Hi Lizards,

I’ve been observing the DI team (I still wonder if they just do it for kicks, or get paid) and I think I have the playbook worked out:

1. Pump-action fake.
“This is boring / unimportant. / What is this? / Let’s talk about Islam!”
Counterplay: Nice try buster. Go get your own blog.

2. The fake handoff.
“Stop bashing Christians / conservatives!”
Counterplay: Millions of conservative Christians around the world, including the Pope, accept the facts of evolution. Which cult are you in?

3. The screen.
“You cannot prove life sprang from nothing. / They haven’t recreated life in a lab!”
Counterplay: Wrong argument (again and again). You are talking about biogenesis. The facts of evolution do not explain how life came into existence in the beginning, so scientists do not even try to explain it (though some do have atheist theories). This is exactly why Christians accept the facts of evolution as well as God being the creator.

4. The run and shoot.
“Irreducible complexity! / Cambrian Explosion! / Transitional forms! / Other canard!”
Counterplay: Easily blitzed (they are all directly quoted from Deception Institute websites), and Charles / Sal / Sharmuta have the links where they have been destroyed. The purpose here is not to convince any lizards (far too thorough!), but just to repeat the lies often enough perhaps to sow some confusion in occasional, less-well-informed readers. It can be a lengthy process as they ignore each refutation and just leap into the next lie, with getting the last word in as the objective, so we can just wait for Sal.

5. The retreat.
“Ok, adaptation occurs but not speciation!”
Counterplay: Stop laughing first, then ask where they learnt about species. This stance involves an imaginary invisible line where evolution suddenly halts. The finches are enough refutation, but now we can reproduce speciation, and watch it in real time, with e-coli. Ask the creationist: What would you call a fish? A lizard with gills, or a fish?

6. The Hail Mary Bomb.
“Jesus said blah blah blah…”
Counterplay: Dogmatic literalism is the easiest to counter: “Jesus said, ‘With God, all things are possible.’”

7. The punt.
“You are evil / agree with Hitler if you believe in evolution.”
Counterplay: GAZE

8. The self-destruct.
“Well I can’t see any good evidence for evolution, so you must all be crazy and believe in it like a religion!” (No further argument offered)
Counterplay: Go on, you believe the Flintstones is real, right? (You can have fun at this stage)

9. The white flag.
“I’m not a creationist.”
Counterplay: Well, you must be happy now that we have pointed out how you say and believe exactly the same lies, so you can accept the facts of evolution now.

10. The utter surrender.
“Well, I have to go take the giraffe for a walk now (etc).”
Counterplay: You win. Reset for the next evolution thread.

BiJ