11.16.2010

Another Question to Consider

At this point in history are there reasons to reject evolutionary theory as the best explanation for the historical development of life on earth other than:
a) Ignorance of the facts
b) Misrepresentation of the facts
c) Deliberate lying
or
4) Wishful thinking (the 4 is for you pboy...)

8 comments:

mac said...

I think I'll go with letter number 4.

Jared said...

From what I've encountered, it's more about being deliberately lied TO the vast majority of the time. Those individuals whose income depends upon the ignorance of others usually are the ones misrepresenting and lying. I'm fairly certain it's not pure ignorance, but a combination of being misled and ignorance.

That's just my experience.

Harvey said...

If one is a "believer", then evolutionary theory cannot be true, since it disagrees with scripture (or, at least, differs from it). Therefore, it "follows like the night the day" that you must be untrue to both yourself and your fellow man, even though this requires outright lying.
Ergo, all of the above.

Anonymous said...

Jared has a point.

When I was a creationist, who was I watching/listening too?

Kent Hovind.

Racist, tax evading bastard. For him denying evolution was just good business.

Jared said...

I was never a creationist, although I did believe in god (about the same period of time span I believed in Santa and the Easter Bunny, just a few years longer) I've just seen and spoken to more than I care to contemplate at the moment. I only really have a problem with the ones peddling the bullshit, not the suckers that believe it. I always asked too many questions to buy into the "god told people what to write in the bible and the bible is right because it says so" line. My first question came within a few lines of the Genesis myth; how was there light before any stars? My second question came a few lines later: how were there plants before the sun? After that, I got another: if humans have dominion over every living thing, why were bacteria historically so lethal? I could go on, but I was just an inquisitive little bastard that asked all the wrong questions that people would just answer with "god works in mysterious ways." Which lead to another question: why would an all-knowing being be so stupid? I sympathize with the duped because I've seen so many people become so, but those who should know better and (either through intentional dishonesty, greed, or wishful thinking) try to convince others by misinformation, misrepresentation, or outright lies make me quite upset.

pboyfloyd said...

Yea, I think that believers are steered towards the old, "It's just a matter of opinion really, except you don't want to be going to Hell, now do you?", kind of thing.

Seems to me that the same holds true for the popular libertarian views that a lot of Americans hold. It too seems to be, "Just a matter of opinion, but you don't want to be a dirty commie, do you?"

Occasionally I talk with the stereotypical right-wing voter on my game and I've even went as far as calling his hairsplitting of information and 'content', trying to show the silliness of his position by the stances of the people who agree with him, as 'drivel', but he just soaks it up as good-natured disagreement.

It bothers him not one tiny whit that his ideology could well ruin the USAs economy and throw the entire World into a depression.

He also likes to use strange examples which he feels that I might agree with to help me agree with him on examples I certainly would NOT agree with him on.

For example, he claims that his father is rich yet gets a pension which he feels his dad ought not to be entitled to. This is so bogus because he is obviously fishing for me to agree that no-one at all ought to get any kind of government check out of taxes.

This kind of 'argument' is rife in creationist anti-evolution drivel too, the old, "Why isn't there alligators with birds wings?", and so on.

They're just trying to muddy the waters.

pboyfloyd said...

Here's a good one.

You'd imagine that Christians would be the very last people to claim that abstinence is 100% effective.

Johnny Edward Carlson said...

I think those reasons pretty much cover it.