Diaphanitas

Yesterday I was listening to a radio debate between Reginald Finley (the Infidel Guy who hosts a freethought radio show) and Bob Dutko (who hosts a Christian talk show). The topic of the debate, I believe, was "Does God exist," but the two also discussed other things such as the Theory of Evolution, Abiogenesis, and the Big Bang. Reginald is an atheist and Bob is a theist who doesn't accept the three aforementioned theories. It was overall a very interesting debate, but the biggest problem is that Bob tended to bring up the usual creationist claims. There were several parts that particularly bothered me:

• The Definition of Science: Bob didn't want to stick with the usual meaning of science. Science deals with the observable, natural universe. It doesn't say anything about supernatural phenomena. It's more interested in asking "How does something work?" rather than "Who did it?" or "Why?" Moreover, it's concerned with mechanisms. How did this or that happen? But Bob wanted to include supernatural phenomena in science. That is significant because if we include the supernatural phenomena in science, then we can include any god claim in the realm of science. The idea of the Flying Spaghetti Monster could be a scientific theory in that case. We could say similar things for Zeus, Thor, and Horus. Someone can say that we're just substituting one god claim for another, and he or she would be right. But then it'll all become one great Battle of the God Claims, and we have plenty of "God of the Gaps" arguments (where we simply just appeal to a supernatural force whenever we can't think of a natural one), and yet not one of them lets us know of a testable and falsifiable mechanism that shows how things work in the universe. And were are simply adding more mysteries to existing mysteries.



• Quote-Mining: Stephen Jay Gould was a famous paleontologist, biologist, and historian of science (and proponent of the Theory of Evolution). He died a few years ago, but before he died, he was considered to be one of the greatest theoreticians in his field. Well, anyway, Bob read a passage from one of Dr. Gould's writings, and it seemed that even Dr. Gould was doubtful about some aspect of the Theory of Evolution! Actually, Bob was taking the passage out of context. Anti-Evolution people do that often. They even quote-mine out of Darwin's Origin of Species. I wouldn't be surprised if someone did something similar to me. Some of my readers know that one of my favorite Sailor Moon arguments has to do with the "mythological switch" between Sailor Pluto and Sailor Saturn. Well, I say that there was no "switch" and I like to show why. Imagine someone quote-mining me and saying that I actually don't support the idea that there was no switch!



• Argument from Design: Bob kept saying that the observable universe is very complex. I think that most of us can agree with that. But Bob thought that complexity implies design by an intelligent force, and he would not mention any actual evidence for that. Simply pointing to the complexity of the universe and claiming design is begging the question. You have to show things were designed by an intelligent force in the first place. We know that things like watches are created by humans, and we know that critters and animals make footprints, but (as far as I can tell) we have yet to show that this thing or that thing is objectively the mark of a cosmic designer.



• Double Standards: There was at least one instance in which Bob made a strong claim, but didn't cite any specific sources. (The one I can think of is the claim that there is no logical way that life can come from non-life.) When Reginald made a strong claim, Bob insisted that Reginald needed to cite a specific instance or source. When Reginald couldn't do that, Bob basically said, "You can't come on my show, make such a claim, and not expect to back it up."



• Beyond One's Expertise: One of the most insidious tricks that an Anti-Evolution person can do in a verbal debate is this: know your opponent's field of expertise, but then start asking questions that deal with technical aspects of some field beyond your opponent's field of expertise, keeping doing that until your opponent can't answer the questions sufficiently, say that your opponent doesn't have any good explanation for the phenomena, and then conclude that your opponent's theories aren't any better than yours. Bob did that to Reginald near the end even though Reginald admitted that he isn't a scientist.

I was taken aback by how many tricks and fallacies Bob used in the debate. In fact, if I were a teacher teaching a class on logical fallacies, I would use the debate as a good example of one that features many of the kinds of fallacies that someone is likely to encounter in debates like this and even in day-to-day life.

Latin word of the post: scientia, "knowledge" or "science."