We need your help for this one, dear reader. What we’d like to do is create a fairly complete list of creationist come-backs to objections they encounter to their beliefs. The all-time classic is from ol’ Hambo’s website, years ago, when he instructed his drooling followers to respond to just about anything a scientist says about the past regarding old earth or evolution by saying: “Were you there?”
Since then we’ve encountered numerous responses (rejoinders, retorts, etc.) that are recommended by creationists, but we never compiled them into a list. The event that inspired this post was something from Klinghoffer that we blogged about a few days ago: Discoveroids Try To Rebut God of the Gaps. His recommended response: “Oh yeah, what about the multiverse?” That is supposed to stun you into silence.
We’ve encountered loads of others over the years, but we never kept track of them. We once tried to accomplish the opposite of what we’re proposing today. Some of you may remember The Curmudgeon’s Instant Rebuttal Project. But there we were looking for quick responses to crazy creationist claims. Today we want the crazy responses of creationists — which they think are totally effective.
Let’s see what you can come up with, dear reader. There must have been hundreds of such things that we’ve encountered and laughed about over the years that we’ve been blogging here. So help us out — give us some goodies for our list. When we have a load of them compiled, it’ll be a grand source of amusement. Let’s hear from you!
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The Sensuous Curmudgeon 
It’s only a theory.
That’s good!
If evolution were true, nobody would be gay.
Also, belief in evolution causes the gay.
I see lots of quote mining–from Darwin, of course, but also Lewontin, Dawkins, and others. They’ll quote a passage as long as it supports their position, but then stop when they begin losing. Weird–it’s almost like it’s deliberate.
richard: also, the gay disproves evolution, because it doesn’t lead to propagating the species.
Any fossil species found has always been well adapted, viable in its own way, not merely in transition between species.
@Bob it also disproves dentists. Because if there are dentists, then everyone is a dentist. Not everyone is a dentist, therefore there are no dentists.
Evolution is racist, or supports racist ideology.
A classic: “If evolution is real why are there still monkeys?”
“What would you expect to see buried in sedimentary deposits in the event of a global Flood? Billions of dead animals and plants! And that’s exactly what we find!”
Where are the transitional fossils?
One I encountered on YT, just recently: “Show me a cat turning into a dog”.
If evolution were real, why isn’t it happening today?
It contradicts the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.
That’s historical science.
@Bob Seidensticker, the bit of Lewontin that they always quote because it looks so ridiculous, about not allowing the supernatural to get a foot in the door, is one that I have criticised myself, until someone here pointed out that close reading shows that actually Lewontin is giving an unflattering summary of Sagan, with whom he is disagreeing.
@SC, off the top of my head; I’m sure you’ve already got a number of these, and you might consider some of them claims rather than rebuttals:
There are anomalies at overthrusts, therefore the geological record is unreliable. Geologists rely on uniformitarianism, which is disproved by the fact that catastrophes happen. Moreover, the radioactive decay of one isotope of rhenium can be speeded up 1 billion-fold (this is true, but only when it is completely ionised in stellar interiors, making possible beta-emission to the K shell), therefore radiometric dating is unreliable. The assumption of constancy of radioactive decay rates is an unprovable assumption (this argument had some force until Gamow explained the decay as quantum mechanical tunnelling, constrained by fundamental physical constants). Scientists change their mind, therefore they are unreliable. Consensus means that dissidents are being silenced which means that the consensus is wrong (here the DI, and the Heartland Foundation discussing climate science, overlap). Besides, there is no consensus anyway. There are gaps in the fossil record, therefore the record does not exist. A single counterexample is enough to overthrow a theory. It turns out that the appendix is useful after all, therefore there are no vestigial organs and the argument from bad design fails. What use is half an eye? Most mutations are destructive. No one can explain the origin of life, or of sex. Evolution is materialist and materialism can’t explain consciousness. The only reason people believe in evolution, is so that they can feel justified in going around raping and slaughtering people. Haeckel was very naughty, therefore the whole of developmental science is a fraud.
Y’all are doing a great job!
It (Insert feature here) is too complex to have arisen by chance.
“Were you there?”
That’s the verbalized version of the appeal to the distinction between historical and observational science.
“That’s microevolution.”
Jim Roberts: Ah yes, the micro-macro mambo.
My son’s best friend is a creationist, and that’s basically the only crutch he leans on. No matter how clear and obvious it is that a species has been observed changing into a new species, it’s “change within a kind” and not speciation, somehow. It’s astoundingly flexible.
Back to basics again:
Rocks (or fossils) don’t come with a label attached, do they? So it’s all based on assumptions.
“I wouldn’t want to live in a world without God.” “This all couldn’t happen by chance.” “It’s only a theory.” “You have to have absolute morality or everyone would just kill everyone.” “You just don’t understand god.” “You just want to sin.” “We have a book written by (or inspired by) god.” “Why are you mad at god?” “Mathematically impossible…”
As unlikely as it is for an individual
of a new species to appear, evolution demands that two individuals, male and female, appear at the same time and same place! Do you have any fossils of that?
@TomS. Has anybody tried to counteract that old creationist canard with examples from dog breeding? For example, when they were trying to breed a poodle, how did they get a male and female poodle at the same time?
@TomS, as miraculous as it is for an individual
of a new species to be created, creationism demands that two individuals, male and female, both be created at the same time and same place!
Here, as with all the creationist attacks on the plausibility of evolution, we can turn the tables, forcing the creationist to admit that the process that they are invoking is free from all the normal constraints, and therefore free to explain anything. Unfortunately, some of them might regard that as a strength rather than a fatal weakness
The best rejoinder that I’ve heard of (to the argument that evolution demands the coincidence of a male and female) is:
A first speaker of French was impossible without the appearance at the same time and place, of the first person who could understand French.
I’d like to credit the person who came up with that, in this forum not that long ago, but I’ve forgotten who.
Evolution is ‘just a theory’. Forgetting that so is religion.
#Ross Cameron for some reason they like insulting things with things that they are. I mean, can you imagine a scientist thinking that they are insulting religion by calling it a science?
@richard
There are those, such as represented by the Jack Chick comic “Big Daddy”, for whom Christianity is not s religion.
@Ross Cameron, religion is not a theory. It is a faith, which makes it unshakable. That is why compromise is betrayal, and the first rule of creationist logic [sic] is that what does not fit the way they read the Bible must be wrong. If you disagree, that is because you are starting out with different assumptions from those [true indeed!]
@Paul Braterman
It’s rather more complicated than that. One has an opinion which is not to be denied. The source of that opinion is a mixture of what has been traditional in one’s family, authorities and society, it is shaped by what can be thought of what is in the Bible. In the USA, traditional understanding of the “Founding Fathers” insofar as that can be fit.