Thursday, July 28, 2005

Creationist actually stumped?

Jason Rosenhouse, one of the contributors to the Pandas Thumb went to the recent Creation Mega Conference in America. Aside from his sometimes amusing descriptions of the usual creationist rubbish he also managed to ask a few questions of the speakers after some of their talks. One was Werner Gitt, who proposes the concept that DNA and other aspects of biology are 'information' a lot like a dictionary or a computer program. It appears that Jason was, in a stunning move, actually able to stump Werner and get him to blindly contradict himself

I pressed on. But we're not talking about believing in God and evolution. We're talking about accepting your particular theories about information on the one hand and evolution on the other. You said explicitly that that was impossible. So you were being disingenuous when you told the other fellow that scientists accept your ideas.

And this is where Amazing Thing Number Two happened. He shrugged and looked down at the floor. He actually looked abashed! Since I didn't think creationists were capable of shame, I considered this a major victory.

Sounds like a good time all around really. Sometimes this is like shooting fish in a barrel however, because most ID-proponents and creationists are almost terrified to answer precise questions. This is particularly true of any pseudoscience in fact and is one of the primary means one can use to combat them.