A few people in this thread were suggesting we needed a creationist bingo card — Skeptico obliged earlier this month.
You need a couple of randomized versions of this, but you’ll still have the problem that people all over the auditorium will be shouting “Bingo!” five minutes into the talk, and by the end, you’ll have to give everyone a prize.
‘Repeats debunked arguments?’ You may as well start with that one crossed out.
Forgot “PILTDOWN MAN / SCIENTISTS ARE DISHONEST” and “ATHEIST CONSPIRACY!”
I think that would be fabulous to print on cards and hand out at creationist talks, but it also ought to have information/places to go to get information as to why each of those squares is wrong – that way it’s educational propaganda!
Got my random card generator all set, set up a 5 by 5 grid in an Excel sheet with each cell linked to a second sheet with the scoring items entered, went to random.org to get a random 24 number sequence, copy/pasted that sequence next to the scoring items and sorted by that column – nearly instant randomness! You can even increase randomness from card to card by adding more scoring items and grabbing a longer random sequence, since only the first 24 items will appear on the card. This ought to make listening to the cretards far more entertaining, but can we get an over/under for the fastest bingo?
Are the folks over at Uncommon Descent reading off this card when they compose their pathetic blog entries?
I didn’t see, “Why are there still monkeys?” No creationist bingo card is complete without monkeys.
A more generic version – CRETIGO ! – by me, a few years back :
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/699048/posts
Many more entries for more possible cards !
We play Colloquium Bingo here in the physics department. There are lots of buzzwords in science (as you know), and giving a colloquium seems to compel people to make tenuous connections between their specific field and Big Ideas (CMB, quantum entanglement, etc). I’ve never gotten the nerved to yell out “Bingo!”, though.
Great idea, great card, but It seems to be missing “watch” or “watchmaker”. “747” would be good too.
I’m just a little bit confused. Is the JOKER square in the middle automatically marked off, or do you have to wait till someone mentions Dembski, Behe, or Johnson?
Hmm. Something tells me that list is too short…
“and by the end, you’ll have to give everyone a prize.”
If you sit through an entire creationist lecture don’t you deserve a prize?
Get this off the web an destroy all copies! The way the human mind works is this will just make people think creationism has a point. Better to make a proper evolutionary board that will spread the message.
Upon further review I see that “Watch” is indeed included…K, I’m stickin with the “747” “Junkyard” thing then.
1) put numbers in lower right corner, have citations of refutation on the back side.
2) make events more clearly defined (darwinism is theology = darwinist/darwinism)
3) surplus of results so there is randomness to who wins.
HAHA. That card should be required to enter any ID lecture.
I’m considering bringing some of these when Dawkins comes to Chicago in October. (AAAAAAAAAAAAA!) Anyone?
I have a new favorite drinking game.
I think there should be a square that says
“Pack public meeting with legions of creationist sympathizers.”
And maybe one that says
“I’m not LIStening! La la la la!”
No, wait, why not a square for
“Science is a matter of faith, and evolution is just part of its dogma.”
I agree with Traffic Demon (#4). We need randomized versions with the entries drawn from a bank of possibilities larger than the size of the card, so that each card has only a subset of all possible inanities.
Where is the PYGMIES + DWARFS box???
Where is the PYGMIES + DWARFS box???
If the card were to be expanded to include all the wacky forms of creationism, “Moon dust!” needs its own space.
“Darwin recanted evolution on his deathbed” FTW
I can imagine a lecture now:
Behe[sounding familiar to anyone who has seen “It’s the great Pumpkin Charlie Brown!”
Behe: “blah blah blah blah blah”
Bingo!
Bingo!
Bingo!
[Behe looking confused]
Maybe some readers near Joplin Missouri could take the card in to this lecture series and give us some real data on how long it takes to get a “bingo.” How long to fill the entire card would also be interesting.
In a curious demonstration of the fractal nature of reality, one could take the central JOKER square and divide it into 25 squares: Behe, Wells, etc.
Bingo Halls for Jesus.
Yep, that was the one. Five minutes into Dembski’s lecture I was wishing I had thought to bring one of those.
To tell you the truth though – Dembski has learned. He used to mousetrap to explain evolution (“coevolution and cooption”), albeit badly, and mentioned McDonald’s demolition of the analogy. Still, he did use it, so I suppose you could have claimed the point (and he most certainly used Mt Rushmore).
It’s funny to see that Dembski has learned from his critics – he has learned how to anticipate and side-step the arguments.
Yep, that was the one. Five minutes into Dembski’s lecture I was wishing I had thought to bring one of those.
To tell you the truth though – Dembski has learned. He used to mousetrap to explain evolution (“coevolution and cooption”), albeit badly, and mentioned McDonald’s demolition of the analogy. Still, he did use it, so I suppose you could have claimed the point (and he most certainly used Mt Rushmore).
It’s funny to see that Dembski has learned from his critics – he has learned how to anticipate and side-step the arguments.
I’d much rather play creationist Battleship.
“YOU SUNK MY HMS BEAGLE!”
I disagree on the didactic utility of this card. It only works if you already understand that the things printed in the squares are wrong, so it only serves to get a howl out of the monkeyhouse, not to turn people away from the choir.
A creationist if confronted with this card would just say “yes, we say those things at every talk because they are true and part of our argument against Darwinism.” They could also easily produce their own “Darwinist Bingo” cards with squares that say “MICROEVOLUTION = MACROEVOLUTION”, “MOLECULES TO MAN”, “EVOLUTION IS A FACT”, “HUMANS = ANIMALS” and other things that are characterizations of what anyone speaking in favor of evolution would say and which creationists think are bunk.
@jpf – while creationists characterise evolutionary biology that way, how many talks about evolution have you been to that use coded buzz words like that? Could you imagine going to a public talk by an evolutionary biologist about their area of specialisation and hearing them use enough of those terms for anyone to win at Bingo? I’d be surprised if even a talk debunking creationism hit on too many of them. Concepts, maybe, buzz words? Not so sure. But that isn’t a fair comparison (unless Eugenie Scott or Barbara Forrest is speaking) – these are talks about a person’s primary area of professional expertise. Imagine PZ giving a talk to the public on zerbrafish evolution. Now think of a Bingo card which would work for PZ, Eugenie Scott, Francisco Ayala, Rich Lenski, Peter Raven and Richard Dawkins.
I thought it was “tornado/junkyard/brand new car!” Or did they change to “tornado/junkyard/747?”
How many creationists do you hear say “As Darwin has been quote-mined as saying…” or “If I may put forward a debunked argument…” That card makes some judgments about the things that a creationist would say that are never literally stated by creationists. They do those things, but, again, one would already have to understand that before one would recognize them as such. (Who is the target audience for this card?)
Likewise, a creationist would make judgments about the things that a person speaking in favor of evolution would say, and categorize them according to their own views of evolution. You can protest that they are mischaracterizing or using loaded terms, but they would still be able to point at their little bingo cards and gloat about how predictable the “Darwinists” are, which really is what the Creationist Bingo card is asking us to do to creationists.
I think something like this bingo card is trite, and not just for evolution vs. creation. Any well-tread argument — abortion, gun control, the death penalty, the existence of god, etc. — will have people on both sides repeating the same points and using terms typical of their side. The mere fact that you can show repetition or stereotypical language isn’t a counter argument.
Again, creationists (of the sort this card is intended to be played with, at least) actually believe that there’s no morality without god, that evolution violates the SLOT, etc. so all you’re doing is making note that they say what they believe. Those who also believe or are open to believe in those things won’t be swayed to think any less of the creationist speaker because of this.
(All that being said, the creationists’ incessant use of “Darwinism”/”Darwinist” does deserve to be pointed out, since that repetition is a deliberate attempt to frame evolution as a cult centered around some man. Bringing awareness of their monomaniacal repetition would undermine its effect, especially if contrasted to the relative lack of obsession with Darwin by evolutionists. However, I think some sort of drinking game would be better suited for that.)
With whom? Who has claimed any utility whatsoever, beyond catharsis?
What catharsis is there in saying “hey look, a creationist speaker is saying typical creationist things”? What exactly would the sort of people for whom a creationist-related cathartic experience is needed think they would be hearing at a creationist talk?
Forgive this averagedly-but-not-highly-academiced and not-particularly-heavily-science-fortified evolutionist wannabe.
What is this “Abiogenesis” creationist confuse evolution with? (Or is it the creationists who claim evolutionists do the confusing?)
abiogenesis=begining of life. At least that’s how this non-biologist understands it. Evolution proceeds after that.
Correct me if I’m wrong….please.
We should take one of these and go back into that post with Crom and see if we get a bingo!
Question to any of the smart biologists around here. I’m a social scientist and took my last bio course like 10 years ago (and I hated my professor, so I skipped most of it). Yet, I understand the concepts of what a theory means in science (or else I wouldn’t be about to finish a PhD). So, aside from bitching about repression, do IDers have any substantive arguments? Regardless of whether you’re an atheist or not, let’s say you make a theory god…er the Desginer, how you proceed to test it? I mean, in politics Jerry Falwell (or was it Pat Robertson) said that Clinton’s election was god intervening to punish America, and of course Bush redeemed it. How the fuck do I test that to explain election results? If god is the answer to anything, why bother doing research? The complain about the “nihilism” in Darwinian materialism (or however they call it), but if they have a theory that said that the Designer created life (and other forms like viruses) then shouldn’t we stop trying to learn, and then, why is the designer so lousy to only release an alpha version of the product without any testing…that sounds like a crappy designer to me.
jpf,
The major point to remember is that this is listed also under “Humor”. The joke being that there are a great many classic creationist canards that have been repeatedly disproven over many decades. To those of us who engage with creationists on a regular basis hearing the same arguments over and over again becomes tedious to the point where you simply have to laugh. In this case, if a particular speaker repeates off enough old, old, old claims as to get a bingo, we can get a laugh out of it. Right before we slog back in and continue the seemingly endless debate.
In other words, this is for fun, in a (sadly) inside joke sorta way.
I’m not alone!!!!!!
My last course, though, was about 15 years ago when I switched from chemical engineering to music, and still managed to pass senior level biochemistry without going to class and taking the exams cold. I was proud that I was actually able to remember how to (symbolically) produce a benzene ring yesterday, after all those years of not even thinking about it.
“I think something like this bingo card is trite, and not just for evolution vs. creation. Any well-tread argument — abortion, gun control, the death penalty, the existence of god, etc. — will have people on both sides repeating the same points and using terms typical of their side. The mere fact that you can show repetition or stereotypical language isn’t a counter argument.”
This isn’t supposed to be a counter-argument. Instead, it’s supposed to be funny, which it is.
jpf wrote:
If you read pop creationist brochures, they not only repeat many of these pseudo-issues, but they often make a big to-do over evolutionists “having no answers.” The assumption is that (gulp) these problems just haven’t occurred to them before. The creationist at the podium often sets himself up as stumping those folks in the audience who came in thinking the case for evolution was air-tight … but now? They’ve been presented with some new arguments that must really make them rethink their position. Someone on the fence might be swayed by this sort of rhetoric, caught up in the Big Daddy-style fantasy.
Creationist Bingo might help make the point that no, these critiques are not unexpected ambushes out of nowhere. We’ve heard it.
The mere fact that you can show repetition or stereotypical language isn’t a counter argument.
No, but notice that the things on the bingo card aren’t just repetitive stereotypes, but repetitive stereotypes that are demonstrably wrong. The humor is in the fact that they keep using entirely incorrect arguments over and over, not just that they’re saying the same things. The false statement bingo card is a fairly widespread meme for several political issues, and if you go looking for them you’ll see that one of the generally understood tenets is that the statements on the bingo card have to be stupid, wrong statements.
What is this “Abiogenesis” creationist confuse evolution with?
abiogenesis=begining of life. At least that’s how this non-biologist understands it. Evolution proceeds after that.
Correct me if I’m wrong….please.
Ah! As in theories as to the origins of life (creationists still say evolutionists claim Primordial Soup although my understanding that hasn’t been the theory in vogue for 30 years and although it seems contrived extra-terrestrial origins particularly from Mars are not without supporting evidence) are independant and seperate from theories as to what forms and processes occured to the life once existant?
Or biologists can study and explain forces and changes upon life during evolution but they are not chemists and thus can’t nescessarily speculate upon on forces cause first forms of from “non-life”?
The main differences I see between creation/ID bingo and evolution bingo would be that the “facts” repeated by the creationists would not change….they would never evolve as new evidence is found. Whereas the evolution bingo card would change regularly as new evidence is found.
In a way, the nature of the bingo game itself would be a testament to evolution vs. creationism.
Woozy – Basically, yep and yep. I had a revolt on my hands last week in my non-majors evolution class last week when someone asked about lightning strikes and protein formation and I said that we weren’t covering it, because origin of life is an entirely separate topic than evolution. I had to promise to add a lecture on the stuff and figure out how to squeeze it in somewhere during the semester, but made sure they were clear that it was an entirely separate topic from evolution practiced by completely different kinds of scientists.
Bleargh. Stupid school server. As I was *attempting* to say before my comment got eaten, it dosen’t help at all that creationists conflate abiogenesis with spontaneous generation.
I had a revolt on my hands last week .. but made sure they were clear that it was an entirely separate topic from evolution practiced by completely different kinds of scientists.
Well, to be fair, it isn’t unreasonable for a student learning the material the first time or for a critic to imagine that if evolution is more or less the study of the process of life and its changes over time, that it’d be concerned with the most important change– its origin(s). This is further implied by the general lay persons description of evolution as the explanation of the “origin of species”. (i.e. most people think of study of evolution and the purpose of the study of evolution as a way to look backwards, and not nesc. as method to observe current processes or future results.)
Bleargh. Stupid school server. As I was *attempting* to say before my comment got eaten, it dosen’t help at all that creationists conflate abiogenesis with spontaneous generation.
To be honest, while reading the wikipedia entry on abiogenesis I had a bit of trouble seeing the difference myself.
“Spontaneous generation”, I suppose, refers the long refuted idea that life regularly and consistantly arose from inorganic material. Even the most brain-dead creationist knows this isn’t what abiogenesis believe. However if one takes “spontaneous generation” to mean life arising from non-life, I’m kind of failing to see the difference.
Also, the wikipedia entry mentioned opponents to the idea of abiogenesis and alternative hypothesis. I’m having trouble seeing any alternative to abiogenesis as it’s a logical tautology. Either 1) Life never existed. 2) Life always existed. or 3) At one point of time life didn’t exist and later it did. We can rule out 1) as life does exist. We can rule out 2) unless we are utterly *wrong* about everything we know. So 3) = abiogenesis.
Aren’t creationists the *biggest* proponents of abiogenesis with their “god created life” beliefs?
Sorry to go off topic. But then again, on a humor thread a few days old is staying on topic really a virtue?
“Spontaneous generation”, I suppose, refers the long refuted idea that life regularly and consistantly arose from inorganic material. Even the most brain-dead creationist knows this isn’t what abiogenesis believe.”
Exactly, woozy. But they do it anyway. They bring up Pasteur in the process, yelling “Pasteur proved LIFE can only come from LIFE!” (Not surprisingly, these very same people tend to reject the “germ theory” of disease, which is what Pasteur REALLY proved.)