This thread illustrates the challenge before evolutionists in a nutshell. The problem isn't that there are books out there like
Why Evolution is a Fraud, but that a creationist who reads such books thinks they contains good arguments and are in some way scientific.
From Henry Morris's
The Genesis Flood way back in the 1950's to Duane Gish's
The Fossils Say No! in the 1970's to Dembski's
The Design Inference of the 1990's, the creationist genre is rich and free-flowing and almost completely absent any legitimate science, let alone logic or rationality or sometimes even any connection to reality whatsoever. What's dismaying is that what creationists find convincing isn't the evidence or logic or accuracy, all of which are mostly absent in these works, but simply the flow of argument, and we know this because when we engage creationists in discussion it is most often the case that they have no scientific knowledge upon which to base their opinions. If a creationist reads that the argument about monkeys and typewriters is evidence against evolution, they'll buy it. Someone at this level of understanding is at least a few months of intensive study away from understanding our rebuttals. Since they're not going to actually engage in a period of intensive study, the ignorance about matters scientific will extend for years, likely their entire lives.
I'm fond of saying that explaining science to creationists can be like teaching calculus to your cat - it just isn't possible. I just heard Phil Plait, he of Bad Astronomer fame, say that one thing that keeps him going is when he receives email from someone who's read his writings, be it books, articles or website, and says that he was persuaded by this argument or that argument. But one of the worst things he can hear is when someone says something like, "I've switched to believing you now," in other words, someone who changed sides without understanding. We feel this way because our true goal isn't conversion but communicating knowledge. Once there's knowledge and understanding, the conversion will happen in its own way and in its own time, if it ever does happen.
This is far different from evangelical religion, where they only desire a willingness to mouth the words, "I accept Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior." How many times have we heard people say that they had trouble believing this sort of thing while never giving any external indications of their doubts? But science is not in any way like this. We never have any doubt about the process of science, because we know that, as demonstrated over the past several hundred years, scientific progress is inevitable because it allows our understanding of the universe to gradually align more and more with actual reality. In the long run it doesn't matter how well our theories accord with reality today, because we know that what's truly important is that they accord better than yesterday and not as well as tomorrow.
By this time Evolution Crusher realizes that the monkeys/typewriters example is not the strong point he thought it was, but he very likely has no idea why. He might not even believe what we're telling him about it, that it doesn't even have any relevance to evolution. If he only comes away thinking, "They ridiculed the monkeys/typewriters arguments, the miscreants, what's the point in even talking to these guys," we should understand that this is not a good thing. The challenge before us is how to help Evolution Crusher understand why this is such a bad argument.
Lawrence Krauss (well known professor of astronomy and author of
The Physics of Star Trek) believes that the problem with religion is one of education. Sam Harris (
The End of Faith) counters that it is clearly not an issue of education when we have engineers and architects flying planes into buildings in the name of religion. I tend to side with Krauss. For those who are just normal religionists, I think a little education can go a long way. The terrorists in the over-used 911 example of Sam Harris are not normal religionists, but are more cultists, and we now know that cults are a rather complex psychological issue.
So I do think that education is the way to go, and now it's only a matter of figuring out how.
--Percy
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