Buz...have you ever watched Star Trek?
I watched it a lot when I was a kid. And the writers of Star Trek, largely, knew virtually nothing whatsoever about physics or space travel. What they did was use sciency-sounding words to describe the Plot Device of the Week. The result was that the solution to a problem in any given episode would boil down to "reversing the quantum polaron field polarity," or "making a crack in the event horizon by using the deflector array to fire a tachyon burst."
It sounds wonderfully sciency to those who don;t really understand the terms being used. They use
real terms from
real physics, after all, like "event horizon" and "quantum."
But it was worse than meaningless. Absolutely anyone with even a passing familiarity with the actual terms would immediately know that the episode writers hadn't the faintest idea what those terms actually meant. If they did, they'd never have written a script so absurd as to involve a "crack in the event horizon" of a black hole.
It's called "Treknobabble," because it's a babbling mishmash of scientific terminology to make for a futuristic-sounding technological explanation for a plot event.
You, Buz, are using Treknobabble.
That's what everyone is harping on - you're using terminology that you don't understand, and it's extremely clear to those who
do understand the terms that you do not...even if you think you do.
But most Creationists don't do quote the same thing. They often (usually) don;t understand the Theory of Evolution particularly well, but it's more a case of having been misinformed at the outset rather than stringing together evolution-sounding words in order to sound competent.
I don't think a dogpile on you for spouting Treknobabble is what scares off most Creationists. After all, it hasn't scared
you. It hasn;t even made you spell the term correctly.
I don't even think there's a single influence that causes us to bleed Creationists. Dogpiling doesn't help. The mockery many of us use as our first and last resort in debate is certainly a problem. Some may have even changed their minds, and others may have sought easier places to "save souls."
But I wonder if the biggest single reason is one of evidence, and (just as importantly) a fundamental disagreement of what evidence
is. We demand evidence a lot here, and the most frequent complaint from Creationists (including yourself, aside from complaints of imagined censorship) is that "I
did post evidence, you just refused to recognize that it
is evidence!" When Biblical evidence is regarded on one side of the debate as just as or more valid than experimental observation, and Biblical evidence is restricted to a subforum that rarely if ever sees an actual evolution-based topic...it seems the result would be a foregone conclusion.
The creation of the Bible subforum was Percy's attempt to resolve that problem by partitioning scientific vs. theological evidence...but all of the evolution debate stayed in the science forums, while the "religious" subforums became grounds for theological debate not relating to history or science.
I'm not sure what a better solution would be. If we allow Biblical and scientific evidence in the same debates, we'll end with threads spiraling around "that's not evidence" "yes it is" "books don't make things true" "it's not a book it's God's Word" until they reach the summation limit. But without being ever allowed to bring what they consider their most convincing arguments to the table in the first place, I can't imagine how we'd manage to keep Creationist posters interested in continuing here,
especially in the face of the treatment they can sometimes expect (while the moderation staff is relatively fair, the mockery and insult carried by many of us, particularly when it's used with new members, is not a reason to stay).
What do
you think, Buz? Is that a more helpful analysis of the problem? And if so, do you have any ideas for how to solve it?
The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it.
- Francis Bacon
"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." - John Rogers
A world that can be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar world. But, on the other hand, in a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land. This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity. — Albert Camus
"...the pious hope that by combining numerous little turds of
variously tainted data, one can obtain a valuable result; but in fact, the
outcome is merely a larger than average pile of shit." Barash, David 1995.