non-scientific arguments which are already bad in a logical sense, but which, to boot, are put forward in a mean-spirited way to promote another agenda. They are the worst, because we will never get rid of them: as soon as we have demolished them logically, they will emerge elsewhere in the debate, in a new guise, because of another motive behind them which will not go away.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

Closely related to "science is just a modern religion". A statement that is stupid, ignorant, deluded, malicious AND hypocritical.

Along with the article of faith:
"If evolution is true, then everything about Christianity is false, nothing in the Bible is true, and God does not exist. So if evolution is true, you must throw your Bibles into the trash, become hedonistic atheists, and run naked down the street."[theme from "Highway Patrol", Broderick Crawford]
Dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb. Dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb. DUMP!
[/theme]PS
It's amazing how many creationists have vehemently insisted on this claim to me. And also insisted that they only believe what the Bible says, yet whenever I ask them where in the Bible it says that they immediately change the subject and/or have extremely pressing matters to attend to elsewhere.PPS
The theme music from "Highway Patrol" was also played in "Sixteen Candles".
10-4.PPPS
Or maybe it was from Dragnet, another early 50's police show. It's just that every time I heard it I'd think of "Highway Patrol".Edited by dwise1, : Corrected faulty TV nostalgia
Added postscriptsEdited by dwise1, : Realization of failing memory

IamJoseph just brought another perennial gaff:

quote:

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Evolution as per Darwin, though accepted by a majority world mindset in science - is still a THEORY

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Implicit admission that they don't know what they are talking about, since they just revealed that they don't even have a clue what a theory is.PS
Actually, the originator of that claim probably did know what he was doing. He used the standard creationist deception of "semantic shifting" -- substituting a different definition of a word in order to misquote without having to change a word -- in which he substituted the street usage of "theory" to mean a SWAG ("some wild-asterix guess") in place of the scientific definition of "theory", thereby enabling the creationist deception that whenever a scientific source or an opponent of the creationist said "theory" that he meant a SWAG instead of a scientific theory.It is the creationist's followers intoning of "it's only a theory" that demonstrates that they are merely parrotting what they've been told without comprehension.Edited by dwise1, : No reason given.

It was Dragnet, definitely Dragnet. I can't believe you confused "Dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb. Dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb. DUMP!" with "dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb. DUMB, DUMB DUMB DUMB." You don't happen to remember the TV shows Frontier Circus or Casey Jones, do you? I always have a hard time finding anyone who remembers them. Gilligan's skipper was Casey.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Spelling.

Actually, as I remember it, the claim is:

quote:

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Evolutionists believe that ancient man in early historic times were far less evolved than modern man, low-intelligence brutes just barely above being apemen. This is obviously wrong because the ancient builders displayed great skill and intelligence equalling and even surpassing modern man.
  —"loosely from memory"

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I've only seen two instances of this claim. The first was in a local creationist club's newsletter several years ago, quoteing a guest speaker, an author, at their last meeting. The second was an article on Answers in Genesis that I found while researching the first instance. Unfortunately, I cannot find my notes on it.

I'll have to plead the "granola defense". I wrote that during breakfast and my blood sugar hadn't risen yet.Oh yeah, that's right: No webpage found at provided URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVa2c7iR_oQ. Hey, keep in mind that I'd last seen that show nearly 50 years ago.Those two shows you mentioned seem vaguely familiar. I actually seemed to get most of my viewing in during the afternoons in the summer. That's when I watched "Highway Patrol" and "Dragnet", though my favorite was "Burns and Allen". I also watch "Amos and Andy", though I couldn't understand some of the jokes, like the perfume called "Manslaughter". I also remember that one of my favorites was "Men into Space".Ever see Alan Hale Jr's father? It's like they had run the old man through a Xerox machine. Same with the Robert Walkers.

This is Willowtree/Herepton/Cold Forgein Object/Ray Martinez's pet arguement. Evolution is false because man is obviously getting dumber compared to the super-advanced pryamid builders. He can never produce anything else created by the ancients, no stone age space-shuttle or computers.

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Just a monkey in a long line of kings.
If "elitist" just means "not the dumbest motherfucker in the room", I'll be an elitist!
*not an actual doctor

And how about "The Bowery Boys" (aka Dead End Kids), "Little Rascals" and "The Life of Riley"! Ooh! Ooh! (Shades of Gunther Toody) I wonder if this is the show that I loved but whose title I never knew. It was around 1960, I think. If it's the same one, given how primitive it was it's hard to believe they were doing shows like Star Trek just six years later.Never saw a picture of Alan Hale Sr.--Percy

As I recall, the Bowery Boys wasn't a TV show, but rather a series of movies.One day an old 3 Musketeers movie came on featuring Alan Hale Sr as one of the three. Our immediate reaction was "Another clone!"Actually (in a vain attempt to make this appear on-topic) that raises a question I've always had. What's the genetics of family traits? How does the genome manage to express itself in such a way that kids with only half of a parent's genome end up appearing identical to that parent? Or for someone to look almost exactly like an ancestor (eg, a picture of my father's sister who died as a teenager looked exactly like my sister)? Or for siblings or cousins to resemble each other so much that you can tell at a glance that they're related? That's just something that's always amazed me.Oh yeah, "Men into Space" (BTW, I had newspaper route 54, so I got a lot of Toody & Muldoon jokes tossed my way). Wikipedia has a good write-up on it at Men into Space - Wikipedia. Aired in '59 and '60. Tried to be an accurate depiction of our plans for manned space and of the problems and solutions thereto. I think they had some support from the military space programs, what with the mention of the pilot using actual Navy high-altitude pressure suits.I was 9 at the time and I only remember a couple things. On the moon one astronaut had snuck along a pistol and was threatening to shoot another; I remember we were trying to figure out whether a gun could actually be fired in a vacuum. Maybe in the same episode, they were trapped outside with their suits' oxygen supply about to run out, so they buried themselves in a void next to the outlet of a large oxygen tank and filled it with air. The rescue team figured out where they were and, as I recall, had to tap instructions to them to suit back up so they could be rescued. All I remember of one other episode was that they went to an asteroid and one of the astronauts exposed his unshielded eyes to the sunlight; next shot was of him back on earth in the officer's housing area, blind. Seems like the actor looked like James Franciscus, but we already discovered how good my memory is, right?Several years ago SciFi Channel had late,late night programming -- like around 2 to 4 AM -- that they called "Retro TV" and which featured really old and obscure programs. Like "Men Into Space" and "Science Fiction Theater" (where the grey-haired host would introduce some of that episode's concepts and illustrate them with a brief science experiment). Also, one of the links from the "Men into Space" Wikipedia page mentioned a DVD with some of the episodes.Edited by dwise1, : No reason given.

Given that all creationist arguments I have seen so far are based on some combination of logical fallacies (the argument from incredulity and authority are favorites), stupidity (inability to grasp the basic facts), ignorance (not knowing - and failing to check - the basic facts of reality), delusion (including the belief that they are right therefor they don't need to worry about accuracy or truth) or maliciousness (outright lies), ALL creationist arguments are bad.I'd have to nominate creationism as a whole as a bad argument.

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This one's definitely a contender for the title. Watch the video, starring a moron and a rock. You won't be disappointed.http://www.atheistperspective.com/...ot-a-parody-its-funnier

Well one of them has some IQ. I thought the rock did an excellent job.

Yes, it was a classy performance. A bit static, maybe, but promising.

It's easy to be upstaged when you take your co-star for granite.