Row and Bee

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Heil Creationism!

Kilre

on Nov. 18, 2009

There are several factors that went into today's image. One was a lecture by one of my heroes, PZ Myers, of Pharyngula fame. Yes, that makes me one of those crotchety "new atheists", and personally I'm fine with the term. But that's beside the point. He discusses the argument…s that creationists use, and from the singular creationist seminar I went to, he's nailed the description. You can watch it here. I guarantee it'll be entertaining.

The other influence is also from Pharyngula, and two related blogs: kittywhumpus and Greg Laden's Blog. The subject this time was coverage of PZ's debate with creationist Gerald Bergman, wherein Bergman makes the wonderful non sequitur that all creationists bring up, equating evolutionary theory with Hitler and the Holocaust; incidentally, our own creationist lectures included how evolution was responsible for the Holocaust, as well.

It's almost always an appeal to emotion of some sort; they can't make a coherent logical argument based upon the many facts, all of which are covered ad nauseam: Hitler dogmatically misused science to further his own ends, he was a dictator that abused human rights, he used religion to control his troops. None of these speak for the argument that Hitler used evolution to kill millions of people, especially even when Darwin himself said that evolution, as it acted in nature, should not be applied to humans: it would be unethical otherwise.

All that aside, it's a dick move to pull out Hitler in a debate. You've basically got no argument left at that point, and you'd rather go the route of absurdity than rational discussion.