Creationist from Ignorance of Evolution?

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One of the most annoying things I found about Bill Nye the Talking Points Guy in the debate with Ken Ham was that he regurgitated "science" that creationists have addressed years, even decades, previously. (He was also condescending, but never mind about that now.) Nye also used lame arguments that have been brought up many times, and we still see them now. Atheists and evolutionists seem to dislike doing their homework, being hopelessly locked into defending their fundamentally flawed worldview.

When people use the same kind of "argument" that Nye brought up about evolution being essential to science, some of us will point out that great scientists of the past were biblical creationists, Christians, theists and so on. The counter-claim is that sure, they were clever people, and they would have believed evolution if Darwin had written back in their time.

 Such a claim reeks of desperation. Also, they are inadvertently claiming godlike powers because they "know" how someone would have thought. This claim contains a boatload of assumptions that cannot be rationally justified. One of these is that Darwin came up with evolution, but the concept is actually quite ancient. Another assumption is that evolution has so much logic and evidence supporting it, those poor deluded fools could not possibly reject evolution and cling to that silly superstition of creation.

 I have encountered these kinds of claims recently. Here is an article from 2002 that address this irrational claim, in this case, involving Isaac Newton.
From Timothy … of the UK. In his letter, printed below, he tries to counter the point that the great founders of modern science were creationists — see Creationist Biographies. His letter is reprinted, with point-by-point responses by Dr Jonathan Sarfati, showing that there are a number of reasons why it’s legitimate for creationists to use this argument.
You can read the rest of "Newton was a creationist only because there was no alternative?", and be sure to read the addendum.