Friday, December 9, 2011

Answering creationist "arguments"

I said this post would be good, and while it is not particularly unique, it is very entertaining. This is of course an incomplete list, but I'll expand upon it later when I find some more "arguments".

If humans evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?
Ok, almost everyone has heard this one, and almost everyone thinks it is stupid. But for those who think it is convincing, I'll explain it this way. All dogs were bred from wolves, so how come there are still wolves? It's because only a small group was changed. And there are so many different breeds of dog, but they all have the same ancestor species, the wolf. The same thing applies to humans and monkeys, and apes. We all evolved from a common ancestor. It wasn't a monkey or an ape of today. It was something that had the shared traits of all, and most likely in a more primitive form. There was a divergence of genetics in the past, one side went on to become monkeys, the other to become apes (humans are just really smart apes).

Creatures don't live for millions of years!
Once again, this is stupid, even to some creationists. The million year timeline isn't for the individual, but for the genetic group it is part of. Their defendants over the course of millions of years adapt to survive in drastic ways (depending on the circumstances). If a being did live for millions of years, that'd be amazing, and worthy of study and preservation.

I did a (insert radiometric dating technique here) on my dead cat and found it to be thousands of years old. Therefore radiometric dating is false.

Okay, well first off, that's fucked up. Second, there are many reasons why a false result could have been achieved. First and foremost, radiometric dating is to brides on very old things. Fossils, or rocks that are at least a couple hundred years old. Thief younger than this are going to give a false result. Or, if you were using a more appropriate dating method (and thus disproving your conclusion anyway) there is a high chance for human error. I doubt you have a degree in any of the sciences, which makes it unlikely that you know the correct processors. Or perhaps it was confirmation bias comung into play. Doing multiple tests and only one of them was wrong, so you hold it up as a triumph. Silly creationists, tricks don't work well in science.

Scientists like to use big words to sound more impressive, like deoxyribosenucleic acid, for example. Sounds impressive, right? Ever seen what happens when you put something in acid? It dissolves. If we had that throughout our bodies, we'd all dissolve. So much for the theory of evolution.

I respond to this thusly: ever eaten an orange, or a lemon? Those have citric acid in them. And not just a kittle. How come your teeth and stomach didn't dissolve? Remembering from my Chen days (a couple years back) I think an acid is defined as having a readily bonding hydrogen atom on it. Like HCl, or hydrochloric acid. The acidity is determined by the number of free H+ ions in a solution, I think. I'll check my facts and comment the results on this post.

So that is it for the arguments I've seen/heard. If you know of any that you want me to answer, or want to challenge my answers on these, just comment, and I'll get right on it.

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