The creationist “scientific” arguments for a young Earth are absurd, I and other authors have dealt with them at length elsewhere, and they do not merit further attention here.

The scientific case for rejecting such bad science (or non-science) is indisputable. But that doesn’t make it persuasive to creationists or other religiously motivated evolution skeptics.

The first problem with this argument (“teach the controversy”) is that there is no scientific controversy about evolution, and the second problem is that intelligent design doesn’t qualify as a scientific theory.

All the Creationists’ major objections have now been examined. What appear, at first glance, to be imposing obstacles turn out, on closer inspection, to be conjuring tricks employing inaccuracy, misrepresentation, dazzling numbers, and layers of confusion. As a teacher, I sometimes wonder after an exam why some students became confused on a particular point, and I try to understand how my presentation or the formulation in a book could have misled them. In the case of the Creationist authors we have studied, there is no great difficulty in seeing how muddles arise. They want to use scientific data and scientific principles to attack evolutionary theory. So they skim, searching for ammunition. When they find a claim that seems to be at variance with evolution, they seize it as a trophy to bring back to the Institute for Creation Research for public display. If they actually tried to understand the terrain they scavenge, they would have learned some interesting science. Instead, they seem to acquire only the most tenuous grasp of complex theories and then offer their muddled caricatures of important scientific works to as wide an (inexpert) audience as they can reach. (It is possible, of course, that their understanding is greater than that revealed in their confused discussions. But I am loath to accuse them of perverting ideas that they actually comprehend.)

To a biologist, the “it’s just microevolution” argument is painfully obtuse.

I am no investigator with an ear at the key-hole of Nature’s workshop, trying with vulgar curiosity to steal the secrets of her trade. The interests of science are as little to me as mine seem to have been to science.

The scientific process of peer-review seeks out and exposes fraud by design. But antievolutionist arguments are withheld from peer-review because they are driven entirely by frauds including misstatements, out-of-context quote-mining, and contrived or distorted falsehoods, and terms erroneously redefined into instigative reactionary nonsense unintelligible as anything other than propaganda. In short, if creationists knew how to expose a fraud, they wouldn’t be creationists anymore.

I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy — and when he talks about a nonscientific matter, he will sound as naive as anyone untrained in the matter.

Those who cavalierly reject the Theory of Evolution, as not adequately supported by facts, seem quite to forget that their own theory is supported by no facts at all.

I do not propose to argue the case for evolution, which I regard as being quite as well proven as most other historical facts, but to discuss its possible causes, which are certainly debatable.

We have learned from encounters with such ventures as 'creation science,' which purportedly refutes the theory of evolution, that we must be sceptical when nonscientist advocates offer purported analyses of scientific data to reinforce conclusions that they have already reached on nonscientific grounds.

I criticize the present methods because they are based on a rather low level of scientific thinking. We are capable of much greater sophistication in our solution of the problem.

Merely being offended, or worried, isn't a counter-argument. It isn't a deep reason not to think about something or discover whether or not something is true or useful.

Those who cavalierly reject the Theory of Evolution, as not adequately supported by facts, seem quite to forget that their own theory is supported by no facts at all. Like the majority of men who are born to a given belief, they demand the most rigorous proof of any adverse belief, but assume that their own needs none.