The moderator in the debate between Ken Ham and Bill Nye on whether creationism is a viable scientific pursuit asked, “What would change your minds?” Scientist Bill Nye answered, “Evidence.” Young Earth Creationist Ken Ham answered, “Nothing. I'm a Christian.” Elsewhere, Ham stated, “By definition, no apparent, perceived or claimed evidence in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the scriptural record."
I remember that debate. Bill Nye didn't do to well (as a debater) I thought. And I remember Ham retreating to "faith" at one point.
I have to say there is one line of argument that does work for Creationists, though it's logic is valid but not sound. Basically it says that if scripture is true, then anything that contradicts it must be false. We can't argue with that. The Creationist will add that as God is all powerful (says so right here in the Bible and the Bible is true) any apparent contradiction is explained by the ability of God to create things that look any way he wants them to, which leads inexorably to "lastTuesdayism", to which the reply is that didn't happen 'cos it says so right here ....
@nPeace:
I should probably give a serious response to your OP.
Your problem I think is that you left too many doors open for people to offer alternative explanations. May I attempt a rewrite?
A good friend of mine died a few months ago of cancer. He had stage 4 lung cancer that had spread to other areas of his body. He had chemotherapy but was never expected to live long. The disease was documented fully with Xrays and so on and he saw a doctor on a regular basis.
Now, let's leave what really happened and pretend that one day some guy walked up to him, looked at him, and he immediately felt better. The doctor took more Xrays and did more tests to find that the cancer had totally disappeared. Cancer does get better on its own sometimes and they call that spontaneous remission, but I've never heard of that happening at such an advanced stage.
Now, the question is would that cause me to consider some supernatural agency? It certainly should be a reason to do an intensive investigation. I'm not sure how I would investigate a supernatural cause, but I wouldn't rule that out.
Something else:
You seem to be unhappy that people aren't giving your arguments sufficient value, and suggesting that they are closed minded and so on. You may be overlooking something. Most of we skeptics that have frequented discussion forums like this one have heard these Creationist arguments over and over for decades, and have seen convincing rebuttals to all of them. We may be polite enough to read what you have to say to see if you have come up with something new, but that seldom or never happens. So what you are seeing may not be the result of closed minds, but simple unwillingness to tread a familiar path one more time.
By the way, I'm at that stage in the other thread. We seem to be talking past each all the time, and our world views are so far apart, that's inevitable. So I'll take this opportunity to thank you for the polite discussion, and move on.
