ID Creationist Bingo

September 8, 2007

Skeptico presents ID Creationist Bingo:

(Click on the image for a larger, printable version)

How do you play?

You check off a square every time the relevant dopey argument is presented. You win when you have a straight line of five – horizontally, vertically or diagonally. The “JOKER” square can either be a free square, or you can reserve it for any new ludicrous argument presented (as long as it is presented with total sincerity), or any argument [you’ve] missed.

Bonus points, I say, if you can make this game last longer than two minutes.

[tags]atheist, atheism, Christian, Intelligent Design, Evolution, Creationism, Ken Ham, Michael Behe, Phillip Johnson, William Dembski[/tags]

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olvlzl, no ism, no ist

Evolutionists should stop talking about Darwin and talk about the 120 years of science clearly supportive of evolution done since his death. What other science still clings to a figure that has been dead that long when most of the science in the field has been done since his death? Genetics, for example. Throw the creationists for a loop and refuse to talk about ancient science, talk about the modern stuff they haven’t prepared talking points on and it will take them fifteen years to catch up. By which time you’ll have moved on.

If you meet the Darwin on the street, kill him. He’s not God, you know.
miller

olvlzl, didn’t you know? The idea that evolutionists overemphasize Darwin himself is a myth perpetuated by ID/creationism. That’s why they use the term “Darwinist” for their opponents. Most evolutionists reject this term (it’s even in the bingo), and already agree with you that Darwin himself shouldn’t play as much of a role in the debate as he does. It doesn’t stop the ID/creationists.
Bad

Evolutionists should stop talking about Darwin

Are you freakin kidding me? It’s not us who spend the lions share of our time yammering about Charles Darwin and calling everyone “Darwinists” and so forth and trying to prove this that and the other thing about Darwin and Origin as if it made any difference to modern science. Evolutionists are the ones who have a perfectly reasonable picture of the man: an intriguing historical figure, but the start of the story, not the end.

I mean, you did get the part about how, say, this list is a list of arguments that creationists raise, right? It’s not like we bring up these embarrassingly silly arguments for them: THEY bring them up and then demand answers.

What other science still clings to a figure that has been dead that long when most of the science in the field has been done since his death?

Yeah, right, no one these days has ever heard of Newton. Or Archimedes. Or Kepler. Or Galileo.

And what do you even mean by “clings to”? Who? How?

Throw the creationists for a loop and refuse to talk about ancient science, talk about the modern stuff they haven’t prepared talking points on and it will take them fifteen years to catch up.

Again, we don’t need advice on doing this: this is what we’ve been doing, not that anything in particular seems to help with a true believer.

If you meet the Darwin on the street, kill him. He’s not God, you know.

Again: tell the creationists that, because it’s pointless to tell scientists that, none of them think he’s a God. They are the ones who cannot see past their own way of thinking, and cannot conceive of how “Origin of the Species” could be seen as anything other than holy writ and Darwin an everlasting authority, even though no scientist sees it that way.
Miko

What other science still clings to a figure that has been dead that long when most of the science in the field has been done since his death?

Interestingly enough, much criticism of mathematics pedagogy in recent years has come from the fact that we don’t do enough of this, thus creating the false impression that the area is a set of arbitrary rules set down randomly. I think some textbooks are swinging way too far in the other direction in order to combat this, but there is something to be said for pointing out that these ideas didn’t just appear out of a vacuum.

And let’s not forget that there’s a difference between what scientists are doing and what’s being taught. We’re never going to teach cutting-edge ideas to a large segment of the population because they have no need to know and lack the necessary motivation to stick with it long enough to find out. Honestly, no one except biologists has any need to know anything about evolution. It’s worth teaching the fundamentals to inspire the next generation of biologists, but until they make that choice I don’t think they need an understanding of the theory that’s much deeper than what Darwin had.

And really, evolution isn’t the other side in the fight against ID. This fight is about whether or not truth can be dictated by a show of hands.
Kate

The Bingo square is missing “evolution is wrong because poodles are ugly” 😉
olvlzl, no ism, no ist

You haven’t noticed the propensity among evolutionary biologists, when they are engaged in a controversy with other evolutionary biologists, to cling to Darwin as if he was a life raft? Often quoting him to contradictory effect? The disputes between the Gould and Dawkins camps are full of it, the popular literature about evolution is replete with it. Darwin was a brilliant scientist but he hasn’t done any science in a hundred twenty years.

There is nothing more obviously impressive evidence supportive of evolution than the comparison of genomes in closely related and more distantly related species. Who needs to deal with “missing links” when there are links in the here and now? Maybe if science played up that instead of what hasn’t been as effective they might turn around those depressing poll numbers.

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