Carl Sagan was the unofficial voice for naturalistic atheism for many years until his death in 1997. In one of his last books, The Demon-Haunted World, Sagan lamented that in spite of monumental public education efforts to teach random chance processes had produced all life, only 9% of American citizens accepted this as true. Sagan's solution was for people to learn critical thinking skills. However, Dr Sagan never applied these same critical skills to his own unshakable belief in naturalistic evolution. Professor Phillip Johnson does an excellent job of doing just that in his book, Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds. Here is a summary of some classic distortion techniques used all too often to defend evolution.

BLIND APPEAL TO AUTHORITY

This is often the first resort used to discredit those who do not cower to the majority opinion. Yet every major breakthrough in science has happenede because some researcher looked outside of the prevailing opinion. An authority stating that something is true does not make it true. When searching for the truth , rely on the quality and quantity of evidence rather than empty claims. In science, experimental evidence must reign supreme - not opinions or appeals to authority.

SELECTIVE USE OF EVIDENCE

Evidence can be found to support any point of view - no matter how absurd. Truth is usually found by examining what most of the evidence supports. For examples, lots of animals have similar appearances and features. Is it any surprise that some fossils can be found which combine features intermediate between features of two different animals? Just because a bicycle and a motorcycle have two wheels does not mean that random changes in a bike can turn it into a motorcycle. What does the bulk of the fossil evidence reveal? An honest viewing of the fossil record reveals distinctly different types of animals without immediate transitions.

AD HOMINEM ARGUMENTS

Ad hominem is Latin for "to the man". Those who publicly defend the scientific evidence for creation are often greeted with personal insults and attacks which hacve nothing to do with the evidence. The weaker the evidence for evolution, the more vehement the atteacks become. The essence of the attacks are, "Creationists believe in God. Therefore they are biased and anything they say on the subject of origins cannot be trusted". Everyone is biased. Evolutionists whose jobs and funding depend upon agreement with naturalistic interpretations are also highly biased. It is the quality and testability of the scientific evidence which must determine a theory's validity.

TESTABLE CONCLUSIONS

Learn to distinguisn between interpretations and facts. Carl Sagan stated, "The Cosmos is all there is, or ever was, or ever will be." This is opinion... not science. How could statements such as this ever be tested? On the other hand, creationists make the following types of claims:

There has been a worldwide flood in the past.
Random information can not produce ordered complexity by natural processes.
One type of life is not observed to change into a distinctly different type.
Mutations destroy rather than create useful functioning features.

These statements are vscientifically testable and there is enormous evidence to support each.

STRAW MAN ARGUMENT

A straw vman argument is when a position is distorted and the dist0rtion then attacked. This is repeatedly done by evolutionists. The creation/evolution debate is about determining the truth of the past. ~Yet evolutionists constantly set up a straw man attack by trying to make this an issue of religion verses science.

BEGGING THE QUESTION

Begging the question is asking a question to which you have already assumed an answer. Evolutionists start with the assumption that creation is a myth, there has never been a worldwide flood, and all animal life has evolved from a common source. By defining science to exclude supernatural intervention by God, evolutionists have begged the question by eliminating one possibility before starting the debate. No search for the truth or honest debate is possible.

May we resist the pressure to conform to the fuzzy reasoning and faulty logic which surrounds evolution.

Bruce Malone

THE DOWNWARD COURSE OF TRIFLING WITH ERROR

The Christian recognises the error -

Then he tolerates it; then he excuses it; then he defends it; then he condones it; and finally he embraces it!