Saturday, April 19, 2008

Creationism Pseudoscience

I kind of like the title of my last entry. "Manifesto of the Pervert." I'm not even sure what I meant by that. It just sounded right.

You can see I've made little progress in building my website. Instead I've been watching debates between evolution science and creation "science". For some reason I've been fascinated with the arguing. It's not even a debate. Sadly for the creationists they just can't argue with the evolutionists. Basically creationists argument boils down to "Well God did it" or "Evolution is just a theory" and a bunch of pseudoscience.

VenomFangX is the biggest user of nonsense to support creation.

He's also pretty arrogant and smug with his arguments but completely illogical or wrong. His overall argument is that evolution cannot be explained scientifically so therefore God made everything. Instead he counters that the Bible and God are supported by science. He goes on to "prove" his theory with flawed logic, bad science, flat out errors and nothing that holds up to scientific review.

In one of his videos he makes the claim that he can prove God's existence by looking at the solar system. He opens his argument with the following: the solar system is to perfect to happen by chance i.e. the Big Bang. He further states, and truthfully, that the earth is in perfect spot for life. However his argument breaks down at this point. He states that the earth cannot be in this ideal spot by chance. Therefore God created it and put it there. That's his proof of God. He sadly claims that since evolutionists can't explain it then it's there because God wants it there.

When he does try to use science to counter evolution he falls flat on his face. He starts off with a wrong fact: that earth is the only place in the solar system where water is found. He simply states that how is it that there is only water on earth and no where else on the solar system? Is it just by accident? No, it's not by accident. God put the water on earth. He just chooses to ignore that there is water on the moons of Saturn and Jupiter, the comets are made of ice and that Mars has water too.

To further show he has no clue, just watch the first two minutes of this video.

At the very least, the origins of the Ica Stones is unknown. No one has been able to prove them as genuine. Click on Ica stones for an alternate view of the Ica stones. Basically no one knows their origins and whether they are genuine. The stones simply cannot be used to support a theory.

Once again he torpedoes his own claims in the first two minutes of his presentation.

His proof is a CNN article about a study. He selectively quotes the first sentence of the article and that stands as the proof of his argument. The problem here is that we don't know what the rest of the article says. For all we know the rest of the article can go on to say that the study he quotes is flawed. Or it maybe a legitimate statement but since he doesn't show what the rest of the article is about we cannot see for ourselves. We have to take his word for it. If he is going to use an article to support his claims, he should give us a reference where we can read the article and see the entire context for ourselves. Referencing a source is basic high school research academics.

To continue to show how flawed his logic is I'll use the same quote he uses from CNN. The opening line from the article CNN is "Dinosaurs shared the earth for millions of years with the species that were their ancestors, a new study shows." He claims that the earth is only 6000 years old and that all dinosaurs lived at the same time. However to back up his claim he quotes an article that sinks his own argument. Notice that the quote clearly contradicts his claim that the earth is 6000 years old. He could probably come back and say no he was only using the quote to demonstrate that there is proof that all the dinosaurs lived at the same time and that how long ago they all lived doesn't matter. However, you cannot use one part of a statement to support your theory when one other part clearly contradicts another part of your argument. That is selectively using what fits your argument and ignoring the parts that don't. A logic fallacy.
Edit 4-22-08
I stand corrected in my logic argument in the preceeding paragragh. However VenomFangX is still wrong in his argument. Here's how it was explained to me:
As you describe the argument, the fallacy committed appears to be that of begging the question.

The second proposition doesn't necessarily say anything about all dinosaurs; even if it did, it would still require context and support.

The first proposition is simply a more specific statement of the conclusion, requiring even more proof than the conclusion; thus, it “begs the question.”

It is not a logical contradiction to say that they could have walked the earth for millions of years and walked the earth 6000 years ago. The absurd notion that they walked the earth 6000 years ago is contradicted by other evidence, but not by the "CNN statement".


One person made a response video to VenamfangX's claims. It's short but it complete debunks him.


Finally, this one is my personal favorite. Ray Comfort and former "Growing Pains" star Kirk Cameron use a banana to prove God. Never mind that the banana in this form is a result of man domesticating it for consumption. To give Comfort credit, he owned up to his fallacy of the banana argument.


I'm not anti religion at all. I think people should be free to believe in whatever deity, religion and faith that they want. What concerns me is that some religious people want to teach creationism and intelligent design as science. They firmly believe that their pseudoscience is fact and at least deserves to be taught as an alternate theory to evolution in science classes. If they want to believe in God's creation and that the earth is only 6000 years old and dinosaurs walked the earth with humans, I'm fine with that. Just don't teach it as fact in classrooms.

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