Let me say something that may be encouraging though, to Siamang and Richard and Felicia and cautious and other science experts here who so heroically (in my view) and patiently engage with creationists, and seemingly get spit at for their trouble.

I’d like to throw in my .02 as well–even if it seems your patient explanations are falling into a void, there are others reading, who haven’t taken a position. Many of us born in the 60s got a lousy science education. When I read Siamang or Cautious’s explanations I have to think, surely this isn’t the same biology I suffered through years ago. Even if you can’t budge a creationist from his position, you’ve put some info out there for people who don’t know much about the topic to think about. And you do it so engagingly that some will be drawn to go learn more for themselves.

It makes a difference. I had been ambivalent – not anti science, not pro creationism – but now I’m not, and I will go to the school board if my county tries to feed crap to my child and call it science.

Look here: http://talkorigins.org/indexcc/CA/CA211_1.html

Like others who have commented here, I once believed the creationist crap–not because I knew anything, or cared anything, about science or biology, but because it was polemical ammunition and some psychological comfort to my faith, since science as it was taught to me in the public schools threatened my faith. People like Looney are desperate to believe this crap because they’re fearful.

Exactly, Darryl. I was in the very same situation.

Let me say something that may be encouraging though, to Siamang and Richard and Felicia and cautious and other science experts here who so heroically (in my view) and patiently engage with creationists, and seemingly get spit at for their trouble.

I was watching this ridiculous creationist diatribe on whale evolution that PZ posted today, and I had something of an epiphany. Because I remember hearing that same sort of diatribe from creationists back in the day, but I also remember that there was a still, small voice in the back of my head when I listened to that stuff. (And this is kind of funny, because for Christians the “still, small voice” is supposed to be the holy spirit talking to your heart.)

But what I realized today is that the still small voice that I heard during creationist lectures was not the holy spirit – it was the voice of reason! “Yeah, this evolution stuff sounds really, really silly and impossible, but can it be that bad? What am I not hearing here? If it’s so ridiculous and flimsy, how can any educated person accept it? Why do all these brilliant scientists who know way more than I do about this stuff believe it?”

Now, I squelched that voice of reason as effectively as I could, but eventually it got louder and louder, to the point where I simply couldn’t ignore it. I’m not sure, but I’d bet that more than a few creationists are also stuffing down that pesky reasonable voice in their heads, and if you can say anything to them that allows that little doubt or that little skepticism to get stronger, I think your time is well spent.

Like others who have commented here, I once believed the creationist crap–not because I knew anything, or cared anything, about science or biology, but because it was polemical ammunition and some psychological comfort to my faith, since science as it was taught to me in the public schools threatened my faith. People like Looney are desperate to believe this crap because they’re fearful.

You plugged in some other scientific equation(s), but because evolution is a “framework”, you felt it OK to credit evolution with the success as if it were a theory. Of course, a “framework” is a “set” and the set is the set of all theories because evolution and change are synonymous. This is how my molecular biology texts employ evolution and how Dawkins employs it also. A framework, however, is never a scientific theory, because a theory is fixed and precise while frameworks are free to change day by day.

You can still believe the meta-narrative of evolution without insisting that evolution has the properties of scientific theories – a distinct, tangible equation that never changes – which we all know is not true.

Justin, I was wondering how many other people here used to be in Looney’s shoes.. Having been there yourself, can you tell me.. Are they so insulated in their bubbles that it does no good to converse with them? Looney’s “worse” than many I’ve sparred with over the years, mostly because his illusionary counter-science isn’t well fortified. He hasn’t spent the work I’ve seen other creationists spend where they don’t venture too far off the well-riveted creationist boilerplate. In other words, it was easy to show him to be baldly false re rabbits in the precambrian and the evolution of coelacanths. That he equivocated and falsely declared his equivocating sentence illustrated a tautology was epic fail on his part, I just had to swoop in and claim credit. Notice that he didn’t respond to me again… he just yipped and yapped at people he thought he could cow (Who turned out to be real biologists. HA!)

What popped your bubble, btw Justin? Does talking to these people even help?

Then I learned what the word “falsifiable” means.

Then I started reading books that weren’t written by Creationists.

Then I realized I’d been duped by my church, as had my father before me and his father before him, etc.

Just like I think we’re being duped, now. Anyone else think that Looney is not really a theist or anti-evolution? He calls himself “Looney,” for Loki’s sake.

Felicia, I think it is a good bet that you have never plugged “change in allele frequencies in a population over time” into a calculator and gotten a useful result.

Uh… actually, I have. As part of my biology education. You know. Where I study biology, at university, in the hopes to make a career as a scientist. It’s quite insulting to all us thousands and thousands of biologists who are studying, have studied or are working with evolution to have people doubt our expertise to the extent that anti-evolutionists do. I don’t understand how computers work, but I don’t go up to engineers telling them they’re doing their job wrong.

You’ve got everything backwards. The experiments and calculations you refer to are only possible because of the framework of evolutionary thought that biological science is based upon. Evolution doesn’t step in at the last minute to claim credit, it’s what leads us to new interesting hypotheses to test. Sometimes they’re right, sometimes they’re wrong, but evolution doesn’t stand and fall with individual experiments. There’s so much corroborating evidence by now that there is no reason to doubt evolutionary theory as a whole, even though individual facets may be wrong.

The point is, evolutionary theory WORKS. Just like I assume engineers have sound science backing them when they construct circuitboards.

Finally, comparing biological theory to physics is really rather unfair. Biology and physics are both natural sciences but they’re conducted in different ways. Physics concerns the most fundamental properties of the universe – you don’t measure physical constants statistically, you do it absolutely. Biology is concerned with extremely complex systems with so many confounding factors it’s amazing that we’ve gotten as far as we have today. Although there are rigorous mathematical frameworks for many parts of evolutionary theory (aside from the most simple definition of a change of allele frequency over time), it’s unfair to expect to be able to boil it down to something as simple and elegant as for instance special relativity. It would be rather like saying you should be able to boil down and explain Beethoven’s ninth symphony with just one note.