The terms “Evolution” and “Scientific fact” have undergone significant semantic shift over time, enabling antitheists to exploit motte and bailey fallacy to justify their brainwashing of children. If you take its two constituent words, the term “scientific fact” is supposed to have an incredibly strong qualification: If you claim something is a “fact” you are making a claim of absolute truth – not positing a theory. You don’t necessarily need to provide an experimental demonstration... until you use the term “scientific” – at which point you are also claiming it can be demonstrated in an experiment. Well at least that’s the reasonable interpretation: “An absolute truth claim I can demonstrate with a controlled experiment in accordance with the scientific method” – a clearly defined objective qualification. Instead antitheists shift the goalposts to the entirely subjective “Theory well supported by evidence” – who decides what constitutes evidence and what that “evidence” supports? – The Scientific Community^™ of course!

Then there is the term “Evolution”. Only one definition is relevant to religious debates, and when you strip away all the pseudoscience it actually sounds more like a religion itself:

"About 10 billion years after the Almighty Explosion in the Sky, Immaculate Conception of the Common Ancestor gave rise to life as we know it today by the grace of Miraculous Randomness whose name is “Evolution”. First preached by the prophet Darwin, and then forced into schools as "scientific fact" by evolutionist extremists like Ayotollah Dawkins. He who lacks faith shall be beaten by the ‘scientific community^™’ with the sacred sticks, whose names are “The Science^™” & “Billions of years”.

The claim: “Common descent from abiogenesis through evolution to the complexities of the human race and other life on Earth today is an absolute truth which we can demonstrate experimentally” is the Bailey - the claim antitheists wish to promote. But this is scientifically indefensible, so when challenged, they retreat to the motte of “change in allele frequency over time is well supported by evidence”. While this is a more defensible position, its goalposts have been shifted so wide it is nothing more than a red herring, completely irrelevant to any creation debate because there is no reason such a thing cannot occur within a creation paradigm. If you wish to use evolution to argue against creation, an abiogenetic origin story is your only viable option. However, simply shifting the goalposts to a red herring does not in and of itself constitute motte and bailey fallacy – the goalposts must be shifted back to the abiogenetic origin story, using a motte victory to prop up the bailey’s weakness. The most recent official definition of "evolution" came in 1937 when Darwin’s “Descent with modification” was changed to Theodosius Dobzhansky’s “change in allele frequency over time". So… is this what is taught to children in modern text books?


Following this through to its only logical conclusion it is clear we are back to the bailey of abiogenetic origins, and epistemic certainty, not simply “a theory well supported”. This is a falsehood being forcibly taught to children – if they believe and repeat the lie, they get rewarded. Giving the correct answer will lose them marks in the exam & harm their prospects for a more desirable career, thereby risking their future. It could also earn the scorn of teachers and classmates on something that is supposed to be a private, protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010 in UK law, and similar indoctrination in the US would violate the 1st Amendment. To insist anyone accepts or rejects a religious belief with a penalty of non-compliance is not education, it is indoctrination. Specifically known as “Operant Conditioning” - a type of brainwashing which utilizes a system of positive/negative reinforcement and punishment to enforce compliance. In the example, the student is offered neither evidence, nor alternative to the dictated origin story. They are simply told to outsource their critical thinking to a foreign entity – The Scientific Community ^™. This is an act of religious tyranny antitheists have ironically been projecting onto creationists in recent decades.

I believe in absolute freedom of religion, of all kinds and for all ages. I don’t think any version of our origins should be taught as a scientific fact to children, including the version I believe. Unfortunately antitheists do not see it this way – why not? If you are secure in your beliefs as I am, you would not need the intellectual alignment of others to validate your perspective. If you believe in free thought, you would not force your your beliefs on children.

As an experiment, I offered an alternative education model. One that still teaches the observable facts, but does not demand children renounce their fundamental beliefs in order to progress. Essentially, all theories regarding the origins of life would be restricted to a separate class – “Origins”. In this class children would be introduced to the various major religions, including evolutionism & the almighty explosion in the sky. They would be under no requirement whatsoever to agree or disagree with any of it. They could also access any text, and even propose their own version if they like. They would only be asked to understand the perspectives, and no test would be phrased in such a way that would require agreement with any perspective in any answer. My position is that people should have access to the claims, but not be required to believe any of them.

Children would still be able to learn about experiments such as Drosophila Inheritance Studies, they would simply not be required to infer the abiogenetic origin story from them. To aid in free thought in the matter, terms like “evolution” and “natural selection” should be replaced with terminology that carries less risk of crossover definition. While antitheists tout these experiments as proof of abiogenetic evolution into new species, the reality is that no new DNA is formed – existing “junk” DNA simply rearranges. Gotta love the arrogant, pseudoscientifc, ad ignorantiam term “junk DNA” here aswell – the idea that because you can’t make sense of it, it must therefore be senseless, flying in the face of observable evidence of what often happens when some of this “junk” is removed. The adaptive nature of this DNA indicates it is not “junk” at all - but a built in capacity for change within a kind, but not development into an entirely new one as required by the claim of abiogenetic origin. Perhaps Intelligent Design is a little more Intelligent than they thought...

As I said, this proposal was an experiment – the result was antitheist rage so great I can’t help but think it had something to do with my otherwise inexplicable full admin ban on Reddit – I received no warnings or explanation as to what rule I broke.