Bronze-level articlePoint refuted a thousand times

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A point refuted a thousand times, commonly abbreviated as PRATT, is a common phrase on internet forums where debates have a tendency to go in circles. Once people have refuted a point the first thousand times, it's hard for them to muster the motivation to do it again. Once someone has labeled an argument a PRATT, that usually means they have no interest in discussing it. This could itself be a diversionary tactic.

The website talk.origins acts as a repository of PRATTs commonly used by creationists, and presents (usually in great detail) their refutations and science behind them. The site is a good starting point when facing a PRATT.

Contents

Examples of PRATTs

These assertions are mostly very easy to refute, but remain persistent arguments due to ignorance.

Religion

Some Christians, especially Fundamentalist Christian, are told to avoid reading material and visiting websites that can disturb their faith. Therefore naïve fundamentalists may repeat bad arguments because they genuinely do not know the refutations. More cynical preachers may bring out arguments that have been refuted time after time because they know the sheep who flock to hear their messages will not find out the refutations.

Religious examples

Religion is required in order for a person to be moral.
If this were anywhere near true, the world would be in chaos as Adherents.com reports[1] that a fairly sizable 16% of the world population have no religion[2]. That's nearly 1 in 6 people who would happily murder you because they lacked any form of morality - this just doesn't stack up to observed evidence. Secular humanism has established several non-religious moral codes, and biologists and psychologists have tracked various evolutionary pathways for why we act in (what we define as) a moral manner. Perhaps most importantly, statistical analysis (rates of murder, adultery, rape, theft, etc.) shows that non-religious folks behave no less morally than those who have found the LORD. It is simply not true that religion holds a monopoly on morality. Also, if someone presents this argument to convince an atheist to convert to Christianity, they are implicitly asserting that they don't actually believe it; the very fact that they think an atheist would think that "Atheism leads to immorality" is a bad thing means that they think that the atheist is opposed to immorality.
Atheism is a direct cause of lawless behavior.
This is similarly untrue for almost all beliefs, with the notable exception of Murderism, which to be fair has never really caught on.
If this was true, most of Scandinavia would be well-known as a hotbed of insane, Godless violence. As it currently stands, it isn't.[3] Neither is there much obvious correlation between lawlessness and religion as most causes of crime are attributed to social and economic conditions. Religion, or lack of it, isn't often viewed as a contributing factor.
Atheism is a religion.
While it's pretty certain some people can be quite passionate and organised about atheism - and even issue out religion-like edicts about what atheists should and shouldn't do - atheism itself is not a religion. It has no dogma to follow and is a completely non-prescriptive belief system. As proof of this, there have been quite a number of dogmas and/or prescriptive belief systems bolted onto atheism, of which the three best known are secular humanism, Marxism, and Objectivism.
While you could alter the "definition" of religion to include atheism, the practical result is really that the term "religion" loses a lot of its value as a category, and the point would lose any power as an argument - becoming not only readily ridiculous but also self-defeating.

Same-Sex Marriage

Social conservatives frequently claim that allowing same-sex marriages will "destroy" marriage... somehow. This despite the fact that those nations and states that have legalized it are doing just fine, thank you.

Another oft-repeated canard is that children are better off being raised by a mother AND a father both. To support this, they cite a study that compared children raised in two-parent families to those raised by single parents, without regard for gender. They then turn their ears off when one mentions the studies done that find children of same-sex couples are just as well-adjusted as those of opposite-sex couples.

Evolution

The Second Law of Thermodynamics disproves evolution.[4]
The Second Law is frequently misinterpreted here as if to say that complicated or ordered structures were completely forbidden from forming. Thermodynamics applies to what are known as closed systems, and the Earth (and the evolution occurring on it) are not closed. Energy from the sun acts as a driving force for chemical reactions, which are a key part of biology. Thus evolution, like air conditioning and street sweeping, does not violate the Second Law. Presenting this refutation often prompts the creationist to respond that outside energy is not sufficient to create order, which displays twofold dishonesty: their opponent is not claiming that is sufficient, only that it makes it possible, and the fact that they had this response lined up shows that they knew their argument was wrong from the beginning.
The fossil record gives us no transitional forms.[5][6]
Entire pages of books and websites have been dedicated to listing transitional fossils. Just as much has been written describing what a transitional form actually would be - specifically that all fossils are really transitions between something and something else. Creationists say that transitional fossils don't exist so much that this could be considered the ultimate PRATT. Their repeated use of this point in the face of evidence is an extreme form of denialism.
Evolution theory is inseparable from social Darwinism.[7]
Besides being a twisted argument from adverse consequences, this point is wrong. Charles Darwin was never involved in social Darwinism and never endorsed it, nor was the theory inspired by it. However, even if he was a proponent of social Darwinism or eugenics, and even if every evolutionary biologist since was also a fan, this fact would have absolutely no bearing on the validity of evolution. This point is like arguing that theories about gravitation are all wrong because walking off a cliff results in death: the consequences of the theory don't affect its validity.
Evolutionism is a religion.[8]
There is no worship in evolution, there is no blind faith or adherence - only evidence. Religion is a quite nicely defined social construct, and no aspect of evolutionary theories fit in. At all. In short, if you were to stretch the definition of "religion" far enough to include evolution the term would cease to have any real use or proper meaning.
The origin of life is not explained by evolution, therefore it is wrong
The point cannot be overstated enough that evolution explains the origin of species and speciation, and the diversity of life as it reproduces (biogenesis). The origin of life would be explained by a different mechanism, abiogenesis, which is a separate process separate from evolutionary theory.

Economics

Supply side economics
This states that if we cut taxes on the rich, they'll invest the money and it will "trickle down" to the less wealthy. Supply side economics and the Laffer Curve are sound in principle (for instance, if you have massive levels of crippling taxation and a population being fed by a black market), but have been thoroughly debunked as wishful thinking, since whenever these tax cuts have been implemented in real life, there has been no trickling down of the benefits. Yet despite this, they are held in high regard by many fiscal conservatives.

Conspiracies

Most purported evidence of the moon landing hoax
There are as many websites out there pointing out the blatantly obvious flaws in this conspiracy theory as there are websites trying to support the conspiracy theory. "Buzz Aldrin isn't holding a camera!" - the astronaut's cameras were attached to their chests. "There's a prop visible with 'C' written on it!" - no one labels their props like that. "The flag waves in the wind!" - grow up and read some physics. And so on and so forth.
There's a face on Mars
This still does the rounds on conspiracy websites, blog/YouTube comments and the occasional woo-pushing documentary despite being thoroughly examined and revealed to be nothing particularly interesting. Higher resolution shots of the "face" have revealed it to be exactly what every skeptic said it was, just a mountain range with some funny shadows. See a very interesting psychological effect known as pareidolia - indeed, this crops up every single time someone reports seeing a face in something, from Jesus on a toasted sandwich to the Devil in the smoke of the World Trade Center collapsing yet the message still doesn't seem to get across.

See also

External links

Footnotes

  1. Adherents.com - Religions by number of adherents
  2. The distribution of such people and thus your safety varies by location.
  3. See the Wikipedia article on Scandinavia.
  4. Talk.origins - Thermodynamics, Evolution and Creationism
  5. Talk.origins - Transitional Vertebrate Fossils
  6. Wikipedia - Transitional fossils
  7. Talk.origins - Social Darwinism
  8. Talk.origins - Evolution is a religion
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