What's the lamest defence of Theism you've ever heard?

[Pat Mustard]

I pointed out that the distance of those planets from the earth was not constant, and indeed not constant in exactly the way we would expect if all of them - including the earth - was orbiting another body that occupied the exact position that the Sun happens to be in.

None of the planets have "constant" distances from the Sun though. All the planets have elliptical orbits, so their distance from the Sun fluctuates over the course of the year.

We moved on to evolution, and I invited him to visit the Smithsonian to review the mountain of evidence. His reply was "what evidence?".

What makes that odd is that the Catholic Church accepts evolution as fact, so he's going against his own church.

Considering what the Nazi pope was saying before he retired to wear his SS uniform, and some of the utterance of Wotyjla and Bergoglio, I'd doubt the sincerity of their acceptance of evolution.

I agree but don't put it like that, because while we did adapt to get where we are now, we are not the best species at surviving everything. Cockroaches survived what killed the dinosaurs, humans wouldn't survive something like that. There are far more species of life better at reproduction and survival than humans. Our biggest problem as a species is our own ignorance of our place on the planet and and in the universe.

Cockroaches have found a successful survival model
which significantly surpasses the tenure of human life on Earth, yes.

However, they've never risked adaptation beyond that successful survival model
...hence, they are still just cockroaches.

Better to attempt to evolve continually, and risk annihilation,
than to remain a cockroach for eternity, just to be on the safe side.

I mean, what's the point of surviving forever,
if you're just going to be a cockroach for eternity???

Survival at the cost of Evolution is worthless, IMO.

Actually, cockroaches haven't given up evolving, if we could get DNA from 60+m years ago we'd probably see that the modern cockroach is vastly different at the genetic level than his ancestors. That's a common misconception people often have about creatures that look like their distant ancestors, that they've stopped evolving (many people think we've stopped evolving too, for different reasons. We're god's greatest creation natch, so why bother attempting to improve the unimprovable), when in order to survive this long the creatures have to be able to adapt both significantly and frequently.