We have mentioned each of these three fallacious arguments before, but it should be useful to collect them into one post — in case you need to point them out to some woeful soul who may think that there’s something rational to be said about creationism.

The first example of illogic was highlighted in Answers in Genesis: The Anthropic Principle. That was a few months ago, so we’ll discuss it briefly again.

The Anthropic Principle, the observation that the laws of nature and the fundamental physical constants seem remarkably suited to our own existence, is a favorite of creationists, who “conclude” that the universe was deliberately designed. We’ve reviewed this in Common Creationist Claims Confuted, some of which we’ll copy here:

[A]s a scientific hypothesis pointing toward a Designer it’s a bit of a dead end because it’s utterly untestable. […] Whenever the Anthropic Principle is mentioned, we find ourselves compelled to ask: How does one compute the odds against this specific universe? From where we sit, the odds favoring the universe seem to be 100%. Where is the evidence suggesting that this particular universe shouldn’t exist, or that its attributes should have been different from what they are?

Answers in Genesis (AIG) demonstrated fallacious thinking about the Anthropic Principle when they tried to explain away a recent finding that one of the fundamental constants isn’t ideal for maximum galaxy and star formation, and therefore the universe isn’t all that it might have been to encourage the existence of life. So how did they deal with this? Rather than abandoning the Principle as being erroneously conceived, they stayed with it — choosing to ignore the evidence that contradicted their hypothesis

They argued that the constant, although not ideal, was nevertheless good enough. Then they claimed that we couldn’t know what God would regard as ideal, so maybe — from God’s viewpoint — it was perfect. Finally, they insisted that the other constants still pointed to a designed universe. Then, as if that weren’t bad enough, they waved away the inconvenient evidence by saying that the imperfect constant may have been originally perfect, but it had become corrupted as a consequence of the Fall (which somehow didn’t affect the other constants.)

They went through some other gyrations too, which led us to conclude our post with a restatement of the cosmic fine-tuning argument, as enhanced by AIG:

The fundamental constants are perfectly designed for life, therefore Oogity Boogity! And even if they’re not so perfectly designed, Oogity Boogity anyway!

The same fallacy, but not involving cosmic design, came up in Discovery Institute Tolerates Bad Design, where Casey Luskin argued that even bad design is nevertheless design. At the time we rhetorically asked:

[I]f poor design is nevertheless the handiwork of the great celestial designer — whose name dare not be spoken — then how, pray tell, does an ID “researcher” know when he’s looking at evidence of ID?

The next example of creationist illogic is the classic First Cause argument, popularized — but not originated — by Thomas Aquinas. All of his five “proofs” are fallacious (or at least unpersuasive), but many theologians and believers rely on them anyway. The First Cause comes up all the time in creationist literature. It’s the weakest argument by far because it violates the premise of causality by insisting that the “conclusion” of God is exempt from the premise that everything requires a cause. We recently discussed it in Institute for Creation Research v. Stephen Hawking, and it popped up in one of our earliest posts, Flaming Idiocy About Evolution, so we won’t re-hash it here.

The third example of creationist illogic was discussed only yesterday in Discovery Institute: There’s No Junk DNA. There we reminded you of the Creationists’ Scientific Method:

1. Select a conclusion which you hope is true.

2. Find one piece of evidence that possibly might fit.

3. Ignore all other evidence.

4. That’s it.

But our insight about the logical fallacy that was involved if there is any junk DNA in the genome came to us in one of our comments in which we said:

The key claim of the Discoveroids is that they can spot the designer’s work because it gives the appearance of design, and the things that they (and only they) discover in this way couldn’t possibly have evolved (so they claim). If you take away the appearance of design, then there’s no evidence for and no reason to hypothesize about a designer. If, however, you don’t care about evidence, and you start with the assumption of design, then yes — the designer could have designed DNA any old way.

Okay, so where are we now? All of the fallacies discussed above are really different examples of the same fallacy, which goes like this: A creationist claims to have evidence to support his treasured belief — the belief he had from the beginning of his “research.” When his evidence fails, it doesn’t occur to him — as it would to a scientist — to reconsider the correctness his belief. Instead, he just diddles with or completely ignores the inconvenient evidence and clings to his belief anyway. This is commendable as an exercise in theological faith, but it’s not how science is done.

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