Hassling creationists just for the hell of it

Further to Hassling spammers for fun and profit, I seem to be in a punchy, "let's tilt at some internet windmills" mood this week in general.

A few days ago I got an entirely classic bit of spam (via an account I monitor for the Internet Infidels) from an apparently somewhat known internet creationist.

Creationists, for those of you who don't know this particular weird little corner of the world, are the folk who are convinced an invisible sky fairy created the entire universe, and who like to take their creation myths literally enough that they actually get pretty bitchy when you point out that there is an enormous pile of evidence from comparative morphology through fossils through comparative rRNA and DNA sequences which makes it awfully clear all life on this globe (or at least all life yet examined at any length) is clearly descended from a common ancestor. Apparently they feel their sky fairy wouldn't have done things in such a fashion (I really have no comment on this presumption, as I don't consider conjecture regarding the presumed temperaments of invisible sky fairies a particularly fruitful area of inquiry).

They, naturally enough, claim not to like the evidence that makes them look so vividly like the superstitious rubes they so obviously are. But this, as you might imagine, gets a bit comical when the evidence can be found in every strand of DNA in their own bodies, as well as in fossils found in every corner of the world.

The more amusing of them, the 'YECs' or 'Young Earth Creationists' also like to claim the world is around 6,000 to 10,000 years old. The fact that radiometric dating techniques easily comprehensible to anyone with a high-school education, done repeatedly and verified by multiple methods, find rocks in the crust that are more like four billion years old (measured from when they last solidified) notwithstanding.

The punchline to all of this is: probably because they pretty much have to be, they're hilariously stubborn, and flagrantly dishonest, but at a level which can make debunking them amusing (if occasionally somewhat repetitive) sport for anyone who knows the science well enough to catch the lies quickly enough to keep it interesting. The modus operandi of the typical creation science nut, as far as I can determine, is mostly a refinement of the arts of deception and obfuscation. The idea is to concoct as many quibbles with the evidence as you can, pile them all together, then slather on rhetoric implying this all adds up to a massive conspiracy to hide evolutionary biology's alleged weaknesses, and to a dogmatic, sclerotic science ripe for overturning--that given all this, evolutionary biology should have been abandoned by now. Another technique, 'quote mining', is used to bolster the rhetoric and imply there are respectable authorities who agree with this view: take a sentence from someone who sounds like they might know what they're talking about, take it out of context, and imply it means this authority is saying something they absolutely are not. As an example, were I an authority, a quote-miner would take the phrase from my own prose directly above--'given all this, evolutionary biology should have been abandoned by now'--quote it, and say this reflects my view of the situation. This latter technique they particularly like to apply to relatively recent articles, probably to give the impression they're very up on current research, and frequently, you'll find the quote comes from a comment by a researcher to the popular press to the effect that such and such a result is 'revolutionary'--a common gambit is to take any interesting new and widely disseminated story--such as the recent bit in Nature on Homo floresiensis--and take the fact that people are saying this really overturns a lot of what we thought we knew (and the H. floresiensis discovery does, actually, though only things pertaining to the natural history of our own genus, and things many probably would have been happy to say are pretty speculative), and imply from this (comically) that evolutionary theory as a whole is in turmoil, and, again, ripe for complete collapse.

Another little bit of nonsense is to trade on the implication they like to make that evolutionary biology is a 'dogma' and not taught with enough skepticism, and use this as a lever to either get it taken out of curricula, or to insist their creation myths be taught next to it, or that disclaimers about it being 'theory not fact' be stickered into textbooks. Which, apart from demonstrating their own lack of understanding (or willingness to deceive) about what, exactly, a 'theory' is in the context of science (see also 'the theory of relativity' and 'Maxwell's theory') is also quite ridiculous, when you know the full status of the science involved--which is, essentially, that the fact observed life on this planet descended with variation from a common ancestor is about as controversial as is the fact that things fall down (as opposed to up) when you drop them. There are still interesting open questions about the mechanisms involved, it's true, but even here, a great deal is more than well enough known (we know natural selection is instrumental, for instance) that insinuating otherwise is just, frankly, deceptive.

Their objections to the evidence, as well, on inspection, quickly turn out to be something like 99% fraudulent claims and 1% valid complaint about pedagogy massively blown out of proportion. And that's being generous. A typical example is the creationist complaint about the account of research into peppered moth (Biston betularia) melanism, common in many introductory biology textbooks: creationist literature on this subject is full of heat, but there's little light: they'll cite a source they claim indicates the moths do not rest on the trunks of trees (which would have implications for predation, which is believed to be a critical part of the selective mechanism here), and that the photos of the moths resting on trunks are staged. This, however, is a mixture of outright fraud and hilariously overheated rhetoric: the source they cite clearly indicates moths were observed resting on the trunks of trees a significant portion of the time (23.6% of the time they were found on an exposed portion of the trunk, while 10.8% of the time they were found on unexposed portions), and the 'staged' photos appeared in textbooks, which were clearly using them to illustrate the relative visibility of a dark moth versus a light moth on a dark tree trunk, and which clearly made no claim as to how these photos were done (and in the research the creationists themselves obviously had read, there are many unstaged photos available). So there's a (possibly) valid point hidden in all the noise: it might make sense for textbook publishers explicitly to state these are photos posed for illustration purposes. But that's as far as it goes. And clearly, the folk raising this stink are lying their asses off about what the research itself says about moth behaviour. More is available here, in the talk.origins FAQs.

And this is typical. A creationist playing the game usually spins several such frauds together into the narrative, quote-mines a few authorities, and makes a sweeping rhetorical condemnation of all evolutionary biology. The technique, though clearly nothing more than a con, can either work pretty well toward convincing people the creationist has a point, or fall hilariously flat, depending on the venue. Against a reasonably bright soul who knows they're coming, knows the science well enough, and knows their games, and especially in an open-ended written forum, it's pretty hopeless, because the con gets caught pretty quickly (and it can be absolutely delicious to watch). But in a church basement, in front of a sympathetic crowd, and even in a debate with a competent science teacher or prof who might not know their techniques or who might not be particularly well-grounded in the specific area of science the creationist chooses to misrepresent that evening, or who might not be much for debate, it can be pretty persuasive, and leave an audience with just the impression the con is trying to create: that evolutionary biology and/or science concluding the earth is more than four billion years old is pretty flaky stuff, and thus it might be sensible to let the creationists argue their case too. And never mind that they don't particularly have one, beyond the flim flam job they just did.

So I went with my usual, when this yutz sent me a particularly classic creationist string of frauds--I called him on one lie, pointed him to an article which called him on the rest, and informed him the reason no one's listening to his ilk isn't that science is 'dogmatic', but that he's a liar (and a rather repetitive one), and no one's gonna bother too much refuting stuff that's already been dealt with ad nauseum.

At this point, our dance went in the usual directions--he didn't even acknowledge the charge that he'd lied, made no attempt to defend his claims, and claimed I was just 'biased' against 'intelligent design' (really just a branch of creationism, once you get to know them, though a smidge more subtle, and not usually dumb enough to get mixed up in YEC nonsense) and creationism, insisted I wasn't 'skeptical' enough of evolutionary biology (the creationists like to use the term 'Darwinism', for obvious rhetorical reasons), and copied out much more pseudophilosophical spam on what a dogma evolutionary biology is. At which point and I responded that it isn't bias to dismiss movements that have proven themselves nothing more than pious frauds repeatedly, shamelessly, and flagrantly, that I applied a healthy dose of skepticism even to the evidence of evolutionary biology, and judged that the theories stood up quite well against the evidence. And that it's a bit rich (actually I believe I used the phrase 'it had me in stitches'; I do love to compose a good diss) being lectured on 'skepticism' by a guy whose ability to critique the utility of his own conjectures is so utterly pathetic. I can post the whole broadside if any of you really want to see it; I thought it was loads of fun, but somehow it seems a bit full of myself to do so without being so invited.

Anyway. Seems to me as an exercise, if any of you think this might be fun, you should have an opportunity to prep yourself against such yutzes. There are two basic imperatives: (1) know the general science of (a) evolutionary biology and (b) geology and physics well enough to grasp the whole outline of argument and evidence working to the conclusions that (a) all life on this planet is descended from a common ancestor through descent with variation moderated by natural selection and (b) the planet and the rest of the solar system are approximately 4.5 billion years old, well enough that you can catch the more obvious distortions even if they are new ones, and (2) know some of the popular fraudulent claims of the creationists well enough that you can catch them at it almost before they open their mouths.

So. If you're interested: (1) here's an article he cited and quoted in full from a creationist site, replete with about several of the currently popular creationist cons. Add to this a claim he made (or, more precisely, quoted; he's big on clipboards) that no 'unambiguous' example of speciation has ever been observed (specifically, he said no speciation 'due to the accumulation of mutations'--an odd qualification if you know the area, but note that he specifically cited the Michael Behe quote of Lynn Margulis explained here and it makes a little more sense), and his own wild little surmise that a recent discovery of a gap in a protoplanetary disk of a relatively young star might imply our own planet is significantly younger than we think (yes, despite the fact that we have radiometric dates for material from our own solar system). (2) Then take this--the central FAQ of talk.origins, a site devoted to archiving the often delightful online debunkings of these fruit loops (see particularly this essay, which breaks down most of the creationist article's howlers--it would appear the article is largely based on the same source book the essay debunks). Then line up the lies with the debunkings, and look a bit into the actual science being discussed. Finally, you might also browse that FAQ a bit more, get to know some of the other nonsense these guys do.

Presto. You can do that, you can have a lot of fun with such frauds too, when they come your way. Damn good sport for a slow weekend, if you ask me.