Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Top Ten Creationist Arguments



The arguments for the existance of God are like the lyrics to familiar TV jingles. Sure intelligent design doesn't make a lot of sense but everybody knows the words, and sometimes it's fun to sing along. So here is the top ten favorite creationist arguments by The Thinking Atheist.

One of the best videos that hits the target!

Transcription by me:

# 1: Carbon dating isn't accurate to determine the age of the Earth. Well perhaps that's why carbon dating isn't preferred method for dating rocks and fossils in fact there are great many methods radiometric dating that accurately measuring the decay of radioactive elements in rock, meteorites and fossils and those methods can confidently measure the age of planet Earth 4.5 billion years.

# 2: You cannot prove evolution. As opposed to proving the young Earth theory from primitive and anonymous documents? Well actually, man has unlocked world of genetics to reveal that all living things have and do evolved and that similiatiries exist between the DNA of plants, animals and humans alike. Evolution is observable, provable science. To quote the famous evolutionary biologist Stephen J. Gould :"creationist critics often charge that evolution cannot be tested, and therefor cannot be viewed as a properly scientific subject at all. This claim is rhetorical nonsense."

# 3: If man evolved from monkeys why do we still have monkeys? This is like asking if America was colonized by English why do we still have England? Next question please.

# 4: The human eye is to complex to be evolved. This arguments also known as irreducible complexity. This gross oversimplification ignores the creatures like this single celled euglena which have evolved antenna for light. Molluscs and jellyfish have evolved varying grades of vision. Plus consider this: human eye is more poorly constructed and much less acute than the eye of octopus or great horned owl. Did God care more about the design of the horned owl than his own children.

# 5: Atheism is actually a religion. Indeed much like not collecting stamps might be called a hobby or not smoking might called be a habit.

# 6: Scientist x believes in God. That's nice! So did icons like Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, who also lived during the time of dirt floors, bleeding sick people to cure them of illness, and burning witches at the stake. Sir Isaac Newton was a believer and theologian, he was also an alchemist. Did Newton's groundbreaking research on gravity and laws of motion also prove his beliefs that metal had magical powers and could be combined to make gold. Chery pick all you want but 93% of members of National Academy of Sciences reject the concept of god, that's not just a majority its overwhelming majority. In fact this is just a sampling reputable scientific organizations that reject intelligent design and support evolution by natural selection.

# 7: So you are saying that everything happened by chance. No, chance certainly plays a part evolutionary cycle but natural selection promotes non random change of specific desirable traits over time. Living organisms didn't just pop into the existence by chance but they did evolve over millions, sometimes billions of years.

# 8: America was founded as a Christian nation. Actually the US constitution never mentions God and the mention of religion in article 6 and first amendment served to separate religion from government altogether, the words in god we trust imprinted on American coins until in 1863 after a religious surge during the civil war. Paper money didn't have until 1957. The words "under god" weren't even in original pledge of allegiance they were added by congress in 1954 and many of our founding fathers were either deist and ambivalent about Christian God. Including Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, John Adams, Thomas Paine, and George Washington.

# 9: The second law of thermodynamics. We love this argument because it is thrown out so flippantly and with so little understanding. In a nutshell the second law of thermodynamics says the systems must become more disordered over time, so complex living cells and organisms couldn't have come out in basic inanimate chemicals, in other words more time means more chaos. What creationist failed to mention is that this law only works in closed system where no energy or matter leaves or enters. The Earth is not a closed system, it receives outside heat and light from our Sun's nuclear fusion fueling simple organisms so that they can become more complex by consuming other forms of life than nonliving materials.

Here is an easy way to frustrate this argument: When a Christian brings up the second law of thermodynamics, ask him what the other laws are? When he shrugs and stares into space you know how truly informed he is on the subject.

And finally #10, our favorite. Adolf Hitler was an atheist. Well actually Hitler was raised Roman Catholic. In Mein Kampf Hitler speaks of the creator of the universe and says Aryan race created by God, his religious views or lack thereof them remain in dispute but using the name of the history's greatest tyrant is not an argument, its a provocation, that has nothing to do with concept of the evolution or creation. Invoking Hitler is a hot button, designed to distract people from the true evidence that God only exist in the imagination of man.

So there they are our top ten favorite creationist arguments. Next time you come up against one of these just remember the your world view is based on evidence, their world view includes invisible divine daddy, two naked people and a talking snake, contradictory documents written in bronze age, the wearing torture devices around one's neck and bumper stickers that proudly say "7 days without prayer makes one weak". For the record, we are not sure the creationist's argument could be much weaker, we're just saying.

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