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| Author | Topic: One liners, or how to make the PRATTS fall | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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subbie Member (Idle past 3 days)  Posts: 3508 Joined:
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Points Refuted A Thousand Times are a common arrow in cdesign proponentsists's quiver. Most of them are short and based on a deep misunderstanding of what the ToE actually says. It occurs to me that part of the reason they persist is precisely because they are short and the point they are trying to make is easy to understand. If this is in fact true, then perhaps the best way to respond to them is an equally short and easy to understand rebuttal. (I completely understand that we aren't going to change the minds of the truly committed cdesign proponentsist. My goal here is to come up with something we can use to persuade those who are on the fence or who don't really know enough about the ToE to see what is wrong with the PRATT.) I would like this thread to be a compilation of one or two line responses that cut to the heart of a PRATT, show why it is wrong and can be used to defeat their nonsense in an informal setting. I will begin with this: PRATT: If we evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys? Response: If Americans emigrated from Europe, why are there still Europeans? Miscellany please. Edited by subbie, : tyop Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. -- Thomas Jefferson We see monsters where science shows us windmills. -- Phat It has always struck me as odd that fundies devote so much time and effort into trying to find a naturalistic explanation for their mythical flood, while looking for magical explanations for things that actually happened. -- Dr. Adequate ...creationists have a great way to detect fraud and it doesn't take 8 or 40 years or even a scientific degree to spot the fraud--'if it disagrees with the bible then it is wrong'.... -- archaeologist
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Admin Director  Posts: 12578 From: EvC Forum Joined: Member Rating: 4.5 |
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Percy Member  Posts: 18249 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 4.0
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How about this modification PRATT: If we're descended from monkeys, why are there still monkeys? --Percy
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subbie Member (Idle past 3 days) Posts: 3508 Joined: |
That works, too. Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. -- Thomas Jefferson We see monsters where science shows us windmills. -- Phat It has always struck me as odd that fundies devote so much time and effort into trying to find a naturalistic explanation for their mythical flood, while looking for magical explanations for things that actually happened. -- Dr. Adequate ...creationists have a great way to detect fraud and it doesn't take 8 or 40 years or even a scientific degree to spot the fraud--'if it disagrees with the bible then it is wrong'.... -- archaeologist
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Rahvin Member (Idle past 1230 days)  Posts: 3964 Joined:
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I like this thread. I'm sure I'll use whatever clever one-line responses are posted, and I hope there are many. Unfortunately I don't have a talent for witty one-liners. Apparently, if it's not a wall-of-text, I can barely bring myself to hit "submit." “The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it.” - Francis Bacon "There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." - John Rogers
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Panda Member (Idle past 1756 days)  Posts: 2688 From: UK Joined: |
Or maybe: If the English language evolved from German and French, why do the German and French languages still exist? If I were you And I wish that I were you All the things I'd do To make myself turn blue
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Panda Member (Idle past 1756 days) Posts: 2688 From: UK Joined:
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"Evolutionism is a religion." Please describe why being a religion is such a bad thing and then I will explain why evolutionism is not a religion. If I were you And I wish that I were you All the things I'd do To make myself turn blue
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Dr Adequate Member  Posts: 16083 Joined: Member Rating: 10.0 |
Well the one-line answer to 90% of PRATTs is "but that's not true, that's something creationists made up". It is only rarely that you get something like "why are there still monkeys" which rests on an error of reasoning rather than of fact. I suppose a couple of error-of-reasoning ones would be --- Creationist: Mutation can't account for blah blah blah blah blah. Creationist: Natural selection can't account for blah blah blah blah blah. That is quick. It's not effective, because of the tendency of creationists to be idiots, but it can be compressed into a single line. Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.
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herebedragons Member  Posts: 1493 From: Michigan Joined: |
I saw the term PRATT used a couple days ago and was wondering what it meant, now I know
I did a book review on Sarfati's book Refuting Evolution for my evolution course last semester. And I made this same point. His book was written to be read and understood by those with no scientific training. Although even a student in an introductory evolution course could easily pick out his errors, it is precisely that reason, the simplicity, the brevity of the arguments, that I think many are duped. They pick up a book like that wanting to find answers that they agree with, that make them feel comfortable - and they do. And they are easy to learn and hold on to. Simple. I had a YEC friend of mine tell me the other day that the fossil record was out of order. That the fossil record was better explained by other means, such as hydro-logic sorting. I just didn't know what to say. I just looked at him. I mean where do you start? I didn't want to spend hours trying to explain why that doesn't make any sense when obviously he was convinced that it did. I think he felt like he had won a victory, but I just didn't have a simple, one-line, easy-to-understand, quick response.
It doesn't seem as if your purpose is to come up with snide remarks, but short, to the point responses. I am not sure it is possible. I think what bothers most people about YECs is how they insult science (and scientists) by saying that the tens of thousands of scientists who have worked hard in their field and have study and learned their craft actually know nothing about science. And a quack like Sarfati comes along with a couple simple, brief quips and thinks he has overturned hundreds of years of work. How do you correct that with one-liners? How do you teach science with one-liners? Maybe the point is it gets tiring refuting the same non-sense over and over and so why waste the time? But I am not sure one-liners are the best approach. If someone did make the point "If we evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?", it clearly shows they have absolutely no understanding of how evolution works. Responding with "If Americans emigrated from Europe, why are there still Europeans?" will only sound snarky. I don't think it is as intuitive to them as it is to us. I don't know, just my thought. I will be interested to see what people's ideas are for this. It would be nice to have some simple rebuttals to arguments like hydro-logic sorting. HBD
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Dr Adequate Member Posts: 16083 Joined: Member Rating: 10.0 |
Well, the short answers to those assertions are: "No it isn't, that's something creationists made up" and "No it isn't, that's something creationists made up". The long answers are indeed longer, because we don't have to rest on bare assertions.
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Tangle Member  Posts: 6607 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 3.9 |
I did actually work out a proper answer to that for a friend with no biology background (with a lot of help from people here). http://www.evcforum.net/dm.php?control=msg&m=638814 Of course it's easier to ask the dumb question than answer it. Here's mine Q. Why are there no transitional fossils? Edited by Tangle, : No reason given. Life, don't talk to me about life - Marvin the Paranoid Android
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Larni Member  Posts: 3975 From: Liverpool Joined: Member Rating: 8.3 |
Then why are most convicts religious?
http://holysmoke.org/icr-pri.htm Edited by Larni, : No reason given. The above ontological example models the zero premise to BB theory. It does so by applying the relative uniformity assumption that the alleged zero event eventually ontologically progressed from the compressed alleged sub-microscopic chaos to bloom/expand into all of the present observable order, more than it models the Biblical record evidence for the existence of Jehovah, the maximal Biblical god designer. -Attributed to Buzsaw Message 53 The explain to them any scientific investigation that explains the existence of things qualifies as science and as an explanation Does a query (thats a question Stile) that uses this physical reality, to look for an answer to its existence and properties become theoretical, considering its deductive conclusions are based against objective verifiable realities.
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Coragyps Member Posts: 5375 From: Snyder, Texas, USA Joined: |
Maybe a question: "Why have crab fossils and trilobite fossils never been found in the same rock?"
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jar Member  Posts: 30934 From: Texas!! Joined: |
quote: Hydrological sorting does not explain repeated layering. Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!
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Dr Adequate Member Posts: 16083 Joined: Member Rating: 10.0 |
Yes, but in order for that argument to work you then have to start telling them facts about the geological record of which they are almost certainly ignorant.
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