There's a clever term for all this:
Confirmation Bias.
Confirmation bias refers to a type of selective thinking whereby one tends to notice and to look for what confirms one's beliefs, and to ignore, not look for, or undervalue the relevance of what contradicts one's beliefs.
Twice now Faith has done tests on these boards in relation to confirmation bias. Both times she has shown that she does it (its quite common and not a reflection of intelligence). However, this is what we see in Faith's evidences. If there was a Global Flood we would see Fossils all over the place, she's right, but let me take the baton of analogy and run with it.
I can't remember who it was (and I'm on a laptop with no mouse, so I'm not going to check), but whoever it was above mentioned a murder scene. Let's play sliding doors:
Forensic scientist: Almost missed the train today. phew. Anyway, to business. The house owner's fingerprints were found all over the place. Then again, it is his house, so that could be explained in other ways. Also we have his passport which shows that he was out of the country at the time of the incident, which falsifies the idea that it was him that committed the murder. Also, the house owner is very ill at the moment according to German hospital records (where he is bedridden according to the same records).
There is a partial print that matches a rapist's, a size 15 foot print matches the rapist's trainers.
Let's hall him in and get some answers.
****Sliding doors*****
Confirmation Biased Forensic scientist: The normal guy isn't in today, he missed his train. OK, so the house owner's fingerprints are all over the place, exactly what we'd expect to see if he was the killer. The other fingerprints are a piece of data that is problematic for my model but my theory is more elegant and parsimonious.
I knew it had to the house owner anyway, the I Ching said that the house owner would rise against his fellow with flashing blade. It was a knife that killed him so it all fits together.
It's all speculation anyway because we don't have a witness, and we can hardly test the past. Bring me the owner.
This confirmation bias makes it very difficult to discuss the subject fully. When somebody considers something evidence of an event which they happen to believe in strongly, they have a tendency to simply not see or regard all the evidence that contradicts the model. Therein lies the differences in the approaches. Evolutionists look for evidence against something, and if it can't be found, and evidence for it can, then we've got something interesting to explore. Creationists look for evidence that confirms their beliefs and dismiss evidence that couldn't be there if their beliefs were true. Usually by saying that it will be explained later, or that the evidence is not being correctly interpreted.
From the definition I linked above:
See also ad hoc hypothesis, cognitive dissonance, communal reinforcement, control study, selective thinking, and self-deception.
The only real option for us Evolutionists is to point out this confirmation bias in the hopes that it will be seen and understood by those who are not as clouded by it.
™ Version 4.2
