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Sarfati "Responds" to a Critical Student
John Stear

Below is part of an exchange between Dr Jonathan Sarfati and a young Canadian student. 
The complete article can be found
here

Student:    I am a high school student who is taken aback by your complete faith in your narrow minded theory.

Sarfati:    I’m a Ph.D. scientist who is taken aback by one so inexperienced who is narrow minded and condemnatory of our theory before examining the evidence.

Student:    I study science and religion at school and on my own. What's so bad about evolution? It's certainly more believable and educated a theory than yours.

Sarfati:     Why? Have you seen one kind of creature changing into another, or any change increasing genetic information? Presumably all you've seen is sorting and loss of already existing information. It doesn't sound very "educated" to make assertions without evidence.

As can be seen from the above exchange Jonathan Sarfati is quick to attempt to humiliate a young student.  He accuses the student of not having examined the evidence: but what is the evidence pray tell?  I've yet to read any plausible evidence for the creation model.  There are only lies and subterfuge and the final refuge in the Bible, but no "evidence".

The student rightly claims that evolution is a more believable and educated a theory than creationism.  Sarfati responds by raising the ridiculous argument about one kind of creature changing into another.  (How many times have I been confronted with the question, "If evolution is true, why haven't we seen a frog change into a pig", or some equally nonsensical scenario). 

Sarfati caps off his unscientific explanation with the old canard about the sorting and loss of genetic information.  What creationists don't understand or CHOOSE not to understand is that instances of increases in DNA information have been documented.  For instance, there is an obvious increase in information when a gene duplicates and the two copies undergo independent mutations which result in two genes with somewhat different functions.  Despite the fact that gene duplication, mutation and selection are known to occur due to natural biochemical processes in a variety of organisms studied in the laboratory, creationists deny that the expansion from a single primordial gene to a large family of genes with distinct functions clearly represents an increase in genetic information.  In fact, if it were so that mutations were unable to generate new information creationism would be in even more trouble than it is.  I quote from a reply to a question posed on TalkOrigin's Archive's Feedback:

Incidentally, the alleged inability of mutation [sic] to generate "new information" would be a huge problem for creationism, which postulates a post-Flood world with as little as two animals of any particular "kind" to repopulate the planet. These animals would have a maximum of four alleles for any given gene. However, there are many genes for which dozens of alleles are known. If these alleles could not be generated by a mechanism such as mutation, then the story of Noah in the Bible would be utterly refuted by this. (A strictly literal reading of the story of Noah is, instead, already refuted by a mass of evidence.

If there's a lesson to be drawn from  Sarfati's harangue it's this:  don't expect a scientific answer from a creationist if the questions have anything to do with real science.

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