Most retarded arguments against evolution

[Simon_Jester]

You see, it is pretty simple:

One person can explain his argument logically. But he get's annoyed by the other persons failure to understand it, so he gives up.
The other person can not explain his argument logically. He get's annonyed by the other persons demand for an logical explanation, so he gives up.

The ability to present an logical, honest argument is all that matters here. Creationists can never do that:
Either they have to ignore evidence (dishonesty) or argue illogically.

That's what I thought. It looks like it was the latter; I'm looking at a part of the situation that doesn't matter to you.

Inside the head of the creationist, we find the delusion that an argument from faith is just as good as a logical argument, if not better. They believe (wrongly) that they can take the slots in a conversation where you'd normally put a logical argument, put in an argument from faith, and still be saying something valid. They believe that their own religious beliefs are self-evident truth, you see, on par with "two plus two equals four."

They remain wrong, but that's not my point. My point is that they think they are doing the same thing you'd think you were doing by dismissing an argument that two plus two is three. They're wrong, but they don't know that; if they did they wouldn't be wrong.

I'm only talking about the internal thought process here. It's not a question of whether what they're saying is true, or whether it's good debating practice, or whether they have a right to do it when they don't have a logical argument. I'm not claiming any of those things. I'm saying that they feel much the same thing that a rational person feels when confronted with absolute stupidity: a sense that the other person only disagrees with them because the other person is a clod.

And, just to underline this one more time: this does not make them right or justified in doing so. It was never meant as anything but a comment on the psychology of religious fanaticism.

[Serafina]

Eh, they may think that faith equals (or trumps) evidence and logic, but that makes them stupid.

[Dave]

Inside the head of the creationist, we find the delusion that an argument from faith is just as good as a logical argument, if not better. They believe (wrongly) that they can take the slots in a conversation where you'd normally put a logical argument, put in an argument from faith, and still be saying something valid. They believe that their own religious beliefs are self-evident truth, you see, on par with "two plus two equals four."

They remain wrong, but that's not my point. My point is that they think they are doing the same thing you'd think you were doing by dismissing an argument that two plus two is three. They're wrong, but they don't know that; if they did they wouldn't be wrong.

I'm only talking about the internal thought process here. It's not a question of whether what they're saying is true, or whether it's good debating practice, or whether they have a right to do it when they don't have a logical argument. I'm not claiming any of those things. I'm saying that they feel much the same thing that a rational person feels when confronted with absolute stupidity: a sense that the other person only disagrees with them because the other person is a clod.

And, just to underline this one more time: this does not make them right or justified in doing so. It was never meant as anything but a comment on the psychology of religious fanaticism.

So the logical follow-up question is, what can we do to show them that their premises are flawed, and thus their conclusion is not valid?

[Darth Wong]

Inside the head of the creationist, we find the delusion that an argument from faith is just as good as a logical argument, if not better.

That is correct, but that is also totally irrelevant to the stupid claim you made earlier, where you claimed that scientists and other smart people often engage in the same conduct as stupid fundies, by attempting to equate those two kinds of dismissal.

I'm only talking about the internal thought process here ...

There is a huge difference between saying that the fundie thinks you're doing the same thing he is, and saying that you're actually doing the same thing he is.

[wolveraptor]

The single most-stupid argument against evolution, or, at least, what the creationist believed was against evolution was, and I quote; "How can something beautiful come from an explosion?" He had of course got the big bang confused with an explosion, and evolution. The sheer number of concepts to not understand to get that question as an argument against evolution did actually make me go silent, jaw agape for a moment. That's stupid and ignorant on a level I couldn't believe a person could be. It's a shame, because he was otherwise a nice guy with some decent knowledge about computers.

Whenever I get WTF arguments like this, I like to play stupid and act like I don't know what concepts they're attempting to refer to. You can totally get away with it, because the Big Bang wasn't anything like an explosion, or evolution.
What ends up happening is that they try to explain what they mean, and immediately prove beyond any doubt their massive ignorance of the subjects involved. It looks bad to bystanders, at least.

[Samuel]

So the logical follow-up question is, what can we do to show them that their premises are flawed, and thus their conclusion is not valid?

Point out that if they are using faith to reach their conclusion, it can be used to reach any other conclusion, like for every other religion on the planet. It probably won't change their mind, but the simplest way to show it is flawed is to show that it can't decide between opposing claims.

[Simon_Jester]

So the logical follow-up question is, what can we do to show them that their premises are flawed, and thus their conclusion is not valid?

I like Samuel's option.

Incidentally, I've seen stupid fundies be badly wrong-footed when they run into a defender of evolution who claims to be a Christian. That's going to be useless to practically the entire of the population of this forum, but it's entertaining to watch.

That is correct, but that is also totally irrelevant to the stupid claim you made earlier, where you claimed that scientists and other smart people often engage in the same conduct as stupid fundies, by attempting to equate those two kinds of dismissal.

Let me look over what I wrote:

Although it's not as if developed (not-retarded) people can't be tempted. I'm sure you've had times when you wanted to say to someone "Look, no. You're just... wrong. That is completely wrong, go back to school and try again." Sometimes someone says something so manifestly absurd that it's hard to figure out where to begin demolishing it, or where the effort to do so isn't justified for practical reasons...

OK. Comparing this to the claim you say I made, I'm not reading this as doing anything more than vaguely implying it. But that doesn't matter; the claim is false anyway.

I'm only talking about the internal thought process here ...

There is a huge difference between saying that the fundie thinks you're doing the same thing he is, and saying that you're actually doing the same thing he is.

Fine. Anyway, the first one is true. More to the point, he thinks he's doing the same thing you think you're doing: trying to shut up an obtuse little git who's arguing in bad faith, because that's what he thinks you are. The reasons he thinks that are the product of bizarre delusions; the only thing I actually care about saying is that the motivation is similar enough to be familiar.

And yes, the predictable response of "well, fuck him" is perfectly fair, because he doesn't have justification for doing it even if he thinks he does.

[sketerpot]

"Evolution can't be true, because no new information can be added to a system unless there is a source of energy constantly putting more into the system!"

THE SUN GODDAMMIT.

In general, that relates to those brain-damaged "second law of thermodynamics" arguments, all of which assume a closed system in addition to horribly misinterpreting entropy. These people do not understand the concept of a closed vs open system in science: something that they literally teach in grade school.

They didn't teach it in my grade school. I had to wait until high school physics before anybody covered basic thermo. And of the twenty people who signed up for that class, all but four dropped the class before it got to that part. Most of these people went to college and became "educated", but I doubt many of them ever thought about thermodynamics again. This is how people can go through 17 years of education and still remain ignorant of basic facts about how the world works: by avoiding them through sheer laziness, and by failing to understand them if someone does try to teach them. That is how educated people come to use trailer-trash arguments: when it comes to science, they are trailer trash.

Even when people are forced to learn a bunch of science, comprehension tends to be damn spotty. A introductory physics teacher at Harvard found that his non-physics-major students, who would happily churn through hairy triple integrals on their exams, usually failed miserably at basic intuitive understanding of everything. Ask them a question about Newton's laws of motion and they'd do about as well as someone who'd never studied physics. Ask a trivial question about an electric circuit that any electrical engineer could answer in seconds, and they'd think it was the hardest question on the exam.

Speaking as someone who teaches bewildered freshmen how to program computers, I can say with some authority that teaching is fucking hard. Most people have learned that memorization and blind, unthinking pattern-matching are the best way, because for most of their educational careers, that brain-dead approach actually works. When they have to actively learn and understand things, and fucking think, it scares them. The key, I think, is to set them tasks that absolutely can not be completed without thinking and developing intuitive understanding. That's difficult, and a lot of teachers don't manage to do it. (I'm lucky to have a subject where this isn't as hard, and I still often wonder how much my students are truly learning.)

[Intio]

That's actually a huge improvement upon the guys who teach science in school and who clearly don't understand the most basic principles of the scientific method. There are teachers out there who actually think it's important to stress that "just a theory" bullshit, or who actually buy into some of those incredibly stupid pseudo-scientific arguments.

At the very moment I started to read that, I was listening to AronRa's video, where the first question is about this very subject. No beneficial mutations indeed.



Back on topic, I'm always amused by the line: "You only believe that stuff because you didn't have the right pastor to teach you Christianity." I like to ask them if they think the only reason that they aren't Muslim is because the right Imam didn't teach them Islam. When they hear their own bullshit sent back to them, they suddenly hear how unconvincing it is. Then why did they think it would be convincing to an atheist?

[adam_grif]

They didn't teach it in my grade school. I had to wait until high school physics before anybody covered basic thermo. And of the twenty people who signed up for that class, all but four dropped the class before it got to that part.

I did physics in high school and then "physical sciences" (physics+chem) in college (which I think is still called highschool in the American system, year 11). I never heard one word about thermodynamics. I later familiarized myself with the concepts, but I had to do that of my own volition. I'm assuming the year 12 physics course covered it, but unless you're doing a physics specialization it's easy to see how most people don't know jack about it.

I feel your pain.

[wautd]

I was just curious as to which arguments, either against evolution or in favor of creationism, especially stand out in stupidity. As I'm currently up to something related to the subject, I am wondering just how low such people can sink.

Recently heard:

"Global warming is a scheme created by atheist evolutionists to promote their eugenics agenda."

^So here we have 4 non-related things that still wouldn't disprove evolution if it were true.

[Akhlut]

I was just curious as to which arguments, either against evolution or in favor of creationism, especially stand out in stupidity. As I'm currently up to something related to the subject, I am wondering just how low such people can sink.

Recently heard:

"Global warming is a scheme created by atheist evolutionists to promote their eugenics agenda."

^So here we have 4 non-related things that still wouldn't disprove evolution if it were true.

How the fuck does that even all fit together? How would global warming advance a eugenics agenda?

Oh, right, we're dealing with retards here.

[The Spartan]

Survival of the fittest perhaps? Only the most fit humans will survive the consequences of climate change and thus only the most fit humans should have resources expended upon keeping them?

[SapphireFox]

I was just curious as to which arguments, either against evolution or in favor of creationism, especially stand out in stupidity. As I'm currently up to something related to the subject, I am wondering just how low such people can sink.

Recently heard:

"Global warming is a scheme created by atheist evolutionists to promote their eugenics agenda."

^So here we have 4 non-related things that still wouldn't disprove evolution if it were true.

How the fuck does that even all fit together? How would global warming advance a eugenics agenda?

Oh, right, we're dealing with retards here.

Amazing how these people can string the most implausible things together to justify their position. Tho I'm still trying to figure out how it helps their position.

[Teleros]

Amazing how these people can string the most implausible things together to justify their position. Tho I'm still trying to figure out how it helps their position.

"Bad stuff is a fake by bad people to justify their other bad stuff. This proves that bad people are always bad, so worship God and trust the Bible or else you'll go to hell."

That's the best I can do on short notice, beyond that I think it just relies on the target audience not thinking .

[Crossroads Inc.]

I know this is a "Stupid 'Evolution' argument' thread, but I wanted to relate what I felt is currently the stupidest argument against the Moon landing.
Just today on the train, I heard two people talking about it, and this is what I overheard:

First guy:
"You know what they REALLY don't want to talk about.. the fact that they want us to believe that they used this MASSIVE huge rocket to get to the moon, but were able to get BACK to earth in that tiny command ship?"

Second guy
"Yeah! if it was THAT Easy getting back from the moon, how come they never had any probes lift off and come back to Earth? "

First guy again
"Exactly, unless they built a Rocket as big as the Saturn-V on the moon, it would be a one way trip only!

You have to wonder about people like this, you just have to wonder....

[Intio]

Survival of the fittest perhaps? Only the most fit humans will survive the consequences of climate change and thus only the most fit humans should have resources expended upon keeping them?

Survival of the fittest has to be the next thing in line when it comes to gross misunderstandings. I've heard 'rebuttals' in the form of "I saw a student at a sports day help a member of the opposing team: that shouldn't happen if survival of the fittest were true", to "So you evolutionists would go into a hospital and tell a dying child that she is going to die because she isn't 'fit' enough!?"

It's so frustrating , and it makes me want to push for the legislation required to legalize old biology teachers to have the right to slap people who say such things...

First guy:
"You know what they REALLY don't want to talk about.. the fact that they want us to believe that they used this MASSIVE huge rocket to get to the moon, but were able to get BACK to earth in that tiny command ship?"

Second guy
"Yeah! if it was THAT Easy getting back from the moon, how come they never had any probes lift off and come back to Earth? "

First guy again
"Exactly, unless they built a Rocket as big as the Saturn-V on the moon, it would be a one way trip only!

... and also physics teachers.

[Liberty]

I know this is a "Stupid 'Evolution' argument' thread, but I wanted to relate what I felt is currently the stupidest argument against the Moon landing.
Just today on the train, I heard two people talking about it, and this is what I overheard:

This makes me think of a conversation I heard last December, if only because I also overheard it on a crowded train (the T in Boston in this case). Some atheist group paid for ads in the T for the month of December that said "Good without God? 30 million Americans are." Or something like that. So anyway, they were looking at it and saying things like "seriously, what's the point of that? What did we ever do to make them mad?" "Yeah, why can't they just leave us alone." It was everything Surlethe and I could do to keep from laughing, and I really wanted to butt in and talk to them about it. I mean, it's not like we don't have to see every Jesus sign in this country...not to mention nativity scenes...

[Simon_Jester]

Why not laugh?

Seriously. It may be rude, I know, but I don't think I'd be able to resist, because the desire to at least communicate the message "there are people who do not think as you do, and they're all over the place" would be too intense.

[Marcus Aurelius]

First guy:

Second guy
"Yeah! if it was THAT Easy getting back from the moon, how come they never had any probes lift off and come back to Earth? "

... and also physics teachers.

Don't forget history teachers, since of course there have been numerous unmanned sample returns from the Moon including Luna 16, 20 and 24. Of course those were all done by evil water-fluoridating commies, so probably they do not count

[Patrick Degan]

I know this is a "Stupid 'Evolution' argument' thread, but I wanted to relate what I felt is currently the stupidest argument against the Moon landing.
Just today on the train, I heard two people talking about it, and this is what I overheard:

First guy:
"You know what they REALLY don't want to talk about.. the fact that they want us to believe that they used this MASSIVE huge rocket to get to the moon, but were able to get BACK to earth in that tiny command ship?"

Second guy
"Yeah! if it was THAT Easy getting back from the moon, how come they never had any probes lift off and come back to Earth? "

First guy again
"Exactly, unless they built a Rocket as big as the Saturn-V on the moon, it would be a one way trip only!

You have to wonder about people like this, you just have to wonder....

It's almost enough to make you consider that sterilising people that stupid in the best interest of evolution might not be such a bad idea after all.

[SapphireFox]

It's almost enough to make you consider that sterilising people that stupid in the best interest of evolution might not be such a bad

It seems we may have an idea for a eugenics plan after all.

[Ilya Muromets]

the Creationist Canopy Theory. The theory which is supposedly more "plausible" and "scientific" than "evilutionist science." One of the so-called "Flood Models", all of which brain-achingly bad. I just extend special mention to this because this is what is being taught in the Science classes of the creationist school I'm currently working in. I die a little inside each time every time this is brought up or, worse, when I am contractually obligated to teach it. The minute i get my Master's degree, I'm jumping ship to a more secular school.

Anyway, the highlights are:

Factors Suggesting Canopy Theory

* Continuous forty day rain.
* Rainbows & clouds - not mentioned in the Bible before the flood
* Fossil plants and animals in polar regions, indicating globally uniform temperatures before the flood.
* Tremendous decline in human life expectancy following the flood.

Before the flood, human lifespans were approximately 10 times our current expectancy. Also, the overall size of organisms, and the productivity of ecosystems, was generally much greater before the flood than after. Various regions of the Earth now perpetually glaciated, such as Antarctica, possess fossil evidence of rich ecosystems, including fossil ferns and amphibians with skulls measuring up to one meter. Productivity in these regions could only be explained by global temperature fluctuations or continental drift.

There are other indicators of an atmospheric change resulting from the flood, such as the sudden appearance of a rainbow following the flood, and the fact that human life expectancy declined to what it is today in just the few generations after Noah. Likewise the first mention of clouds is not until after the deluge, and many believe there was no rain or clouds beforehand. However, from the Bible it is clear there were stars also visible before the flood, therefore any supposed canopy was less dense than the standard cloud cover today.

There are three possibilities to how the canopy fell.

1. Since the canopy is polarized by the earth's magnetic field, a sudden polar flip would make it fall. [1]
2. A meteor impact would have destroyed the canopy. [2]
3. God's divine intervention.

Note that "God's divine intervention" is a perfectly scientific explanation for these guys.

This "theory" always comes up in any evolution bashing session in the school since it proves that since conditions were perfect before the Flood, nothing needed to evolve because the habitat was so well suited to everything and everyone. The reason humans and animals are supposed to be suffering now is because of how "imperfect" the world is now because of sin. All said dead seriously, of course.

Gah, I feel stupider just typing this down. *cringe*

[The Spartan]

Wait a minute. If everything was so uniform before hand, and thus nothing required evolution to adapt, why the fuck are there animals that are adapted to things like desert or arctic conditions?

[Ilya Muromets]

Serious answer? They say: God's Will.

Seriously. They say God allowed the animals to adapt. For example, there was only one kind of bear but it adapted on its own to different environment into different bears because God in his wisdom gave it the ability. But it's not evolution, because... I dunno, it doesn't make sense to me either.

EDIT: Oh, wait, I remember their reason. All of those adaptations are supposedly imperfect degradations of the original "ideal" form in the Garden of Eden. Which disproves evolution because evolution supposedly only "improves" creatures. As a bonus, they tie this with that whole entropy bullshit too, so it's "scientific!"