anthonybaxter

the SMH's Web Diary recently hosted a "debate" on evolution vs Creationism. It was the usual festival of creationist quote-mining, deliberate misrepresentations and outright crackpottery. And then the host decided to sum up the debate. It's a classic of the "no no, everyone's beliefs are equally valid and people should be nice to each other" bullshit that so-called fair-minded individuals reach for in this sort of situation.

It's also crap.

This is not a matter of abstract philosophy, this is science. In science, we have theories, and we have evidence. On the basis of this evidence, we can then determine whether a theory still holds - if not, it is discarded or modified. If the evidence fits, then the theory remains accepted. This could also be called a "wrong answer" and a "right answer", respectively. This is the case here - the creationist theories (such as they are) are either crap or so abstract that you can draw no useful conclusions from them. In this particular debate, it was more of the former than the latter. This was largely because the creationist side wasn't just the (vaguely subtle) Intelligent Design crackpots, but fully-fledged Young Earth Creationist, Every-word-in-the-bible-is-true whackjobs.

Now, if these sad, ignorant dropkicks were happy to just sit in the corner drawing pictures of their favourite bible moments in crayon, I wouldn't care. But they don't - they instead are out there polluting our public discourse with their utter shite. And it does no-one any favours to coddle them.

[update I waded into the discussion thread on this piece, and found that the "moderator" (who posted the above summing-up) believes that "neither creation or evolution should be taught as science." For fuck's sake, what a complete tool.]