I'd rather not see this conversation die, as I still appreciate its potential for entertainment.
I'm not sure if I'm following Great Debate protocol exactly, but I'll start with a couple of observations, and then see if Dr Adequate is interested.
I contend that each of us has our own positive claims to support. On Dr Adequate's side, he'll have to offer evidence that outright stupidity is a dominant trait among creationists, and that they are indeed creationists just because they can't grasp even simple concepts when they are presented with them.
Basic ignorance is only the starting place, and as far as I'm concerned, it isn't that significant a factor. Creationists, like anyone else, may just not be very educated. They may have passed through the public school system or been homeschooled, but either way, it's common enough for high school graduates and even college students to be deprived of huge chunks of real learning. It's what they do when they are presented with the facts of the Theory of Evolution that matters.
Dr Adequate should show that creationists' dimwittedness is not selective. In other words, they have to be dumb in more areas than just science. If they can't understand math or English grammar either, then lack of intelligence may indeed be factor in their insistence on substituting belief in simple stories for facts.
I have a somewhat more difficult position to defend. I have to show that creationists are indeed capable of understanding Evolution, but that they choose not too. Further, I think that I'll have to show that they not only flee opportunities to learn, but that they commonly repeat falsehoods even when they've been shown many times over why they're wrong. That counts as lying as far as I'm concerned.
We might want to draw a distinction between active promoters of creationist nonsense and those who simply repeat what they're told. Take
Ray Comfort. (Please.) It would be a slam dunk for me to make a substantial list of the lies that he spews out over the course of just one week of his blog. Of course, he's also a demonstrable dim bulb, but still. He's a liar, through and through.
Maybe we could take a recent example as a starting place. I'm thinking of herebedragons and his latest post,
Are mutations truly random or are they guided?. He's what I think of as a typical creationist. He's come out with a fairly standard creationist position, been told that his assumptions and/or understanding are faulty, and most importantly, he's been told why he's wrong and where to go if he actually wants to learn something about natural selection's role in evolution. Now let's see what he does. So far his only post in the thread has been the OP. Will he actually go read something factual? Will he return with nothing to offer but restatements of his original position? Or will he just run away? Let's see.
Next?
I have no time for lies and fantasy, and neither should you. Enjoy or die.
-John Lydon