Post and run?
Looking at the record (click on his name as a link), this OP was the first thing he had posted (25 Apr 2021) , but it didn't get promoted until 03 May 2021, a week later. While he did participate a bit in four other topics, his last message listed was on 28 Apr 2021, about 5 days before this topic was belatedly promoted. That might suggest that he had not intended this to be a post-and-run, but rather he had already decided to brush the dust off his sandals and forget about us (New Testament reference for writing off a community you fail to convert).
This OP was the only time I recall seeing him even mention evolution. As I recall, in all his other messages he affirmed his belief in demons, tried to convert us while pulling the typical proselytizing BS (including denying the Cheeto dust of proselytizing all over his face and hands), and generally engaged in typical fundamentalist nonsense.
I suspected he was yet another case of what we'd seen before. In a number of fundamentalist schools students will be given an assignment in which they find an "atheist" forum ("evolutionist" means the same thing to them) and troll it with "challenges to evolutionists", reporting back to the class for credit.
There was even a "grassroots" campaign a decade ago (04 May 2011) organized by one ministry (so much for "grassroots") with its own webpage:
Just a moment... . The idea was to arm creationist students with a set of questions to raise in class. The purpose was to put the teacher on the spot with "unanswerable questions" that would show that what the teacher was saying wasn't true and so to cast doubt on evolution -- BTW, slamming your victim with "unanswerable questions" is a common proselytizing tactic. That page lists their list of 15 questions which of course are nothing but PRATTs ("Points Refuted A Thousand Times"). A few other sites added to that list with even worse questions. My personal was "Looky at all these compounds! What did they all come from?" to which the obvious answer was, "Start paying attention in chemistry class and you'll learn where they come from, and so much more!"
It used to be very common to get some of those students doing that homework assignment here, but it's been a while now. The pattern would be for them to post an OP with one or some (or even all) of those questions, maybe offer a few weak responses, and then abruptly disappear to go collect their class credits.
This OP certainly smelled like one of those, however his email suggests that he is at least a young adult who is either a service member or a veteran (MacDill AFB is near him and it does have a Navy Reserve presence). At one point he mentioned not being very well received in the gaming community, which I assume to be on-line gaming, so I assume him to be rather young still (old gamers tend to do more table-top gaming). Maybe his adult RE class handed out those same assignments.
"Evolutionist" is defined as someone who "believes" in evolution. Virtually nobody "believes" in evolution. They conclude it by applying reasoning to the evidence.
My senior English teacher taught us that words have both denotations and connotations. The denotation is the factual definition, basically what's in the dictionary. But the
connotation is the set of emotions and prejudices that are associated with that word.
"Evolutionist" has both denotations and connotations. Every time you ask someone, especially a creationist (also loaded with connotations), what "evolutionist" means and he'll always give you a somewhat neutral denotation: someone who "believes in", ie accepts, evolution.
But that creationist never ever offers any of the connotations they have for that word, virtually all of them negative. To them, an "evolutionist" is not only an atheist, but also outright anti-God and wanting to destroy religion. Furthermore, they deem
by definition "evolutionism" and creationism to be mutually exclusive,
therefore an evolutionist cannot be a creationist nor can a creationist be an evolutionist (not by their narrow definitions; see below).
This works as a trap for their opponents, especially in any kind of discussion or debate format before an audience of believers. Especially in the earlier debates (ie, before we figured out this trick) the creationist was introduced as a creationist and his opponent was introduced as an "evolutionist". The opponent would usually accept that label ("OK, this is creation/evolution, so since I'm on the opposite side I guess that label makes sense.")
without knowing about the very negative connotations that he was signing on for. So as a "self-admitted" "evolutionist", the audience immediately saw him as the most vile form of enemy and he lost the audience and the debate before either of them even spoke the first word.
That is why I keep asking creationists what an "evolutionist" is supposed to be, just as I keep asking them what they think that evolution is (clearly that's not what we normals know it to be), and they never ever give me a straight answer, if they even bother to answer (which is very rare).
Edited by dwise1, : he referred to the gaming community