Summations Only

The reason for the adversarial process should be clear: only false ideas can be destroyed by accurate evidence. If you're right, no asshole with a doctorate will ever be able to falsify your model, and that's the point. That which can be destroyed by the truth, should be. It's the only way we can grow stronger in our knowledge of the world around us.But despite the fact that we tend to be hypercritical around here, I'm sorry that foreveryoung feels like such an outcast. I see that his status says he's now an "inactive member," and I hope he changes his mind and comes back.

Perhaps his "farewell" was a bit emo, but I can think of nothing he has done to earn our enmity. There are very few people I'd like to see leave this forum. The rest, even when I disagree with them, I'd like to feel welcome even if it doesn't seem like it in the heat of debate.

There are quite a few, actually. It's part of what makes this such a great place to learn. But not all of us are professional scientists. Some of us are just amateurs with a heavy interest in science, logic, rationality, theology, debate, or all of the above. I'm just an IT guy, myself. I just discovered that the EvC debate was interesting to me. It may also interest you to know that I am a former Christian. I used to have what could be considered fundamentalist views, as I believed that the Bible was literal truth. Those beliefs changed over time, and eventually I could no longer say that I honestly believed in God. The EvC debate played a significant role in causing me to critically examine my own beliefs...if you look back to my earliest posts (just click my profile), I was posting as a Christian though not a literalist Creationist. Well, it's definitely adversarial as it's a debate site, and debate is by its nature adversarial. But the "hateful mocking"...sometimes people, myself included, try to illustrate the illogic of an argument through humor. The idea is typically to shock the opponent into examining their own beliefs, possibly causing them to realize that they believe something absurd. It almost never works, and usually only succeeds in making the opponent feel insulted...and sometimes even vindicated. Ive been trying to tone down my mockery, at least for new people. Try to understand - the specific topic of the EvC debate involves extremely deep beliefs. Challenging beliefs like those, beliefs that are so closely tied to our identities, sometimes even tied to our opinions of ourselves as moral people, tends to cause a lot of emotion. We all get defensive. We all feel even more adversarial than perhaps we should. As a Christian, try to think of how difficult it is for you to honestly consider a world without God; the "other side" feels a similar reaction, though the specifics are different. It gets heated sometimes, and whiile we could all probably benefit from trying to turn down the heat, we also have to remember to have thick skins - Christians tell me that "the fool sayeth in his heart that there is no God," and I have to focus on the topic and rational rebate instead of lashing out. Every year or so we have a topic discussing whether Atheists (like me) can possibly be moral people without believing in God, which is rather insulting on its face.The rest of the hostility is, honestly, often a lack of patience. We see an awful lot of repeated topics here. An awful lot of new Creationists repeating an argument from literally 20 years ago that was falsified a week after it popped up, but people keep on repeating them. I remember one Creationist on Youtube, VenomFangX (lol), once stating that Earth is the only place in the Universe where water is found...even though water is the second most common molecule in existence, right after molecular Hydrogen. When somebody says something that wrong, so wrong that 30 seconds of research could how that it's wrong, that having ever even once heard of comets would prove that it was wrong, let alone Europa...it can cause a bit of frustration. A kneejerk "wow, that's stupid" reaction. It's not particularly productive, but it's what happens.I dont hate Christians, with the possible exceptions of bigots like Fred Phelps. My family are still all Christians. Glad to be on that list. Here's the big lesson, foreveryoung: never be afraid of a debate, even if it gets heated. Only an inaccurate belief can be falsified. Beliefs that are wrong are already wrong, and finding out that you have an inaccurate belief is just an opportunity to improve yourself. I want to find where my beliefs are inaccurate. I want to lose my false beliefs. What's the value of an idea that's wrong, anyway? And the only price is a little humility, a reminder that none of us are perfect, and we all believe a few things that probably aren't true.So look forward to confrontation. Don't be afraid to look at your own beliefs critically, and just as importantly, help the rest of us examine our own beliefs critically. Help us find where we're wrong, and we'll help you find where you're wrong, and together we can all learn and improve.And if someone's just being a dick...well, just ignore them. Blessing or curse, here at EvC Creationists are never short on debate opponents; you can afford to ignore the occasional asshole.ABE: And welcome back. Glad you decided to stay.Edited by Rahvin, : No reason given.

People find "ultimate purpose and meaning in life" from sources other than the Bible, including multiple other religions.Logically, since the Bible (and many other religious texts) insists that it is mutually exclusive with the others, at least some of the sources of "ultimate purpose and meaning in life" must be false.Yet despite the necessary falsity of at least some of these worldviews, people still derive "ultimate purpose and meaning in life."If (as you would believe) people can garner a sense of "ultimate purpose and meaning in life" from a false Koran or a false Rig-Veda or a false Dianetics, then why could people not garner the same thing from a false Bible?Even Jesus in the Bible specifically made use of parables, fictional stories used to illustrate a spiritual or moral point. The idea is more important than the factuality of the events describes.Why, then, does the truth or falsity of the claim that the Earth was Created in six days need to be literally true? If the story of the Good Samaritan didn't need to be literally true to illustrate a point, why do other specific stories?I'm an Atheist, I don't even use any religious text as a source of "ultimate purpose and meaning in life." I derive those from my own system of ethics and personal preferences - I determine the meaning of my own life, and I decide my ultimate purpose.To be logically consistent with your claim here, you must believe that all non-Christians (and even other Christians who use a different canon for their Bibles) live their lives without any purpose or meaning in their lives...yet they clearly don't feel that way. Why do you think that is?

Just to expand on what jar rightfully says...Certain very deeply held beliefs transcend the status of just a normal belief. Instead, they become closely associated with a person;s identity. These beliefs aren;t just hard to change, they garner an additional emotional response, because challenges to those beliefs threaten to exclude the individual from a particular social identity group.We see it in politics and religion all the time. We even see it in sports or in fandoms.But religious beliefs tend to be those that are held most deeply, and which most strongly connect a person to friends, family, and an entire worldview.Anger is perfectly normal when those beliefs are challenged, even a little. So is incredulity, and rudeness - by challenging those beliefs, the challenger has identified him/herself as an other, a person outside of the challenged person's social identity group. It's like a fast-track shortcut to being identified as "enemy," and usually leads to reflexive contrarianism as well as the emotional responses.