Top Bonehead Arguments of Evolution
| Author: Doug Sharp Subject: Creation-Evolution Overviews Date: 12/1/1999 |
- Argument by definition: “Creation is outside of science.”
- Argument by appeal to authority or intellectual snobbery: “All those scientists can’t be wrong.”
- Argument by lining up ducks in a row (homology).
This is like space travelers visiting earth in year 3000 finding cars in a junkyard and creating an evolutionary sequence from them. - If you can’t explain it, give it a scientific name (evolutionist fairy dust).
- Arguing that if you have described a process, you have explained its origin.
- Assuming what you want to prove (tautology).
- Mistaking devolution for evolution. (Devolution is like a nail spontaneously turning to rust. Evolution is like rust spontaneously turning into a nail).
- Selection (eliminating features) produces new features.
- If an evolutionist can come up with an ad-hoc argument that seems to explain something, it refutes the creationist explanation.
- Punk-eek (Punctuated equilibrium). “Evolution happened too fast to find transitional forms in the fossil record.”
- The straw man (creating a misconception or false image of what creationists believe). “Creationists believe that the earth is flat.”
- Creationists who sell books are “money-grubbers” motivated by profit.
- Comparing Christians to Islamic fundamentalists and the Taliban.
- “Creationists don’t publish in the top evolutionary science journals.” (Hmmm…I wonder why?)
- Teaching creation violates the separation of church and state. (As if teaching evolutionary doctrine doesn’t.)
All of these arguments are either patently false or so ridiculous they don’t merit the time spent to answer them. If a person resorts to arguments like these to bolster evolutionary theory, their thinking is so out-of-whack from the foundation that it would take months to straighten it out.