I was educated as a biologist and evolutionary theory remains an intellectual interest of mine. I spent many hours in my youth arguing with “scientific” creationists. These hours were largely spent educating the creationists on the actual theory they were criticizing, or debating the finer philosophical points of scientific methodology. I eventually gave up due to pure frustration because in the end creationists believe what they believe as a matter of faith. You can’t argue somebody out of his faith.
So this post over at Powerline pointing to a biology professor who is denouncing the Powerline guys for being idiots because one of them doesn’t believe in evolution grabbed my attention .
Creationists are exasperating because they never study evolutionary theory in any detail. Since they start with the unshakable presumption that the theory is wrong, they can never actually honestly analyze the theory and therefore can never understand it in any depth. They just skim over the theory looking for points that confuse them and then pronounce the misunderstood points as fatal flaws within the theory itself.
Frankly, most creationists’ knowledge of evolutionary theory boils down to, “them scientist fellas what says we alls comes from monkeys!”
