"Both science and religion appeal to authority. Religion appeals to the authority of prophets, while science appeals to the authority of experts. What's the difference? I think that the truth must be somewhere in the middle."
Rebuttal
There are two huge differences between scientific experts and religious prophets:
Scientific experts can explain their reasoning and provide their evidence. Every scientific theory is documented in this manner, with evidence and reasoning and a defined mechanism with predictive capabilities.
Religious prophets, on the other hand, explained nothing. They simply stated that it was so, wrote it into ancient manuscripts that eventually became the Bible, and you are expected to believe it for that reason alone.
You can become an expert yourself, if you are willing to devote several years of your life to go to university and learn the methods (note: reading some creationist websites on the Internet is not remotely comparable to this process). Once you have achieved expertise in the field, you will be qualified to question the conclusions of other experts in an informed manner, perform your own research, etc.
There is, of course, no corresponding method for becoming an accredited prophet, nor is there a venue for questioning existing prophecies, challenging other prophets, or publishing your own prophecies within the framework of the church.
In short, it is simply false to say that science appeals to the authority of its experts; it only demands that you be sufficiently informed before discussing or reviewing their conclusions, and they even provide a system of training in order to help you achieve this level. Religious prophecy cannot be remotely compared to this system; its prophecies are not subject to peer review, and in fact, there are no "peers" at all.
Fallacy watch:
Tu Quoque fallacy (aka "you do it too!"; attempts to refute evidence of wrongdoing by accusing someone else of doing it as well).
Golden Mean fallacy (assumes that the middle point between two extremes must be the most reasonable and therefore most correct position).
Search Database Again
Search Notes:
Key word searches always look for all of the search words,
ie- Boolean "AND".
The exact keyword search looks only for exact matches in the argument (not
the rebuttal), and it ignores commonly used words and search terms shorter than 4
letters. The normal search will accept partial word matches and any search terms,
and it will search both the arguments and rebuttals.
If you search without entering any keywords, the system will produce
a complete list of all the arguments in the database.
This site was written using OpenOffice, running on Mandriva Linux.