I was taught that you should occasionally listen to the other side of an argument, not because both sides of an argument ARE valid, but because sometimes they expose weaknesses in your own arguments. Sometimes they expose the ludicrousness of your argument too, but just because they may do that does not mean every side of every discussion IS right in some way. Also it is good to listen to the other side so you know how they are arguing. I have been watching YouTube videos by science deniers. It is clear from their arguments that they do not understand science. It is also clear that people who trust science do not know how to argue with these deniers.
There are people out there that know how to argue with science deniers, but they are the ones that listen to their arguments and have learned to respond to them; they are effective. I idolize them, if it could be said that I idolize anyone, and I want to be like them. I have written a few posts q.v. These Eyes, Dear Commenter, and a few others, but none done so well as my response to Anti-Vaccination and Mercury in Vaccines. I researched that one, both sides, and debunked their arguments using established science. Anyways enough patting myself on the back, because I don't do that sort of thing.
So I was watching, I watched all of the 115 minutes of Kent Hovind's "100 Reasons Why Evolution is so Stupid," because I wanted to see the other side; I wanted to understand what they thought.
The first thing he does is tell everyone that he likes Science and tells everyone that he likes Science, but then tells everyone that it is all wrong. He then goes on to give a definition of Evolution. Okay, that is fine, but he sets up evolution by not giving the correct definition. How can you defeat an argument with simple words, you can either prove the words wrong, or you can set up your argument by using a fake opponent that is not factually accurate and break down this false argument to prove your point: a classic Straw Man Argument. I learned when I was young that by playing the computer, I could nearly always win a game, but playing an actual opponent was a lot harder.
His first definition is that of Cosmic Evolution, that is the Big Bang Theory, which is not actually about Evolution, Darwin's Theory, but he plows on insisting that it is the same.
Next he defines Chemical Evolution, "Hydrogen making all the other elements, plus the synthetic ones," he says. He says this is all wrong. Actually he says it is all lies.
Next he defines Stellar and Planetary Evolution and he says that this is all wrong too, lies. — no baby stars being born, but no one sees babies being born in the world or outside in our population, but we know they exist. Baby stars are born in Stellar Nurseries which are cloaked in dust, just as no one can see through hospitals to see babies being born.
Next he defines Organic Evolution, the creation of life from nonliving material. He says that no one can prove it so it is lies. The scientific Theory is called Abiogenesis. It is just a theory as no one can know because it would take millions of years and it would be difficult in the least to document that. But there is no Evolution from rocks to living things. He is presenting a Straw Man Argument
Next he defines Macro Evolution as the change of one organism to another, and since no one has seen this happen, it must be a lie. He was using the Personal Incredulity Fallacy, just because he does not understand something, does not mean it is not true. He presents another straw man argument, suggesting that one day a reptile egg hatched out a chicken rather than the idea that the process was gradual and took millions of years. Many Creationist ask if Humans and monkeys evolved from a common ancestor, where is the missing link? They ask where is the missing link, other than the ten to twenty so far discovered steps including Neanderthal, Homo Erectus, Homo Habilis and a dozen others, where is the missing link, besides those ones.
Lastly he defines Micro Evolution by saying that it is variations within a species. And this he says is observable and is true. There are variations between all animals within a species, but no biologist would ever claim that as Evolution.
The problem with this list of definitions is many fold. Firstly, none of these are the scientific definition of Evolution. Secondly, the first three definitions are not even about Biology, but about Astrophysics. Thirdly, the first three are processes and not related to or analogous to Evolution. The fourth point is not evolution either, it is called the theory of Abiogenesis and people who even ascribe to this theory do not claim to have solid proof so they say it is a best guess and not a Scientific Theorem. Fifth point is no scientist actually ascribes to the theory that one species would change into another species in one step. Darwin's Theory was the Theory of Natural Selection or rather the process of how evolution occurs, the Theory of Evolution is far older than Darwin.
It is easy to push aside an argument when you don't know what the argument is. He states from the first that he is a preacher and taught science to children from the point of view of the bible for fifteen years. He never stated that he was a Cosmologist or an Astrophysicist, but he does say that he does not understand the reasons why they say things and so what they say is stupid. His methods of argument are not to present facts, but to present the past thinking of Science to show that scientists of different ages disagree with the ideas of past ages and therefore no scientist can be believed. When someone says stuff like this, the only thing that is clear is that they do not understand Science.
Science is a body of knowledge about how the world and the entirety of everything works based on what evidence that we have at this time. As we get more evidence the ideas are refined, some new ideas are proposed and some old ideas are put aside and then many other people test these new and old ideas to see if they work with the observable evidence. When an idea is tested time and time again and the idea still holds true to all the observable evidence, it is called a Theory, not an idea. The constant misuse of language causes change to occur in a language so that people's use of the word theory to lend weight to their idea, has caused a greater deflation of the value of what a theory actually is. A theory is an idea that has been tested multiple time sand found to be solid under every fair test that is given and is not subjective.
The other thing that Scientific Theory can do is make predictions. When Galileo noticed that different sized objects fell at different rates he came up with an idea that different objects fall at the same rate. But he encountered a problem because radically different objects had different air resistances and so that parts of his idea were untestable on Earth, but when people went to the moon, they brought along a feather to test this idea. They found that a feather did indeed fall at the same rate as a hammer in an airless environment.
Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion, Newton's Laws of Motion, and many others are testable. Mendeleev's Periodic Table of Elements had holes in it where he thought there would be more elements and he described about how much mass they would have and other properties that they would have. Years later, people discovered more elements and they fit within the gaps that were placed on the Table. These new elements had the properties that were predicted.
One of Einstein's many theories included the idea that a sufficiently massive object could influence the trajectory of light. People did not think that this was possible, but Einstein provided a prediction and a test that would prove or disprove it. People knew the position of all the stars relative to our own and they knew where and how they should appear in the sky at any time. The most massive local object was our own star, but we could not see the position of the other stars relative to it because it was so bright, the light of the stars was overwhelmed. But, when the moon completely eclipsed the Sun, the stars are visible and it was at this time, that people would able to observe any starlight that was bent out of position by the gravity of our star. An eclipse was predicted, the observations were made and Einstein's theory was vindicated.
Kent Hovind likes to show how there is confusion in scientist's knowledge, by showing that scientists of different ages believe different things from different ages. He does not present the data as it should be, that scientific views change depending on data available at the time. People used to have only one source for the age of the Earth, the Bible. The Bible says the Earth is about 6000 years old and for years this was all the data that we had.
Geologists looked at the layering of the Earth's sedimentary layers and the mountain building processes and concluded that the world was much older, but could not conclude whether it was 75k years old or billions of years old, because they did not have enough information to know.
Later scientists knew more about the planet and theorized the age based on how long it would take the earth to cool down to its current temperature and they concluded that it was about 98M years old. But they did not know about radioactive decay which heats the molten core.
When radiometric dating was first discovered the age of the Earth depended upon where the sample was taken, some areas of the earth was heated and cooled more than once. When rock is melted it resets the age of the rock. It was not until recently that the very oldest rocks were found that dated to about 4.55B years ago. And this number has been confirmed by testing the age of meteorites which were formed in space.
None of this debate was mentioned by Hovind, when he was trashing what Scientists know about the age of the Earth. When he did address any of the facts it was to say that because no one can observe the events that scientists base their arguments on, they are not admissible. Radiometric dating is not admissible because there is no way to prove that the rates of decay remained the same. Which I think is funny, because the same arguments could be proposed for his arguments. People lived before the flood for up to 900 years, but we're the years the same length as ours and how do you know? Did you observe the length of the year? There is no mention of how long a year is in the Bible, so how do you know? Maybe they thought a year was the cycle of the moon, if so 900 divided by 12.586 cycles of the moon a year is 71.51 years. That sounds more realistic than 900 years doesn't it? My point is that if Science establishes a fact based on the observable universe, which can be tested in multiple ways, it has more evidence than a book written by man with no evidence other than itself.
Hovind points out that a few scientific facts provided by sources unknown are examples of circular thinking. But he and his kind never propose the other argument, that what they believe is an example of circular thinking, from sources well known. God exists, the bible says so. God did all these amazing things, the bible says so. The bible was dictated by God. That would be like me saying that I, GreenPsychopomp, am the most awesome person on the planet. And my proof for that statement is the previous statement, because I, GreenPsychopomp, wrote it so it must be true, because I do not lie.
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