So in order to get the creos to move forward in their arguments, we help them to understand that there is no threat to their beliefs from evolution. But is that strictly true? It requires them to believe that much in the Bible is metaphorical, and that the humans who wrote the Bible could have made errors. Most Christians take what they see as the universal truths from the Bible and don't worry so much about the rest. But if you start to think deeply about it, you may begin to wonder why the Bible is even needed when those universal truths can also be found in other places, and why "the rest" is there in the Bible.
Springboarding off that, I'll pipe in that I've long maintained and argued that there is not inherent contradiction nor conflict between creation and evolution, between religion and science. Science deals with the natural universe. Evolution is a product of how life works. God or no God, the universe works exactly the same either way. If God created the universe, then He created it to work the way that we observe that it works. Science does not rule out the possibility that God created, it just must restrict its attention to the natural aspects, not the supernatural ones. No inherent conflict.
However, as you point out, the problem lies within the creationists' theology. There is no inherent conflict between creation and evolution, but there is definitely a conflict between a number of theologies and science. These theologies make very specific statements and claims about the natural universe -- statements and claims which are contrary-to-fact -- and then attack science because they believe that science is attacking their beliefs. The conflict is only in their minds; we just get involved in the fight because we're defending ourselves from their attacks which they believe are justified.
And therein lies much of the problem. We try to arrive at the truth, but the truth (ie, the way that the universe really works and the evidence of how it really works) conflicts with their beliefs and so they feel that they must defend their beliefs against it. We encounter this all the time when we try to discuss something with a creationist and he suddenly drops into his siege mentality and lashes out viciously (eg, in another forum, I pointed out a simple factual error in one of Hovind's claims and the creationist denounced me for viciously attacking Christianity; apparently Hovind had been elevated to rank of "The Second Coming"). How do we try to reason with such people without triggering their defense mechanisms?
So maybe what I'm saying is that there is no threat as long as you don't probe too deeply into things. Otherwise, your faith might get blown out of the water. I'm delighted with what happened to me personally, but I think a lot of people would find themselves in the sort of spiritual crisis that Glenn Morton faced. He was only able to remedy this for himself by tweaking some of his literal interpretations of the Bible and I'm not sure how satisfied he is with that.
As I express in the first quote in my signature, everybody creates their own theology and every one of those theologies is wrong. True, Revelation is supposed to be part of most theologies, but even then most of the rest of the theology is still fallible human attempts to interpret and to understand that Revelation, with multiple layers of attempts to interpret and understand those interpretations, etc. And then each student being taught that theology misunderstands it and interprets it in his/her own way and, upon growing up and becoming a teacher or parent, passes that misunderstanding on to the next generation who misunderstands and interprets the teacher's misunderstanding in their own way. And so on.
That is not to say that no theology contains anything that is true. No, most theologies can indeed contain much that is true. But they also contain much that is false and most that is false is in the details. Such as the detailed claims in creationist theology of what the natural universe must be like if Scripture is to have any meaning and if God is to exist.
Of course, having your theology unravel can be painful, especially if you are not ready for it. But it is a necessary evolution (Navy talk there; I'm a Chief). There was an article on our church's bulletin board (Unitarian-Universalist) about how most people have childish ideas about God because they had formed those ideas when they were children and those ideas never matured as the individual matured. Everybody needs to revisit their old ideas and question and test them, but that too seems to conflict with creationists' theology.
{When you search for God, y}ou can't go to the people who believe already. They've made up their minds and want to convince you of their own personal heresy. ("The Jehovah Contract", AKA "Der Jehova-Vertrag", by Viktor Koman, 1984)
Of course, if Dr. Mortimer's surmise should be correct and we are dealing with forces outside the ordinary laws of Nature, there is an end of our investigation. But we are bound to exhaust all other hypotheses before falling back upon this one. (Sherlock Holmes in The Hound of the Baskervilles)
Gentry's case depends upon his halos remaining a mystery. Once a naturalistic explanation is discovered, his claim of a supernatural origin is washed up. So he will not give aid or support to suggestions that might resolve the mystery. Science works toward an increase in knowledge; creationism depends upon a lack of it. Science promotes the open-ended search; creationism supports giving up and looking no further. It is clear which method Gentry advocates. ("Gentry's Tiny Mystery -- Unsupported by Geology" by J. Richard Wakefield, Creation/Evolution Issue XXII, Winter 1987-1988, pp 31-32)
And springboarding from you, there's a problem when someone decides to turn off the rational part of their brain and deny everything. I explicitly pointed out what Hovind's fake credentials are, supported by evidence, and still they defend him. I honestly don't get it. So he's lying about being a high school physics teacher, lying about having an accredited PhD, and yet what they tell me is that his qualifications are still better than mine and I'm not a scientist so I'd better shut up.
I am the only evolutionist there, and there are about 6 creationists regurgiposting and calling me an evil liar. Is there any place on this forum to invite some help . . .?
I tried posting the Clergy Letter too, thinking that some sense from other Christians might help, but they just looked up the denominations of the people who have signed it and said they are liberal infidels who allow homosexual marriage.
I keep explaining how their regurgiposts are making unscientific claims but they ignore this.
These people are in their own world and I'm not going to shake it. However, maybe the sorts of creos who come to a forum like this are generally more "malleable" and open to seeing the flaws in their beliefs? Or perhaps some are just so arrogant that they think they're going to teach the scientists a thing or two, I don't know.
I do know that when someone here feels "ganged up" then the natural reaction is to go into defense mode. It's happened to me enough. You can't keep up with everyone's posts and you feel isolated and besieged. Maybe backing off a bit and giving some space would help. You could try inviting a creo onto The Great Debate maybe.
What you are going up against is willful ignorance and fear, LindaLou, and you will never win. They will never admit to anything, they are not interested in learning or in reality. They have a belief, it is based upon faulty thinking, and it fills an emotional need in them, not an intellectual one.
The only thing they want is to protect their preconceptions and their feeling of specialness. No facts, nor even reality itself, can ever break that.
The best you can do is keep debating and presenting evidence and logical arguments for the benefit of fence-sitting lurkers.
That's all I've ever hoped to do here at EvC.
As an aside, if you post a link to the board you frequent, I might be willing to help you out.
Yeah, I've been there when the "Gish Gallop" turns into a Gish stampede. Then on top of that, the forum's non-creationist moderator departed leaving only the creationist moderator who then ran rough-shod over every "evolutionist", suspending them on the slightest pretext.
Still, while we're warned against casting our pearls before swine, at least there's some satisfaction in knowing that it irritates the swine.
Here's a thought: I'll give you a Hovind claim that you can toss to them and ask them what they think of it. Then have them do the math so that they can see for themselves that the claim is dead wrong.
Here's the link to a draft of my page on that claim: No webpage found at provided URL: http://members.aol.com/dwise1/cre_ev/solar_mass.html -- I don't recommend linking them to the page because it's still rather rough. When you get down about half-way, you'll have to view the source to make sense of it, which from that point on is mainly notes that I had gathered at that point. I had to post it (without links to it) in a hurry to support discussion of this claim in another forum and I haven't had to time to go back and do it right.
Basically, Hovind tries to support the "shrinking sun" claim by pointing out that the sun is losing 5 million tons of matter every second, which means that 5 billion years ago the sun would have been so massive that it would have sucked the earth in.
Here is the first form of his claim (on my draft page), from a radio interview on Southwest Radio Church, Welcome - SWRC, 13 Sep 2002 (my transcription taken from the audio at Page not found - SWRC at 8 minutes 53 seconds into the broadcast):
quote:For instance, the sun is burning, of course, and it's burning an enormous amount of fuel. It's losing about 5 million tons every second. Well, if the earth is billions of years old that creates a problem, because you couldn't go back 5 billion or 20 billion years like they say with the sun constantly getting larger and larger and heavier and heavier. The sun's gravity would of course become real great and would suck the earth in. Plus the sun would be bigger and burn the earth up. It can't possibly be true that it's billions of years old.
The second form is from his seminar tape videos that used to be on his website a few years ago (not on my draft page, since I didn't find it until afterwards). From Hovind's Seminar tape # 7, Q&A, starting at 0:37:40 and ending at 0:39:54:
quote:
Next question: Is the sun shrinking? For quite a few years creationists use the argument that the shrinking sun proves the earth is not billions of years old. I think it is still a valid argument. I do not use it in my seminar -- uh, in my seminar part one about the age of the earth -- , because there are so many other good evidences.
The problem is nobody is positive of what's causing the sun to burn. There are two theories about what causes the sun to burn. One theory says the sun is burning by nuclear fusion, in which case it could burn for billions of years and you wouldn't see much change in the diameter, because a small amount of matter produces an enormous amount of heat. The other theory says the sun is burning by gravitational collapse and is just, you know, burning up -- OK, the pressure produces the heat to keep it burning. All we know is that we have observed the sun for several hundred years ever since trigonometry was developed and we've observed the sun is shrinking. Both in polar diameter and in equitorial diameter the sun is getting smaller. Now it does seem to oscillate up and down, you know, it swells and contracts, it swells and contracts, but the overall general trend is towards shrinking. This is what's observed. Now if somebody wants to assume that, well, maybe this is just, you know, part of a bigger trend and it used to be getting larger in the past, you can assume that but you don't have scientific data to back it up. Secondly, it's never been observed, nobody's ever seen this. And thirdly, you'd got a problem: where's this extra material come from? All you got to do is step outside and look up. Obviously the sun is burning. It's losing 5 million tons every second. You can't just keep losing 5 million tons a second, pretty soon you start to lose weight. And so the sun is losing this mass -- 5 million tons every second -- which means it used to be larger. And it used to be more massive. If you increase the mass of the sun, going backwards in time for several billion years, you start to create a problem with the gravitational balance between the earth and the sun. It's going to suck the earth in and destroy everything. So those who would like us to believe it's 4.6 billion years old I think have a very serious problem. I don't know, the shrinking sun might only limit it to a few billions years. I don't know. But it certainly is obvious the sun is shrinking.
Now, 5 million tons of matter lost every second is a lot of mass. And if you extend that over 5 billion years, then that is a huge amount of mass, something to the order of 1024 tons. But since the sun's total mass is something to the order of 1027 tons (off the top of my head; refer to my page for more detailed figures, or else do the math yourself) then that means that the total mass lost in 5 billion years only amounts to a few hundredths of one percent of the sun's total mass. A miniscule amount that would "suck the earth in" by maybe around 100,000 miles. Which is an insignificant distance, since the distance from the earth to the sun varies by about 3 million miles every single year (on 02 January, in the dead of winter, we'll be at perihelion, the point of our orbit that is closest to the sun -- please notice how broiling hot it is outside on that day -- and on 04 July we'll be at aphelion, the farthest distance from the sun -- on that day please go outside and notice how freezing cold it is).
When I tried to get Hovind to clarify this claim and to say what he had figured the ancient sun's mass to have been when he did the math, he did everything he could to avoid answering, even to the point of twice trying to pick a fight with me over my AOL screen name (the same as it is here).
If you post Hovind's claims on that other forum, I'd be curious to know what the response is. Of course, I would post the claims first in order to get the discussion going, then suggest that someone do the math, then present the math to them.
In the original discussion about 5 years ago, I presented my results and one creationist said I had done it wrong, that it was a percentage loss (which it's not; it's arrived at by measuring the sun's energy output per second and then calculating how much mass had to be converted to energy via fusion to account for that energy output -- ironically, Hovind seems to believe that the sun burns by combustion and that combustion results in the annihilation of the fuel being burned). So he wrote a QuickBASIC program to calculate it but ran into programming problems (when his loop counter got too big, BASIC changed it to floating point such that adding 1 no longer changed the value). He refused all help except for my suggestion that he embed his loops in order to keep the control variables small enough. When his program finally ran, his results were even smaller than mine. Now he decided that Hovind must have used a different method, so I suggested that he ask Hovind and gave him Hovind's contact info, assuring him that Hovind really wanted people to call him. But the creationist never would. Actually, I recall that he had contacted Hovind much earlier on and Hovind's response offered no useful information; I'll have to dig through my archives for that one.
{When you search for God, y}ou can't go to the people who believe already. They've made up their minds and want to convince you of their own personal heresy. ("The Jehovah Contract", AKA "Der Jehova-Vertrag", by Viktor Koman, 1984)
Of course, if Dr. Mortimer's surmise should be correct and we are dealing with forces outside the ordinary laws of Nature, there is an end of our investigation. But we are bound to exhaust all other hypotheses before falling back upon this one. (Sherlock Holmes in The Hound of the Baskervilles)
Gentry's case depends upon his halos remaining a mystery. Once a naturalistic explanation is discovered, his claim of a supernatural origin is washed up. So he will not give aid or support to suggestions that might resolve the mystery. Science works toward an increase in knowledge; creationism depends upon a lack of it. Science promotes the open-ended search; creationism supports giving up and looking no further. It is clear which method Gentry advocates. ("Gentry's Tiny Mystery -- Unsupported by Geology" by J. Richard Wakefield, Creation/Evolution Issue XXII, Winter 1987-1988, pp 31-32)
I do know that when someone here feels "ganged up" then the natural reaction is to go into defense mode. It's happened to me enough. You can't keep up with everyone's posts and you feel isolated and besieged. Maybe backing off a bit and giving some space would help. You could try inviting a creo onto The Great Debate maybe.
Yeah, I've seen both sides, and it isn't pretty, no matter which side you are on. I also thought the Great Debate (GD) could be a solution, but then I got accused of trying to get every newcomer into a 1:1 debate when that was not the case. I've also suggested GD in 1:2 or 2:2 formats.
You could also do "tag-team" style debates(most GD's also have a peanut gallery) or just limit the number of replies (3 replies) with only one per poster (ie - make it good, make it count, no fluff, no chat, no off-topic etc)?
And springboarding from you, there's a problem when someone decides to turn off the rational part of their brain and deny everything.
That's when I post
And point out that it's a matter of choice, a choice based on how you determine statements are true: do you compare them to facts of reality or to fixed beliefs? How do you test for reality?
I explicitly pointed out what Hovind's fake credentials are, supported by evidence, and still they defend him. I honestly don't get it.
So they aren't interested in reality, big surprise eh? Their "test" of statements is not whether it is true in reality, but whether it is "true" to their preconceptions.
I tried posting the Clergy Letter too, thinking that some sense from other Christians might help, but they just looked up the denominations of the people who have signed it and said they are liberal infidels who allow homosexual marriage.
Yet these are the same people they happily include as christian when they tell you that the US is 90% christian. So it's easy to expose their hypocrisy about what they "count" as christian - is it belief in christ and his teaching, or is there an additional criteria?
These people are in their own world and I'm not going to shake it. However, maybe the sorts of creos who come to a forum like this are generally more "malleable" and open to seeing the flaws in their beliefs? Or perhaps some are just so arrogant that they think they're going to teach the scientists a thing or two, I don't know.
By and large that is true for all creationists I have debated with here. There are a few that have changed, but coming here only made that change easier, not cause it.
People come here with their complete world views, and you will not change them with an argument on the internet without their willful participation.
So you don't post to change those you are debating with, you post to make information available for those who are looking and ready to change - whether they post or just read.
This is great. You spoke to Dr. Dino yourself did you? You really do some good work, I've read debates you've had with other creos.
The problem here is that the ones I'm talking with are ignoramuses. I was asking why 40,000 year old ice core samples from Greenland didn't show any evidence of a global flood and the best one of them could do was say "ice floats and ice melts," and thereafter whenever I referred to this she claimed she'd answered me and asked why I was still pestering. I seriously don't think something as abstract as math is going to pin them down in any way and I don't think any of them would even understand what 10 to the nth power is, let alone how to do basic calculations with it.
We're certainly on a Gish stampede but it's because they regurgipost passages, which only takes a second, and refuting them can take hours for someone like me who isn't a scientist and has to trawl the web for info. At least it ties them down to some easily debunked claims, which is better than the usual vague comments of "do your homework," "know thyself," and "I'm an expert on the Bible and you aren't."
I do know that when someone here feels "ganged up" then the natural reaction is to go into defense mode.
Maybe it's just me... If I had several people at once telling me I was wrong and explaining how I was wrong, the thought would cross my mind that, hey, I might be wrong. I might even back off and rethink.
Disclaimer: The above statement is without a doubt, the most LUDICROUS, IDIOTIC AND PERFECT EXAMPLE OF WILLFUL STUPIDITY, THAT I HAVE EVER SEEN OR HEARD.
I'm not sure it's worth persevering to be honest. It's impossible to know how many lurkers there are. There's definitely something to be said, though, for giving creos a bit of a sense of security in a debate so that they will move their argument on. I like RAZD's ideas. They also start feeling bold when there are a few of them, as opposed to one, and then you can get something going as well.
Nator I'll give you the URL but bear in mind that this is actually a large forum with many different areas, some of which I am certain you would frown upon as being woo -- people are not in those areas to debate. The place where creationists and evolutionists talk is the forum I will link you to and you'll find enough there to keep you happy I daresay. Don't tell them I sent ya BTW the only moderator is the list owner and he allows everything apart from trolling. No one gets reprimanded for anything.
In that case Ringo, I'd better get back to my Bible and throw out everything those nefarious evolutionists taught me because several creationists keep telling me I'm dead wrong.
In that case Ringo, I'd better get back to my Bible and throw out everything those nefarious evolutionists taught me because several creationists keep telling me I'm dead wrong.
I said they'd have to tell me how I was wrong. I doubt that any creationist is doing that.
I've also taken on several Bible-bangers at a time on the religious threads - but they all have the same arguments. Several opponents all saying the same thing only count as one.
Disclaimer: The above statement is without a doubt, the most LUDICROUS, IDIOTIC AND PERFECT EXAMPLE OF WILLFUL STUPIDITY, THAT I HAVE EVER SEEN OR HEARD.
Not literally spoken, but rather emailed. He's a fast glib talker and I'm sure adept at redirecting the conversation, something that he tried in email. Mainly our "exchange" consisted of my having to repeat the simple direct questions that he kept dodging. When I finally get around to finishing that section (one single page will not be able to contain it) I'll probably describe it. Probably won't happen very soon due to other all the other things sucking my time and energy away.
Buddika's been around for a while. I know that I've visited that site before, but it's been a while.
The thing with the Gallop (let alone a stampede) is that even if you are an expert with all the information at the tip of your tongue (or fingers, depending on the venue), it takes much longer to explain why a creationist claim is sheer nonsense than it takes to utter that claim. It's mainly a creationist tactic in formal debates where the creationist spends a minute spewing convincing-sounding nonsense that would take his opponent several times longer than he's allowed by the debate rules to respond to that nonsense.
Another way that they dodge is that when you point out creationists flagrantly violating the "absolute moral standards" that they preach about, the response is that only a Christian is in any position to take another Christian to task for moral lapses; a non-Christian has no right to point out that a Christian is being a hypocrite. Then when I've been able to point out to a creationist that another creationist has been thoroughly dishonest, such that the first creationist cannot possibly deny it and does indeed agree with me, then that first creationist would flatly state that it is not his place to inform a fellow Christian of his transgressions nor does he even care whether a fellow Christian's soul is in eternal peril. Yet that same Christian would not hesitate to denounce a non-Christian for his moral lapses (imagined or otherwise) or to express great concern for that non-Christian's soul.
Weaselly bastards. And some of the best arguments against Christianity.
And as an example of how they can't understand simple science, here's a link to a strange page, No webpage found at provided URL: http://www.cuttingedge.org/NEWS/n1260.cfm. These people believed that there was an Illuminati plot to usher in the Anti-Christ by crashing the Galileo probe into Jupiter, causing a nuclear explosion that would ignite that planet into a second sun. But when they asked astronomers about the feasibility of this, they kept getting the same answer, "no, because Jupiter is not massive enough to trigger a fusion reaction in its core". And they just plain could not understand at all what the astronomers were telling them. Finally, they got an answer that they could understand for a "Christian scientist", Kent Hovind:
quote:We were still not sure exactly why Jupiter could not ignite, especially if it were hit with the huge atomic explosion of 1,750 Megatons, as occult sources are saying will occur when the 49.7 pounds of plutonium in the spacecraft Galileo is turned into the planet on December 6. After all, the largest thermonuclear explosion on earth was the Russian test of only 100 megatons in 1961. The answer we received from a Christian scientist, Dr. Kent Hovind, [
Dinosaur Adventure Land
] explained the science to us so we could understand. In the NASA excerpt, quoted above, we learned that "most" of the mass of Jupiter is Hydrogen and Helium, a most explosive mix, if it is mixed with sufficient oxygen in order to burn this mixture. Dr. Hovind says Jupiter does not contain enough oxygen in order to sustain the type of continuous burning that would be needed to produce a star. Now, we understand and now it all makes sense. No matter how large the initial explosion might be, the lack of sufficient quantities of oxygen would snuff out any resulting fire rather quickly. (my emphasis)
And that tells me that not only did these guys think that the sun burns by combustion, but apparently Kent Hovind also believed that.
Edited by dwise1, : added emphasis in the quote
{When you search for God, y}ou can't go to the people who believe already. They've made up their minds and want to convince you of their own personal heresy. ("The Jehovah Contract", AKA "Der Jehova-Vertrag", by Viktor Koman, 1984)
Of course, if Dr. Mortimer's surmise should be correct and we are dealing with forces outside the ordinary laws of Nature, there is an end of our investigation. But we are bound to exhaust all other hypotheses before falling back upon this one. (Sherlock Holmes in The Hound of the Baskervilles)
Gentry's case depends upon his halos remaining a mystery. Once a naturalistic explanation is discovered, his claim of a supernatural origin is washed up. So he will not give aid or support to suggestions that might resolve the mystery. Science works toward an increase in knowledge; creationism depends upon a lack of it. Science promotes the open-ended search; creationism supports giving up and looking no further. It is clear which method Gentry advocates. ("Gentry's Tiny Mystery -- Unsupported by Geology" by J. Richard Wakefield, Creation/Evolution Issue XXII, Winter 1987-1988, pp 31-32)
We're certainly on a Gish stampede but it's because they regurgipost passages, which only takes a second, and refuting them can take hours for someone like me who isn't a scientist and has to trawl the web for info.
You can create your own "great debate format" by stating at the start of your post that while many people might reply, you will only respond to the first one, and anyone that feels their point has not been covered can respond to that one. And then stick to that. Invite them here if they don't like that format.
Keep your point simple and focus on one thing at a time, so that you don't get a long response.
Enjoy.
Note that the Greenland and Antarctic ice are more than 40,000 years old, a lot older, and they agree on climate with age.
I wrote this last year (when I was fairly active) but it applies here, so I'll repost it (rather than rehash it):
The truth of the matter is that while I stick within the forum guidelines, I have no interest or motivation in trying to convince anyone here of the wrongness of their position. It's a complete waste of time and resources.
The people who post here are those (on both sides) who are already convinced of their "rightness" and while we sometimes see some minor shifts (generally in scientific terms and away from literal creation science), most of the long-term posters are complete entrenched.
The weaker ones on the creationist side will disappear very quickly once it becomes clear that a) "Hey I don't know what I'm talking about!" and b) "Hey if I don't know what I'm talking about, maybe the rest of it is nonsense as well - geez that's scary, better stop going to that site" (information blunting).
The important battle is here is for the hearts and minds of the lurkers and those who end up here via google or other mechanisms. I'd like to say that facts and evidence are the important aspects of the battle but for those people, it needs to be simple and it needs to be straight forward - those who want a more complex explanation will generally join in with the debate.
We keep talking about how scientists doing their debate via peer review rather than internet forum, it's true and it's also an illustration that science is a complex business and one that the average man in the street will struggle to get a grasp of without a significant investment of time. It's why the creationists are so effective on the internet - they pitch their material at the right level (it's irrelevant to an extent that it's made-up!).
Therefore there needs to be a level of discourse on those boards pitched at people with little or no experience or understanding of the sciences or the atheist/theist debate. Iano also digs me for my relatively short posts - but it's entirely intentional, I occassionally write long posts but will delete them and replace them with something much shorter.
The truth of the matter is that most of the lurkers will skip straight past the long posts for a varity of reasons (This is not off the top of my head, my real-world "expertise" is around the information-seeking behaviour of individuals and organizations. Therefore I have a fair idea of the process and the best mechanisms to attract attention). It's at this problem perpection level that I am trying to reach the lurkers - when they are still trying to define their source selection criteria.
At that level, it's more useful to try and get them to consider the source rather than what the source is saying/providing as evidence. The "education" in the relevence of the evidence is already provided by people like Razd, wounded king and others. People will seek out that information when they feel able to cope with it.
That's why as a element of any debate it is useful to question the motivations and backgrounds of the organizations that what they are actually saying.
Am I attacking the messenger? No I'm just highlighting aspects of their expertise and their bias that the reader should consider. It's an attempt to act out what in social cognitive theory terms is termed as "behaviour modeling". Many of the lurkers on here would struggle to replicate the questioning techniques of RAZD or Wounded King or many of the others in terms of evidence but attempting to model the lurkers behaviour in terms of source selection is slightly straight forward.
(I've used Lurkers as a very broad term in there but in reality I'm talking about the people who are only casually considering those issues or just starting to think about them).
I can't believe I've seen your cartoony face over there RAZD. Have fun but keep in mind that you have just summarised Russ' posts perfectly: vague, off-topic rants. Usually sprinkled generously with Biblical quotes and links to creationist and conspiracy sites.
How long before you think it's a waste of your time?
added in edit I see you've been busy there, and Percy has decided to visit too. That forum could be a very good testing ground for some of the ideas here about how to get creos to move their arguments on. If either of you succeed in actually getting them to pin their arguments down with evidence in the first place then you'll deserve congratulations. Anyway it's nice to see you there.
I'll try to learn from your polite, non-threatening debate style RAZD. I've been on that creo forum for some time by myself and have patiently endured all kinds of character assassinations. It will reflect better on me if I continue to cultivate patientce and try to use a bit more tactfulness I think.
BTW the only moderator is the list owner and he allows everything apart from trolling. No one gets reprimanded for anything.
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