I live in Florida and work in healthcare, so I’ve often had “conversations” with creationists when they try to refute evolution.
Sadly . . . it is very rare for me to hear an original argument.
They fall into a few very specific categories:
- The watchmaker on the heath (William Paley).
- Evolution is only a theory (Universal Gravitation is also a theory, but this doesn’t make it hurt less when you fall and hit your head).
- The Universe is “fine-tuned” to permit life (we don’t have any other examples of other universes with different laws, and–also–they need to read up on the Anthropic Principle . . . both weak and strong versions).
- It seems unreasonable that life can just fall together by chance (ignores the realities of chemistry, physics, and statistics).
- Scientists haven’t created life in the lab (we haven’t established a permanent human settlement on Mars yet, either . . . but we eventually will if we don’t destroy ourselves first).
- Life violates the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, as order cannot come from disorder (a pot of boiling water with a lot of dissolved sugar is very disorderly, yet the sugar molecules will crsytalize in a neat, orderly, monoclinic structure if we put a stick in this solution and make rock candy).
- A partial eye (bacterial flagella, etc.) doesn’t function, so how does evolution create an eye unless every component occurs simultaneously all at once (ignores the idea that the antecedents of the eye were doing other, vital tasks. A partial bacterial flagella exists in the bacteria that causes plague).
- We never see transitional forms in the fossil record (well . . . we have. This is just a falsehood).
- If humans evolved from apes, then why do apes still exist? (a half-truth taken out of context. Humans actually are apes).
- 95% of the people in the world believe that God, or Gods (in one form or another) created the Universe. Isn’t it arrogant and delusional to claim that you know better than the vast majority of humanity? If a psychotic person believes we have been taken over by aliens, then we give him meds and/or lock him up because no one else sees the aliens. How are you different from the mentally ill person who believes in aliens that no one else sees? (I’m not obligated to believe in a flat Earth just because everyone else does).
I’m familiar with all of these arguments . . . except that I keep hoping I’ll hear something original when I read the Christian apologetics books.