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Member (Idle past 3402 days) Posts: 301 From: Burlington, Canada Joined: |
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Author | Topic: Creationist writing style | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Woodsy Member (Idle past 3402 days) Posts: 301 From: Burlington, Canada Joined: |
I'm just curious: why do so many creationists use such a convoluted writing style?
Lately, I've been struggling to make sense of posts full of ten-dollar words, malapropisms, and general florid pomposity. The effect is often to seriously obscure the meaning of the posts. Why do these religious types write like that?
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1433 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
From what I have seen it is
(1) they don't really understand science and they think it makes them look like they do (2) it's the old baffle them with BS when you don't know squat routine (3) they are as confused as their posts (4) that's really the way they think or any combination of the above combined with what happens when you try to make sense of creationism in the real world. There is also a question of whether it is their nature or whether it is nurtured by the religious 'education' Enjoy. Edited by RAZD, : nature vs nurture compare Fiocruz Genome and fight Muscular Dystrophy with Team EvC! (click) we are limited in our ability to understand by our ability to understand RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share.
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Chiroptera Inactive Member |
It's a product of the educational system, the need to pad the essays and papers in English class so that they are 10 pages long.
It took me a long time to break the habit of convoluted writing, and I still haven't completely broken out of it. In many respects, the Bible was the world's first Wikipedia article. -- Doug Brown (quoted by Carlin Romano in The Chronicle Review)
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CK Member (Idle past 4156 days) Posts: 3221 Joined: |
My missus is a french language academic (in that she writes in french not that she's writes about the french language) - the writing style they use makes my head explode. If anyone can understand what you are saying on their first read, you have made it too reader-friendly and need to reword it to make it more complex.
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Kitsune Member (Idle past 4328 days) Posts: 788 From: Leicester, UK Joined: |
Would you like to give an example or two?
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EighteenDelta Inactive Member |
Rule #3 of 'How to win any argument' reads
the site, how to win any argument writes:
Use meaningless but weightly-sounding words and phrases. Memorize this list: * Let me put it this way* In terms of * Vis-a-vis * Per se * As it were * Qua * So to speak You should also memorize some Latin abbreviations such as "Q.E.D.," "e.g.," and "i.e." These are all short for "I speak Latin, and you do not." Here's how to use these words and phrases. Suppose you want to say: "Peruvians would like to order appetizers more often, but they don't have enough money." You never win arguments talking like that. But you WILL win if you say: "Let me put it this way. In terms of appetizers vis-a-vis Peruvians qua Peruvians, they would like to order them more often, so to speak, but they do not have enough money per se, as it were. Q.E.D." Only a fool would challenge that statement. http://www.orange-papers.org/orange-winargs.html I think that is the best explanation. -x "Debate is an art form. It is about the winning of arguments. It is not about the discovery of truth. There are certain rules and procedures to debate that really have nothing to do with establishing fact ” which creationists have mastered. Some of those rules are: never say anything positive about your own position because it can be attacked, but chip away at what appear to be the weaknesses in your opponent's position. They are good at that. I don't think I could beat the creationists at debate. I can tie them. But in courtrooms they are terrible, because in courtrooms you cannot give speeches. In a courtroom you have to answer direct questions about the positive status of your belief. We destroyed them in Arkansas. On the second day of the two-week trial we had our victory party!" -Stephen Jay Gould
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Woodsy Member (Idle past 3402 days) Posts: 301 From: Burlington, Canada Joined: |
I'm reluctant to do this: I'm not out to insult anyone, but I do see this style on many forums, and it caught my attention.
Here is an example:
Look at the stats as equations, akin to MC2. The observations and evidencing is upto each generation's status. Science is a recent study, appearing after maths and history. If there is a stat the city Ramesey is a one day journey from Goshen - mankind has to determine and evidence its veracity. Where it says the Nile never runs dry, it becomes evidenced by the terrain examination, namely all rivers flow down and never up from this point: there was never a famine in Egypt. If the text describes the ancient Egyptian diets [the fleshpots of egypt, the fish for naught, the garlic, melons, etc..] - we can verify of this is of contemporanous veracity. The surrounding colliliary gives the credibility factor.
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macaroniandcheese  Suspended Member (Idle past 3956 days) Posts: 4258 Joined: |
haha i remember that one.
wtf is a fleshpot? it really seems to me that if it takes too long to say what you want to say, then you're probably not actually saying anything. Edited by brennakimi, : No reason given.
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RAZD Member (Idle past 1433 days) Posts: 20714 From: the other end of the sidewalk Joined: |
and I was going to reply that any post by him would be an example.
note it is interesting to do a google on "colliliary" - a consistently misused non-word. Edited by RAZD, : colliliary compare Fiocruz Genome and fight Muscular Dystrophy with Team EvC! (click) we are limited in our ability to understand by our ability to understand RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist ... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ... to share.
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Woodsy Member (Idle past 3402 days) Posts: 301 From: Burlington, Canada Joined: |
A fleshpot is usually an entertainment district in a city (including bordellos?). It's not clear what this has to do with diet.
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macaroniandcheese  Suspended Member (Idle past 3956 days) Posts: 4258 Joined: |
i see. the only thing i could think of was sexpot, so i was right. i think we could make assumptions about diet, but that's dirty
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iceage  Suspended Member (Idle past 5943 days) Posts: 1024 From: Pacific Northwest Joined: |
I don't know if you can really make this classification.
Some like NJ, CTD, Phat and Buzz (and the recently departed Faith) often write clearly and with proper grammar and usage. However, others like refpunk or higherevolvedracist are probably young and have not developed writing skills yet. CFO is in class all of his own. He probably has a macro to randomly insert "typical atheistic/evolutionist philosophy" and "objective persons can clearly determine". I am not a creationist but when I go back and reread my own post - oh my! I notice a missed conjunction here, a wrong tense there. I usually write in rush and don't reread or check what I have written. So I don't know that there is clear trend. Or if there is, I am skewing the result :0 Edited by iceage, : he he fixed some grammar
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bluegenes Member (Idle past 2505 days) Posts: 3119 From: U.K. Joined: |
RAZD writes: and I was going to reply that any post by him would be an example. You weren't the only one! But I didn't want to mention names.
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Woodsy Member (Idle past 3402 days) Posts: 301 From: Burlington, Canada Joined: |
I'm not much concerned with the minor errors we all make when writing quickly. The inflated language is what gets my attention.
Certainly, some creationists write very clearly, but one very rarely sees that over-decorated style from anyone else. I'd very much like to know why they use it. Edited by Woodsy, : No reason given.
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molbiogirl Member (Idle past 2670 days) Posts: 1909 From: MO Joined: |
This may seem petty, but I just can't believe the misspellings.
I'm not talking about typos. I mean consistent, didn't-you-ever-participate-in-a-spelling-bee misspellings. They always seem to accompany the ten dollar words, too. I say: If you can't spell "sequel", lay off the fancy lingo.
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