Playing Chess with Pigeons is the weblog of Troy Britain.
The title comes from a very amusing description of what it is like to debate creationists about evolution by Scott D. Weitzenhoffer made in a comment on Amazon.com regarding Eugenie Scotts’ book Evolution Vs. Creationism: An introduction (2004):
Debating creationists on the topic of evolution is rather like trying to play chess with a pigeon — it knocks the pieces over, craps on the board, and flies back to its flock to claim victory.
The pro-creationist reviewers of this book clearly demonstrate this to be true.
Man, have I been there. It’s not just that antievolutionists are often completely ignorant of evolutionary theory, the state of the evidence, and the history of science. There have also been numerous times where I have been debating an antievolutionist or responding to their claims that I would have to take time to explain their own arguments to them.
“No, you meant to say “Piltdown Man” was based on a human skull and an orangutan jaw, not on a pig’s tooth. That was “Nebraska Man” and it was based on a peccary tooth.”
Is it so much to ask for that if you’re going to try and use Piltdown Man against us that you at least know what the hell it was, and that you get your own arguments against it straight?
Add to this their constantly moving goal-posts, their tendency towards scatter-shot (keep throwing stuff against the wall and hope that something sticks) mode of argument, their constant digressions to irrelevancies, non sequiturs and other logical fallacies, and it gets pretty breathtaking.
[You can buy a "playing chess with pigeons" quote T-shirt at Evo-T's.]
