(How) can a non-expert defend science against creationists?

[Kritikos]

I had a pretty good high-school education in the natural sciences, and in recent years have been learning more about them; but I am just not any sort of expert in them and do not expect ever to be one. This presents a problem when some religious type starts putting forward creationist canards in the course of discussion. I wonder how I can deal with this sort of situation given the limits of my scientific knowledge.

My question arises from the following experience. (This will go on for a bit, so anyone who is not interested in reading the details should skip down to the last paragraph. I do hope, though, that some people here with greater scientific expertise than mine will find the details worth reading.) A few weeks ago, I got involved in a dispute with a Defender of the Faith in the "comments" section of the JREF Swift Blog. The topic of the blog post was Pat Robertson's comments on Haiti (Brandon Thorp, "Fault Line: Why Pat Robertson and his boosters are either ignorant, racist, or both," January 26, 2010), and a guy under the name of Qualt posted a comment for the ostensible purpose of defending Robertson. However, he also said this, after his first paragraph:

Before I continue I need to state, as a Christian I am firmly convinced there is a God. Nothing else makes any sense, furthermore the other extreme of the Darwinian fairy tale, that there is no God and therefore all life created itself through inanimate material turning into life, is as absurd a principal as one could ever embrace. I will not take the time to discuss that principal now as it would only divert attention away from the subject I wish to address.

In my reply I addressed myself solely to what Qualt went on to say about Robertson and Haiti. But Qualt's reply showed that the "principal" that he declared that he did not want to discuss was in fact exactly what he wanted to discuss. After accepting my correction of his spelling, he wrote:

As for the Darwinian fairy tale, the theory falls apart at the foundation and is almost entirely embraced by those who either believe without giving it much thought, or refuse to acknowledge truth. After over 150 years, and billions of dollars spent on research, no one, I repeat no one has created life from inanimate material, and they never will. The Darwinian fairy tale is based on 100% faith! Those who embrace this fairy tale must also invoke the false concept of "given enough time anything can happen." In any debate a Darwinian will always run to that as their crutch. The diversity, (and adaptation) of species i.e. large dogs, small dogs, long hair dogs, short hair dogs, etc, in no way proves that life evolved entirely on its own without a creator. That, as you say, "kind sir or madam," is not a straw man argument.

In my reply, I still refused to take the bait, but other people did take it, and so Qualt continued on about it. I again ignored what he wrote about it and replied only to what he had to say about religion, the Bible as a basis of belief, and so on. He posted a very long comment in reply, to which I replied with the following very brief one, under the title, "Why do people who derive their opinions from scripture and religious authority bother to post here?":

Qualt, you need to understand that no argument founded on articles of faith is going to be taken seriously by the readership of this site, other than perhaps as an object of psychological study. What you think God told you is not a reason for anyone else to share your opinion. As the Lord Chancellor says to Strephon in Iolanthe, "it isn't evidence."

That evoked a reply that began as follows:

My question back to you is, why do you or anyone else post here? From what I have gathered so far, most, if not all of those who have responded, live their lives on blind faith, not on hard evidence. So far no one has answered how life on this earth came about without some kind of intelligent creation. I will repeat it again, the Darwinian explanation, that all life spontaneously evolved from inanimate material and then continued to change (evolve) until we have what is currently on this earth, is as foolish a story as anyone could come up with.

At this point, I felt that I could no longer avoid taking up the topic. The trouble is that, as I said earlier, I am no expert in biology or any other branch of natural science. I am confident that I know more about it than this guy, but that is not saying much. So I wrote as follows:

Qualt, I am no expert in biology, but even I know that Darwin's work has nothing, absolutely nothing to say about the origin of life. This is not some sort of controversial or refined question of interpretation. It is rudimentary historical fact, like the fact that The Origin of Species was published in 1859. If you can't get this straight, you have no business talking about this subject at all. So please spare me the sing-song about a "Darwinian fairy tale" about the origin of life. Your use of that phrase with reference to abiogenesis show that you don't know what you are talking about.

The evidence for the theory of evolution -- which does derive from the work of Darwin -- is as strong as the evidence for any branch of science. As I said before, the medical science on which you depend for your continued life and health every day is utter nonsense without its foundations in evolutionary biology.

Note (and confession): The last quoted paragraph was a bluff on my part. I made these assertions based on what I have heard from others whose judgment I trust, but I could not defend them. I stand by what I wrote after that, though:

The fact that I do not know all the details of modern science does not mean that I live on "blind faith." I base my judgments on what I do know of science and of how science works. It is a trust founded on the proven record of science in the past five hundred years in discovering how the world works -- as contrasted with religion's proven record of ignorance, delusion, backwardness, and failure on that count. It is like the difference between my putting my trust in the postal carrier to deliver my mail to me six times a week and putting my trust in a medium who claims to be able to foretell my future or a quack who claims to be able to cure my aches and pains with magnets or crystals or the like.

The fact that I personally cannot explain the details of biology or physics to you does not undercut biology or physics any more than my ignorance of engineering lends support to some nut's claim that the Sears Tower (or whatever it is now called) is about to collapse. I do not know what produces the force of gravitation, but that does not give me license to talk about the "Newtonian fairy tale" that holds the paths of the planets about the sun and so forth to be determined by universal gravitation. My ignorance of natural causes does not constitute insight into supernatural causes: it just means that I am ignorant. You should learn to apply the same lesson to yourself. Your personal incredulity is not a ground of argument of any kind.

Qualt had also made the objection that "to ridicule faith is also foolishness, for almost everything we do in life requires some level of faith." I wrote as follows in reply to that:

Of course life is impossible without faith. I could not, e.g., sit in the chair in which I am sitting as I write this if I did not have faith that it would support my weight -- a belief for which I have no proof apart from the fact that, so far, it has supported my weight (and other chairs much like it have supported the weight of other people sitting in them for years, and so on). If I insisted that the chair be examined for structural integrity before I sit in it, I would then have to worry about whether the examiners missed something. To avoid every element of faith, I would have to investigate whether the floor under my feet is absolutely firm, whether the air that I breathe is not poisoned, and so on -- in short, I would be a paranoid lunatic. No one is saying -- at least I am not saying -- that faith is an error. But there is an important difference between faith in something that is in complete conformity with common experience, scientific knowledge, and so on, such as the trust that my chair will support my weight, and, say, the belief that an earthquake was caused by the intervention of God or the devil, or the belief that the coming-into-being of diverse species of living thing was so caused, or in general any claim of the intervention of supernatural agencies into the course of nature. If the need for faith in commonplace things (like the reliability of my chair or the postal carrier) licensed faith in such extraordinary things, it would be license not just for Christian faith but for every bizarre theology imaginable or existent -- Mormonism or Scientology or the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

It went on from there. Anyone who is interested in seeing how is welcome to go over to the blog page and read the comments by Kritikos and Qualt.

I just wonder if anyone has any comments on how I dealt with this business or any suggestions about how I might have dealt with it better. Unfortunately, since it took place on a "comments" page rather than a message board like this one, it did not attract the attention of anyone who could have made better arguments in defense of science than my limited knowledge allows me to make.

 

[Dunstan]

Creationists like to equivocate with the word "faith," flipping back and forth between the "believing things without any evidence" sense that describes their beliefs, and the "confidence based on evidence that is convincing but not 100% proof (as there virtually never is)." It's obvious from your reposted comments that you're aware of this distinction, but I think you're playing into their hands by using the word "faith" in the latter sense.

As a more general matter, I think a layperson (which I am) can be reasonably well-armed against a creationist simply by knowing what the theory of evolution is and what it isn't. Most creationist "arguments" rely on distortions of the ToE (everything just happens randomly, crockoducks, etc.).

Technically you're correct that abiogenesis is not part of the ToE, but I think that's the beginning of a response, not the end of it.

 

[Kritikos]

Creationists like to equivocate with the word "faith," flipping back and forth between the "believing things without any evidence" sense that describes their beliefs, and the "confidence based on evidence that is convincing but not 100% proof (as there virtually never is)." It's obvious from your reposted comments that you're aware of this distinction, but I think you're playing into their hands by using the word "faith" in the latter sense.

Actually, in some comments that I did not include above, Qualt claimed that his faith was supported by historical evidence; so I don't know that he was making the particular equivocation that you describe. While I agree that faith heads tend to equivocate with the word "faith," I think that the senses between which they switch are not the two that you describe but rather (1) "trust or belief without conclusive proof" (roughly your second sense) and (2) "religious belief." They will attribute to you some faith in sense (1) and then try to use that to show that you yourself have faith in sense (2). I was trying to undercut all such arguments by accepting "faith" as something utterly banal and devoid of inherent religious significance. But I can see how it might be more effective to use a word like "trust" or "confidence" for that purpose.

As a more general matter, I think a layperson (which I am) can be reasonably well-armed against a creationist simply by knowing what the theory of evolution is and what it isn't. Most creationist "arguments" rely on distortions of the ToE (everything just happens randomly, crockoducks, etc.).

Yes, I suppose I should just continue to study those things.

Technically you're correct that abiogenesis is not part of the ToE, but I think that's the beginning of a response, not the end of it.

Well, I made much of that, first, because it was a point on which I could be completely sure of my ground, and second, because I think it really is part of the rhetorical strategy of creationists to conflate the theory of evolution, abiogenesis, and atheism (though I failed, initially, to note that my opponent was including that last element in the package). Further, as far as I know, there is no scientific theory (in the sense of "theory" that contrasts with "mere hypothesis") of the origin of life as there is a scientific theory of evolution. The annoying thing is that creationists seem to think that if you admit that you can't explain how something happened by natural causes, then you must admit that God did it. As if "We don't know" were a license to believe anything you pull out of your arse.

 

[John Jones]

I had a pretty good high-school education in the natural sciences, and in recent years have been learning more about them; but I am just not any sort of expert in them and do not expect ever to be one. This presents a problem when some religious type starts putting forward creationist canards in the course of discussion. I wonder how I can deal with this sort of situation given the limits of my scientific knowledge.

[...].

Try www.talkorigins.org. Creationists/IDers haven't learned much over the decades, except to try and redefine science to meet their faith.

 

[Perpetual Student]

The evidence for evolution is multifaceted and overwhelming. Geology, genetics, embryology, ETC(this may help) all provide powerful support -- but, of course, you already know all this. Evolution is a scientific fact, not a theory -- it is as incontrovertible as the fact that the earth is not the back of a turtle. Sorry, for the following comment: but at age 70, I have lost patience and interest in debating fools about this subject. This person is not going to change his mind because it has been damaged. Regardless of however rational he may be in other areas, it would be like trying to explain Newtonian physics to a mushroom.

 

[schrodingasdawg]

Regardless of however rational he may be in other areas, it would be like trying to explain Newtonian physics to a mushroom.

Nah, mushrooms are too quiet. Perhaps more like trying to explain Newtonian physics to a narcotic-addicted monkey in need of a fix?

In response to the OP, I think skeptoid did a fine episode on debating creationists,
http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4065
, which does an adequate job at pointing out the fundamental points on which creationists are wrong. talkorigins, as John Jones already suggested, contains a lot of finer details (which are worth reading not just because they can be used to rebut creationists, but because they are interesting).

But I concur with Perpetual Student that creationists aren't generally worth debating. If it's a rationally-minded friend who could be convinced, then go for it (but remember to emphasize that religion and evolutionary theory are perfectly compatible). If there are bystanders who could benefit from having the creationist's errors explained, go for it. But if the creationist is stubborn and any bystanders already know this person is a moron, then it's probably not worth the effort and frustration.

 

[Kritikos]

Try www.talkorigins.org. Creationists/IDers haven't learned much over the decades, except to try and redefine science to meet their faith.

Actually, I've even got the book based on the materials on that Web site -- The Counter-Creationism Handbook. I just need to read it!

This person is not going to change his mind because it has been damaged. Regardless of however rational he may be in other areas, it would be like trying to explain Newtonian physics to a mushroom.

I concur with Perpetual Student that creationists aren't generally worth debating. If it's a rationally-minded friend who could be convinced, then go for it (but remember to emphasize that religion and evolutionary theory are perfectly compatible). If there are bystanders who could benefit from having the creationist's errors explained, go for it. But if the creationist is stubborn and any bystanders already know this person is a moron, then it's probably not worth the effort and frustration.

I can see that point. As I said, I declined to take the bait for as long as possible. And even when I did so, I had no aspiration of inducing my opponent to accept the findings of modern natural science: I aimed only to get him to admit that his objections showed nothing but his ignorance -- or even just to admit that it is science itself that he is rejecting, and not just some metaphysical opinion. What inclined me to argue with him rather than simply scoff at him or disregard him was the fact that he obviously takes himself to have objectively sound reasons for his views. Look at this statement from his penultimate comment on the blog page:

We should only wish to embrace truth and therefore we should never fear having our beliefs challenged because if they are correct they will stand up to criticism and if not we should repent (repent means to change direction). Therefore I am never afraid to engage someone who challenges my beliefs. Over the years I have embraced, rejected, abandoned and changed many things I once thought were true.

Qualt thinks that he is engaged in critical reasoning. So it should be possible to show him that he is reasoning very badly. In theory!

I think skeptoid did a fine episode on debating creationists,
http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4065
, which does an adequate job at pointing out the fundamental points on which creationists are wrong.

Thanks: that is a very manageable little summary.

 

[MattusMaximus]

Try www.talkorigins.org. Creationists/IDers haven't learned much over the decades, except to try and redefine science to meet their faith.

Specifically, check out the Talk Origins Index to Creationist Claims - it's chock full of various creationist claims and ways to counter them. There was even an app for the I-Phone/Touch last month, but it got removed due to copyright issues, which are still pending. Fortunately, I nabbed it before it was removed

 

[MG1962]

I generally challenge creationist with the thought - according to them, science only works in certain situations. Example, we can date the age of the earth by studying half lifes of various elements. When discussing the age of the earth. This science is invalid. Yet at the same time, the theory allows to have watch dials that glow in the dark, destroy cities with bombs and create almost unlimited power.

Why is the science wrong in one particular case, and not all the others