Over the years, I've formed an opinion about honest creationists, that they do not last long, because they either withdraw from discussion upon learning that their position has problems or they eventually give up on creationism and sometimes even join the other side. My first impulse was to state the same opinion of knowledgeable creationists -- and for the most part the same does apply -- but upon reflection I see there's more involved.
We can say that there are two kinds of knowledgeable creationists: honest ones and dishonest one. OK, we could talk about a third kind who is severely delusional, but I would tend to lump those with the dishonest ones. Also, by "creationist", I mean those of the "creation science" persuasion rather than anyone who believes in Divine Creation, such as extremely effective anti-creationist and self-described creationist (ie, believer in Divine Creation, being a practicing Roman Catholic) Dr. Ken Miller.
An honest knowledgeable creationist will not last long on forums such as this, because the problems with his position and arguments will very quickly become apparent to him and he will need to deal with them. Whichever path he ends up taking, he will most likely retreat from forum participation since he cannot in good conscience continue to argue for things that he knows are wrong. In rare cases, he might continue to participate in order to work things out in his own mind, but I would not expect that to continue for very long.
A dishonest knowledgeable creationist would also not be expected to participate on this forum. Examples are most leading creationists, such as Hovind, Gish, Morris, etc, plus many highly active local creationists. Although highly knowledgeable, they remain dedicated to perverting that knowledge in service to their god (arguably the Great Deceiver, but since I'm an atheist, I don't believe in that Christian god either). The reason why we will not see them here is that they know from long and bitter experience that their claims are false and that in a fair discussion they have no hope of success -- eg, they will push ardently for a creationist-style verbal circus debate while at the same time absolutely refuse to engage in an on-line written debate where their opponents have time to research their claims and the audience can see exactly what claims they're making and be able to check on those claims. Also, they know that they must avoid knowledgeable opponents like the plague; eg, a local activist will bully and mock an opponent mercilessly, until he suddenly discovers that that opponent is knowledgeable, whereupon he immediately starts playing super-nice and tries to disengage as quickly as possible.
So neither kind of knowledgeable creationist can be expected to last here long. OK, that "third" kind, the highly delusional knowledgeable creationist, may stick it out longer because he's just simply, due to his delusion, clueless of the situation. But how long can he keep that up?
So all that leaves us with are the creationists who are not knowledgeable, who don't know what they're talking about. Protected by their ignorance, they can endure.
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