Creationists think Evolutionists think like Creationists.

I'm not sticking around for your entertainment value.

Hi, Big Al. I have a direct ancestor who was a member of the Ku Klux Klan, others who were Southern slave owners, and another who was a polygamist that married at least one fifteen-year-old girl.Upon reading these facts, do you then think that I pessimistically advocate white-supremacy, slavery, polygamy and child marriage?I doubt that you were thinking that as you read it.Yet, when an evolutionist argues that his/her direct ancestors are a series of winners of a billions-years-long, cutthroat struggle for survival, you apparently interpret this as his/her arguing that survival-of-the-fittest is a policy to live by.It sounds like it’s more your failure to read information about evolution in the same way that you read other kinds of information than evolutionists doing a poor job of selling their story.Edited by Bluejay, : "others who were"

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

Good grief...I think somebody touched a nerve!

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Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity. It is the mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus. -- Thomas JeffersonFor we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and non-believers. -- Barack ObamaWe see monsters where science shows us windmills. -- PhatIt has always struck me as odd that fundies devote so much time and effort into trying to find a naturalistic explanation for their mythical flood, while looking for magical explanations for things that actually happened. -- Dr. Adequate

I believe that is Poe's Corollary

Well, now that you brought it up, there does seem to be a major failure on the part of creationists in the critical thinking department. And "logic," with the exception of the circular kind, does seem to escape the majority of them all together. Combine these with the creationist propensity to ignore so many millions of facts and you may indeed be correct; a creationist can't think correctly. But I think before you can say this, Big-Al, you would need to define just what "correctly" means.

Much of this can be explained by projection, IMHO. Creationists accept creationism because their religious texts tell them to believe in it. Creationists project this thought process onto evolutionists. They believe that evolutionists do the same thing, except that their "bible" is "On the Origin of Species". They actually think that atheists are somehow lost and need something to cling to, and so they pick evolution as a religious belief that helps define their worldview. Creationists don't see this as science vs. religion but as religious vs. religion.

That should be "kill and be killed". It's a food chain, not a war. There's nothing pessimistic about food.

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I rode off into the sunset, went all the way around the world and now I'm back where I started.

The only place where I have run across the slogan "anything goes" is from Creationists putting those words in the mouth of Evolutionists.If Evolutionists believed in disorderly behavior, it would show up in their behavior. Such does not seem to be the case. I used to belong t a skeptic group in Tennessee. If they ever had any drunken orgies, they didn't invite me and they didn't announce them in the newsletter.Evolutionism does not imply disorderly conduct. Animals of all species live in an orderly society and every savvy Evolutionist knows that. Animals of many species practice monogamy. Our own species practiced monogamy long before religion coined their lofty rhetoric about "holy matrimony."Big Al, if you know of any Evolutionist who said or wrote that "anything goes," then let's see some documentation.

Theodoric, you're right, that's Poe's Corollary.
But speaking of Poe's Law, is it possible that Big Al is an Evolutionist who is just having fun by teasing us?Big Al, here are some reasons why I regard Evolution as optimistic: We are free to refer to a model which helps us understand each other and ourselves. We are free to refer to a model which allows us the challenge of exploring the world for truth rather than having it all handed down to us. We are free from the obligation to worship an unjust God who blesses or curses us for beliefs which don't really make any difference. We are free from the obligation to hold beliefs which don't make any sense to us.Anyway, Big Al, thank you for bumping my thread.

I think that you have described rather well how creationists think that "evolutionists" think. You illustrate very well how creationists' misunderstanding and misrepresentation of evolution leads them to make grossly inaccurate assumptions about what "evolutionists" think and believe, grossly inaccurate assumptions that they stubbornly hold onto despite the truth of what evolution really is and what "evolutionists" really think and believe.Now, most rank-and-file creationists are just plain ignorant about evolution and accept without thought the creationist lies that they are fed; they simply regurgitate those lies without knowing what they are doing. But many active creationists do know what they are doing and that they are using lies. For example, when I discussed with a local creationist activist his use of the standard creationist misrepresentation of punctuated equilibria (PE), he demonstrated that he did in fact understand PE rather well, yet he persisted in presenting the creationist lie to his audiences, thus demonstrating that he engaged in deliberate lying (something that he also demonstrated several other times).Thus creationist claims to morality ring very hollow in our ears. Rather, that "horrific picture" is the caricature that creationists paint. It is pure propaganda. And thus we can see quite clearly what creationists are trying to sell.Now, if we turn the topic's title around, we also find that part of the problem in trying to carry on a discussion with creationists is that we normals tend to start out assuming that creationists think like we do. When I started out, I falsely assumed that creationists were interested in truth and in building a self-consistent world-view, and were capable of rational discussion. It didn't take long for me to be disabused of those assumptions.

Is belief in an afterlife really optimistic?
That can go two ways.
It's more pessimistic than hopes of going to Heaven,
but it's more optimistic than fear of going to Hell.Or is it optimistic even to imagine going to Heaven?
I have a few questions: We are told that God is infinite in love. Yet we are told that God is so vain that he created us just to worship him. I would have difficulty in worshipping a God who is so vain.I would feel good if someone sent me a message saying, "Oh, Tomato! Your posts on the EVE Forum are brilliant! I enjoy reading every one of them!" But there is one important difference: I don't claim to be infinite in love. Heaven is described as a place of perfect bliss. But we are all evolved to adapt to a world in which perfect bliss is impossible. That's why even the arts and entertainment abound with fictional settings, complete with crises and complications. Even conservative music abounds with dissonances and resolutions. Wouldn't Heaven be a boring place? I understand that loving and benevolent people go to Heaven. Then how could they be happy, knowing that millions of other people are in a place of everlasting torment? There are gazillions of religious groups, each claiming to be the only path to salvation, and each claiming that all the other groups are mere Satanic counterfeits. We are expected to imagine which bandwagon is the right one in the eyes of an omnipotent God, and we are expected to make this decision with our finite brains. That is impossible. The result, then, is that salvation depends on sheer luck. You are saved if the right bandwagon happens to pass by your house.Suppose that the Mormons are right and the Moonies are wrong. The Mormon bandwagon passes by my house and I hop on. I'm saved. But suppose that the Moonie bandwagon passes by your house and you hop on. However, you would have hopped on the Mormon bandwagon if it passed by your house. You're doomed. Is that fair?I think I am being optimistic for not having to worship such an unjust God.

Have any of you ever participated in a forum entitled evolutionfairytale?
I recommend it for anyone seeking an exciting adventure.The rules state that everyone in the forum should be courteous to everyone else.
But they only enforce that rule one way; the Creationists can be as rude as they want to be.
On the other hand, nearly every Evolutionist gets banned for no discernable reason.
I got banned after writing over 100 posts, which is good compared with how most of the other Evolutionists fared.I made an occasional attempt to be diplomatic.
Whenever a Creationist shared information which I had not known before, I thanked the Creationist.
For instance, one Creationist said that Darwin made a passing acknowledgment to Lamarkianism. (That is, the belief that acquired traits could be inherited. A giraffe stretches his neck and sires a giraffe with a longer neck. An elephant stretches his trunk and sires an elephant with a longer trunk.) I looked that up and found that the Creationist was right.
As you may expect, one conversation got onto Evolutionist hoaxes, such as the Piltdown Man and the Nebraska Man. One Creationist told us about the Archaeoraptor. I hadn't heard of it before, because my reading has been mostly about Duane Gish, and this hoax took place after Gish retired from his debate circuit.
I thanked both Creationists.However, there were a few times when I got rather nasty.
One of the Creationists said that the Bible must be true because some of the place names and personal names have been found to be names of actual places and actual people.
I said that the same can be said for South Park. Does that mean that all of the South Park episodes are true?Not surprisingly, one of the thread diverged onto an argument over whether Hitler was a Creationist or Evolutionist. (The Creationists blamed the derailment all on the Evolutionists, but it takes two to tango.)
One of the Evolutionists said that the question was not important, because a claim should be evaluated on its merits, not on the beliefs of someone else.
One of the Creationists said yes, the question was important, because we are seeing what happens when an Evolutionist gets elected.
I did a quick Web search and found that Obama was an Evolutionist. I said that the White people in the United States had better watch out, because they are going to be sent to the gas chambers any day now.

Evolutionfairytale.com bills itself as a Christian ministry whose mission is to spread the Word. There's usually a few science-minded folk over there, I expect you encountered some of them. Last time I was there Adam Nagy was continually participating and moderating the same threads and couldn't be dissuaded from the behavior, so I finally left. Is he still an active moderator?--Percy

I don't mean to be rude but you are typical of how evolutionists think. "let's see some documentation". Other typical quotes from evolutionists include "where's the evidence", "prove it", "show me one person who" etc etc....

And what exactly is so terrible about those questions?