The smoldering of EVC

You seem to be a bitter, little man. Why so bitter? Did Percy break your favorite toy when you were kids?ABE: You remind me of the villain, Buddy, from The Incredibles. "Percy won't play with me so I am gonna get my revenge."HBDEdited by herebedragons, : No reason given.

Well, being a "non-atheist" I come to learn by listening to others who have knowledge in a specific area and then (more importantly) by doing some research on my own to conform the things being said. I learned more about geology by participation in the Why the Flood Never Happened thread than I had ever previously, mostly by doing my own research on particular pieces. Most of what I learned I never even posted anything about.I also come here to improve my rhetoric skills. Being able to form a solid and clear argument is critical to being a scientist and participating in debates is an effective way to develop those skills. There is a wide variety of people on here from diverse backgrounds and I consider the ways they develop their arguments and see if there is anything I can take away from it.A third reason I come here is to be exposed to viewpoints that are often significantly different than my own. For example, before spending time on this forum, I had only been exposed to a couple of professed atheists and my perception was based on those individuals and the misconceptions that I had learned in church. Now I see that the reasons people are atheists are much more complicated and varied and things I have learned about that issue has helped shape my own philosophy and even the way I live my own life.A final reason is to put my own beliefs to the challenge. I realized several years ago that any belief worth having must be able to stand up to scrutiny. If I am not willing to challenge what I believe and have that belief survive that scrutiny, that belief is really not worth having.Why would any "non-atheist" who doesn't want to learn, doesn't want to consider other points of view and doesn't want their personal beliefs challenged want to debate here? I have no idea. That's why creationists now tend to congregate at places like evolution fairy tale. It doesn't put their beliefs in jeopardy. MESSAGE 841 ???!!!! Do you realize how many posts that is?? What about the 840 posts before that? After 840 posts of denial, evasion, unsupported evidence and general nonsense, people get testy. Did you happen to take note of Faith's attitude during any of that? Was she without fault? So it was only "atheists" who were disrespectful?? It's a debate forum - people are going to get rude; get over it. Yes, there are some who come here to mock and ridicule religion and Christianity in general (and Percy is not one of them - who this thread is supposed to be deriding). But for the most part the thing that most people mock and ridicule is the unscientific, unsupported positions that are touted as "THE TRUTH and only TRUTH." If you have something to say that is true, then you should be able to support that position. If others don't accept your position as truth, so frickin what? Move on. Let it go.HBD

We discussed this over a year ago in Creationist Shortage. It hardly seems to be a moderation issue.Personally, I don't like to get involved in political discussions or Bible study discussions, I prefer to stick to science threads. And these days science threads are in the minority, but again, hardly the fault of moderation. Lately the creation/evolution debate has been attracting a lot of those on the far fringes of sanity. (I'm not talking about Faith or mindspawn) Remember the guy that kept showing pictures of rocks and saying it was a dinosaur that had been shot with a gun. Or the guy that said Noah's ark was the human nervous system and (maybe the same guy) posted in every single forum his 14 ages of creation or some such nonsense. HBD

People are creationists because they understand that the Bible says its true and their literal interpretation of what scripture says is infallible. I am not really sure what you are implying here. Science is a very specific way of understanding our world. It deals with natural phenomenon and processes. If a particular belief involves natural processes, then it is subject to scientific scrutiny. Do I consider the Bible to be a source of knowledge? Yes, I do. What other "sources" are you thinking of? My remark was made specifically regarding why people are atheists. The misconception that many churched people have is that people are atheists because they want to live a wicked lifestyle. That they reject God so they don't have to accept any moral values. In reality, a significant reason people are atheists is the utter failure of the church to live up to its name (Christians = little Christs). A major part of this failure in recent times is this idea that if the earth is old the we need to throw out the entire Bible. Those that hold to this young earth position resort to half-truths, misrepresentations, misunderstanding and out-right deception to support their supposed "truth." It is utterly deplorable. Well, yes. Shouldn't I allow an atheist to inform me as to why he/she is an atheist? (That is the context of my comment after all) I think you mean "atheists who won't agree with you because they think you are wrong." What about it? If you are coming here to try and convert an atheist into a YEC, then you are totally wasting your time. But you only have control over yourself. If your argument is sound and you convince yourself, then it doesn't matter what others think. You can't make them accept your beliefs and whining about it won't help your case any. Care to support this? This may be an example of why you take such heckling - unsupportable, unfounded assertions. Let me guess, you, Faith, Mindspawn and bolderdash are the only ones who DON'T fit this description. Nonsense. Dwise1 hit the nail right on the head in his Message 854. What young earth proponents do is start with conclusion that is "true" and then try and get "science" to agree with their conclusion. This claim of literalists is what is incompatible with science. It never occurs to them that their initial premise could be wrong. It never occurs to them to think "maybe we have misunderstood this particular interpretation." It might be time for traditional religion to get bashed. If you think about it, when the church was established it was intended to be radically different, not traditional. But today the church wants to be comfortable, it wants to hold on to its dogmatic traditions regardless of how ineffective and out of touch with our modern world they are. The church of today has become so much like the Pharisees of Jesus' time; more concerned with the traditions of men that with the purpose God has given us - to be salt and light.HBD

From my experience on EFF, what I realized is that their primary purpose is to proselytize the "unbelievers." When they realize that you will not be converted they just ban you since there is no reason for you to be there except to waste people's time.HBD

Shouldn't that be a huge red flag that something is terribly wrong? Why can creationists not agree on important issues like flood geology? Why is there no coherent, unified theory that holds it all together? But instead it gives the appearance that everyone is basing their ideas on their own imaginings.HBD