Top Ten Creationist Arguments

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The arguments for biblical Creationism are like the lyrics to familiar television jingles. Sure, Intelligent Design doesn't make a lot of sense. But everybody knows the words, and sometimes it's fun to sing along. So...The Thinking Atheist presents...Our Top Ten Favorite Creationist Arguments 1) Carbon Dating Isn’t Accurate To Determine the Age of the Earth. Perhaps that’s why carbon dating isn't the preferred method for dating rocks and fossils over 50,000 years old. There are a great many methods of radiometric dating that accurately measure the decay of radioactive elements in rocks, meteorites and fossils, and that’s why science can confidently estimate the age of planet earth at 4.5 billion years. 2) You can't prove Evolution. As opposed to proving a Youth Earth theory from primitive, anonymous texts? Actually...man has unlocked the world of genetics to reveal that all living things have and do evolve, and that similarities exist between the DNA of plants, animals and humans alike. Evolution is observable, provable science. To quote the famous evolutionary biologist Stephen J. Gould "Creationist critics often charge that evolution cannot be tested, and therefore cannot be viewed as a properly scientific subject at all. This claim is rhetorical nonsense.” - 3) If man evolved from monkeys, why do we still have monkeys? This is like asking, if America was colonized by the English, why do we still have England? The "branching" phenomenon in speciation doesn't make the original branch disappear. Next question, please. 4) The human eye is too complex to have evolved. This argument is also known as, "Irreducible Complexity." This gross over-simplification ignores creatures like the single-celled Euglena (you-GLEEN_uh)...which have evolved antennae for light. Mollusks and jellyfish have evolved varying grades of vision. Plus...consider this: The human eye is more poorly constructed and much less acute than the eye of the octopus or the great horned owl. The human eye has blind spots in the visual field. The human retina is inverted, requiring the brain to "flip" the image to appear right-side-up. Did God care more about the design of the horned owl than his own children? Complexity does not demand a designer. 5) Atheism is actually a religion. Indeed. Much like "not collecting stamps" might be called a hobby. Or “not smoking” might be called a habit. 6) Oh yeah? Well "Scientist-X" believes in God. That's nice. So did icons like Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo, who also lived in the time of dirt floors, bleeding sick people to cure them, and burning witches at the stake. Sir Isaac Newton was a believer and theologian. He was also an alchemist. Did Newton's groundbreaking research on gravity and the Laws of Motion also prove his belief that metals had magical powers and could be combined to make gold? Cherry-pick all you want. The fact is, 93% of the members of the National Academy of Sciences reject the concept of God . That's not just a majority. It's an overwhelming majority. In fact, this is just a sampling of the reputable scientific organizations that reject Intelligent Design and support Evolution by Natural Selection. 7) You're saying that everything happened by "chance?" No. Chance certainly plays a part in the evolutionary cycle, but Natural Selection promotes non-random change of specific desirable traits over time. Living organisms didn't just pop into existence by "chance." But they did evolve over millions, sometimes billions, of years. 8) America is a Christian nation. Actually, the U.S. Constitution never mentions God. And the mentions of religion in Article 6 and the First Amendment serve to separate religion from government altogether. “In God We Trust” wasn’t printed on American coins until 1863, after a religious surge during the Civil War. American paper money didn’t have it until 1957. The words “under God” weren’t even in the original Pledge of Allegiance. They were added by Congress in 1954. And many of our founding fathers never proclaimed any allegiance or belief in the Christian God… including Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, John Adams, Thomas Paine, and even George Washington. 9) The 2nd Law Of Thermodynamics! We love this argument, because almost everyone who uses it has no idea what they're talking about. In a nutshell, The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics says that systems must become more disordered over time, so complex living cells and organisms couldn't have come out of basic inanimate chemicals. In other words, more time means more chaos. What Creationists fail to mention is that this "law" only works in a closed system, where no energy or matter leaves or enters. The earth is not a closed system. It receives heat and light from our sun's nuclear fusion, fueling simple organisms so that they can become more complex by consuming other forms of life and nonliving materials. Here's an easy way to frustrate this argument. When a Christian brings up with 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, ask him what the other "laws" are. When he shrugs and stares into space, you’ll know how truly informed he is on the subject. 10) And finally...Our favorite. Adolf Hitler was an atheist. Actually...Hitler was raised Roman Catholic. In "Mein Kampf," Hitler speaks of the "creator of the universe" and says the Aryan race was created by God. His religious views (or lack of them) remain in dispute, but using the name of history's greatest tyrant isn't an argument. It's a provocation that has NOTHING to do with the concept of Evolution or Creation. Invoking Hitler is a "hot button" designed to distract people from the true argument...the overwhelming evidence of Evolution By Natural Selection. There they are. Our Top Ten Favorite Creationists Arguments. Next time you come up against one of these, just remember that your worldview is based on evidence. Their worldview includes an invisible divine "Daddy", 2 naked people and a talking snake, contradictory documents written in the Bronze Age, the wearing of torture devices around one's neck, and bumper stickers that say "Seven Days Without Prayer Makes One Weak." For the record...we're not sure the Creationist argument could be much weaker. We're just sayin'.
Info
Channel: TheThinkingAtheist
Views: 2,256,160
Rating: 4.6936588 out of 5
Keywords: atheist, atheism, God, Jesus, Christ, evolution, creation, creationism, intelligent design, big bang, science, evolved, thermodynamics
Id: SSxgnu3Hww8
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 7min 55sec (475 seconds)
Published: Wed Dec 30 2009
Reddit Comments

This is outstanding. Well done The Thinking Atheist!

👍︎︎ 14 👤︎︎ u/InDrublic 📅︎︎ Dec 30 2009 🗫︎ replies

It's weird seeing a video with high production values that is completely pro-atheist. It's normally just somebody with a webcam laying down the law guerilla style. Hopefully soon the ghost "documentaries" on the History channel will be replaced by high quality atheistic programming.

👍︎︎ 9 👤︎︎ u/[deleted] 📅︎︎ Dec 31 2009 🗫︎ replies

I did enjoy this. Though I have to ask, is the production team at Mythbusters hiring out now?

👍︎︎ 6 👤︎︎ u/Wyldstein 📅︎︎ Dec 30 2009 🗫︎ replies

Well thought out, but perhaps a little too brief. The style seems to be a little too "hurr hurr Creationists are dumb" for my liking, I can't help but feel that it's antagonistic enough that any real Creationist would just ignore it, and that it's only really aimed at those who already agree with them.

Yeah, it's useful to have the answers in one place, but I think they could have been a little more civil about it. You'll catch more flies with honey, and all that...

Edit: Guess I should specify that, while I understand that it's aimed at people who want to refute creationist arguments, there's still no need not to be civil about it. Creationism is born of ignorance, and as long as intellectuals look down on them and laugh, they're not likely to take anything intellectuals say seriously. I just think it's a bit crass - we have science and logic on our side, being rude or disparaging can only serve to hurt our argument and distract from it.

👍︎︎ 8 👤︎︎ u/chowriit 📅︎︎ Dec 30 2009 🗫︎ replies

TheThinkingAtheist: isn't "Thinking" a little bit redundant? ;)

👍︎︎ 6 👤︎︎ u/tragg2 📅︎︎ Dec 30 2009 🗫︎ replies

Amazing :-)

👍︎︎ 1 👤︎︎ u/zwangaman 📅︎︎ Dec 31 2009 🗫︎ replies

I am as sick of hearing these responses as I am the charges. I just plain don't like living in a world where this is still being debated.

👍︎︎ 1 👤︎︎ u/Hookhand 📅︎︎ Dec 31 2009 🗫︎ replies

I was hoping for something more along the lines of being able to show it to a creationist. It's a good video, it's just preaching to the choir.

👍︎︎ 1 👤︎︎ u/[deleted] 📅︎︎ Dec 31 2009 🗫︎ replies

I wish they elaborated on the monkey/man thing. Humans are a different strain of monkey, as are orangutans and gorillas, and we all evolved from a common ancestor that does not exist today. The America/England metaphor does not convey this.

👍︎︎ 1 👤︎︎ u/Firrox 📅︎︎ Dec 31 2009 🗫︎ replies
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