When a kooky creationist email pops up, it deserves the satire and mocking that PZ dispenses over on Pharyngula to the great amusement of us all, but what happens when a 12 years old attempts to take him on? It can be argued that an adult has had sufficient time in this world to read and think, and that a 12 year old has simply been brainwashed, so what to do, be even handed and deploy satire and wit? Nope, instead he takes the quite sensible approach and reverts to being a calm schoolmaster who corrects the fallacies and spells out the facts. Here it all is in full …
The true tragedy here is the complete brainwashing of a 12 year old.
Copied from PZ’s – “I get email” on Pharyngula
Joe wrote me a letter because he doesn’t think my arguments against creationism are very good. Unfortunately, his arguments are…well, pretty much the standard inconsistent and incoherent tripe I always get from creationists. But at least Joe has an excuse: he’s only 12.
By the way, his email actually was in Comic Sans. Part of it, anyway: a large random chunk in the middle was set in good ol’ Comic Sans.
Hello. This is not Spam. I would like to have a discussion on your post ‘The five best arguments for creationism ever.’ (http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/09/the_five_best_arguments_for_cr.php) Where you try to disprove theory’s made by creationists on a news paper article I left a comment but I feel that your points are not strong and I (being a twelve year old kid) would like to argue them further the other way. Here is the comment that I left (well i changed it a bit from my original comment).
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1. We have lots of evidence between evolution with in a species BUT NOT BETWEEN SPECIES its called the missing link!
The “missing link” is copy from tabloid journalism. There is no “missing link”, scientists are not looking for one, and it’s silly to argue that we have to find something that evolution does not predict.
It’s populations that evolve, and we have plenty of examples of transitional forms. Look up ring species, or Tiktaalik, or whale fossils, or any of the hominid fossils. What you are calling the “missing links” are out there, and closing your eyes won’t make them go away.
2.Just because the earth is obviously old doesn’t mean that this point is incorrect as got could have easy created a pre-aged earth (god dint create Adam and eave as babies, he created them pre-aged.
OK, that’s fine; you’ve just invoked a major magic trick by a deceiver god. That is a possibility that would account for the existence of all that evidence for evolution, but then you don’t get to deny the existence of “missing links”; that’s part of the evidence for an old earth that your trickster deity salted in the ground.
3. The compound eye is an example of irreducible complexity so complex that it cannot be any less complex its ether an eye or it isn’t there is no evolution in the middle. Another example of irreducible complexity is blood clotting.
Irreducible complexity is a dead issue, I’m afraid. It’s no obstacle to evolution, the examples of IC that creationists frequently trot out, like the clotting cascade, are explainable by natural processes.
4. It is true that some creationists think that ‘the bible uses allegory to explain the creation of the earth. It is a story, so employs figures of speech and other literary devices to tell the story of how God created man e.g. Genesis “days” could also be read as “ages”.’ but I don’t see what the newspapers point is there.
The newspaper tried to suggest that there were reasonable scientific arguments in favor of a young earth, that is, an earth less than ten thousand years old. It was wrong; there are none.
By the way, you haven’t presented an argument here. Have you run out?
5. Evolutionists have not, cannot ant will not prove evolution… mainly because they have not cannot and will not find the missing link.
This is the same as your first argument. I guess you really are done.
So you’ve managed to come up with a grand total of three arguments: the first is built on a misconception and denial of the evidence; the second simply argues that it was all magic; and the third simply regurgitates an intelligent design creationism buzz phrase. That’s a rather poor performance.
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I have a problem with many science teachers teaching evolution. If you are going to teach students evolution you need to teach students all the opposing theories. I
however Evolution and Creation may not be opposite and it may be that they merge together as the book of genesis is taken by many to be a story of figures of speech and literary devices and therefore can mean that evolution may merge into that. And personally given better evidence I may be able to accept that idea however I refuse to believe that man evolved from any other species because man is created in gods image and any other species are not.
Your refusal to believe in the evidence because you don’t like the conclusions is fairly typical creationist thinking, and it’s also illogical and wrong. There is no reason to accept the book of Genesis as a legitimate source of scientific information, and your refusal to consider the possibility that it isn’t a science text and gets all the science wrong puts you out of the realm of scientific thinking.