This is another sure sign of intellectual dishonesty

September 24, 2015 12:27 PM

From the Neurologica blog: "Creationists are engaged in science denial—denying evolutionary science. The purpose of denial is doubt and confusion, so they don’t have to create and defend a coherent explanation of the origins of life on Earth. They don’t have to provide an explanation for all the available evidence. All they have to do is muddy the waters as much as possible."

Neurologist Dr. Steven Novella makes a detailed examination of creationist talking points and common arguments against biological evolution.

posted by Flexagon (41 comments total)

But I'm sure that, just as with the AP Style Guide's approach to Climate Denial, someone will be along to insist that they should be called "skeptics," or perhaps if that's too generous, "doubters," rather than the quite accurate label "denier."

FWIW, I like to use the term "Truther." They don't merely deny the evidence; they imagine a grand conspiracy to "suppress" what they errantly believe is actually going on.
posted by mystyk at 12:38 PM on September 24, 2015 [5 favorites]

So, presidential Dr. Ben Carson, despite being a brain surgeon with some record of innovation, is a creationist. Here's 45 minutes of Ben Carson dissembling on evolution. Despite having great knowledge of biology, he has somehow insulated his creationist beliefs from full examination. It's an amazing mishmash of politics and religion in 45 minutes.
posted by Llama-Lime at 12:49 PM on September 24, 2015 [6 favorites]

Comfort-zones are a hell of a drug...
posted by mikelieman at 12:53 PM on September 24, 2015 [3 favorites]

I was a little confused, so in case anyone else is:

This is the original creationist piece being critiqued (it's the 4th link in the FPP).

Dr. Novella's response is split into (at the moment) 3 separate blog posts
Part I - Dealing mostly with out of context quotes and transitional fossils
Part II - Addressing the "sudden appearance" of species
Part III - Addressing several different creationist arguments (difference between persistence of families/orders vs individual species over long time periods, hoaxes, outright misrepresentations)

So far Dr. Novella has only gotten to 29 of the 44 arguments, I assume the blog posts will continue.
posted by Wretch729 at 12:53 PM on September 24, 2015 [8 favorites]

"Dr. Novella" sounds like the awesome name of a super hero whose missions always seem to take a bit longer than they should.
posted by Celsius1414 at 1:12 PM on September 24, 2015 [24 favorites]

I confess that I unfortunately hold out little hope that the denialists will be convinced by logic and scientific arguments.

Darwin help us all.
posted by key_of_z at 1:13 PM on September 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

Sigh. There is no convincing these people. Check out my blog in my profile for an endless host of denial. Denial is their bread and butter.
posted by agregoli at 1:29 PM on September 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

The purpose of denial is doubt and confusion, so they don’t have to create and defend a coherent explanation of the origins of life on Earth. They don’t have to provide an explanation for all the available evidence. All they have to do is muddy the waters as much as possible.

Notice the tacit admission that the so-called "creationist" explanation is the bunk, so the task becomes creating enough FUD that they can convince themselves that science does not, in fact, offer a better explanation than their myths do.

And what's sad about that is there should be room for uncertainty in faith. Indeed, many faiths, including Roman Catholicism, have embraced the truth of evolution as posing no conflict to their faith. It's only when one believes that every word of the Bible is literally true and believes, deep down, that anything that proves otherwise proves one's faith "wrong" that such intellectually dishonest shenanigans become necessary -- essential, in fact.

O ye of little faith, indeed.
posted by Gelatin at 1:40 PM on September 24, 2015 [3 favorites]

"Reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired."

More true now than when Swift wrote it in 1720.
posted by LooseFilter at 1:46 PM on September 24, 2015 [24 favorites]

So, presidential Dr. Ben Carson, despite being a brain surgeon with some record of innovation, is a creationist. Here's 45 minutes of Ben Carson dissembling on evolution.

I skipped around a bit, because I just didn't have it in me to listen to the whole thing. Wow. Just wow. I can't help but wonder if he really believes what he's saying, or if it just plays well to the crowd he seeks out. Because if he really believes what he's saying... I don't know. I'm dumbstruck.
posted by [insert clever name here] at 2:08 PM on September 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

It's been said often enough, but it still is a source of wonder to me: anyone who believes every word in the Bible is literally true cannot have read the Bible. The Bible is full of self-contradictions and discussions and in the case of the New Testament: completely different versions of the same story. It is meant to be discussed and interpreted and even contested, as civilized Christians do.

Genesis, just to take an example, is clearly a tall story - it makes no sense at all. First of all: who did Cain and Abel marry? There weren't supposed to be any other people, remember? Or Noah and the Ark - please! You have to basically be incredibly stupid either to believe that or to believe that intelligent adults ever believed it in a literal sense.

I always imagine that the fundamentalists all have the children's Bible I had when I went to Sunday School, where all the sexy stuff and the weird stuff and the incomprehensible stuff had been weeded out. I was so (positively) surprised to find the real book in my granddad's bookshelves. I remained an atheist, though.
posted by mumimor at 2:13 PM on September 24, 2015 [7 favorites]

Buzzfeed has the highlights (lowlights?) of Dr. Carson's talk. Phil Plait has a response on his Bad Astronomy blog at Slate.
posted by ogooglebar at 2:14 PM on September 24, 2015 [4 favorites]

I was raised a young-earth creationist, and - ironically - it was a book arguing for young-earth creationism that cured me of it. "Wow," I said to myself, "these arguments are really bad. Laughably, depressingly bad."

The arguments haven't gotten any better.
posted by clawsoon at 2:17 PM on September 24, 2015 [17 favorites]

For most people, the response is, "It doesn't quite make sense, but someone smarter and more mature in their faith - someone up the theological ladder - has got it all figured out. I just don't get it yet... and that's okay, because I've got this community that I'm part of, and it's good, so... I'm sure it all makes sense to someone, so I won't think about it too much. I'll just keep working on this potato salad for the church potluck."

The people up the ladder, though, the ones who have thought about it, realize that they have to settle for hypocrisy, a giant boatload of "faith", or leaving the church. And the last option is the least appetizing, since by that time they've built their whole life around it.
posted by clawsoon at 2:22 PM on September 24, 2015 [8 favorites]

The problem, of course, is not that people believe strange, illogical shit. Every person on this planet believes his or her share of strange, illogical shit in one area or another, and not all of it fits into a God-shaped box.

I believe that I can move my body close enough to contemporary standards to be called "dancing," that I am not a bad driver, and that the Eagles will win a Super Bowl someday. None of these have anything to do with God and even a casual observer can easily tell that all three are false, but despite this I persist in my beliefs.

The problem is that some people make sincere efforts to base the laws under which all of us live on their particular flavor of God-shaped strange, illogical shit, and the response from the general public is "that's okay" rather than "What the holy screeching fuck is wrong with you?" often enough that they succeed.
posted by delfin at 2:36 PM on September 24, 2015 [17 favorites]

There is a comprehensive explanation. God did it (Ctrl-Alt-Sarcasm).
posted by AJScease at 2:38 PM on September 24, 2015

delfin: The problem is that some people make sincere efforts to base the laws under which all of us live on their particular flavor of God-shaped strange, illogical shit, and the response from the general public is "that's okay" rather than "What the holy screeching fuck is wrong with you?" often enough that they succeed.

I have a half-baked theory that a ridiculous idea is required to create a cohesive, long-lasting group - something that outsiders won't believe and will attack.

And a cohesive, long-lasting group is great for gaining political power.
posted by clawsoon at 2:39 PM on September 24, 2015 [6 favorites]

"It's been said often enough, but it still is a source of wonder to me: anyone who believes every word in the Bible is literally true cannot have read the Bible. The Bible is full of self-contradictions and discussions and in the case of the New Testament: completely different versions of the same story."

After being raised as a Catholic, I actually sat down and read the Bible from front to back in my late twenties. That is when I became a confirmed atheist. To this day I am dumbfounded actual adult human beings take such religious texts literally. I really wonder how many are just pretending?
posted by AJScease at 2:48 PM on September 24, 2015 [11 favorites]

Unless you're reading it in the original (yeah, right) you can tell yourself the inconsistencies are translation errors. Or, more likely, just not worry about it. In other words, what clawsoon said.
posted by Bella Donna at 3:01 PM on September 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

If one doesn't take the Bible literally, then it presents a perfectly adequate theory of biology, as Hegel makes clear:

There is essentially understanding in Nature. Nature's formations are determinate, bounded, and enter as such into existence. So that even if the earth was once in a state where it had no living things but only the chemical process, and so on, yet the moment the lightning of life strikes into matter, at once there is present a determinate, complete creature, as Minerva fully armed springs forth from the head of Jupiter. The Mosaic story of creation is still the best in its quite naïve statement that on this day plants came into being, on another day the animals, and on another day man. Man has not developed himself out of the animal, nor the animal out of the plant; each is at a single stroke what it is. In this individual, evolutionary changes do occur: at birth it is not yet complete, but is already the real possibility of all it is to become. The living thing is the point, this particular soul (Seele), subjectivity, infinite form, and thus immediately determined in and for itself. Already in the crystal, as a point, the entire shape is at once present, the totality of the form; the crystal's capacity for growth is only a quantitative alteration. Still more is this the case in the living thing.--The Philosophy Of Nature , p. 284

It seems that the one thing that evolutionists and creationists have in common is that they would rather squabble with each other than engage with this kind of thinking.
posted by No Robots at 3:01 PM on September 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

It seems that the one thing that evolutionists and creationists have in common is that they would rather squabble with each other than engage with this kind of thinking.


The Bible has no bearing on science, given that it is, at best, a collection of literature that makes a broad swathe of entirely unprovable claims. Why should scientists engage with it? It would be like asking them to engage with Harry Potter or Dianetics.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 3:13 PM on September 24, 2015 [18 favorites]

The point isn't that the creationists literally believe the Biblical account of creation. The point is that they are willing to publicly declare that they do. They are signaling the strength of their commitment to the group. They are demonstrating to their fellow regionalists that they are prepared to risk obloquy for the sake of group membership. It's called high-risk signaling, and its part of every fundamentalist religion. Examples are orthodox Jews with their beards, wigs, prayer shawls and side locks, Hindus with bricks tied to their penises, Buddhists with their shaved heads and saffron robes, Mormons with their underwear, and Muslims with all their various and deliberately uncomfortable customs. That's why it's silly to argue with creationists (of whom I am one, of a kind) rationally. The whole function of declaring for creationism is to show your affiliation-group that you are proud to pretend to believe something that defies logic. It's the same reason criminals get tattoos on their faces. It means you're damned serious about what your into.
posted by Modest House at 3:15 PM on September 24, 2015 [15 favorites]

The Bible has no bearing on science, given that it is, at best, a collection of literature that makes a broad swathe of entirely unprovable claims. Why should scientists engage with it? It would be like asking them to engage with Harry Potter or Dianetics.

I quoted Hegel, who considered himself a scientist, and who found that the Bible contains in naive form a scientific theory of biology.
posted by No Robots at 3:17 PM on September 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

Biologists engage with that kind of thinking, No Robots, but in a way that's informed by the fascinating discoveries of the past 200 years. Especially interesting stuff from the past few years ties together both evolution and development - the first which Hegel denies, the second which he talks about with "in this individual, evolutionary changes do occur" - in subjects like evo-devo, epigenetics, chimerism, etc.
posted by clawsoon at 3:19 PM on September 24, 2015 [6 favorites]

What biologists today do not engage with is essentialism, the idea that life can only be understood as sets of unique forms. Instead, we have reductive atomism.
posted by No Robots at 3:23 PM on September 24, 2015

You really should read up on evo-devo, ontogeny and speciation. You might be surprised to find how well they can be translated into debates about Platonic forms.
posted by clawsoon at 3:28 PM on September 24, 2015 [2 favorites]

Well, clawsoon, I am hopeful that these developments will lead biology on to the right path.
posted by No Robots at 3:31 PM on September 24, 2015

The fact that biology is a discipline that grounds its conclusions in reality suggests that it will continue to go down the right path. :-)

(And, BTW, the Platonic form ideals that reigned when DNA was considered supreme and the central dogma reigned - a surprisingly good match for Hegel's crystals, in which the totality of the form is present at the beginning - are breaking down as we discover more about the play that goes on from one generation of cells that builds us to another.)

(What would Hegel say about cancer, I wonder, if it were explained to him?)
posted by clawsoon at 3:40 PM on September 24, 2015 [4 favorites]

Hegel seems to be arguing that there's something more than the sum of the parts, and it's driving the creation process. That's not really any branch of science.
posted by scruss at 3:40 PM on September 24, 2015 [2 favorites]

Schopenhauer can be read as a genetic scientist too. Read "Will and Idea" as if he were talking about gene and expression. It really works pretty well.

But he was not a scientist either.
posted by yesster at 3:44 PM on September 24, 2015

Nature's formations are determinate, bounded, and enter as such into existence.

This is (more-or-less) what started happening when the first successful cell assembled. But before that - what? A fascinating question that Hegel couldn't have the knowledge at the time to even ask, and that nobody really knows the answer to now. (There are some guesses, though.)
posted by clawsoon at 3:55 PM on September 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

BTW, the more we learn, the fuzzier that the edges of the ideal forms look. The essentialism there was in biology is turning into essentialism-ish as the Mendelian paradigm bumps into the complicating web of fascinating new stuff we're learning about life.
posted by clawsoon at 4:02 PM on September 24, 2015 [4 favorites]

delfin: I believe ... that the Eagles will win a Super Bowl someday.

Oh, delfin, that is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard or read. Maybe the Pope can help?
posted by JKevinKing at 5:44 PM on September 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

Ben Carson Shattering Stereotype About Brain Surgeons Being Smart
posted by homunculus at 5:51 PM on September 24, 2015

Conspiracy Road Trip: Creationism (1 hour BBC road trip where an Irish comedian Andrew Maxwell takes 5 British people to road trip in a bus around southwestern parts of the USA and have their creationist ideas tested by exposure to scientists and facts).

Too long ... here is a 30 sec peek
posted by phoque at 6:49 PM on September 24, 2015 [3 favorites]

clawsoon: I have a half-baked theory that a ridiculous idea is required to create a cohesive, long-lasting group - something that outsiders won't believe and will attack.

Which seems related to the idea that part of the strength of The Bible as a teaching tool stems from its contradictions and outrageous claims; by the time a committed reader has waded though and rationalized all that stuff they're impervious to what most of us think of as rational argument. Specifically, I've heard the charge that some Christians develop a very flexible approach to Truth which allows them to ignore various kinds of bad behaviour in their own lives. These are the people I see arguing against evolution, as no tactic or falsehood is beneath them as long as it provides ammunition to attack biology.
posted by sneebler at 7:19 PM on September 24, 2015 [1 favorite]

Hegel seems to be arguing that there's something more than the sum of the parts, and it's driving the creation process. That's not really any branch of science.

No Robots gets on this Hegelian hobbyhorse on a regular basis and I've engaged him about it before because I was interested in unpacking the what and why of his convictions. I've gotten all sorts of what but remain fairly unclear on why.
posted by atoxyl at 9:59 PM on September 24, 2015

Hegel seems to be arguing that there's something more than the sum of the parts, and it's driving the creation process. That's not really any branch of science.


But that's exactly what the concept of emergence is in biological systems.
posted by prodigalsun at 10:22 PM on September 24, 2015 [2 favorites]

That's a great BBC show, phoque. It shows just how much sociology is involved in faith. A United Church preacher once said to me - and it was eye-opening - that she noticed how fundamentalists believed that if you reject young-earth creationism, you have to reject everything to do with Christianity.

I said to myself, "Huh. That's true." And that's exactly what one of the women in the BBC show says at a point of crisis-in-faith: "If I start accepting all of this, then I've got to accept that everything else is a pile of crap."

And that means losing all of the community, the hope, the uplift that comes with the best parts of fundamentalist Christianity. Fundamentalism says that you have to choose between all of that - and it's a powerful emotional pull! - and the truth.
posted by clawsoon at 8:26 AM on September 25, 2015

"If I start accepting all of this, then I've got to accept that everything else is a pile of crap."

Its too bad that the only Christianity she knows has to be taken literally or not at all.
posted by LizBoBiz at 10:10 PM on September 25, 2015

Wow, that BBC show was awful. The evolution-creation "debate" is difficult enough without the reality tv overlay. It's disaster tourism for intellectuals.
posted by sneebler at 5:46 PM on September 26, 2015