Cretigo: Bingo game on the Crevo threads!

It’s been a long time ago, but you have claimed to be a deist. Do you still believe there was an ‘Intelligent Designer’?

I'm also not sure where to fit the ubiquitous, fatuous comments of the type, "I'll believe in evolution when I see a whelk give birth to a redwood tree!" (or some other event that would fly in the face of evolution).

Patrick, I realize that I cannot un-ring a bell, but I do apologize for the snide comment that I made earlier.

No problem. As you know, I've suffered far worse than that. But you're one of the very few who has regrets about such things. You're a gentleman. I'm certain that I've been quite boorish at times too. I try to behave myself; but sometimes I don't live up to my standards.

That being said, I do have a serious question ... What is the 'one' major item that causes you to doubt the existence of an 'Intelligent Designer'?

Very simple. Lack of evidence. The only "arguments" we ever see (other than unimpressive arithmatical mumbo-jumbo about how the "odds" are against evolution) are statements like: "Golly, I don't know how X happened. Therefore no one will ever know. Therefore ..." That's nothing but a modern-day version of our ancestors' argument for a lightning god.

Do you still believe there was an ‘Intelligent Designer’?

I never have in the Behe sense. The evolution of organisms is not the result of any conscious process. The intelligent design came about in the crafting of the conditions under which complexity could arise spontaneously...or rather, inevitably.

Thank you for your honesty. I was truly curious as to the “why?”

I think that is B Personal Incredulity

Some useful references:

Major Scientific Problems with Evolution

EvolUSham dot Com

Many Experts Quoted on FUBAR State of Evolution

The All-Time, Ultimate Evolution Quote

"If a person doesn't think that there is a God to be accountable to, then what's the point of trying to modify your behavior to keep it within acceptable ranges? That's how I thought anyway. I always believed the theory of evolution as truth, that we all came from slime. When we died, you know , that was it, there is nothing..."

Jeffrey Dahmer, noted Evolutionist

Social Darwinism, Naziism, Communism, Darwinism Roots etc.

Creation and Intelligent Design Links

Evolutionist Censorship Etc.

Catastrophism

Big Bang, Electric Sun, Plasma Physics and Cosmology Etc.

Finding Cities in all the Wrong Places

Given standard theories wrt the history of our solar system and our own planet, nobody should be finding cities and villages on Mars, 2100 feet beneath the waves off Cuba, or buried under two miles of Antarctic ice.

Intelligent Versions of Biogenesis etc.

Talk.origins/Sci.Bio.Evolution Realities

hose who find medved's essays and links useful will also be delighted with these:

TIME CUBE .
The Earth is Not Moving!.
Earth Orbits? Moon Landings? A Fraud! .
Flat Earth Society Homepage! .
The Current State of Creation Astronomy.
THE MOON: A Propaganda Hoax .
CRANK DOT NET.

Cretigo! I win!

CHEATER!!

Those who find "PatrickHenry"'s lame attempts at humor amusing will be rolling on the floor over this one:

Unbridled lust leads to frustration and misunderstandings!

From the website: After a few years in the creationism vs evolution debates, I noticed that there was a core of commonly used creationist 'arguments'. So, I compiled them...

You don't seem to have compiled any of the arguments I use in your "compilation".

The big lie which is being promulgated by the evos is that there is some sort of a dialectic between evolution and religion. There isn't. In order to have a meaningful dialectic between evolution and religion, you would need a religion whicih operated on an intellectual level similar to that of evolution, and the only two possible candidates would be voodoo and Rastifari.

The dialectic is between evolution and mathematics. Professing belief in evolution at this juncture amounts to the same thing as claiming not to believe in modern mathematics, probability theory, and logic. It's basically ignorant.

Evolution has been so thoroughly discredited at this point that you assume nobody is defending it because they believe in it anymore, and that they are defending it because they do not like the prospects of having to defend or explain some aspect of their lifestyles to God, St. Peter, Muhammed...

To these people I say, you've still got a problem. The problem is that evolution, as a doctrine, is so overwhelmingly STUPID that, faced with a choice of wearing a sweatshirt with a scarlet letter A for Adulteror, F for Fornicator or some such traditional design, or or a big scarlet letter I for IDIOT, you'd actually be better off sticking with one of the traditional choices because, as Clint Eastwood noted in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly:

God hates IDIOTS, too!

The best illustration of how stupid evolutionism really is involves trying to become some totally new animal with new organs, a new basic plan for existence, and new requirements for integration between both old and new organs.

Take flying birds for example; suppose you aren't one, and you want to become one. You'll need a baker's dozen highly specialized systems, including wings, flight feathers, a specialized light bone structure, specialized flow-through design heart and lungs, specialized tail, specialized general balance parameters etc.

For starters, every one of these things would be antifunctional until the day on which the whole thing came together, so that the chances of evolving any of these things by any process resembling evolution (mutations plus selection) would amount to an infinitessimal, i.e. one divided by some gigantic number.

In probability theory, to compute the probability of two things happening at once, you multiply the probabilities together. That says that the likelihood of all these things ever happening, best case, is ten or twelve such infinitessimals multiplied together, i.e. a tenth or twelth-order infinitessimal. The whole history of the universe isn't long enough for that to happen once.

All of that was the best case. In real life, it's even worse than that. In real life, natural selection could not plausibly select for hoped-for functionality, which is what would be required in order to evolve flight feathers on something which could not fly apriori. In real life, all you'd ever get would some sort of a random walk around some starting point, rather than the unidircetional march towards a future requirement which evolution requires.

And the real killer, i.e. the thing which simply kills evolutionism dead, is the following consideration: In real life, assuming you were to somehow miraculously evolve the first feature you'd need to become a flying bird, then by the time another 10,000 generations rolled around and you evolved the second such reature, the first, having been disfunctional/antifunctional all the while, would have DE-EVOLVED and either disappeared altogether or become vestigial.

Now, it would be miraculous if, given all the above, some new kind of complex creature with new organs and a new basic plan for life had ever evolved ONCE.

Evolutionism, however (the Theory of Evolution) requires that this has happened countless billions of times, i.e. an essentially infinite number of absolutely zero probability events.

And, if you were starting to think that nothing could possibly be any stupider than believing in evolution despite all of the above (i.e. that the basic stupidity of evolutionism starting from 1980 or thereabouts could not possibly be improved upon), think again. Because there is zero evidence in the fossil record (despite the BS claims of talk.origins "crew" and others of their ilk) to support any sort of a theory involving macroevolution, and because the original conceptions of evolution are flatly refuted by developments in population genetics since the 1950's, the latest incarnation of this theory, Steve Gould and Niles Eldredge's "Punctuated Equilibrium or punc-eek" attempts to claim that these wholesale violations of probabilistic laws all occurred so suddenly as to never leave evidence in the fossil record, and that they all occurred amongst tiny groups of animals living in "peripheral" areas. That says that some velocirapter who wanted to be a bird got together with fifty of his friends and said:

Guys, we need flight feathers, and wings, and specialized bones, hearts, lungs, and tails, and we need em NOW; not two years from now. Everybody ready, all together now: OOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMMmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.....

You could devise a new religion by taking the single stupidest doctrine from each of the existing religions, and it would not be as stupid as THAT.

But it gets even stupider.

Again, the original Darwinian vision of gradualistic evolution is flatly refuted by the fossil record (Darwinian evolution demanded that the vast bulk of ALL fossils be intermediates) and by the findings of population genetics, particularly the Haldane dilemma and the impossible time requirements for spreading genetic changes through any sizeable herd of animals.

Consider what Gould and other punk-eekers are saying. Punc-eek amounts to a claim that all meaningful evolutionary change takes place in peripheral areas, amongst tiny groups of animals which develop some genetic advantage, and then move out and overwhelm, outcompete, and replace the larger herds. They are claiming that this eliminates the need to spread genetic change through any sizeable herd of animals and, at the same time, is why we never find intermediate fossils (since there are never enough of these CHANGELINGS to leave fossil evidence).

Obvious problems with punctuated equilibria include, minimally:

1. It is a pure pseudoscience seeking to explain and actually be proved by a lack of evidence rather than by evidence (all the missing intermediate fossils). Similarly, Cotton Mather claimed that the fact that nobody had ever seen or heard a witch was proof they were there (if you could SEE them, they wouldn't BE witches...) This kind of logic is less inhibiting than the logic they used to teach in American schools. For instance, I could as easily claim that the fact that I'd never been seen with Tina Turner was all the proof anybody should need that I was sleeping with her. In other words, it might not work terribly well for science, but it's great for fantasies...
2. PE amounts to a claim that inbreeding is the most major source of genetic advancement in the world. Apparently Steve Gould never saw Deliverance...
3. PE requires these tiny peripheral groups to conquer vastly larger groups of animals millions if not billions of times, which is like requiring Custer to win at the little Big Horn every day, for millions of years.
4. PE requires an eternal victory of animals specifically adapted to localized and parochial conditions over animals which are globally adapted, which never happens in real life.
5. For any number of reasons, you need a minimal population of any animal to be viable. This is before the tiny group even gets started in overwhelming the vast herds. A number of American species such as the heath hen became non-viable when their numbers were reduced to a few thousand; at that point, any stroke of bad luck at all, a hard winter, a skewed sex ratio in one generation, a disease of some sort, and it's all over. The heath hen was fine as long as it was spread out over the East coast of the U.S. The point at which it got penned into one of these "peripheral" areas which Gould and Eldredge see as the salvation for evolutionism, it was all over.

The sort of things noted in items 3 and 5 are generally referred to as the "gambler's problem", in this case, the problem facing the tiny group of "peripheral" animals being similar to that facing a gambler trying to beat the house in blackjack or roulette; the house could lose many hands of cards or rolls of the dice without flinching, and the globally-adapted species spread out over a continent could withstand just about anything short of a continental-scale catastrophe without going extinct, while two or three bad rolls of the dice will bankrupt the gambler, and any combination of two or three strokes of bad luck will wipe out the "peripheral" species. Gould's basic method of handling this problem is to ignore it.

And there's one other thing which should be obvious to anybody attempting to read through Gould and Eldridge's BS:

The don't even bother to try to provide a mechanism or technical explaination of any sort for this "punk-eek"

They are claiming that at certain times, amongst tiny groups of animals living in peripheral areas, a "speciation event(TM)" happens, and THEN the rest of it takes place. In other words, they are saying:

ASSUMING that Abracadabra-Shazaam(TM) happens, then the rest of the business proceeds as we have described in our scholarly discourse above!

Again, Gould and Eldridge require that the Abracadabra-Shazaam(TM) happen not just once, but countless billions of times, i.e. at least once for every kind of complex creature which has ever walked the Earth. They do not specify whether this amounts to the same Abracadabra-Shazaam each time, or a different kind of Abracadabra-Shazaam for each creature.

I ask you: How could anything be stupider or worse than that? What could possibly be worse than professing to believe in such a thing?

I am aware that some of the evos here don't like seeing the article above more than once. The problem is (quite aside from the question of newcomers being allowed to see these arguments on new threads), that they apparently NEED to see it more than once. Kind of like medicine; nobody really LIKES taking medicine either...

Or maybe it's like the story about the Texas state rep who started to tell an aggie joke and, being told that there were a few Texas aggies in the audience replied "OK, I'll tell it S-L-O-W..."

Likewise if some of the evos see some of this stuff enough, some of the logic of it might start to sink in...

You don't seem to have compiled any of the arguments I use in your "compilation".

Let's see!! The argument will be listed below the paragraph it applies to!

The big lie which is being promulgated by the evos is that there is some sort of a dialectic between evolution and religion. There isn't. In order to have a meaningful dialectic between evolution and religion, you would need a religion whicih operated on an intellectual level similar to that of evolution, and the only two possible candidates would be voodoo and Rastifari.

Argument J

The dialectic is between evolution and mathematics. Professing belief in evolution at this juncture amounts to the same thing as claiming not to believe in modern mathematics, probability theory, and logic. It's basically ignorant.

Argument Q

Evolution has been so thoroughly discredited at this point that you assume nobody is defending it because they believe in it anymore, and that they are defending it because they do not like the prospects of having to defend or explain some aspect of their lifestyles to God, St. Peter, Muhammed...

Argument Q

To these people I say, you've still got a problem. The problem is that evolution, as a doctrine, is so overwhelmingly STUPID that, faced with a choice of wearing a sweatshirt with a scarlet letter A for Adulteror, F for Fornicator or some such traditional design, or or a big scarlet letter I for IDIOT, you'd actually be better off sticking with one of the traditional choices because, as Clint Eastwood noted in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly: God hates IDIOTS, too!

Argument Q

The best illustration of how stupid evolutionism really is involves trying to become some totally new animal with new organs, a new basic plan for existence, and new requirements for integration between both old and new organs.

Take flying birds for example; suppose you aren't one, and you want to become one. You'll need a baker's dozen highly specialized systems, including wings, flight feathers, a specialized light bone structure, specialized flow-through design heart and lungs, specialized tail, specialized general balance parameters etc.

For starters, every one of these things would be antifunctional until the day on which the whole thing came together, so that the chances of evolving any of these things by any process resembling evolution (mutations plus selection) would amount to an infinitessimal, i.e. one divided by some gigantic number.

Argument B

In probability theory, to compute the probability of two things happening at once, you multiply the probabilities together. That says that the likelihood of all these things ever happening, best case, is ten or twelve such infinitessimals multiplied together, i.e. a tenth or twelth-order infinitessimal. The whole history of the universe isn't long enough for that to happen once.

Argument S

All of that was the best case. In real life, it's even worse than that. In real life, natural selection could not plausibly select for hoped-for functionality, which is what would be required in order to evolve flight feathers on something which could not fly apriori. In real life, all you'd ever get would some sort of a random walk around some starting point, rather than the unidircetional march towards a future requirement which evolution requires.

Argument H

And the real killer, i.e. the thing which simply kills evolutionism dead, is the following consideration: In real life, assuming you were to somehow miraculously evolve the first feature you'd need to become a flying bird, then by the time another 10,000 generations rolled around and you evolved the second such reature, the first, having been disfunctional/antifunctional all the while, would have DE-EVOLVED and either disappeared altogether or become vestigial.

Argument H (continued)

Now, it would be miraculous if, given all the above, some new kind of complex creature with new organs and a new basic plan for life had ever evolved ONCE.

Evolutionism, however (the Theory of Evolution) requires that this has happened countless billions of times, i.e. an essentially infinite number of absolutely zero probability events.

Argument B

And, if you were starting to think that nothing could possibly be any stupider than believing in evolution despite all of the above (i.e. that the basic stupidity of evolutionism starting from 1980 or thereabouts could not possibly be improved upon), think again. Because there is zero evidence in the fossil record (despite the BS claims of talk.origins "crew" and others of their ilk) to support any sort of a theory involving macroevolution, and because the original conceptions of evolution are flatly refuted by developments in population genetics since the 1950's, the latest incarnation of this theory, Steve Gould and Niles Eldredge's "Punctuated Equilibrium or punc-eek" attempts to claim that these wholesale violations of probabilistic laws all occurred so suddenly as to never leave evidence in the fossil record, and that they all occurred amongst tiny groups of animals living in "peripheral" areas. That says that some velocirapter who wanted to be a bird got together with fifty of his friends and said:

Guys, we need flight feathers, and wings, and specialized bones, hearts, lungs, and tails, and we need em NOW; not two years from now. Everybody ready, all together now: OOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMMmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm..... You could devise a new religion by taking the single stupidest doctrine from each of the existing religions, and it would not be as stupid as THAT.

Argument F

But it gets even stupider.

Again, the original Darwinian vision of gradualistic evolution is flatly refuted by the fossil record (Darwinian evolution demanded that the vast bulk of ALL fossils be intermediates) and by the findings of population genetics, particularly the Haldane dilemma and the impossible time requirements for spreading genetic changes through any sizeable herd of animals.

Argument M

Consider what Gould and other punk-eekers are saying. Punc-eek amounts to a claim that all meaningful evolutionary change takes place in peripheral areas, amongst tiny groups of animals which develop some genetic advantage, and then move out and overwhelm, outcompete, and replace the larger herds. They are claiming that this eliminates the need to spread genetic change through any sizeable herd of animals and, at the same time, is why we never find intermediate fossils (since there are never enough of these CHANGELINGS to leave fossil evidence).

Obvious problems with punctuated equilibria include, minimally:

1. It is a pure pseudoscience seeking to explain and actually be proved by a lack of evidence rather than by evidence (all the missing intermediate fossils). Similarly, Cotton Mather claimed that the fact that nobody had ever seen or heard a witch was proof they were there (if you could SEE them, they wouldn't BE witches...) This kind of logic is less inhibiting than the logic they used to teach in American schools. For instance, I could as easily claim that the fact that I'd never been seen with Tina Turner was all the proof anybody should need that I was sleeping with her. In other words, it might not work terribly well for science, but it's great for fantasies...

Argument A

2. PE amounts to a claim that inbreeding is the most major source of genetic advancement in the world. Apparently Steve Gould never saw Deliverance...

Argument E

3. PE requires these tiny peripheral groups to conquer vastly larger groups of animals millions if not billions of times, which is like requiring Custer to win at the little Big Horn every day, for millions of years.

Argument E

4. PE requires an eternal victory of animals specifically adapted to localized and parochial conditions over animals which are globally adapted, which never happens in real life.

Argument J

5. For any number of reasons, you need a minimal population of any animal to be viable. This is before the tiny group even gets started in overwhelming the vast herds. A number of American species such as the heath hen became non-viable when their numbers were reduced to a few thousand; at that point, any stroke of bad luck at all, a hard winter, a skewed sex ratio in one generation, a disease of some sort, and it's all over. The heath hen was fine as long as it was spread out over the East coast of the U.S. The point at which it got penned into one of these "peripheral" areas which Gould and Eldredge see as the salvation for evolutionism, it was all over.

The sort of things noted in items 3 and 5 are generally referred to as the "gambler's problem", in this case, the problem facing the tiny group of "peripheral" animals being similar to that facing a gambler trying to beat the house in blackjack or roulette; the house could lose many hands of cards or rolls of the dice without flinching, and the globally-adapted species spread out over a continent could withstand just about anything short of a continental-scale catastrophe without going extinct, while two or three bad rolls of the dice will bankrupt the gambler, and any combination of two or three strokes of bad luck will wipe out the "peripheral" species. Gould's basic method of handling this problem is to ignore it.

And there's one other thing which should be obvious to anybody attempting to read through Gould and Eldridge's BS:

The don't even bother to try to provide a mechanism or technical explaination of any sort for this "punk-eek" They are claiming that at certain times, amongst tiny groups of animals living in peripheral areas, a "speciation event(TM)" happens, and THEN the rest of it takes place. In other words, they are saying:

ASSUMING that Abracadabra-Shazaam(TM) happens, then the rest of the business proceeds as we have described in our scholarly discourse above!

Again, Gould and Eldridge require that the Abracadabra-Shazaam(TM) happen not just once, but countless billions of times, i.e. at least once for every kind of complex creature which has ever walked the Earth. They do not specify whether this amounts to the same Abracadabra-Shazaam each time, or a different kind of Abracadabra-Shazaam for each creature.

Argument E

I ask you: How could anything be stupider or worse than that? What could possibly be worse than professing to believe in such a thing?

Argument Q

Woo!! I tallied J Q B S H F M A!!! Yee haw! Score your Cretigo cards kiddos! When G3K checks in, the fight for the first Cretigo is gonna get intense.

Note, this is a personal attack on you, not your ideas, medved. (Trying to use reverse psychology...)

I am aware that some of the evos here don't like seeing the article above more than once. The problem is (quite aside from the question of newcomers being allowed to see these arguments on new threads), that they apparently NEED to see it more than once. Kind of like medicine; nobody really LIKES taking medicine either... Or maybe it's like the story about the Texas state rep who started to tell an aggie joke and, being told that there were a few Texas aggies in the audience replied "OK, I'll tell it S-L-O-W..." Likewise if some of the evos see some of this stuff enough, some of the logic of it might start to sink in...

Argument 2, the Gish gallop

All of that was the best case. In real life, it's even worse than that. In real life, natural selection could not plausibly select for hoped-for functionality, which is what would be required in order to evolve flight feathers on something which could not fly apriori. In real life, all you'd ever get would some sort of a random walk around some starting point, rather than the unidircetional march towards a future requirement which evolution requires.
Argument H
And the real killer, i.e. the thing which simply kills evolutionism dead, is the following consideration: In real life, assuming you were to somehow miraculously evolve the first feature you'd need to become a flying bird, then by the time another 10,000 generations rolled around and you evolved the second such reature, the first, having been disfunctional/antifunctional all the while, would have DE-EVOLVED and either disappeared altogether or become vestigial.
Argument H (continued)

Argument H - link to talk.origins BS claiming gains of information are possible, i.e. an irrelevant argument...

Question, Sadwin: You really think you're gonna prove evolutionism to anybody other than yourself by mouthing nonsense incantations?

Thanks, Ted. I'm now pretty close to a CRETIGO. Now all I need is a post from Little Boy Blue ...

Note that Reep (VadeRepo) at least has the decency to try to frame a relevant (albeit idiotic) argument regarding the question of features devolving while other featuers were evolving. Reep claims that all the features necessary to become a flying bird starting from being a coelurosaur or some such would obviously (to him at least) evolve together, thus after many thousands of generations of being disfunctional, the creature would magically one day have the flight feathers, wings, light bone structure, flowthrough hearts and lungs, balance parameters etc. etc. needed to fly.

Granted that's idiotic, Sadwin, but nonetheless you could set that minimal level of relevant argument up as a goal for yourself to try to achieve within the next year or two...

Question, Sadwin: You really think you're gonna prove evolutionism to anybody other than yourself by mouthing nonsense incantations?

Argument Q. Face it, Ted. Between you and the Blues Brothers a lot of us will be yelling CRETIGO all night long. So, when are you going to update your theory in light of all the counter evidence? You've been spamming the www, verbatim, since 1995.

Argument Q. Face it, Ted. Between you and the Blues Brothers a lot of us will be yelling CRETIGO all night long....

That won't represent any sort of a decrease in information content from your usual blatherings.

Claims
A. God of the Gaps/Unsolved Mystery	Assumes that if science cannot PRESENTLY explain something, there is no natural explanation.
B. Personal Incredulity	Assumes that their inability to comprehend or understand how something could have occurred naturally is proof that it did not.
C. Post-It Note God/Morris Effect	Gives a supernatural deity credit for a natural event, or "well, god CUDDA done it that way !" "There is no observational fact imaginable that cannot, one way or another, be made to fit the creation model." - Henry Morris
D. Scriptural Assault	Use of bible verses as 'evidence'. Usually either as threats, or bribes. Also includes such gems as : - "Jesus Loves You" - "I'll Pray For You" - "One day you will have to answer to Jesus Christ Himself, and then it won't be so funny when he throws your unrepentant soul into Hell !" - "One day, when you're burning in Hell, you'll remember this conversation, and that I warned you !"
E. Discredited 'evidences', Hoaxes and errors.	Otherwise known as PRATTs (Points Refuted A Thousand Times). Includes such things as the moon dust argument, the vapor canopy 'hypothesis', and the decaying c-factor hypothesis. These 'evidences' have been refuted (see Talk Origins for them), but creationists keep using them anyway. Things like Nebraska Man, Piltdown Man, and the Lady Hope Story fit also fit in here. Somehow the FACT that scientists were the ones that figured out these were mistakes or hoaxes is always missed by creationists. Science works by correcting its errors, so hoaxes and frauds usually don't last very long.
F. Out of Context Quotes	THE classic creationist technique. If, at any time, you see them claim that an 'evolutionist' says that evolution is false, you can be pretty certain the words have been carefully edited (like Darwin's 'Eye Quote', his 'Transitional forms should be everywhere' quote ... ).
G. 2nd Law of Thermodynamics Arguments	The idea that evolution somehow violates this inviolable law of nature. In truth, it doesn't (in fact, life itself works in accordance to this law). Assumes that organization/complexity cannot form unless directed by some sort of program (false).
H. (Mis)Information Theory	A relatively recent argument, it claims things like 'gains of genetic information are impossible', or 'mutations have never been observed'. Both statements are, of course, false.
I. Absolutism/Burden of Proof	Assumes: 1) if you are not 100% certain about how something happened, then you don't have a clue about how it happened, or 2) anything not proven true is automatically false (or, anything not proven false is automatically true).
J. Denial = Refutation ex cathedra arguments Zeppelin Ego	The first two assume that just because the creationist has stated something, it is automatically true without the requirement for supporting evidence. ('Your statement is false. Now that I have refuted you, you MUST accept that my ideas are correct !') Zeppelin Ego - when opponent's ego is huge, bloated, full of gas, and explodes into flame with the least provocation (tends to go along with #Q - see below).
K. Semantic Games	Opponent will expect you to conform to HIS definition of words, not their REAL, currently accepted definitions. Example : claims that evolution MUST be only single point mutations (as in the Modern Synthesis - 1942 to 1982). Also when evidence is redefined out of existence (ie, the invention of the 'dichotomy' between 'apparent' specified complexity vs 'real' specified complexity when it was demonstrated that a computer program using mutation/selection could produce a sentence exhibiting specified complexity. Sadly, without knowing the history of a process, it is IMPOSSIBLE to tell the 'difference' between 'real' and 'apparent' specified complexity.)
L. Number Games	Use of carefully selected growth rates to 'show' that the entire Earth's population could've been generated by 4 couples a few thousand years ago. Also the One Sided Equation - most processes on Earth are in equilibrium (there are just as many factors increasing something as decreasing it). A One Sided Equation ignores one or the other side of the equation - seen in the Helium escape argument, or erosion/build up of sediment type of arguments for a young Earth.
M. Transitional Form Complaints	They either claim: 1) 'There ARE NO TRANSITIONAL FORMS !!' (false), or 2)'Those fossils are the WRONG KIND OF TRANSITIONAL FORMS, AND SO AREN'T REAL TRANSITIONALS !!' The 'fossils are fully formed whatevers' type arguments are included in here as well.
N. Conspiracy Theories	Two major types : - "All scientists/evolutionists KNOW that evolution is false, but they hide/distort the evidence to get people away from God !" - "Every field of science kneels before the altar of Evolutionary Theory !" - geologists must check with evolutionists so they know how old to say the Earth is, for example.
O. Cartoon Theory of Evolution	Evolution is just the study and explanation of how living things change over time. The Cartoon Theory of Evolution includes Cosmogony (origin of the universe), Nucleosynthesis (origin of substances heavier than hydrogen), Abiogenesis (origin of life from organic compounds) - from the Chick Tract 'Big Daddy' most likely.
P. Argument from Weak/Faulty Analogy	Hearkens back to Paley's Watchmaker analogy (the "irreducibly complex systems" of Behe is the modern incarnation of this). Assumes that if two things have at least one thing in common, they have all things in common (designed objects are complex. Life is complex. Therefore, life is designed), and others of this ilk.
Q. Argument from Insult (direct and implied) Armchair Psychology	Assumes that you can make someone accept your claims by calling them names (direct), or questioning their mental faculties ('you can't possibly believe that fish can turn into men !!' - implying you are stupid, for example. You would have to be to fall for that olde strawman argument). Armchair psychology is when they diagnose a mental condition for you - such as "You are OBVIOUSLY afraid of God, and want science to save you!", or "The ONLY reason you believe in evolution is you fear being held accountable for your actions !", or even "You have OBVIOUSLY closed your heart/mind off to THE TRUTH !!"
R. Argument from Misplaced Authority	When you hear someone quoting an astrophysicist who states that 'evolution is too improbable', for instance (like the olde "Tornado thru a junkyard building a 747 !" argument). Expertise in ONE field does NOT grant expertise in ALL fields.
S. Argument from Improbability 'Evolution is ALL chance !!'.	Usually seen in abiogenesis arguments, this makes the assumption that a modern protein had to be made in just one attempt. But, since natural selection selects more successful variants, it can make improbable combinations occur by working sequentially (several small improvements).
T. Martyr Syndrome Histrionics Emotional Appeals	Creationist will claim they are being discriminated against, or called names ONLY because they are creationist/have faith (actually, they are being called names because they are using lame arguments, and excessive use of Zeppelin Ego). Schopenhauer's Maxim fits in here as well (the 'All great truths pass through three stages - they are ridiculed, then they are violently opposed, then they are accepted as obvious'). Also includes such rancid fare as "Hitler/Lenin/Mao and other nasty people 'believed in'/used evolution; therefore, evolution is evil !!", and "Racists use the theory of evolution to justify their actions; therefore, evolution is evil !!" where the main attempt is to discredit the ToE with polemics, politics and emotions without having to demonstrate that it is wrong.
U. Mobile Goalposts Backpedaling	Occurs when the creationist asks for something, you give it to him, and then he claims that's NOT what he REALLY wanted, or that it REALLY doesn't qualify as evidence for your position (without clearly explaining why).
V. "No Eyewitnesses !!" - type argument	Claims that since no one was there to physically observe the event, we can't REALLY be sure it happened. Or, like using spectroscopy to determine what elements are in an interstellar gas cloud is invalid because no one has gone out there to physically retrieve a sample of the interstellar gas.
W. Misuse and Misunderstandings of the ToE 'Evolution is RACISM/ATHEISM/RELIGION !!"	Oddly assumes that since evolution is based on assumptions, and religion is based on assumptions, that evolution is therefore a religion (ie, accepted as true WITHOUT evidence). Also assumes that one must give up God to accept the validity of evolution (false). Since the ToE is purely a biological theory that explains how life changes over time, it has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to say about morals, ethics, theology, philosophy, or cultural development, which is why claims like "the end product of the PHILOSOPHY of evolutionISM is the erosion of morality !!" belong in this category.
X. Ignorance of Science and its Methods	When someone demands that science PROVE something, or that 'evolution is NOT scientific', score one in #X. Science deals with EVIDENCE, not PROOF. Evolution is scientific because it does make testable and falsifiable predictions (like, 'what would we EXPECT to find in the fossil record if descent with modification were true ?') Also claims that fly in the face of known physics, chemistry, geology, etc go in here as well.
Y. Fallacy of the General Rule	'If sedimentation can occur quickly under these conditions, it therefore can occur quickly in ALL conditions !!' is the prime example. This fallacy occurs when a rule is applied too broadly (The Mount St. Helen's example of a young earth and polystrate fossil formation are other standard creationist fares).
Z. Radiometric and Dating Whines	Common enough to warrant separation from 'Ignorance of Science and Its Methods'. Just baseless complaints/questions about the validity of known and verified dating methods.
1. Muddled logic and other fallacies	The 'miscellaneous' category. Things like Special Pleading ('all things require a cause - EXCEPT GOD'), Circular Arguments (the statement you are trying to prove is one of the assumptions - 'God created things. Things exist. Therefore, God exists !), and Non Sequitor statements (have no relevance to the topic at hand - like bible verses discussing morality when the topic was natural selection).
2. Mind Games and Rhetorical Tricks	Includes Projection (you keep changing all of his definitions of words BACK to what they really are, and he accuses you of redefining words to suit your argument), White Knight (rushing to the aid of a fellow creationist just because he/she is a creationist), going on incoherent rants, and 'just plain NUTS !!'. Use of the 'Gish Gallop' (and its electronic forum equivalent of flooding the message board so the latest "irrefutable demolition of evilution" post that got shredded and burned to ash drops off the bottom) is an example of a rhetorical trick - others fairly easy to recognize.