To all creationists and ID Proponents,
Let me explain something to you. I know you don’t get this, so I will be very clear. Every single time you ask the question, “Well how did X appear?” or ‘How did evolution make Y?” you are really doing three things.
First, you are crafting an argument from ignorance. If any biologist or scientist (or me for that matter) cannot answer your question (for example, how did new body plans appear in the Cambrian), that does not mean that evolution has failed as a theory and that creationism/ID is correct. “Don’t know” means “don’t know”. We also don’t know how gravity is created, but I don’t see you demanding that we teach the controversy on that..
Second, you are setting yourself up for a charge of hypocrisy. If you plan on using this tactic to discredit evolution, then you must be prepared to have the same question asked of your chosen notion on how the diversity of life came about. If you can’t answer to that same level of detail that you require of science, then your own notion is equivalent to the science notion and you must totally reject both of them. Otherwise, you are just being biased and not really requiring that information.
Three, will your opinion change if a response is given to you? Ask yourself if a peer-reviewed paper is given to you that answers the question you asked, will you really totally reject your chosen notion? If you don’t, then why are you asking this question? Or, will you, as has been my experience over the last 3 decades, move the goal post or argue that it really doesn’t explain the point you were making.
You creationists really should read what happened when Michael Behe tried this very tactic in a court. To be blunt, he had his ass handed to him. My favorite comment of Dr. Behe’s
Well, these books do seem to have the titles that you said, and I’m sure they have the chapters in them that you mentioned as well, but again I am quite skeptical, although I haven’t read them, that in fact they present detailed rigorous models for the evolution of the immune system by random mutation and natural selection.
In other words, he hasn’t even read the books, but he is confident that they don’t answer his question.
In my experience, these types of questions are purely designed (see what I did there) to be “gotcha” questions. Ha ha, you can’t answer this insanely minute bit of detail, therefore your entire evolutionary theory is wrong.
Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. You can’t accept that, but it’s true. Let me explain. Evolution, as a theory and as a fact, is so well established, the ability to answer some minutia or not has exactly zero bearing on the theory. In effect, what you are saying, is that we cannot pin down the exact distance of the closest approach of an asteroid 250 years in the future, then Newton’s Laws of Motion (and gravitation) are wrong.
In conclusion, keep playing your little gotcha games. You aren’t fooling anyone who wasn’t already on your side. I’m sure it makes you feel better to use these types of questions. Scientists, however, will continue to ignore you. People all over the world in hundreds of industries will continue to use evolutionary theory. And you will continue to show yourself to be ignorant of modern science.
Have a nice day
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To all my readers, feel free to use this whenever creationist plays the “gotcha” game. Just link back here please. It won’t change their mind, but it will significantly reduce the amount of effort required to deal with them.
