Hard evidence vs. lots of circumstantial evidence

[Fire Fly]

A point often raised by creationists in the evolution vs. creation debate is that there isn't any hard, concrete "ah ha!" evidence to support the theory of evolution. There have been several counter attacks to this particular line of attack, one being Dawkin's so called murder crime scene defense. In this response to the creationist's attack, Dawkin explains that detectives haven't been able to find the murderer yet but detectives have been able to find lots and lots of circumstantial evidence left behind by the murderer, which builds a strong case against a particular suspect. Analogously, scientists haven't been able to see evolution in its full glory because it takes so long but rather, scientists have been able to see the footprints, fingerprints, semen samples, hair fibers and blurry security camera images of evolution.

But I think there exists a stronger counter attack to the creationist's typical pawn to e4 opening. In this variation, the evolutionist should be able to obtain a quick knockout blow with the correct counterattack. Having thought about it for a while, I think the best choice to the creationist's reject-evolution-for-lack-of-hard-evidence is, "Do you also reject that the earth is a globular, three dimensional object in space then? All of the hard evidence that we have (seeing directly with our own eyes) tells us that the earth is flat." In this counterattack, the evolutionist is attempting to directly undermine the credibility of the creationist using simple scientific concepts that the average lay person accepts with 100% certainty. In addition, the evolutionist is also trying to demonstrate that hard, see-it-with-your-own-eyes evidence can be very misleading and therefore, hard evidence must be balanced with circumstantial evidence.

While surfing the wonders of the interweb, I stumbled across a little demonstration of the above counterattack: link.

[Fire Fly]

Please note that I'm using the term hard evidence in a lay sense.

[rhoenix]

That was a good clip, and showed what you mean quite well. I never attack someone for having faith in something - that's fine. But I do try to illustrate that when one starts projecting abstract faith into specific points, it tends to fly into conflict with discovery, science, and logic. Whoopi explained that rather well in the above clip, I thought.

[Kanastrous]

One prospective counter-counter argument (focused on the 'our eyes tell us the Earth is flat' observation), might be Eratosthenes' demonstration of the Earth's sphericality...which he demonstrated using eyesight and a couple of posts.

An educated creationist (they do sort of exist) might demand a comparably simple presentation as proof of evolutionary development.

[ThatGuyFromThatPlace]

Analogously, scientists haven't been able to see evolution in its full glory because it takes so long but rather, scientists have been able to see the footprints, fingerprints, semen samples, hair fibers and blurry security camera images of evolution.

Too play devil's (or christ's as it were) advocate. We've got about that much evidence that Bigfoot exists.

I've run into a number of people who I don't think would nominally be describe as 'YEC fundies' but who would also easily deflect this kind of reasoning with some 'that's not at all related' bullshit, willfully ignoring the metaphor to maintain their own ignorance.

[General Zod]

Analogously, scientists haven't been able to see evolution in its full glory because it takes so long but rather, scientists have been able to see the footprints, fingerprints, semen samples, hair fibers and blurry security camera images of evolution.

That is not exactly correct. Numerous varieties of insects (notably fruit flies) have demonstrated relatively rapid evolution.

[Fire Fly]

Analogously, scientists haven't been able to see evolution in its full glory because it takes so long but rather, scientists have been able to see the footprints, fingerprints, semen samples, hair fibers and blurry security camera images of evolution.

That is not exactly correct. Numerous varieties of insects (notably fruit flies) have demonstrated relatively rapid evolution.

I'm more or less talking about evolution on an impossibly fast rate, where animals can be directly observed changing from amoeba to giraffe in a single person's life time. Again, the counter argument is aimed at a simpler audience, not one who has been versed in elementary evolutionary biology.

[Kanastrous]

Analogously, scientists haven't been able to see evolution in its full glory because it takes so long but rather, scientists have been able to see the footprints, fingerprints, semen samples, hair fibers and blurry security camera images of evolution.

Too play devil's (or christ's as it were) advocate. We've got about that much evidence that Bigfoot exists.

I'd sure hate to be the poor slob who has to collect semen samples, from Bigfoot.

[ThatGuyFromThatPlace]

Analogously, scientists haven't been able to see evolution in its full glory because it takes so long but rather, scientists have been able to see the footprints, fingerprints, semen samples, hair fibers and blurry security camera images of evolution.

Too play devil's (or christ's as it were) advocate. We've got about that much evidence that Bigfoot exists.

I'd sure hate to be the poor slob who has to collect semen samples, from Bigfoot.

I imagine you'd be unpleasantly surprised if you were to google "Bigfoot Semen Samples"

They're out there.

[Darth Wong]

Personally, I find that analogies are rather ineffective on fundies, because they just point out that the analogy is not identical to the situation under discussion in every conceivable way. Of course, an analogy doesn't need to be identical in every conceivable way, but there's the angle of attack they'll use. Remember that a fundie doesn't really refute arguments; he just looks for excuses to ignore them. Worse yet, fundies just love to abuse analogies, so when you point out that they're doing this, they'll claim that you're doing the same, and it will look like the two of you are just going back and forth equally.

I like to respond to the "lack of hard evidence" argument by saying "It's hard evidence if you can't come up with any other explanation for it. And creationists can't come up with any other explanation for the structure of the Linnaean taxonomy".

See, that's the trick; what is "hard" evidence? It's evidence for which only one rational explanation exists. Circumstantial evidence is evidence for which many possible explanations exist. It's not any less physical or concrete; in fact, many forms of circumstantial evidence are quite solid; the problem is that they have many possible explanations (it's easy to come up with examples from criminal cases). So in order to show that the evidence for evolution is circumstantial, they must show that there are many other rational explanations for it. They have utterly failed to do so. Ergo, they are lying about its circumstantial nature.

Mind you, this won't convince a fundie either, but he will flounder trying to refute it because fundies are lazy and won't even bother trying to understand the logic of the rebuttal. That will make him look stupid in front of any observers who are intelligent enough to think about arguments in terms of their underlying logic rather than seeing them as a contest of charisma.

[Kanastrous]

I imagine you'd be unpleasantly surprised if you were to google "Bigfoot Semen Samples"

Or pleasantly surprised.

You never know.

[Skgoa]

A point often raised by creationists in the evolution vs. creation debate is that there isn't any hard, concrete "ah ha!" evidence to support the theory of evolution.

Ask them if the have seen a white peppered moth lately. Or why there are so many different shapes and colours of domesticated wolves. (or cats, chicken, veal, horses, sheep...)