Monday, March 17, 2008

Fighting the Creationists on Youtube

Lately my youtube channel has been subject to two idiotic creationist responses, one of them about abiogenesis and another about my "Proof of Evolution" video.

The guy responding to my abiogenesis video calls himself "Young Apologetic" and is clearly following in the footsteps of other apologists by misquoting prominent scientists and engaging in special pleading. He quotes Francis Crick out of context, and also criticizes Crick's panspermia hypothesis. I, by the way, agree with him that the panspermia hypothesis explains nothing, and that there is no evidence for it. The same applies to intelligent design, and I do not think that an eternal god is a better explanation for the origin of life than a never ending chain of aliens (Panspermia proposes that either the alien's biochemistry was far simpler than ours, or that they were created by another alien civilization which was created by another alien civilization, ad infinitum). Moving on, I think that Wikipedia's entry on Crick summed it up the best:


The conservative political analyst Mark Steyn published an obituary of Crick and attempted a deconstruction of Crick's scientific motivations.[57] Steyn characterized Crick as a militant atheist and asserted that it was his atheism that "drove" Crick to move beyond conventional molecular biology towards speculative topics such as panspermia. Steyn described the theory of directed panspermia as amounting to, "gods in the skies who fertilize the earth and then retreat to the heavens beyond our reach." Steyn categorized Crick’s ideas on directed panspermia as a result of "hyper-rationalism" that, "lead him round to embracing a belief in a celestial creator of human life, indeed a deus ex machina."

Steyn's critique of Crick ignored the fact that Crick never held a belief in panspermia. Crick explored the hypothesis that it might be possible for life forms to be moved from one planet to another. What "drove" Crick towards speculation about directed panspermia was the difficulty of imagining how a complex system like a cell could arise under pre-biotic conditions from non-living chemical components. After ribozymes were discovered, Crick became much less interested in panspermia because it was then much easier to imagine the pre-biotic origins of life as being made possible by some set of simple self-replicating polymers.[50]


To discuss the second video: A girl who appears about ten years old responded to my "Proof of Evolution" video. She may be cute, but the indoctrination and poor reasoning that she demonstrates is anything but. I shouldn't be hard on her, she's young, and as she gets older she will question what she was taught more. Here is how I responded to her:

Hi, I saw you made a video response to "Proof of Evolution". You raise a few points that I think are worth addressing: Where does everything ultimately come from? (you used the example of dust, if that's where everything came from, where did it come from?) Evolution presumes the existence of the universe and life. It simply does not address the questions of life's or the universe's origin. As evolutionist I cannot answer those questions. However, as an atheist and as a person who has just as much wonder about the universe as you do, let me offer you the alternative: http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/mark_vuletic/vacuum.html You also ask what the point is in believing in evolution, or disbelieving in god, since you have nothing to lose by believing and everything to lose by disbelief. Aren't you assuming that god favors blind belief over a rational, well thought out conclusion? This argument is known as Pascal's wager and plenty of philosophers have stepped up to show what a bad argument it is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal's_Wager#Atheist.27s_Wager
And about the poop, you mentioned it but I don't remember what you asked about it. It is buried in a rock layer that most creationists think was deposited by the flood. Why didn't it dissolve as the rushing waters were burying it? I suppose you could argue that it was already buried, or fossilized, but if it was then it should be underneath the supposed "flood" rock layers, not in it. How would it dissolve the dirt and sediment that the fossil was buried in without dissolving it? Thanks, Ryan

4 comments:

Josh said...

Young Apologetic responded to a video of mine on abiogenesis with that same video. Did you notice what he says in his video description?

"I have nothing but contempt for the naturalistic explanation for the origin of life, known as abiogenesis."

I can't blame him for coming off as a little closed-minded. He's quite young, and was probably indoctrinated with this stuff. Makes me feel a bit bad for him really.

AIGBusted said...

Hi Josh,

Yes I feel a little bad for him too. Not being able and willing to search and find the truth is one of the biggest handicaps anyone could have.

Anonymous said...

"The fool has said in his heart, 'There is no God.'"
Psalm 14:1

Within 50 years evolution will finally be known for the hoax it is.

Anonymous said...

LOL i wonder why most trolls never bother to name themselves. Ah well good artical and its really sad that the young are getting so indocrinated with faith now. here's hope that we can fix it.

Cheers