Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What are the better tools to fight creationism?
Professor Laurence A. Moran: Education.
Jacobsen: What have you found to be the shortest arguments to counter creationist, especially young earth creationist, propaganda?
Moran: There are no gods.
Jacobsen: What is the current initiative of the creationist movement in Canada and United States to further their Biblical agenda?
Moran: Most creationists in Canada are not Young Earth Creationists. The most popular stance these days is some form of Intelligent Design Creationism.
Jacobsen: How can Canadians arm themselves against it?
Moran: By promoting atheism.
Jacobsen: What are some of the early misconceptions about evolution undergraduates have in their first year of education with you?
Moran: Most of them don’t understand modern evolutionary theory. They think that natural selection is all there is to evolution.
Jacobsen: How does the problem of young earth creationism compare with homeopaths, ghost hunters, believers in the powers of crystals, climate change deniers, and those that believe in the devil (and the cure for the non-problem through exorcism)?
Moran: Young Earth Creationism is the worst because it’s completely at odds with everything we know about the natural world.
Jacobsen: If you look at advanced students such as graduate students in biology, what are some misconceptions that even some of them may have about evolutionary theory?
Moran: They don’t understand Neutral Theory and population genetics.
Jacobsen: Where do these anti-science problems stem other than our own evolved information processing flaws?
Moran: If you’re talking about creationists then the problems come from being taught that science is wrong.
Jacobsen: Thank you for your time, Professor Moran.
Moran: You’re welcome.
“If you’re talking about creationists then the problems come from being taught that science is wrong.”
This is hard to believe but it is demonstrably true. The intelligent design folks are always talking about science when defended their entirely literary creations. They love black holes and subatomic particles. It’s only the more easily observable natural sciences that they deny.