Creationism Debate Q&A

My video review of the debate between Bill Nye and Ken Ham discusses the majority of the debate, except for the final question-and-answer portion.  It was an important part of that night, and took nearly half of the debate time.  To streamline the review, I decided to handle the questions one by one here on the blog, rather than in video form.

Each question was written in by an audience member, and was addressed to either Ken or Bill, who then had two minutes to answer.  Then, the other got a one-minute chance to answer that same question.  Ken Ham went first, and then they alternated, with a total of sixteen questions in all.

The questions are verbatim, but the answers are not direct quotes (unless stated).   I’ll give a paraphrased answer from each debater so you can get a sense of what they said in their one-to-two minutes.  I'll offer further criticisms and comments in red text.  Obviously you should watch the full debate yourself before coming to any conclusions.

Question 1:  How does Creationism account for the celestial bodies moving further and further apart, and what function does that serve in the “Grand Design”

            Ken: Our Creation scientists observe the universe expanding, as do the traditional scientists, and the Bible says God stretches out the heavens.  This is another example of how observational science proves Creationism.  As to “why” God did it that way, I can’t answer that, but the Bible says that God made the heavens for his glory and to tell us how great and powerful he is.  And looking at this awesome power demonstrated by an infinite God makes you feel small, and makes you think about how special we are that God considers this planet so significant that he created us knowing we would sin and stepped into history to die for us to forgive us and let us live forever.

            Bill: We’re all born with a desire to know the answer to the question ‘why’.  To a Creationist, when your religion gives you the answer -- when it says "He made the stars also" -- that’s a satisfying answer to you.  You stop looking for reasons (even though religion is supposed to explain the “why” while science explains the “how”).  You give up on wanting to know.  To me, I’m driven to learn the truth.  (Bill also challenges Ken in the last few seconds of his time to deliver an example of something in the Creation model that predicts something that will happen in nature, once again trying to get him to address his earlier points.) 

Question 2:  How did the atoms that created the Big Bang get there?

            Bill: This is the mystery that drives us.  It’s what makes us keep looking, keep searching.  When I was young, it was believed the universe was slowing down in its expansion.  Scientists conducted experiments and took observations to find out the rate of the supposed deceleration, but they discovered that it is in fact accelerating.  And do you know why?  No, nobody knows why!  This is what drives us to find out!  Imagine a student from your local school who is excited about science and pursues a career in it, and one day discovers the answer to that deep mystery.  To us scientists and searchers this is wonderful and compelling and what makes us get up in the morning -- the Creationist just says, “God did it” and goes back to sleep.

            Ken: I just want to let you know that there is a book out there that actually tells us where matter came from, and the very first sentence in that book says “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth”.  And really that’s the only thing that makes sense.  Matter can never produce information.  No matter how much energy you put into a stick, it will never create life.  The Bible tells us that the things we see are made from things that are unseen: an infinite creator god.  The only thing that makes logical sense!

Question 3: The overwhelming majority of people in the scientific community have presented valid, physical evidence…to support evolutionary theory.  What evidence, besides the literal word of the Bible supports Creationism?

            Ken: I often hear that the majority believes there is evidence for evolution, but it’s not the majority who is the judge of truth.  Just because the majority believes something doesn’t mean it’s true.  Observational science supports the biblical predictions, as I’ve shown before.  If the Bible is right, that we’re all descendants of Adam and Eve, there’s one race of humans; science has shown that.  If the Bible is right and God made kinds...I talked about that in my presentation.  Really that question comes down to, there are aspects about the past that you can’t scientifically prove because you weren’t there, but observational science in the present does.  Understanding the past is a whole different matter.

            Bill: If anybody makes a discovery that changes the way we view natural law, scientists embrace that person.  That’s the greatest thing in scientific thought: to be challenged and shown where we’re wrong.  You may have misunderstood something in evolution -- it’s the method by which we add complexity.  The energy we get from the sun is used to make life-forms more complex. (That last point was to Ken’s claim in his previous answer that matter can’t create complexity.)

Question 4: How did consciousness come from matter?

            Bill: Don’t know.  Another great mystery.  The joy of discovery drives us to find these things out.  We don’t know where consciousness comes form, but we want to learn.  I challenge the young people to investigate that question, and I remind the taxpayers and voters that if we do not embrace the process of mainstream science, we will fall behind economically as a nation.

            Ken: I just want to let you know that there is a book out there that does document where consciousness came from.  In that book, it says that the one who made us breathed into man and made him a living being.  That’s where consciousness came from: God gave it to us.  I have a mystery, Bill: you talk about the joy of discovery, but you say that when you die, it’s all over.  And if you believe that, then what’s the point of being alive and making discoveries in the first place?  I love the joy of discovery because this is God’s creation and I want to find out more about it for man’s good and for God’s glory.

(There's nothing really to do here.  Bill is showing why we use science, and Ken is saying "God Did It!"  You can't convince these people.)

Question 5: What, if anything, would ever change your mind?

            Ken: I’m a Christian.  I can’t prove it to you, but God has shown me himself through his Word and the person of Jesus Christ.  I admit that’s where I start from.  I challenge people to go and test that, you can make predictions based on that, you can check the prophesies in the Bible.  I can’t prove it to you, all I can say to someone is, if the Bible really is what it claims to be: then check it out.  The Bible says if you come to God he will reveal himself to you, and as Christians, you can say we know.  So as far as the word of god is concerned, no.  No one's ever gonna convince me that the word of God is not true.  We build models based on the Bible and they’re not subject to change.  The facts can’t be disputed; only the methods by which those facts occur can be disputed because we observe in the current world and can’t observe in the past. (Ken then asks Bill to answer this question, as if he’s forgotten that they’ve been doing that for the last four questions.  It’s a telling bit that reveals further illustrates how much he wants to get the topic off of his unquestionable faith.  I encourage you to watch him answer this question.  From the very beginning you can tell he is uncomfortable and having a hard time figuring out how to answer.  I think it’s because he knows his answer is close-minded and groundless: No, nothing will change my mind because I really believe in Jesus and don’t make me think about it, next question!)

            Bill: One piece of evidence.  Show me one out-of-place fossil (such as a rabbit in the Precambrian, as Haldane said) or evidence that the stars appear to be far away but they’re not.  We would need evidence that you can somehow reset atomic clocks and keep protons from becoming neutrons.  Bring on any of those things and you would change my mind immediately.  (Once more, Bill challenges Ken:) What can you prove?  You’ve spent your time coming up with explanations about the past.  What can you predict and prove in a conventional sense?

Question 6: Outside of radiometric methods, what scientific evidence supports your view of the age of the Earth?

            Bill: The age of stars I guess?  Radiometric dating is pretty compelling.  There were attempts in the past to try to find how the earth could be old enough for evolution to have taken place.  Then radioactivity was discovered.  This question to me is akin to saying, “if things were any other way, things would be different”.  Radiometric dating works, protons become neutrons, and that’s our level of understanding today.  These are provable facts.  The idea that there was a flood four thousand years ago is not provable and I think that there is ample evidence that disproves it.  And Ken, you haven’t addressed my point about how the various skulls support evolutionary theory.  (Bill was cut off there at the end for time, but I think that like the last question was Ken’s stumbling block, this one was Bill’s.  He seemed to have a hard time answering the question, and like Ken did, at the end he tried to divert the topic away.  Of course, Bill was stating provable fact and when you’re doing that it’s hard to keep from just doing that.  But I think he could have answered the question better with the fact that we use a variety of dating methods that all support one another.  When you have different sources pointing to the same relative time-frame, it makes a more convincing argument.)

            Ken: There was no earth rock dated to get the date of 4.5 billion years.  People think that, but they actually dated meteorites and because they assumed they were the same age as the earth left over from the formation of the solar system, that’s where that date comes from.  Look at my slide again as proof. There’s no dating method that proves young or old. (Ken is engaging in misinformation here to make it seem like scientists don't check these things constantly.  Is it reasonable to think that no earth rock has ever been dated, or that it would be difficult to just go out and do so?  What Ken is disingenuously alluding to is that the oldest rocks we've ever found came from meteorites that are 4.54 billion years old.  Earth rock has been dated to 4.47 billion years -- so yeah, 4.5 billion, Ken)

Question 7: Can you reconcile the change in the rate at which the continents are now drifting verses the rate at which they must have traveled 6K years ago to reach where they are now?

            Ken: This again illustrates what I’m talking about with regards to observational science vs historical science.  I’m not an expert here, but we have Creationists with PhD's and they’ve written papers on this stuff.  If you look at the plates today and you assume that the rate has always been that way, that’s an assumption and you can’t prove that.  That’s historical science.  We would believe in “catastrophic plate tectonics” as a result of the Flood and what we’re seeing now is a remnant of that catastrophic movement.  (And this is a direct quote:) “We do not deny the movement, we do not deny the plates; what we would deny is that you can use what you see today as a basis for just extrapolating into the past.”  (I’ve made a video that shows Ken Ham in his own words stating that, on the one hand you can’t assume laws worked in the past as they do today, and on the other hand God created the laws to be unchanging and that gave us the basis for doing science, and the writings from Creation scientists further proves this.)

            Bill: One of the reasons we think that the continents are drifting apart is sea floor spreading in the mid-Atlantic: the earth’s magnetic field has reversed over the millenia, and as it does it leaves a signature in the rocks as the continental plates drift apart, and so you can measure the speed – that’s how we real scientists do things.

Question 8: Favorite color?

            Bill: Green.  It’s an irony that green plants reflect green light.  Most of the light from the sun is green and yet they reflect it, it’s a mystery.  Science is cool!

            Ken: (points to his shirt) Observational science: blue.

(Time for some comedic relief, I suppose.  I found it telling that even though it was a lame question, Bill used it to continue his point about how science fosters our curiosity.)

Question 9: How do you balance the theory of evolution with the second law of thermodynamics, and what is that exactly?

            Bill: It’s basically where energy decays to heat.  The fundamental flaw in this question is that the earth is not a closed system, it’s powered by the sun.  It’s that energy that drives living things.

            Ken: You can have all the energy you want, but energy or matter will never produce life. God imposed information and a language system and that’s how we have life.  Before man sinned, there was decay such as in digestion, but after the Fall things are running down and God doesn’t hold everything together as he did back then. (Ken answered this scientifically-based question with complete religion-infused non-answers.  He explained entropy by saying God doesn't keep everything working like it used to!  That's like saying objects float in space because God isn't pushing them down. Mind-numbing!)

Question 10: Hypothetically, if evidence existed that caused you to admit that the earth is older than 10,000 years and that creation did not occur over six days, would you still believe in God, and the historical Jesus, and that Jesus was the son of God?

            Ken: I’ve been emphasizing all night: you cannot ever prove the age of the earth using science in the present, so there is no hypothetical.  We can make assumptions but you can’t ultimately prove the age of the universe.  You can see there are methods that contradict the billions of years, and as the creation scientists said in my video earlier, there’s nothing in science that contradicts a young earth.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the reason I believe this is because of the Bible’s account of origins.  There is no hypothetical, bottom line. (Ken might as well have had his fingers in his ears and going "nana-nana-na no it's not no it's not nana-nana-na I can't hear you!")

            Bill: You can prove the age of the earth with great robustness by using the universe around us.  Ken wants us to take his word for it that his interpretation of an ancient book is more compelling than what you and I can observe around us today with our own eyes.  Ken, you asserted that life can’t come from non-life – are you sure?  Are you sure enough to say that we shouldn’t look for life on other planets, that it’s a waste?  One again, what can you predict, what can you tell us about the future, not just your ideas about the past?

Question 11: Is there room for God in science?

            Bill: Billions of people embrace science and are religious.  Everyone has a cell phone, uses medicine, and befits from agriculture.  So if you reconcile those two things, that’s not really connected to your belief in a higher power.  I see it as a separate point, and I see no incompatibility between religion and science for each person.  The problem I have is that Ken wants us to take his religious word for it in place of what we can observe on our own. (Here, Bill tried to stay away from theology.  While it's true that one can believe in both God and science, the idea of theism isn't scientific.  But Bill didn't need to go into all of that, and did a good job of keeping on the real point: Ken just says the bible is true, even when it is contradicted by things any person could see.)

            Ken: I think God is necessary for science.  We love science here at Answers In Genesis.  You talked about cell phones and satellites and technology, I agree – those are things that can be done in the present with observational science.  In order to do science you have to assume the uniform laws of nature and logic, and where does that come from if the universe is here by natural processes?  The bible and science go hand-in-hand, but inventing things is very different from talking about our origins.

 

Question 12: Do you believe the entire Bible should be taken literally?

            Ken: I would need to know what that person meant by literally.  If you meant “naturally”, then yes.  If it’s history, as Genesis is, you take it as history.  If it’s poetry, as in the Psalms, you take it as poetry.  You take what is written in the context that it is written in and let it speak to you.  The bible says that all scriptures are inspired by god.  You have to take the bible as a whole.  If it’s really the word of god, then there’s not going to be any contradictions, which there’s not.  And Jesus said marriage is between one man and one woman. (Ken has a Clinton-esque "what is is" moment with this one.  He, like many others, take literally what they want, and things they don't agree with are figurative.)

            Bill: When the facts contradict the things you take as literal interpretations, and then you want me to take other parts of your bible as literal, it's unsettling.

Question 13: Have you ever believed that evolution was accomplished via a higher power? [Literally: Have you ever believed that evolution partook through evolution?]

            Bill: Intelligent design has a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of nature.  Nature is bottom up design, not top down.  If you found a watch on a beach, you’d recognize it was designed.  But that’s not how nature works.  Nature has its mediocre designs eaten by its good designs, and the perception that there’s a designer isn’t needed because we have model that makes predictions and repeatable, testable claims.

            Ken: Bill needs to show some new function that arose that was not previously possible from the genetic information that was already there.  There’s no new information or function that can be added to a kind via evolution, and there is no example that you can give that shows this.

Question 14: Name one institution, business, or organization (other than a church, amusement park, or the Creation museum) that is using any aspect of Creationism to produce its product.

            Ken: Any scientist that is using the scientific method is using Creation!  They’re borrowing from a Christian worldview.  Because, in a naturally arising universe there can’t be logic and you couldn’t trust the laws of nature.  A lot of scientists in the past were Creationists.  And if we don’t teach our children about this, they’re not going to be innovative or come up with inventions to advance our culture. (Ad hoc arguments, appeals to authority, and general misunderstanding of real science from Ken here.  I find it hilarious that he claims we couldn't trust the laws of nature in a natural system.  That's precisely why they're the laws of nature!  And if they changed all the time, they wouldn't be laws -- which are descriptive, not proscriptive, Ken.)

            Bill:  The reason I don’t accept the Creation model is because it has no predictive quality.  Many people are religious, but not all of them share the same religious views as you do.  What happens to those people? Are they doomed? (Oh Bill, don't get into grade-school theology here.  Stick to holding him accountable for claiming books trump eyes.)

Question 15: Since evolution teaches that man is growing smarter over time, how can you explain the numerous evidences of man’s high intelligence in the past?

            Bill: Evolution doesn’t say we’re getting smarter.  Survival of the fittest doesn’t mean those who are the most physically strong or the smartest will survive.  It means those that fit into the environment the best.  Sure, our capacity to reason has taken us to where we are now, but if the right germ shows up, we can be taken out.  It has nothing to do with smarts.

            Ken: I remember one of my professors at university was going to give us an example of evolution, and he showed us cave fish that are blind.  He said, 'look these fish have evolved not to see.  They’re evolving because those who are living in this dark cave had ancestors who had eyes and now these ones don’t', and I said, 'but now they can’t do something that they could do before!'  They might have an advantage in this dark cave now, but it could be that those who had eyes got a disease and died out and those with a mutation to have no eyes survived.  (Direct quote:) "It’s not survival of the fittest; it’s survival of those who survive."  You’re not getting new information or new function.

Question 16: What is the one thing, more than anything else, upon which you base your belief?

            Ken: The bible.  It’s the most unique book out there.  There’s no other religious book that talks about an infinite God, the origin of the universe, the origin of matter, the origin of light, the origin of darkness, the origin of day and night, the origin of the earth, the origin of dry land, the origin of plants, the origin of the sun/moon/stars, the origin of sea creatures, the origin of flying creatures, the origin of land creatures, the origin of man, the origin of woman, the origin of death, the origin of sin, the origin of marriage, the origin of different languages, the origin of clothing, the origin of different nations – it’s a very specific book with a detailed account of history.  And if that history is true and so is the rest of the book, then that means man is a sinner, and he needs the saving power of Jesus Christ who died for you so that you can live forever with God.  If this book is true -- and has no contradictions, which it doesn't -- it should explain what we see in the world today.  There was a global flood; yes, we see fossils.  There was the Tower of Babel; yes, we have different languages around the world, and they have flood legends and creation legends very similar to the Bible.  There’s prophecy you can look at as well.  The bible says, if you seek God, you’ll find him.

            Bill: Science.  I base my belief on the information and the process that we call science.  It fills me with joy to make discoveries, and to know that we can even ask the questions and pursue the answers.  It’s astonishing to think that we are one of the ways for the universe to know itself.  We are created from the universe, it’s in all of us.  And we want to know if we are alone in the universe.  It’s the process of science that will help us find this another other things out.  If we abandon all that we’ve learned through science, if we stop using it and stop looking for the answers, we as a nation will be out-competed by other countries.  We have to keep science education in science classes.

###

So that was the other half of the debate.  It was very telling and reveled the positions of both sides a little better than their illustrated presentations were.  Here are some of my final thoughts:

• Bill said a lot by his facial expressions during the times Ken was answering questions.  Bill kept things very formal, and did a good job of sticking on point, only getting off into the you-can't-be-serious-how-is-your-religion-true avenues once or twice.  But you could see on his face at times, he wanted to.  You could see him saying to himself, "oh really?" and "you've got to be kidding me!"
• You could tell Bill Nye doesn't debate these people often.  He had questions that were rudimentary and didn't use answers that are generally presented, some of which I pointed out in my comments.
• Creationism is a thought process that is “almost there”.  Creationists agree that science works…but you can’t make assumptions that things worked in the past just because the do today.  And they agree that evolution happens…just not enough to make one thing so different from it’s "kind" that it becomes something distinct.  And that the genes for a life-form to have incredible complexity are all already within it, apparently eschewing the mechanism of mutation.

See other Creationist questions from the audience here.


-STA

Grand Designs

Since I've decided to make a new effort to blog again, I've been reviewing some old drafts and talking points that have been accruing dust.  Yesterday, I came across a post that I never got around to finishing.  It was written when Ray Comfort called into the Atheist Experience show near the end of March in 2011.  I just heard that Matt and Ray are supposed to debate again this coming Friday, and since this is the eve of the Bill Nye vs. Ken Ham "debate", I thought it fitting to finish up the post for you.


Bananas!
As I press play on a video of the Atheist Experience TV show, I find myself reaching for a stress ball.  This is a special episode in which evangelist Ray Comfort calls the program.  I'm familiar with Ray and his favorite arguments for the god of the bible, and I'm more than certain he's going to use one that falls into the category of PRATT (Previously Refuted A Thousand Times).

Sure enough, Ray began his argument from design right out of the gate.  In Ray's view, anyone who has a brain and eyes should be able to look around at the world and see design.  How this apparent design points to his particular god is still a mystery, but the flaws to this argument are not.

And while you might think I'm about to list all the reasons why this argument is flawed, I'm not (you can find those on your own).  Instead, I'm actually going to -- for the sake of this post -- concede that nature has been designed.

"STA, have you lost your godless mind?!" No, no yet anyway.  But if we analyze this "designer" vis-à-vis its "design" we can examine the aptitude of this being.  It's irrelevant if this designer is the god of the Bible or the Qur'an, Zeus, Baal, FSM, or shape-shifting lizard men from the Andromeda galaxy.  If we assume that whoever created and/or designed life as it exists on our planet was indeed a conscious designer (or group of designers) that has a mind either dependent or independent of a body, we can examine its work and know it, as Matthew 7:20 states.

I Don't Need No Proof
I'm a somewhat musician and I love to sing and strum to a variety of songs, several of which come from a band called Live.  (At the time of writing, Live has disbanded and apparently the lead singer has now fully embraced Christianity.)  My guitar-playing buddy and I used to cover one of their songs entitled Heaven, whose chorus lyrics are:

I don't need no one to tell me about heaven
I look at my daughter, and I believe.
I don't need no proof when it comes to God and truth
I can see the sunset and I perceive.

I have to admit that once I truly became aware of my disbelief in a god, I could no longer perform this song -- even though I still perform many songs that reference ideas about heaven, god, angels, etc.  This song embodies the argument from design (in some ways a subset of the argument from ignorance) so completely that I can't bring myself to perform it for people.  It's still a good song in its own right, with a great hook, catchy melody, and it's well performed as many of Live's songs are.  But the narrator of the song (and now the actual singer, apparently) believes that God exists because things like sunsets and babies are beautiful.

Pay No Attention to the Flesh-Eating Bacteria

This kind of argument is put forth almost every time I ask a theist to give me reasons why they believe in god.  The response usually goes something like, "Look at the trees, birds, and the magnificence of a baby's eye and tell me how you don't believe in a god!"

But what about the very unpleasant in the world: ichneumon wasps, childhood leukemia, necrotizing fasciitis.  It's always amazing to me that I have to point out this bald-faced cherry picking of nature.  They might say, "look at this wonderful flower!  Only a God could have made it!" and then I turn over the flower and find ten kinds of bug that can kill you ten different, horrible ways.  Where's the credit go then?

Were we to examine the enumerations of our world's supposedly grand designs, we would see that a better design could be easily proposed.  Neil deGrasse Tyson said it well:

As Mr. Tyson points out, the world doesn't seem designed with us in mind.  Indeed, even our own bodies are lacking when it comes to functionality.  There are a myriad of ways to die without the aid of external forces, such as choking to death.

The theistic claims generally rest upon the idea of an all-powerful, all-knowing designer, and the fact that we, a supposedly fallible and broken creation, could suggest a design that is better than "perfect" should be a red flag.

It is not hubris to claim that the designer could have done better.  For the "designer" is blind.

The Blind Watchmaker
Nature has been designed -- by nature herself.  The puddle of rain was not designed for the divot in which it rests.  The hand was not designed for the glove.  Creationists too oftentimes put the cart before the horse.  Had enough metaphor yet?

The "designer" simply used the tools that were available, molding and shaping fauna and flora by jerry-rigging haphazardly working with what it has.  It's like giving a child a set of blocks and telling him to build various things with them. Whereas the child is given only a finite number of blocks, a truly omnipotent designer wouldn't have to stick with the pool of resources to create, it could simply create from nothing the parts it needed.

Only in reality, the "designer" is mindless.  There is no direction or goal to the design.  It's not a true design in the sense that we know it, and that's one of the main problems with the watchmaker argument, a favorite of Ray's.  But we can look around and easily see how much of the universe isn't designed for us.  We can examine ourselves and discover problems with our parts and systems as a whole.  We see design because life works and we're used to thinking that things can't work unless they are created with a goal to do so.

If a designer made nature, it could have done better.  Fortunately, we have found that by putting the evidence first -- not the conclusion that we are designed -- we find life changing and evolving without the need of a designer.  The results look designed, but only in the same sense that the puddle looks designed for the hole it lands in.

I Look At My Daughter
Even if evolution were to somehow be disproved, some kind of intelligent designer wouldn't automatically win the top spot for explanation.  Instead it must be proven on its own merits that this designer made things like trees, birds, cholera, and eyeballs.

Since the time of this writing, I have had a daughter.  The first time I saw her, I was filled with emotion and love.  She was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen.  Now, looking back at this post, I'm reminded of those lyrics in the song.  I don't need anyone to tell me a god designed us.  I look at my daughter, and I perceive the little shifts that life took, over millions of years, to "design" such a wonderful thing.  To claim that a god poofed her into existence is to deny facts and evidence we've gathered through diligent study, not reading from a book.  And we I look upon a sunset, I believe that humanity can and will learn more through the use of science and the eschewing of religion and ideas of intelligent designers.

But I'll admit my version's not as catchy.


-STA

An Updated Origin

November 21, 2009 will mark the exact 150-year mark since the publication of Charles Darwin's book Origin of Species, and a group is actually going to provide over fifty college campuses with free -- yes, FREE -- copies of the book. Who is this group, and why would they go through all that trouble? Why, for God, of course!

That's right folks. The group is the 'Living Waters' ministry. But why would I care that a Christian evangelical collective is giving away Darwin's book? Because this is not the book Darwin wrote. This special-edition version includes a hidden 50-page introduction written by Ray Comfort. And therefore, as you should be able to guess, starts the book off by claiming evolution can't happen, and then proselytizing for Jesus. I say "hidden" because the book does mention Ray's name until after the introduction.


Ray's Fractal Wrongness
You can read Comfort's introduction at the Living Waters site. Here's some random lines from Ray's special introduction, to give you an idea into Ray's way of thinking:

"Here’s the argument: There was nothing. Then paper appeared, and ink fell from nowhere onto the flat sheets and shaped itself into perfectly formed letters of the English alphabet." -pg. 9

If you're familiar with Ray Comfort's style of argument, then this should be par for the course. Ray thinks that evolution is cosmology and abiogenesis all rolled into one. He thinks natural selection should explain the expansion of the universe, and that the traits of animals just popped into being.

"Do you think that DNA’s amazing structure could have come together by accident? Or does it point to an intelligent Designer?" -pg. 11

Ray thinks because Francis Collins, the director of the Human Genome Project, thinks God made DNA (and he IS a scientist, after all!), then DNA = ID = Jesus. He also mentions Anthony Flew's conversion, as if it made a difference.

"There is a mountain in South Dakota that proves what evolutionists have been saying all along: if you just have enough time, wind, rain, erosion, and pure chance, you can get a mountain with the faces of four U.S. presidents on it!" -pg. 13

"Here are some interesting questions for the thinking evolutionist: Can you explain which came first—the blood or the heart—and why?" -pg 23

Ray Comfort, Kirk Cameron, and the like have never understood evolution, nor do I think they ever will.

After citing hoaxes of "missing links" (which were discovered using science!), Ray quotes Darwin out of context, and even uses the oldest trick: quoting the bit where Darwin admits that the evolution of the eye seems absurd, and then stopping before quoting the VERY NEXT LINE that shows how. Ray does however mention that next line, here:

"Even more incredible, though, is that Darwin went on to say that he believed the eye could nonetheless have been formed by natural selection. He was right on one point. If a Designer is left out of the equation, such a thought is absurd in the highest degree." -pg 28

The oldest Creationist canards are stuffed into these 50 pages of drivel. All the misunderstandings a religious person who is uninformed about science could make are in here.

"But even if an organ were no longer needed, wouldn’t it only prove devolution? This fits well with the Law of Entropy— that all things deteriorate over time." -pg 29

Ray not only fails to understand evolution, but he also fail to understand any tacit of science, it seems, including Thermodynamics. And after showing us he can't comprehend things such as biology, palentology, geology, cosmology, and physics, he goes on to show how racist and sexist Darwin was -- as if that has anything at all to do with his ideas.

The next logical (for him) tact is to claim that believing in evolution creates people like Adolf Hitler.


One of his funniest lies is this:
"If you find it hard to believe that there was an Intelligent Designer, give this some thought. Man, with all his genius, can’t make a grain of sand from nothing....Did you realize that if we could simply make one blade of grass without using existing materials, we could solve the world’s hunger problem?" -pg. 31

Remember, he's arguing for an intelligent creator god who CAN make things ex nihilo. So Ray, why doesn't your God solve the world's hunger problem?

"Richard Dawkins, arguably the most famous of atheists, can’t claim the title 'atheist,' because he understands that something must have created everything. He said, 'Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.' " -pg. 37

This comes after Ray redefines the term "atheist" to someone who doesn't accept an initial cause. Wrong again, Ray.

At the end of this special introduction, Ray gives us the meat of what he's really after: evangelizing for Jesus.

"Please think about your sins, then think about the Savior and what He did for guilty sinners such as us." -pg. 40

Ray offers a scenario of four choices (the Mona Lisa original, a car, a million dollars, a parachute), says you can pick just one, then tells you "but first you have to jump 10,000 feet out of an airplane". You're supposed to pick the parachute out of necessity. He then takes this same logic and offers the choice of all the world's religions, then goes into his have-you-ever-broken-the-Big-Ten spiel. You're supposed to pick Christianity, because it fixes the problems it creates.

The rest is pure proselytizing, spewing unfounded claims about God and Hell.


They're delivering this bastardized version of the Origin of Species to college campuses nationwide on November 19. They're also calling on people to buy copies and give them out at their schools and churches.


Might Be Okay?
As I was writing this, I was thinking about how scarily-ignorant America is when it comes to science -- BASIC science -- and how this will only continue to fuel the problem. But then I started thinking, maybe this isn't such a bad idea. I mean, they will be getting the copy of the book into people's hands for free. As far as anyone knows, the rest of the book is unchanged. That means that thousands copies of Darwin's work will be in churches all across America. Hopefully, some people will actually read it and realize how what they thought Darwin said and what he actually said were two totally different things.

Another side affect is getting the book to college kids, and hopefully people who know Ray Comfort is full of shit. I think a lot of college students are intelligent and can easily spot the flaws that a 9th grade science student could find. Plus, they won't have to pay for a copy of Darwin's book. They'll just have an easy reference to the "counter-arguments" that fundamentalists make.


-STA

How to Argue Like a Theist

So what am I doing making a post with such a title? Over the years of arguing with them, I've learned to anticipate the arguments that theists will use in a discussion. It's like you can write a script for nearly every single debate (at least the ones with theists who haven't really debated before, or haven't given much thought as to why they think what they do). We nonbelievers have learned all the theists' tricks simply because these arguments are all that they have. They just keep using them again and again, no matter how many times they've been proven wrong.

• Attack #1: Shift the burden of proof ("Can you prove God doesn't exist?")
• Attack #2: What did God do to make you so angry?
• Attack #3: Can you prove love?
• Attack #4: Pascal's Wager
• Attack #5: Watchmaker and other painter/painting Ray Comfort BS pseudo-arguments
• Attack #6: Since science doesn't know how we got here, it must be God.
• Attack #7: Offer personal experiences (you can't say I'm wrong now...I just *feel* it!)
• Attack #8: Then what do you believe in? (purpose in life, morality, etc.)
• Attack #n: see Ways to Annoy an Atheist
  

The first step (depending on how threatened the theist feels) is to attempt to rid themselves of the burden of proof. They may also falsely confuse passion with anger and try to use emotional arguments, claiming that the atheist must have been "hurt" by religion in the past. When these attempts fail, the next step is to argue from design. As the nonbeliever will typically use current scientific understanding to combat these weak attacks, the believer's next attempt is to attack science itself, claiming that scientific methods are invalid or flawed and will commonly use the "well, it's just a theory!". Once shown that science works, they resort to the only thing the atheist can't take away from them: personal experience. By the end of the discussion (if both parties ever reach such a point), the theist will throw out an argument from morality and begin considering what would be required to "believe IN" if one doesn't believe in God.

This is in no way a complete list, nor is it a script that occurs at each encounter. As I said earlier, it's the most common arguments that I find believers using to try to justify their unjustifiable beliefs. Yet the nonbeliever usually finds that every counter-attack has the opposite result: the more you show them there's no proof, the stronger they become in their belief! Faith is the evidence of what you can't see or prove. That's how you know, you just HAVE to know, and then you know. Faith (read: ignorance) can prevail.

Tracie Harris (who writes the Atheist Eve web comic) provides a similar list of theistic tactics, though in a different order:



-STA

STA Answers Frank Turek, Part 1

In a recent debate between Christopher Hitchens and Frank Turek, hosted by the United Secular Alliance at VCU in Richmond, Virginia and focused on the question, "does God exist?", Turek employed the oft-used apologist tactic of volume -- that is, listing off as many "proofs" of God as he could in the hopes that at least a couple would stick. While I'm not going to dissect the debate (you can watch it for yourself), I would like to answer Turek's arguments, worn-out and defeated as they may be, for myself.

Turek gave three main arguments (two of which I will separate) and four minor points for why he believes in a theistic universe (note, specifically theistic, not deistic), and peppered Christian theology in along the way. He also offered a list of attributes for this deity: a space-less, timeless, immaterial, personal, powerful, intelligent, moral creator. I shall deal with these throughout my discussions on his arguments.


#1 - The Cosmological Argument
Turek summarizes this as "how could something come from nothing"? Hoping that if no one can answer this question scientifically then his premise must be true by default, Turek offers the idea that time, space, and matter all came into existence at the same time -- effectively, nature was created in the Big Bang -- and therefore the Big Bang can't be explained naturalistically because nature didn't exist to cause it, and can only be explained in supernatural terms.

I have no problem in saying that nature came into being during the Big Bang. I am not a scientist, but I do know that what is said in Big Bang cosmology is that space-time itself expanded. Turek himself has no problems with Big Bang theory at all and even did a fairly decent job in providing some proofs for it. The only difference is that he thinks he knows for sure "who banged it", that is to say, he believes his particular God was the root cause of the Big Bang expansion. As I said, he's fallacy is that since no one can provide the answer as to what was "before" the Big Bang, then it must have been Jesus's daddy. Obviously this does not follow -- you simply cannot move from the question "what caused the Big Bang" to theism. I, just as his opponent in the debate did, will grant deism as a slim possibility, but one requiring evidence to first be put forth as an answer.

Since it created space, time, and matter, Turek apples the first three attributes to his God here including that it must be powerful because "it created out of nothing", yet Turek offers zero evidence for this claim. Turek then asserts the following: "you can't go from a state of nonexistence to a state of existence without making a choice", therefore this God is a personal deity because only personal beings make choices. Yet again, he offers no evidence for this bold-faced claim. The onus is still on you, Frank Turek, to bolster your claim that existence demands choice.


#2 - The Teleological Argument
Turek uses the standard fine-tuning argument to try to prove theism. Essentially he states the various ways at how things seem to be precisely set just for us to exist -- the position of the sun and other planets, the tilt and rotation of the Earth, the force values of gravity, etc. He didn't have time to get into them all, but doing a simple internet search will provide you with these standard Christian apologetics for the argument from design.

Frank Turek is effectively capitalizing once again on the ignorance we, as the human collective, have. We do not yet have full understanding of all the laws of the universe. We don't know for sure that messing with any of the constants would result in complete absence of life. Regardless, even if we did know for sure that no life could exist with any other configuration of constants, the fact that he's using it as an argument for a specific brand of theism misses the point altogether: we wouldn't be here talking about it if it hadn't been the case. Welcome to the Anthropic Principle, Frank.


#3 - Irreducible Complexity
Continuing on his buffet of tired old arguments, Turek cites the complexity of DNA as a reason for the existence of a particular God. This tied in with the argument from design of course, being touted out as a reason for the intelligence attribute Turek ascribed to his God at the beginning. The amazing amount of information contained within our DNA, as well as various quotes mined from Collins, Crick, and Hoyle, was given as a proof for a theistic God that must also be intelligent.

Again, Turek is guilty of capitalizing on the ignorance of his audience (as well as a non sequitur). A simple search through any reputable source for evolutionary biology will yield extensive amounts of research and results that stifle the argument of "irreducible complexity". I won't waste time here, read them yourself.


#4 - Objective Morality
One of the major arguments Turek gave (and indeed a topic that Hitchens spent a great deal of his time on) dealt with morality. Turek made it clear that he wasn't saying that atheists can't be or are not moral people, nor that atheists don't know what morality is. His argument was, "atheists cannot justify morality" because there's no authority outside of them.

I personally think that morality can be justified without the need of a deity, but as an argument for the existence of a specific God, Turek's argument is pretty weak. I've written on matters of morality before, so I won't go into it here. Nevertheless, as Turek is strained to point out, the subject is objective morality. Perhaps in some sense there cannot be objective morality? We don't need an authority to be moral, Turek freely notes that he doesn't need Christianity to be moral. And, as Turek is arguing for the Christian God's existence anyway, wouldn't Yahweh's rules on incest and rape and murder have to be the objective moral standard? If so, count me -- and millions of other sane, compassionate human beings -- out. (This also raises the question of God's morality and the Euthyphro Dilemma, subjects covered elsewhere.)



I'll post Part 2 soon.

-STA

You Saw God, Didja George?

So after an awesome weekend out on the lake with my relatives, I got the opportunity to listen in on the current country music status quo provided by the local "non-stop continuous today's hottest country music with less talk and fewer commercials...we'll be right back" radio station. I'm not a huge fan of country music, but I was raised on it and there aren't many places around here where I can escape it.


Fallacy With A Twang
We're sitting around talking, waiting on the food to come off the grill, when this lovely line comes over the speakers: "I saw God today". My ears refocused immediately. "Oh?" I thought. "You don't say. Tell me more."

Ah yes. Good ol'fashioned teleological argument writ large -- and with acoustic guitars -- fed straight (or Strait, rather) to a willing demographic. George Strait granted my motion and gave me the chorus:

I've been to church
I've read the book
I know he's here
But I don't look
Near as often as I should
Yeah, I know I should
His fingerprints are everywhere
I just slowed down to stop and stare
Opened my eyes and man I swear
I saw God today

"Great," I thought with a sigh. "How many other toothless inbreds have you convinced using that rhetoric?"


There IS Beauty in Nature
After I returned to civilization, I immediately found the lyrics to this imbecilicly quaint little rhyme. I know...I'm a deviant. The song is about a guy who's wife is in the hospital having a baby. The father steps out for a break, sees beauty and happiness and peace in sunsets and rainbows and puppies, and finds God there. The chorus paints a clear -- and very common -- picture of a man who's been raised in a society where God is "there", but the man's not religious. I can relate.

In the song, the father sees another couple who's expecting a child while he's outside pondering the sunset. How many times have you, the reader, stood slack-jawed gazing up at the grandeur of the universe? Some, like George's character, see God there. I see something bigger.

There is wonder and magnificence in the universe. But positing a supernatural being that lacks any explanatory power whatsoever cheapens the true beauty, I think. Why 'God', George? Why not 'Allah', or 'Brahma', or 'Kukulkan', or 'Adora', or 'Tonacatecuhtli'? Why didn't you see any of them? Could it be the culture of your upbringing (one that I hope you won't stuff your children into)?

The narrator also contemplates the beautiful flowers and thinks about how it's almost like they were "planted right there for me". So does the puddle who thinks that the hole it's it was made for it...it fits so perfectly!


A Conclusion That's 'Good Enough For Me'
The final verse goes like this:

Got my face pressed up against the nursery glass
She's sleepin' like a rock
My name on her wrist
Wearin' tiny pink socks
She's got my nose, she's got her mama's eyes
My brand new baby girl
She's a miracle
I saw God today

I know many people who became more spiritual after the birth of their first child. I know it can happen. Again I'm not trying to diminish the ideals of the song, as far as the notion that nature is beautiful, and so are babies. But "miracle"? How many times does something have to happen over and over again before it isn't considered a miracle anymore?

The man in the song was convinced before his child was born. He wasn't a nonbeliever beforehand. He's one of those people who already has an ingrained image of God. And whenever something wonderful happens -- like the birth of his daughter -- he immediately credits this image. He hasn't thought through any of it because, like most religious occurrences, it's purely emotional. I'm not trying to undermine his faith here; I'm saying that if he'd really THINK about it without letting the emotional agitation of childbirth to get in the way, he might not be so quick to give credit of a natural and ordinary process to a supernatural and extraordinary idea.

We atheists can find beauty, peace, and joy in nature and babies, and we don't need a God to have it. In the immortal words of Douglas Adams: "Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?"

More of my adventures with Country music can be found here.


-STA

Flunked, not Expelled

Ben Stein has a new film out now, and although there are plenty of sites devoted to tearing it to pieces, I wouldn't feel right if I didn't drop my coin in the pond too.

So here goes.

If you're interested in the so-called "debate" between those in the scientific community and those in favor of the pseudoscience of Creationism -- currently flying under the banner of ID or "Intelligent Design" -- then you should be aware that a new movie staring Ben Stein. The movie makes some outrageous claims as it seeks to promote ID and generally stir up shit.

The Deception
The film features some pretty major players in science today, such as evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, professor PZ Myers, NCSE executive director Eugenie Scott, and a number of others. The producers of the movie asked for interviews with these scientists and professors, telling them it was for a movie they were working on called "Crossroads". They not only lied about the title, they lied about the intent of the film as well, claiming it was a fair and balanced look at the Creationism issue. These interviews were made in April 2007. The producers had already registered the domain for Expelled two months before those interviews took place, and had not registered a domain for Crossroads...ever! They knew right from the start that they were underhandedly getting interviews under false pretenses.

The film is very much in the Michael Moore vein of documentary film-making. There are splices, poor editing, and even charactures when someone who disagrees with the film's message is speaking. The style of the film is intended to provide an appealing movie targeted at those who are poorly equipped to understand it.

One such editing twist makes noted atheist author and biologist Richard Dawkins appear to be a "believer" of Intelligent Design. Dawkins sets up a hypothetical situation to address that regression goes past ID, but due to framing tricks, the audience will fail to understand that this is a hypothetical argument. The film aims to show Professor Dawkins and the other real scientist in a light of ignorance and stupidity (similar to this kind of camera trickery.)

Not to mention the copyright violations on music and animations.

The False Comparison
One of the biggest and most ignorant claims made by this movie is basically that "Darwinism leads to atheism leads to Nazism leads to the holocaust". In a twenty-minute segment, Stein visits a Nazi death camp (apparently he's an authority on the subject because he's a Jew). Stein gets the tour guide to say that the Nazi's did what they did in the name of Darwinian evolution. This argument is so common that it's appeared in a number of books and writings by leading Christian authors, yet it's an argument that is unfounded and ignorant.

Darwin got the idea of natural selection from thinking about how animals were bread for their traits (horses, birds, dogs, etc.). This human-selection had been around for centuries before Charles Darwin. Darwin merely saw that nature does the selecting for evolution. Hitler and his Nazi followers, on the other hand, sought to create a super race of humans by using human-selected breading and extermination -- this is not Darwinian evolution! The vile misrepresentation Expelled gives to history is not only wrong, I think it's evil.

The Ignorance
The entire premise of this film is that "Big Science" is keeping ID out of schools because of an elitist, political stance. The fact of the matter is that ID has NEVER produced any results to suppress. The film makes dishonest attempts to show some sort of "war" and controversy between ID and science, when the fact is that there is no controversy. Any scientist worth their weight knows that ID, Creationism, and any other religious claims have no right to be taught as science.

The Hypocrisy
Professor PZ Myers became a victim of the film's hypocrisy when he was expelled from a free pre-screening of the movie. The pre-screening was only available to online registrants. He had signed up on a website, received a confirmation email stating that "tickets were not required". As Professor Myers was standing in line (he hadn't even gotten up to the desk to present identification and sign in) when he was approached by security guards who told him that he had been barred from seeing the film by a producer of the film. The officer even threatened to arrest Myers if he tried to go in! Myers complied and went to talk with his family. The officer came back to him accompanied by the theater manager who told him that not only was he not allowed into the theater, but that he would have to leave the premises immediately! The funny part is that they let in Myer's guest, Richard Dawkins, escorted by Myer's wife and daughter.

After the credits had rolled (in which PZ Myers was thanked for appearing in the film!), Dawkins stood up from the center of the theater and says something to the extent of: "Why, in a movie about free speech and open discussions in academia, do you expel my colleague PZ Myers from seeing it -- a movie, by the way, which he's IN and thanked for in the credits?"

The Grade
Expelled deserves an F minus for research, publication, production, and class participation. It is a laughable film, but the sad and scary thing is that a lot of scientifically ignorant people will view it as gold, and spread the messages it contains. Of course, churches across the country will be giving this movie good publicity and money. I'm sure the Creationist movement will gain a bit of momentum, and more discussion about it will be appearing in the media for a few months after the film's release. But anyone who can spot the flaws of the ridiculous arguments must stand up and spread the set Ben Stein and his disciples straight.

Visit www.ExpelledExposed.com to learn each and every argument and counter-argument to the film.