Bill throws in the towel

Bill Keezer offers what he asserts are his final thoughts on the Creation/Evolution debate.

I have decided to ignore the topic of ID vs. evolution from here out. Based on what I am reading and have read and on the responses to various posts of mine and others, a reasoned debate is not possible, whether desirable or not.

I fear this is precisely the response the creationist crowd is hoping for. If you can't win converts, at least you can make the topic so contentious that people throw up their hands and walk away. This leaves the field clear for creationists to indoctrinate students with ideas that don't threaten their fragile view of God.

All that is required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. Walking away and doing nothing plays into the hands of the Creationists.

Is it going overboard to call them evil? I don't think so. And indeed, let's consider the fruits of Creationist thought, in Bill's words:

With the exception of the post by the Maverick Philosopher, every ID argument I have seen takes data from science and distorts and manipulates it in various ways to reach conclusions that cannot be supported. ID starts from a belief in God and then looks for something to support it. Some of the illogic is so strange that trying to counter it is almost impossible without massive reviews of current science. No ID argument I have seen explains anything comprehensively, and all reveal an ignorance of biology, biochemistry, and geology.

At best, ID/IOT is inept. It can't comprehend real science, and presumes to be able to teach something worthwhile about science. Since the distortions and manipulations persist no matter how many times they're corrected, it's hard to attribute them to anything but ... intelligent design.

If the opponents of evolution are so willing to lie for their cause, what other fruits do you suppose they have to offer?

I also have to take issue with one of Bill's statements:

Evolutionists, on the other hand, do not bother to answer any ID argument. They try to make it go away by saying it is not science. What are they afraid of? I think I stumbled across the answer in a comment to a post in another blog. Many evolutionists take it at face value not understanding the science behind it, which is very complex and deep. Faced with having to defend their position, they panic because they can't. For them it is as much a religious issue as ID is for Christian theists.

I think this statement, at best, overgeneralizes. To be sure, there are a great many people who accept evolution, but don't understand how it works. But then again, there are a great many people who accept TV, and have no idea how it works. If an activist group managed to get a school board to teach the "alternative" "theory" that the picture and sound got from the studio to the TV screen by sympathetic magic and voodoo, I'd be willing to bet a large number of people would object, and would be completely unable to defend electricity and electronics.

People who deal with evolution for a living have answered quite a number of ID claims. The blood clotting cascade may be Irreducibly Complex now, but a very plausible history of incremental development can be constructed. Those who argue a plausible history cannot be constructed have never been able to show why the proposed history is not plausible. (And the fact that evidence tending to support it has turned up in the places an evolutionary explanation would lead people to look only serves to make the explanation more plausible.)

Other ID arguments about particular systems have been similarly answered.

Of course, there are many ID arguments that have not been answered. These are the arguments where...

Some of the illogic is so strange that trying to counter it is almost impossible without massive reviews of current science.

"Purple is green and sheep smell loud. Let's hear your science explain that!"

Arguments have to make a minimum amount of sense before they can be addressed.