The Broken Record That Is Creationism

I went through a humor phase, once, in hearing the same damn questions answered over and over again to benefit the intellectual laziness of creationists. They repeat, like stupid parrots, the lines they are fed by pastors and "creation scientists" like Kent Hovind, then, when those are answered, they plug their ears in their fingers, or stare with their blank looks of incomprehension back at you, and repeat the same fu%#@ng questions...whether 10 mins later or 2 months later, whether to you or to someone else.

I went to the Friel-Tabash debate on Monday [Eddie soundly whipped the joker, I'm working on uploading it to Google Video as we speak, and I'll link back later], and the same thing happened (yet again). A woman demanded answers of me to the classic questions:

• How does evolution generate information? My answer, plus PZ's answers:

...there are mechanisms operating in genetics that make duplication of genes and the concommitant increase of information in the genome routine. I've traced the origin of bicoid and zerknüllt to a duplication of Hox3, for instance, and I've described how genes, such as Wnt, are found in gene families, the product of duplications over evolutionary history. I've shown how Hox genes arose by duplications; seriously, how can anyone look at the serial chain of Hox genes and their phylogenetic distribution, and the fact that vertebrates have 4 sets of Hox genes, and not recognize their source in gene duplication, and not see that as a change in complexity over evolutionary time? We can go further and look at synteny, or the conserved order of sequences in the genome, and see that there is an explicable pattern of change, one that is explained by common genetic and evolutionary processes, and does not fit the design hypothesis (except in the sense that the design hypothesis is so uselessly vague that you can make any observation fit it)...

• How did abiogenesis/the origin of the genetic code occur? My answer, in the form of amazing reviews that cover every aspect of the subject.
  

Here's the $64K question: do creationists read the answers? Do they have the sufficient willpower or background education to understand the answers (or even the questions)? Most important of all, do they want to even try?

The humor phase is gone. When I reciprocated these questions right back at her...what were her answers? "I dunno, but God did it!" They require evidence and logical arguments, but offer nothing in return but mere fideism. But they can go home and sleep at night, because they think they have used their own ignorance to disprove scientific knowledge. The anger phase is waxing. The futility phase -- where I quit even trying to educate people, because I recognize they don't want to learn, but only to believe what they wish, and cover their intellectual bankruptcy with a façade of scientific merit -- is right around the corner.
________________
Technorati tags: Intelligent Design, Evolution, Creationism