Atheist Armaments

Back from break, finally.

The Creationist ministry website, Answers in Genesis, has developed some rather shrewd tactics for combating modern science. Occasionally, I check into their site to prepare myself for possible counter-arguments when debating Creationists — invariably, most Creationists eventually discover AiG. When they do, they copy-paste and ditto-head the text like they were on Rush Limbaugh’s television show.

The articles themselves are extremely well-written, semantically. The logical fallacies are well-hidden, lies by omission well-crafted, and outright lies and fabrications are glazed over so finely that you could probably sell it at a fine French Pastry shop. But as much as you may glaze a horse-apple, at the end of the day it’s still horse-shit.

So today, I went there and picked a random article from the ticker at the top. I chose Georgia Purdom’s “If human and chimp DNA are so similar … ” found here: ( http://answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v1/n2/human-and-chimp-dna )

Part I: The opening

This is your standard, run-of-the-mill introduction. There are a few components worth noting. These components are hardly unique to AiG, but are frequently used by them just the same:

1. Common knowledge
2. Uncommon knowledge
3. Argument
4. Conclusion

[1] When studying the human genome and its similarity to that of the chimp, scientists have recently concluded that 96% of our genome is similar. [2] However, most people are unaware that this percent pertains to the regions of our DNA that result in proteins. [3] It seems logical that if a protein performs a certain function in one organism, then that same protein should perform the same function in a variety of organisms. [4] This is evidence for a common designer as much as for a common ancestor.

Seems pretty straight-forward right? Ok — even though this is just half of the first paragraph, this format is used over and over and over again. The key thing to notice about this one, and future ones, is in #4: The conclusion-en-passant that is unsubstantiated, almost a non-sequitur. I say “conclusion-en-passant” because the conclusion itself begs the question “why” or “how do you know this” but is intended to just be accepted. Since we are all so accustomed to reading things in this format’s rhythm, it is quite easy to overlook #4 without critically questioning it. Granted, I’m pretty sure this is her thesis of the article, yet since it is stuck in the middle of the paragraph, it’s difficult to tell for sure. Again — this technique is hardly exclusive to AiG, but it’s one they use frequently. Ok, onwards, same paragraph:

[1] But most of the DNA sequence performs an unknown function and has been largely dismissed as “junk DNA.” [2] However, increasing evidence supports the view that “junk” DNA performs an important role. [3] For example, a recent report unexpectedly found specific sequence patterns in “junk” DNA which scientists have termed “pyknons.”1 [4] It has been suggested that these pyknons may be important in determining when and where proteins are made.

Same rhythm as before. Known-claim, less-known claim, argument, conclusion. It’s like reading something straight out of Fox News. I’ll give Georgia a little slack on the conclusion here, as she does go into more detail on the next paragraph (actual substantiation). One thing about #4 in that paragraph though: She’s using “Weasel Words”. Fox News also does this all the time: “It has been suggested,” “It has been said,” “Some say,” etc. Who suggested it? This should be a cited source rather than just asserting that she’s read it somewhere before.

[5] Within this “junk DNA” there may be large differences between man and chimp. [6] The areas of greatest difference appear to involve regions which are structurally different (commonly called [7.1] “rearrangements”) and areas of [7.2] heterochromatin (tightly packed DNA).

This paragraph is formatted a little differently. Here we have a different set of elements:

5. Broad statement
6. Claim
7. The “you can be a scientist too” components
   1. Show a “scientific” phenomena and its “common” term
   2. Use a fancy word with a vague description

Ok I call these the “You can be a scientist too” components. The target audience of AiG is the lay-person, by and large. I say this because (a) Science isn’t exactly a super-popular profession, and (b) fewer than 10% of scientists support creationism (1). It follows, therefore, that the inclusion of this data is intended for people with little-to-know professional science education. People who might misunderstand the difference between “theory” and “scientific theory”; People who have heard of DNA but don’t know what a peptide-bond is or how they are formed.

In other words, this information is included to make the explanation sound official. Lay-people, particularly Americans, are noticeably illiterate when it comes to science. Sandy Szwarc says that “… people are easily swayed by appearances of credibility and authority. Most people believed that credentials and university affiliations make something scientific. This belief was held nearly as much among those with the highest levels of education as the least.“(2) AiG capitalizes on this ignorance — they frequently toss out technical words wrapped with religious conclusions so that AiG readers can parrot those technical explanations in arguments. This makes the readers feel smart, even though they don’t necessarily UNDERSTAND what they’re reading.

Moving on…

Here are some other interesting differences between the human and chimp genomes which are often not reported:

Now this is just plain misleading — Why the “which are often not reported” disclaimer? Because it makes it sound like Science is trying to hide something from you. Like it’s going to show up in a book “101 Things Big-Science doesn’t want you to know!” Nevertheless, anytime I see “interesting” in the context of a science reference, I know there’s fallacies afoot.

1. The amount of chimp DNA is 12% larger than what it is in humans.
2. Several hundred million bases (individual components of the DNA) of the chimp genome are still unanalyzed.
3. In many areas of the DNA sequence, major “rearrangements” seem apparent. These account for perhaps 4–10% dissimilarity between chimps and humans.
4. Chimps have 23 chromosomes and humans have only 22 (excluding sex chromosomes for both species).

Ok, in order:

1) This is totally irrelevant, unless you didn’t get the memo that Lamarck’s theories were bogus. There are bacteria that contain more DNA than humans(3). Quantity of DNA isn’t necessarily equivalent to Quality of DNA — it’s possible that some of the DNA is “junk DNA” (as mentioned in Georgia’s article), or perhaps it accounts for certain other functions.

2) Georgia doesn’t specifically say why this matter (nor does she cite her sources). Furthermore, she’s intentionally misrepresenting her numbers here. Percentages initially (94% similar) and then discrete numbers when referencing the portion that we haven’t examined yet. Human DNA contains, if I remember correctly over 3 billion base-pairs. The significance in the comparison here is very ambiguous, and likely intentionally so.

3) Right — so how does this support the likelihood of a common designer. This is another “you can do science too!” argument. She does not clarify the significance of this statement, nor does she provide context or sources.

4) This is just funny. What she fails to tell you here is that the *reason* that chimps have one more chromosome is because in humans, those first two chromosomes have been fused together. This was scientifically predicted and experimentally proven. It actually supports the view of humans descending from Apes! So th is a deception by omission.

[8] Thus, the physical and mental differences between humans and chimps are most likely due to the differences in purpose and function of the so-called junk DNA. [9] This understanding should leave us more mindful of the awesome complexity of the Creator and His creation of DNA.

8. This conclusion was not proven or really SUPPORTED anywhere in the article! The article shows no correlation between differences and purpose/function of Junk DNA (mostly because it never even explains Junk DNA). This conclusion is a Non-Sequitur.
9. Religious puffery - it makes not actual assertions (other than stating opinion).

One technique of Hypnosis is to overwhelm your subject with stimulus, which shuts down their ability to critically think, and they respond more affirmatively to suggestion. With this malleable state of mind, you then tell them things that you want to bypass their ability to critically think.

This is exactly what AiG does here, on a small scale. There’s no reason to include the technical details in the article that they do — their primary readership isn’t going to be people who will know Pyknons from Phosphates. But if you throw a bunch of technical terminology out there, you’ll simultaneously (1) confuse them into accepting it (like Sandy said in her article) and (2) overwhelm them into just accepting it’s correct rather than asking questions.

This was a very brief article, by their standards — next time I’ll try and tackle a bigger one written by someone who’s a little more finessed than Georgia.

1. http://www.religioustolerance.org/ev_publi.htm
2. http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/2008/01/fun-science-facts-what-do-people-really.html
3. http://www.springerlink.com/content/yw8mlqf83ne4kktm/
4. http://godbegone.blogspot.com/2007/09/how-chimp-chromosome-2-proves-evolution.html (This page says “proves” although the correct verb would be “supports”)