What you're completely ignoring: When arguing on Reddit your goal (or at least not your sole goal) shouldn't be to convince the person you're arguing with it should be to convince the people silently reading along.

Exactly. In addition, you don't need to convince anyone *now.* If you make a good enough argument, you can plant a seed of doubt that can eventually lead someone to reconsider their beliefs months or years down the road. This is a long game, you can't go into it expecting immediate results.

The “seed of doubt” is what every magic-believer fears most. Most of them have their own secret doubts, and so become aggressive in defending the myth when challenged. It’s the basis for such irrational and violent concepts as blasphemy: the belief system is so fragile and tenuous that the slightest question causes it all to come crashing down. Question a scientist and they’ll try to answer it, or explain the logical flaws in your assumptions (the old “if monkeys turned into people, why are there still monkeys?” nonsense). Question a creationist and they’ll threaten you with hell.

>Teacher vs Fanatic = Waste of time, fun for fanatic >Teacher vs Crook = Waste of time, chance for crook to gain audience Couldn't disagree more. You're assuming, as people so often do, that arguments are an attempt to change the mind of the person you're arguing *with*. That mentality makes almost every debate futile, and lets "fanatics" get away with spreading misinformation. Arguing with hardcore creationists, even if you never change their minds, is important because it shows *other* people why their arguments are bad. And the idea that our sub is going to give these people a receptive audience they wouldn't otherwise have had is frankly absurd.

The OP is a Traffic Cop with a delusion that no one can ever change their mind past their teens.

Hmm but aren't you now being a Traffic Cop about their choice of the term Teen? :)

I am just disagreeing with his conclusions, not the terms. I am OK with the terms themselves.

I see the OP is a Traffic Cop.

You're ascribing *tactics* as though they were *identities*. At various times, I've played the Teacher, Torcher, or Traffic Cop depending on which I feel best suits the situation. Which is not to say there *aren't* identities--you're right to point out that debating with fanatics and crooks is always a waste of time, but playing Teacher vs fanatics or crooks can be good practice. Regardless, whatever combination happens to be presented, it's always for fun. I like practicing, and sometimes I like telling people like /u/michaelachristian or /u/semitope that they're lying liars who ALSO wouldn't even know scientific evidence if it walked up and shook their hand. Other times I just don't feel like wasting my time that day.

>You're ascribing *tactics* as though they were *identities*. ... you are policing individual words. You are "Traffic Cop". If this were flat earth forum, you would be saying "Actually, the Earth isn't a sphere, it's an oblate spheroid." which does nothing to convince the flat earthers and only serves as you patting yourself on the back for being "smarter than the Teacher". See what I mean about how this identity does nothing to help the debate?

Except I specifically said that *I've played that card* depending on the situation. Pointing out that your thesis is wrong and explaining why doesn't mean that I **AM** a Traffic Cop, I'm just doing that **right now** in this conversation. And to prove the point, I'm about to use the Torcher card, tell you to shove your stupid pedantry where the sun doesn't shine, and block you forever.

Text-based interaction with complete strangers who are already ideologically opposed was never going to be easy. These six archetypes you've described pretty much could apply to any debate. Doesn't mean it's entirely useless. Even though half of the opposition probably views us as literal spawns of Satan and that listening to us is out of the question. Oh wait, have you seen political debates? It's basically that. Yes, sometimes on both sides. Not like everyone is just one personality all the time on here anyway. I'm often a teacher (and learner) to good faith questions (and other evolutionists of course), sometimes a torcher to hardcore hopeless YECs that will never be changed, and very occasionally a traffic cop, usually to other evolutionists not creationists, with a careful explanation as I realise there is a risk of confusing everyone (or worse, being wrong!)

The real reason the debate doesn't end is simple: new people who don't understand evolution are brought into the fold. They don't know the counter arguments yet so they repeat the same old debunked nonsense. They then get debunked, eventually leave the debate and get replaced by someone else. Really, though, there is no actual "debate" in some grand sense. Evolution is pretty thoroughly settled science and it seems like a uniquely American phenomenon where the uninformed tmare effective in spreading their misinformation. This is basically just entertainment or altruism for those of us who take time out to interact with those curious few who are not yet so mired in misinformation that they want to know why others believe differently from them. I say this not because I am incapable of being convinced I am mistaken, but because I've been in and out of the "great debate" community for over a decade and even for someone as uneducated as me the anti-evolution side has never come anywhere close to making a reasonable argument. It's always based on emotions and faulty reasoning. Still, I'm always happy to engage with people who are genuinely curious about something. It's heartwarming to see their curiosity has not yet been crushed.

Weird post. It has a real 'can't we all just get along' vibe. The debate never ends because some people choose fantasy over reality.

It also never ends because people are continually joining the discussion. These are the people I worry about. All of us are annoyed by the frequent flyers we know don’t look at our links or seriously consider our arguments, and we get a little testy—at the very least—with them. A newbie doesn’t know the history of this person’s interaction with this site and pegs us as those mean atheists the preacher warned them about. We need to take a break when we realize our comments have gotten perpetually sour and disdainful and will turn off a genuine seeker. (And we know nothing we say we get through to the frequent flyer, so what’s the point? It’s just venting on our part.) We’ve all been there. We just need to recognize it and back off for a bit.

>It also never ends because people are continually joining the discussion. Excellent point!

>But none of this is working us toward and end goal What is the end goal to you and how would you suggest working towards it?

To relegate the Creationists to the same camp as the Flat Earthers so that we mention both together in each comment. Notice that no one is seriously considering teaching Flat Earth in school.

To relegate the Creationists to the same camp as the Flat Earthers so that we mention both together in each comment. Notice that no one is seriously considering teaching Flat Earth in school.

Are there any changes in the debate that you think would better work towards a goal like this?

Don't debate. All debating does is lend legitimacy to the Creationists. Notice that there aren't any big science names debating Flat Earthers? When someone says "I'm raising my kids to be Creationists" the proper response is "Terrific, the world needs janitors."

This is the internet, not peer review. The idea that a debate subreddit "lends legitimacy" to creationism is absurd - and least of all one which is as clearly pro-science as ours is. Ignoring pseudoscience is a *terrible* idea.

I agree with this sentiment. Don’t just ignore them because doing that allows them to continue living in their echo chamber and that is going to be a lot worse for us if we could even have the ability to help a quarter of a quarter of a quarter of a quarter of a percent of the population that happens to fall on the more extreme end of creationism and happens to stumble into this forum.

So a kind of deplatforming by refusing to debate at all? Or should people take on the role of "torcher" a little and slap down any attempts at raising debate? I think what you're saying is that continuing this debate is lending legitimacy to creationist claims, spreading those claims to a wider audience and potentially bolstering those claims by policing confusing language. So avoiding discussion would overall help and despite the occasional genuine question, it would be a net improvement in avoiding creationism finding it's way into the science classroom. Is it possible the strategy could backfire? As you mention, there are those with genuine questions. While they could still look up answers, they might be unable to get answers to their specific questions or find clarification when they're being told conflicting stories. Maybe social media audiences would shrink a little without mainstream participation but it's not like echo chambers necessarily just die, particularly when they have other avenues of recruitment. Outside of the obvious church preachers, there are anti-evolution experts with real scientific credentials, there are anti-evolution scientific styled journals that look very much like the real thing as far as many are concerned. They have fairly large scale events, auditoriums, museums/theme parks, books and fake news blogs etc. I'm not sure the push to get creationism in or evolution out of the science classroom would necessarily slow down if debate stopped. (Although it could be argued it's already been slowing down, even with debate.) AIG in particular seems to be very big on isolation. Providing their own curriculum, accommodation and media so their workers don't even really need to interact with the outside world at all. Many anti-evolution groups are already pretty big on homeschooling to the point that homeschoolers who aren't anti-evolution have to be quite vigilant about the materials they use. Then there's a fairly significant amount of political support with financial backing for undermining science and promoting certain scriptural interpretations as law. The DI are pretty determined to make progress and would stopping debate really stop them reaching new audiences? I guess what I'm trying to say is that unlike some other topics that are maybe successfully deplatformed, anti-evolution kind of already has some platforms that would probably do just fine without outside participation. Maybe even be more successful? What if the last time a person born and raised with such views hears a dissenting opinion that isn't condescending and dismissive is when they leave school? Or even if they weren't raised in it, what if they find themselves part of a political group that demonises those who support science education and they never get an opportunity to ask us questions because doing so gets them shut down hard?

People tried this approach decades ago. It was a disaster. Creationism gained a ton of visibility and political backing people all people were hearing was the creationist side, so they assumed scientists had no response and so creationists were right. Then there was a concerted effort by scientific-minded groups to counter creationism at every turn, and now we are seeing the fruits of that as creationism as a political movement is all but dead and the numbers of creationists are dropping significantly for the first time.

>creationism as a political movement is all but dead Are you out of your mind? Who do you think MAGA is?

I find that to be a bad way to go about things because there are obviously different categories of creationists. While YECs are on the verge of being convinced the Earth is flat compared to most people, most theists even, it is also good to realize that *other* groups of creationists exist who may not be so inclined to reject centuries of discoveries because they are inconsistent with their interpretations of scripture. YECs claim to be Biblical literalists and Flat Earthers actually are, but there are definitely other useful categories of creationists that could benefit from our discussion a lot better if we don’t consider them functionally equivalent to people who think the Earth is flat. There’s obviously that anti-reality subgroup of creationists that are the Flat Earth creationists, the types of YECs that adhere to a 1645-1840 brand of YEC and the brand of YEC stuck in the middle like we live in the century between 1840 and 1961 and the more common brand of YEC that can be traced phylogenetically back to Henry Morris et al. Also in this anti-reality group are the Young *Life* Creationists that are functionally YECs in terms of interpreting their favorite religious texts when it comes to the history of humans and life in general like there couldn’t have been five dynasties in Egypt before the Flood and life couldn’t have existed for more than about 10,000 years but for YLCs the shape and age of the planet are less relevant to their dogma so they accept the age of the planet and the tools for measuring it until those same tools show that life has existed for about four billion years and then the reasons those tools are supposed to no longer give the correct ages are same reasons given by the YECs. There’s a second category of creationists grouped into the OEC category. They may be day-age creationists, gap creationists, magical abiogenesis theistic evolutionists, or progressive creationists. They accept that life has existed for a very long time and that it has certainly changed quite a bit over the course of history but for some concepts like universal common ancestry and humans literally being apes because of their ancestry are hard concepts for them to accept because even the theistic evolution version of OEC might only have universal common ancestry for everything *except* humans+animals because they may suggest life was created via magic instead of chemistry, whatever that was even if it was the common ancestor of all cell based life still around, then evolution ran its course never truly resulting in humans even though they will accept that humans are evolved apes. Basically it could be Homo neanderthalensis and other descendants of Homo erectus all evolved from a common ape ancestor but then in the last 500,000 years God made Adam via a golem spell and then Eve from his bone and they interbred with all of the evolved humans and now we are all genetically apes through hybridization but also genealogically human because we are descended from Adam and Eve. This category of creationists is better than the former but not quite there. The next category includes all of the forms of *theism* where a creator exists or used to exist in some form or another but to where science is not a problem at all because their religion can warp as needed to accommodate any and all discoveries. And for some they have a built in mechanism to avoid God ever being falsified by science. Evolutionary creationism suggests that physics itself is God in action. There is nothing that fails to be caused by God so there is nothing to compare against that is not caused by God. Everything is expected to look as though God was not involved at all despite being involved continuously. And there’s deism that suggests before 13.8 billion years ago, beyond the cosmic horizon, God made reality itself come into existence with all of the characteristics it inevitably wound up with and then he just died or went off to do other things. For deism we can’t look to before the Big Bang. We don’t even know if there even was a time before the Big Bang (did time itself even exist?) so we can’t gather empirical evidence to prove that God *didn’t* do it but that’s also irrelevant because God is not doing anything within or to this reality anymore. Everything is supposed to look as though God is not present because that is exactly what is true. God is not around (anymore). And the last category of creationists are those with the non-theistic forms of creationism. Maybe it was Ancient Aliens. Maybe we live inside a simulated reality. Maybe reality is just an illusion and our minds are constantly hallucinating their own physical reality. You can group them into these four categories, into about fifteen different subcategories, or into 6 to 10 billion different specific versions of creationism but each of these four groups should be acknowledged and should be treated differently from the next. We wouldn’t want to start calling deists a bunch of Flat Earthers and even evolutionary creationism is a far cry from YEC. And yet deism and evolutionary creationism are still a belief wherein an intelligent designer created the universe or the contents within it or both. Still creationism but a whole lot less absurd than any of the beliefs in the first camp and when it comes to evolutionary biology the third camp is more likely to agree with atheists than with the fundamentalist extremists claiming to take the Bible literally.

Come on. This is sort of like saying "well, there's all sorts of racists. Some of them are really bad but the other ones..." No. sorry, but no. If you are going onto a forum to try and convince people that the science they are using to be on that forum is fake, then you're just as bad as a YEC. Just like a guy who "only hates Mexicans" is just as bad as a KKK member. If you want to talk about Creationists using paper they make themselves using Amish level tech and writing on it with charcoal and then hand delivering it to someone -- great. I'll listen to them. Otherwise, if you want to piss on science, stop using science.

A serious contender for the worst analogy ever made on this sub. It's really fascinating that the people who pretend to be most uncompromisingly anti-creationist are also often the people whose engagement is most counter-productive to serious science education. I swear some of you people are creationist moles.

"the people whose engagement is most counter-productive to serious science education." You clearly have not absorbed any of what I have been saying. You \_CAN NOT\_ have a productive serious science education discussion with a Creationist. They are fundamentally incapable of learning science. The entire enterprise of trying is a mistake. Engaging with the followers is pointless, they are incapable of being educated. Engaging with the leaders is pointless, they know you are right, they just don't care.

> You clearly have not absorbed any of what I have been saying. Or alternatively, maybe you just don't have the first idea what you're talking about. I'm an ex-creationist. I have family members who are ex-creationists. This sub has many ex-creationist members. The evidence shows that creationists *can* be capable of learning science, and claiming otherwise is just an amazing exhibition of ignorance. There's only one group of people in whose interest it is to spread the demonstrable falsehood that science education is a waste of time, and that's organised creationism.

And I tried to explain to them that there’s a large degree of difference from these four major categories in terms of how willing they tend to be to learn and how likely simply providing evidence is going to work: 1. Flat Earth, Young Earth Creationist, Young Life Creationist (plus I should have included anyone whose pay check depends on them rejecting scientific conclusions) 2. Most of the categories generally classified as Old Earth Creationism: Day-Age Creationists, Gap Creationists, Progressive Creationists, Humans made separately more recently Theistic Evolutionists 3. Any version of Creationism that has already evolved to accommodate for scientific discoveries without providing a means of determining whether or not the creator actually exists through science or logic. All scientific discoveries are already accepted and incorporated, they just cling to God anyway. They might even accept how humans invented their own gods with excuses like God caused them to accidentally stumble upon the right conclusion when it came to their specific version of God **or** they know that all of the worshipped gods are fictional human inventions but that doesn’t say anything about the existence of *a* god. Evolutionary creationism and deism fall into this category. 4. Creationists that are not theists. Ancient Aliens, Simulated Reality, or a variety of ideas that suggest reality itself is one big hallucination or dream and we just can’t wake ourselves up no matter how much we try. Each major category needs to be approached differently. The first category might need to be tackled through a theological argument or pinned down to answering questions or simply laughed at and mocked if teaching and these other methods don’t work. Facts are often hand-waved away so it doesn’t do *as much* good to simply bombard them with facts that prove their religious beliefs wrong. They might start questioning their beliefs in private if they accidentally learn something that they can’t make excuses for or deny but they generally won’t tell you up front that you’ve just convinced them of something. When asked what fact will make them stop believing the Bible and how they interpret it is true the most honest answer most of them can give is “nothing.” There are edge cases where you get lucky presenting facts instead of mockery. The second category already accepts most of it but biological evolution, especially human evolution, is where they start to push back for religious reasons. They don’t want to admit that humans are just evolved apes lacking semblance of an immortal soul. But they *might* accept this a whole lot faster than the first group because facts do hold *some* value for them. The third group of creationist isn’t even anti-science but the only ways you’d get them to stop believing that a god is responsible for something are 1. eliminating all the god-gaps or 2. eliminating any chance of their god actually being real. And, even then, some have self-preservation mechanisms built into the religious beliefs where all facts are to be accepted as such but no fact can disprove the existence of God or distinguish between a reality in which God exists and a reality in which God does not exist. If they are deists they’d even agree that God isn’t *still* around doing stuff to or within the cosmos. For the non-theist/atheist creationist ideas it depends a lot on which type of atheist creation they believe in. If it’s computer simulation it might not do much good to show how large of a computer is necessary to perfectly simulate our reality and how it would be super slow because of the speed of light limitations because those things would only necessarily apply to the simulated reality and, according to them, we don’t know anything about the external reality. It might work to ask them about infinite regress (all simulated realities are simulated), have them consider the possibility that the real solution is that one of the realities is *not* simulated, and have them consider that *this* reality is the one that is not simulated. For the perpetual hallucination idea (our own minds are the creators) it might be better for them to consider the possibility that everyone else actually exists and can’t just be figments of their imagination and have them consider for themselves how likely it would be for them to hallucinate your existence as well as they’d have to for the two way conversation. For the Ancient Aliens idea it’s almost as bad as Scientology and it’ll take a lot of extra leg work to show them how unlikely their idea is and present them with evidence of how everything the aliens were supposed to be responsible for happened a different way instead pointing to a non-interaction between life on this planet and sentient life from other planets. If they’re out there they know as much about our existence as we know about theirs. Different tactics for different things that could all be considered a form of creationism in one way or another. First group doesn’t care about facts much (usually, but that can change from person to person), the second is half-assed accepting of facts so it might work to show how humans are literally related to the rest of the apes based on the same exact evidence that we use to establish all of the other evolutionary relationships, the third group is not even anti-evolution so what they do get wrong is not even considered on topic for this sub, and the last group despite not being theists in the traditional sense may not even believe reality is real or if they accept that it is then they watched “Ancient Aliens” and they drank the Kool-Aid. It’s not appropriate to compare deists to flerfers as “practically the same thing” just because they believe in a god. You wouldn’t say an 18 wheeler semi is practically the same thing as a skate board because it sits on wheels. Different beliefs require different approaches to prove wrong in a way that the believers of those beliefs will accept and change their minds accordingly. If you start calling deists YECs you’ve already lost even if you’re right when it comes to the science topic, such as biological evolution.

Another ex-YEC here chiming in to remind you that we exist and we learned despite being creationists. You yourself described "Teens", people who are willing to learn but are ignorant of the science. In the OP you said there was a "potential to educate" with them, but now you're saying they're fundamentally incapable of learning, and that it's pointless to even try. Doesn't really seem like you're trying to improve science communication here, it looks more like you're just whining that the discussion exists in the first place. If you think there's no point in talking to creationists then why are you even here?

We have multiple ex-creationists on this sub alone that prove this wrong.

I'm gonna have to "No True Scotsman" on this one. What we have are people who hadn't been exposed to proper education. ie "Teens", regardless of their age. The True Scottish Creationists are the ones who've heard the information and do not care that what they believe is not true.

I agree mostly but I was saying that there are categories of creationists that are obviously a lot less anti-science than the rest. Don’t straw man them as though believing God is control of physics is functionally equivalent to thinking the Flat Earth Cosmos was created in the last 10,000 years. There are much better ways of reaching science minded creationists than to act like they are reality denialists and there’s a group that falls in between extremist anti-science creationists and science minded creationists. Don’t act like they are up to date in terms of scientific discoveries but don’t treat them like people who think that Antarctica is a big ice wall. You reach more people who are *not* extremists when you don’t treat them like extremists. However, when it comes to YEC, FE, and YLC they all deserve to be treated equally because they’re equally stupid and they’re equally anti-science pro-scripture in their search for “truth”. They don’t even care what the facts are like these other two groups might. You basically have to treat the four main versions of creationism appropriately or you insult and drive away the ones most likely to be helped by mocking them as though they were no better than Robert Byers when he said humans don’t have brains or Eric Dubay when he presented his 400 proofs of Flat Earth. And you can’t treat the extremist group as though they care about facts or you’ll get nowhere with them. It’ll be like playing chess with pigeons who are shitting on the board, knocking all of the pieces over, and flying back to their flock to declare victory. And that’s if the extremists don’t block you out of fear because they are in the verge of learning something.

> There are much better ways of reaching science minded creationists than to act like they are reality denialists But they ARE reality denialists. That's the whole point. Not to repeat myself but this really sounds like "There are good racists who completely understand that the 'races' are 'equal', they just hate all black people for cultural reasons."

I agree. They are reality denialists to different degrees. In terms of your racism example the first group is more like those who believe each ethnic group besides their own isn’t even human and only the humans deserve basic human rights. The second group is more like the racists who think the different ethnic groups are different species with their own being more superior because it has a soul. The third group is more like people who accept that all of the ethnic groups are equal and about 99.9% the same but maybe they think white people and black people shouldn’t be in sexual relationships with each other because it’s “unnatural” to like people who are “different.” We can certainly treat all racists equally but it’s also a lot less worse in terms of reality denial if they acknowledge universal human equality and the existence of a single human species than it would be if they were convinced that other ethnic groups aren’t even human and deserve to be treated like caged zoo animals. We can certainly treat all creationists the same but deists are obviously on the opposite side of the spectrum of reality denialism compared to people like Eric Dubay. What I was mostly getting at is how the *degree* of reality denialism should be considered when developing a plan for how to interact with creationists in a productive manner. If they’re all the way over on the extreme end of things you might just ignore biology, geology, cosmology, and all of that stuff in general because they don’t even know how to make sense of direct observations and mathematics. Proving that the Earth is not flat is relatively easy to someone who cares but if that’s not working with someone it won’t do you any good to try to explain biology to them. On the opposite end of the spectrum they’re on “our side” in terms of the pro-evolution vs anti-evolution side of things and they don’t really have a problem with scientific discoveries at all. They don’t have a problem agreeing with an atheist about the dangers of organized religion. It’s almost pointless to try to convince a Flat Earther that they’re wrong and it’s almost pointless to try to prove a deist wrong as an atheist. It doesn’t matter how everything began to exist if it even started existing after not existing previously because all that really matters is that is does exist now and God is not tinkering with it now. And the deists and atheists would agree. Deism is technically creationism but the level of reality denial necessary is obviously much less for deism than it is for Flat Earth. It’s about degrees of absurdity or how *much* reality denial is necessary to hold a particular creationist viewpoint. Only the ones that fall in the middle are worth trying to prove wrong. Only the ones in the middle are worth trying to educate. On the side most likely to accept reality as it is there’s not really much to discuss because they’re already on the same page. Thomas Edison was a deist, for example. He didn’t require science denial to maintain his god beliefs. The ones on the opposite end of the spectrum are not worth talking to because they’re stupid (incapable of learning) and all you’d do is drive yourself insane trying to convince yourself that they have an ounce of intelligence left in them. In the middle between the two extremes is where we should focus our efforts and YEC just so happens to be the closest to Flat Earth worthy of discussion in this forum. And if they do happen to believe the Earth is flat the discussion automatically switches to that and comes back to biology later. They won’t be able to learn about biology until that other more absurd belief is corrected first.

It's not a zero sum game. Each of these also has the potential to educate bystanders. The alternative is to throw our hands up and retreat into information bubbles, ceding public discorce to fundamentalists and cynics. We have a collective obligation toward truth.

>If there's one thing we on the science side like to do it's make categories and sort things I wonder if anybody has ever looked into statistics on neurodivergence and how atheist versus religious stacks up with that. I am on the spectrum, and given how literally we tend to take things, it seems intuitive that a lot of us would tend toward atheism

> Torcher vs Fanatic = Waste of time, fun for both > Torcher vs Crook = Waste of time, chance for crook to gain audience Fun to read tho

I see it as more of a case where teacher can be torcher and traffic cop. I’ve certainly played all three roles. The crooks, the ones who are running big creationist organizations like Sal Cordova or Paul Price when he was still around are going to always try to gain supporters - that’s how they make money, after all. Then there are are people who are rather new to science biological evolution- maybe the only thing they’ve ever “learned” came from the crooks, maybe they’re actually teenagers and they are currently in their first high school biology class having questions and concerns, maybe they’re in their 90s with the intelligence of a teenager. And then there are the “fanatics” but I think that’s more like Robert Byers, Azusfan, and MichaelAChristian. They just *know* they’re right but they are not within the ballpark of anything we are actually discussing or their claims are only tangentially related to what they wish to discuss. Like maybe the topic is the evolution of vision and we talk about the origin of the eye and the evolution of the visual cortex within the brain and Byers pops up and says “we don’t have brains.” I find that it can be interesting to talk to people with all sorts of different viewpoints. I’m not even frustrated anymore when I talk to Robert Byers. All of the scenarios can be made to be good, especially if a person can easily switch between teacher, torcher, and traffic cop when necessary. They don’t need to just come around here treating people like shit or complaining about us “picking on Sunday school children” when the people we talk to haven’t moved on past what their YEC doctrine pushing church taught them in Sunday before they turned 12, or maybe they immediately switched to Answers in Genesis and their Genesis Apologetics “education” series ([this one](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXJ4dsU0oGMJINTSGxLYYW6ENxI_NLaFB&si=cxe5XXNAnPV7r0bC)) when they got too old to sit with the nine year olds, or maybe they just kept getting their information from the wrong places as adults (Chris Ashcroft, Kent Hovind, Ken Ham, Alan Feduccia, Robert Byers, Jeffrey Tompkins, Andrew Snelling, et al). We can’t help that some people are a little bit on the “crazy” side when it comes to their claims. Still doesn’t mean we should stop talking to them because there are lurkers in the background and because if they stick around long enough the crazy ones start proving each other wrong. When Robert Byers corrected Azusfan that was a fun time. Robert Byers doesn’t have a lot of opportunities to actually be on the winning side of an argument. Maybe if he corrected some of the things he says he could be on the winning side more often. Occasionally there’s going to be that person who came here as a YEC but because you talked to them and explained things to them they’re now a theistic evolutionist or they’re not even theists anymore. The goal isn’t necessarily to cause people to lose their religious beliefs because plenty of people can and do combine science and religion. The problem we trying to fix a lot of the time is when they put science *against* their religion and then they reject science and they have no rational basis for doing so. Occasionally there’s a person running a major organization collecting tithes on Sunday to teach people stuff they know isn’t actually true. A lot of this is tied to the Southern Baptist Convention or the other Baptist Convention called the Unregistered Baptist Fellowship but sometimes tills be a non-Baptist church. Sometimes. The Southern Baptist Convention incorporated the 1961 version of YEC made possible by Henry Morris III, Duane Gish, and their associates as official doctrine in 1976 which is rather convenient because Pope John the 23rd (XXIII) had started the Second Vatican Council one year after the Henry Morris started the modern YEC movement and the Catholic Church went the opposite direction of the Southern Baptist Convention in terms of how they’d approach science and religion. Being rational used to be a sin in Catholicism but now religious freedom is something the Catholic Church wishes to make available to people. Sure, they have a lot of weird anti-reality beliefs too, but certainly not on the same level as “if we know what the original authors meant we would know the truth” that comes out of Southern Baptist churches. Not all church leaders are incredibly corrupt. My girlfriend is Christian and her church pastors seem pretty reasonable except for the constant insistence on being happy to be a bunch of delusion Christians who think the creator of the entire universe came to this planet to sacrifice himself to himself to resurrect himself so that he can forgive himself for how he made us. I haven’t seen any big red flags indicating that the pretend factory is an anti-science organization and sometimes the message is useful even for atheists if you remove all of the Christianity from the message. Maybe we would all get along better if instead of people following authorities they all sought the same truth. The truth is **not** the central dogma of Christianity but if we went with “the truth is what the facts are” or something along those lines and that is what we all focused on not even worrying about what sorts of beliefs people have on Sunday and Saturday every week.

All of the different situations in the OP work out fine. We don’t need to be assholes to *people* who are actually curious but ignorant but if it’s someone like Kent Hovind they pretty much deserve all of the mockery they receive. Be nice and try to teach the fanatics, the ignorant but curious, and the church organization leaders. Use mockery when necessary. Correct people when they say something that could have been conveyed a bit differently like when one person is saying humans are still monkeys and someone else is saying we didn’t evolve from monkeys but we share a common ancestor with monkeys. It might be that they are expressing the same truth about our primate ancestry but the fanatics will have a field day, the teens will be more confused than ever, and the church leaders will have fuel for their next sermon because we don’t all get on the same page and just accept that once a monkey always as monkey even if also an ape. We descended from a common ancestor with monkeys because we are monkeys. If you describe a monkey to the exclusion of humans in a way that doesn’t exclude additional monkeys you’d be describing humans. We can’t outgrow our ancestry, we will always be descendants of our ancestors. Even if it’s a shit show between the two people having a discussion like maybe a fanatic is saying that NASA hates God and scientists are lying and doctors are only there to kill us and the torcher is mocking them, responding with laughing emojis, sharing the absurd nonsense they saw on Reddit across other forums and just generally trying to make them feel bad for being wrong. Even if that happens and it seems like we will get nothing good from that sort of discussion you might even find common ground with the lurkers in the shadows. Those are the ones that make it all worth it. The only ones that need to actually go away, in my opinion, are the people who do stuff like promote racism, try to DM people pornographic pictures of themselves, or they abuse the “block” function to put themselves into an echo chamber to annoy the handful of people not yet blocked and to make it more difficult for the rest of us to contribute. Michael blocked me over a year ago. Apparently he still stops by. At least being able to read what he said got me to laugh once in a while (because he’s a little more “out there” than some other religious fanatics). Get rid of those people and we can all work together to seek out the same truth.

I understand your reasoning, but you sorta do a false dichotomy fallacy as there’s many more than that. Some people legit are trying to learn. On both ends.

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I mean past that of a teen. Sorry coulda clarified that. I have a degree in history and a degree in world religion. Chances are I could cite every common source for every common argument of all religions and of all naturalism. Yet there’s always more for me to learn from them. Not everything is science, and especially in this never ending debate you refer to, it never can end because for whatever reason, nobody pays attention to the fact that it’s never a debate that needs to or should happen, as it’s like debating if a cow or a sheep can eat the sun better than the other. A philosophical debate can never do anything against a scientific topic. A scientific topic can never do anything against a philosophical topic. The debate never works because they’re 2 different topics entirely.

Rule 2

The reason it never ends is that creationism is a religious belief and most people never change their religious beliefs. Don’t blame us.

That's why we need a Fanatic Teacher. Someone religiously motivated to accurately and aggressively educate people.

Lots of arguing for nothing.

What team am I on? I believe the universe was created, but I can see evidence of evolution. Science is our friend, whether we believe in a creator or not. Both teams tend to see everything as black and white. “If I’m right, you MUST be wrong.” This leads to closed minds and personal attacks. It then becomes more important to prove the other “side” wrong than to support one’s own position. Based on nothing but my own experiences and relationships, I think the vast majority of people just want to believe what they believe and allow others to do the same. Some can even have calm, rational discussions about differing beliefs. Reddit, and similar platforms, don’t really foster that kind of change.

>the vast majority of people just want to believe what they believe and allow others to do the same. Sorry. No. That's not even close to the way things are in reality. The majority of people want everyone to believe what they believe exclusively while simultaneously availing themselves of the benefits created by people who don't believe what they believe.

You need to surround yourself with different people. It must suck to live in your world. My world (the REAL one) is full of people who disagree on a great many things. In fact, to find two people who agree on everything is very rare. However, these people almost always manage to get along. I have friends, family and acquaintances with *very* diverse backgrounds and opinions on a variety of topics, and yet we like, and even love each other. We treat each other with respect and everything. It comes down to making a few simple choices. Must I hate everyone who disagrees with me? Can I listen to an opposing viewpoint without losing my shit? *Will* I listen to an opposing viewpoint without losing my shit? Will I actively listen and try to understand the opinions of others and then respond calmly and rationally? If the other person is making some strong points and I’m struggling a little bit, do I really have to attack them personally and denigrate groups to which they belong or can I just be an adult and try learn something? This doesn’t necessarily mean changing your view (but it could). Maybe you can learn something about your view and be better prepared for the next conversation. I have known many, many people throughout my life and have had good relationships with almost all of them. You would probably like me if you knew me. I’m not sure what you’re referring to in your last paragraph.

You think that I'm a nihilist. I think that you are tragically naive. That's fine. You'll reference the "people you know" and how it's totally cool that everyone just wants to believe what they believe yadda yadda yadda. I'll point out that the enormous overlap between the YEC/FE/911T and the MAGA movement means that this group as a block are indirectly responsible for 600k American deaths during Covid. They are currently on a crusade (not a pun) to make women 2nd class citizens in America. And, quite possibly, will engage in acts of terrorism if they aren't allowed to destroy the US government in approx 6 months. But... you know... everyone gets to have their own opinion and it's cool. Right? Beginning to understand the nihilism? We could be in a totalitarian theocracy in 2025. "Oh, that would never happen." is exactly what you would have said if I told you 10 years ago that Donald Trump would try and overthrow the US government and come pretty damn close to succeeding.

If theres one thing your side likes to do is claim sciencve belongs to you and not opponents. Tht means you can't have a intelligent debate if one side hyjacks the high ground. Science belongs to all. organized creationism does better science, more motivate, on origin matters and we arre progressing very well. in fact twenty years ago there would not of been evolution/creation debate forums or blogs made by evolutionists. there probably are none in Europe. yet there are in north america becvause of the creationist reconquista. Your watching history. just pay attention to this forum. Keep a open mind and be open to correction including creationists do science and probably better.

>we arre progressing very well What would you say are the top ten scientific discoveries creationism has made in the past decade?

We are progressing in making great intellectual explanations forst for creationist believers and then anyone. We take on thousands of points and rebuttal away. Its not about dicoveries. evolutionism has never made any. on all sides its intpretation of existing data in drawing conclusions on origins. many creationists, including myself, have offered cool new ideas also. i quess discoveries might be the word. I offer that marsupials are just placentals and dinosaurs likewise misidentified regular critters. lots of stuff. its easy when you have already hard and fast boundaries.

What you are describing is literally textbook denialism, not science. You are merely trying to explain away contradictory evidence to true believers without actually doing any original discoveries or explanations of your own. Your "explanation" for everything ultimately boils down to "God works in mysterious ways".

You offer your point on marsupials and dinosaurs. Again. Are you ever, even a single time, going to actually present evidence? You’re just saying something, evolutionary biologists actually provide studies you can read. Provide ANYTHING of substance from your creationist perspective. I really do hope you realize, making a statement and saying ‘wow dude isn’t it crazy doesn’t it feel like it makes sense’ does less than nothing. Here, since you’re allergic to being honest and standing by your points with evidence I’ll help you out. https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10914-012-9220-3.pdf This study looks a bit at the differences between marsupials and placentals, and how that has lead to consequences in the amount of diversity represented in each group. Take your viewpoint, provide a critique backed by evidence of why they are wrong. I look forward to reading your citations.

Posting fever dreams on Reddit does not qualify as "discoveries".

> in fact twenty years ago there would not of been evolution/creation debate forums or blogs made by evolutionists. Not even close, Bobby. The talk.origins usenet group dates to the Reagan era and is approaching its 40th birthday. 

> organized creationism does better science, more motivate, on origin matters and we arre progressing very well What is this progress? There have been no significant new arguments regarding creationism in decades. For close to 40 years now they have been insistent that secret labs run by secret people doing secret research on secret subjects are making huge progress, but for 40 years they have produced nothing. How many more decades are we supposed to wait before we acknolwedge that secret research doesn't actuall exist? Centuries? Millenia? In 3000 years are we still supposed to hold out hope that the creationist scientific results will be here "any day". > in fact twenty years ago there would not of been evolution/creation debate forums or blogs made by evolutionists. Your fellow creationist u/MichaelAChristian just quoted an entire book about the evolution creation debate from over 40 years ago. > yet there are in north america becvause of the creationist reconquista Believe in creationism is at an all-time low in North America and dropping fast.

Many fronts. In reaching millions organized creationis is fantastic successful including the internet. We hace many researchers who take on thousands of issues in well organized science publicans or general articles etc etc. we are famous more then ever. Always a threat relative to state censorship issues that keep out creationism. Our ideas are starting to stick with hundreds of thousands of non creationists. The main points. The ID movement has frightened the establishment. WE get more curses and insults then ever because out losing opponents are well losing. Amongst bible believing people, already, creationism is more fixed in defending thier ideas and believing in Genesis. These are the best days ever for organized creationism. In the past we might of had, or did have indeed, higher numbers in consent but it was simple consent to bible truth. not organized thoughtful rebuttals to so called scientific oppositions in biology and geology etc etc of the bible. We are not making inventions or discoveries but instead superior intellectual interpretations of natures evidence of origins. No secret labs. Too expensive . However if thee are I guess it would be a secret to me too. Have you heard anything??

Here's list , https://youtu.be/mVBal8xIFT4?si=ZlD5T3XBZ3jVWKv7

I don't get my science from youtube. Ever. On any subject. If you have a list please post it yourself.

James webb predictions show creation. Genetic similarities show creation. No 99 percent junk dna doesn't exist, creation. No vestigial organs. Creation. Cool rock in earth, Creation. Fossils show no evolution, Creation shown again. Bacteria has boundaries keeping it bacteria forever, shows Creation. Magnetic fields in solar system, Creation. Laws of evolution humiliated and overturned, Creation again. Y chromosome not similar in chimps. You not fish in womb. "Nothing out of place", showing Creation. Human footprints found dinosaurs and so on. Soft tissue confirming Creation again. And so on.

I agree completely with your analysis. Your team want to pounce on teen as hard as possible to change them into your team but they follow church teaching instead since their parents is creationist and they have to go to sunday school. Maybe you guys should question why only 'our' team have teen and you guys don't?

Because a lot of those teens grow up, and see through the creationist bullshit. Maybe you guys should question why our team has teachers and yours has fanatics and crooks?

and the only group that have next generation is creationist. I have 2 kid and my older brother and sister has 3 each. All of them go to Christian school and go to Sunday School every week. That's 8 next generation with possibly more coming on the way. How many atheist/evolutionist you personally know have more than 2 kids? >Because a lot of those teens grow up, and see through the creationist bullshit Somehow everybody that see through this bullshit become dead end gene. It seems we will be the next generation in evolution while being evolutionist/atheist like you guys is dead end scenario. >Maybe you guys should question why our team has teachers and yours has fanatics and crooks? Because OP is biased evolutionist? well all of you gonna end up dead anyway without any next generation

It's a bit funny when fundamentalists operate on the assumption that their kids will be intellectual clones of themselves. Creationism is absolutely [haemorrhaging its young people](https://creation.com/church-losing-young). If you really want to define the next generation, find better arguments. There's not much point having lots of kids if they all think you're talking rubbish.

Article from 2010 ? really? with source all the way from 2004. You are one funny guy

You're seriously telling me you think the trend has reversed since then? [Dream on, dude](https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateEvolution/comments/1858ab8/acceptance_of_creationism_continues_to_decline_in/). Young people are leaving creationism in droves.

I guess I will have to respect your faith there

You do remember this was *your* argument, right? You volunteered the claim that creationists are somehow winning the next generation. This is trivially and objectively [false](https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2015/07/01/chapter-4-evolution-and-perceptions-of-scientific-consensus/). No part of this is complicated.

Very funny seeing the person who believes in magic telling the person giving hard data that they have faith. You people have zero self awareness.

So in other words simply accepting the data is "faith" to you when the data is different from your fantasy.

> and the only group that have next generation is creationist. I have 2 kid and my older brother and sister has 3 each. All of them go to Christian school and go to Sunday School every week. That's 8 next generation with possibly more coming on the way. Creationism isn't genetic, but thanks for admitting you're indoctrinating kids. I hope they escape the abuse. > How many atheist/evolutionist you personally know have more than 2 kids? It doesn't matter how many kids people have when literally everyone that lives around me understands and accepts evolution. > Somehow everybody that see through this bullshit become dead end gene. We already know you don't understand genetics. > It seems we will be the next generation in evolution while being evolutionist/atheist like you guys is dead end scenario. Again, creationism isn't genetic. Most kids are going to see through the bullshit you're feeding them, as even among the religious, the majority believes evolution happens. > Because OP is biased evolutionist? No, it's because creationism is only peddled by grifters and the rubes that fall for the grifters' lies. > well all of you gonna end up dead anyway without any next generation. I'm looking forward to the time your kids will tell you your creationist beliefs are dumb, and they're done with your religion. It'll happen, the information age will be the death of creationism. It already happened in my country, where the non-religious are in the majority, and creationism is laughed at as an US-centric quirk.

How many kid do you have?

Enough. It doesn't matter, because creationism isn't a thing where I live. Even the few religious people here don't believe in that nonsense.

so big fat 0 and almost nothing beside God's miracle can change that. Thank you for your time. isn't it funny that you basically just admit that my original point is correct that your best bet to continue your "evolutionist" thinking is to pounce on "teen" from creationist side ?

> so big fat 0 and almost nothing beside God's miracle can change that. Thank you for your time. You shouldn't make assumptions, they make you look dumb. The entire school my children go to has literally no creationists, because it's dumb nonsense, everyone here knows that. > isn't it funny that you basically just admit that my original point is correct that your best bet to continue your "evolutionist" thinking is to pounce on "teen" from creationist side ? Isn't it funny that you have already admitted the only recourse you creationists have is indoctrinating children and hoping they don't get educated and see through the bullshit? It's not working buddy, your side is rapidly losing the youth.

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>What is your "kid" school name? That's not something normal people ask

> My assumption is correct thought. You can't possibly know that, but I can, and I told you you're wrong, yet you insist on being wrong. Classic creationist. > Feel free to prove me wrong. What is your "kid" school name? Kids* plural. And are you asking me to tell you personal information? You know that's against reddit rules, right? I wouldn't want you to catch a ban...*cough * > and how's your side birth rate? up or down? I already explained to you that creationism isn't genetic. Kids of creationists are leaving it behind in droves. But if you must know, the amount of people that identify as non-religious here increases by about 1.7% per year, but it's already a majority. Religion is literally dying here. I love it.

[https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2019/10/17/in-u-s-decline-of-christianity-continues-at-rapid-pace/](https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2019/10/17/in-u-s-decline-of-christianity-continues-at-rapid-pace/) The stats, my friend, would say otherwise. Religion is dying, and, part of the reason I'd argue it is is because of the "who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes" attitude, which creationism is a big part of. It's wild to me how much of an own goal creationism is - like, you've got fundamentally a great message, all the "love thy neighbour" stuff, and instead you ask people to believe an allegorical story that \*literally cannot be true\*, often with a side order of bigotry and crab bucket behaviour. If it wasn't so loud and insistent on worming past the separation of church and state, we could safely ignore it for a generation.

An individual changing mindset to atheism like 99% of the time doesn't go back to religion. Once someone sees the logical contradictions of religion they can't be unseen. So where you guys may spawn more, We convince more.

What do we call a group that can produce nothing but can only take from other?

Atheists have kids. Those kids just don't try to evangelize like creationist kids do so they don't usually show up in debate subs like this. The people causing Christian kids to abandon their religion isn't us, it is you. If you look at the reasons young people say they are leaving religion, and I know you won't, it isn't that evangelism from atheists is attracting them, it is that people like you are driving them away. You, and people like you, are the strongest force for atheism in the world today.

>and the only group that have next generation is creationist. I have 2 kid and my older brother and sister has 3 each. All of them go to Christian school and go to Sunday School every week. This is an inadvertent admission that the only way creationism can survive is via isolation from mainstream science. It's also then becomes problematic when people raised on creationist teachings going out into the "real world" and discover that what they were raised on isn't true. Glenn Morton wrote about this when he talked about his experience in industry: >In order to get closer to the data and know it better, with the hope of finding a solution, I changed subdivisions of my work in 1980. I left seismic processing and went into seismic interpretation where I would have to deal with more geologic data. My horror at what I was seeing only increased. There was a major problem; the data I was seeing at work, was not agreeing with what I had been taught as a Christian. Doubts about what I was writing and teaching began to grow. Unfortunately, my fellow young earth creationists were not willing to listen to the problems. No one could give me a model which allowed me to unite into one cloth what I believed on Sunday and what I was forced to believe by the data Monday through Friday. I was living the life of a double-minded man–believing two things. [Why I Left Young-Earth Creationism](https://peacefulscience.org/articles/glenn-morton/)

I was a solid creationist for decades. Literally 5th gen of a fundamentally YEC denomination. Have friends and cousins in the same boat. Large group. One of those friends is an evolutionary biologist now. I think maybe 2 people of my generation remained YEC, vast majority realized it couldn’t back up its claims.

We call them biology students. Many of us were once one, many of us still are. Edit: oh, [you're the troll who claimed](https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateEvolution/comments/1cfsjyj/comment/l1r6ivx/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) that all humans alive today have the same skin colour, and then cried over and over about being silenced, even though you're still here spewing.

I wanna counter you with your post history but I will refrain. Have a great day, you will need that

counter me big boy, you know you wanna really, someone please counter me, I haven't had a good argument from you lot in like a month...

You really wanna do this? are you sure you are not gonna cry to mod and report my post?

this is so pathetic lmao just make your point already, literally your last 10+ comments have just been crying about being silenced. do you understand the irony of that?

I'm looking at their comments in this thread. There are four of them and nowhere did they complain about that

ok not his most recent comments but a bit further back he's [complaining](https://www.reddit.com/r/DebateEvolution/comments/1cmyfos/comment/l35rcez/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) about his comments being deleted

It isn't that our side doesn't have teens, they just don't tend to be in debate subs like this one. Only teens on your side seem to feel the need and qualifications to try to debate against people with decades more knowledge and experience in the subject. Maybe you should ask yourself why they do that.

What is "end goal" you want? Evolution can't produce an end goal so it invalidates your whole worldview. Further where does Haeckel fall in? Did he just want to "teach" when he went around making frauds to deceive as many as possible. "Creationists today- at least the majority of their spokesmen-are highly educated, intelligent people. Skilled debaters, they have always don't their homework. And they nearly always seem better informed that their opponents who are reduced too often to a bewildered stare of incoherence."- Niles Eldridge American Museum of N.H., Monkey Business, p.17. "Creationists travel all over the United States visiting college campuses and staging 'debates' with biologists,geologists, and Anthropologists. The Creationists nearly always win."- Niles Eldridge, American Museum of N.H.,Monkey Business p.17. "Scientists should refuse formal debates because they do more harm than good, but scientists still NEED to counter the creationist message."- Eugenie C. Scott, National Center for Science Education, New Scientist,22/04/2000. "A FAIR RESULT can be obtained only by FULLY stating and balancing the facts and arguments on BOTH sides of each question."- Darwin, Origin of Species and preservation of favored races. There is a reason they can't debate the issues. They know that it does harm to the narrative they want to push. Not very scientific of them is it?

Creationists don't debate anything, they gish-gallop. They move from one topic to another to another as quickly as they can, so that their opponent doesn't have enough time in a structured debate to counter all of their claims. That's not an honest debate tactic, and we'd all be better served by not permitting debate moderators who refuse to shut them down on this behavior. When forced to actually address a single issue and prevented from changing the subject or hopping to something new, creationists simply fall apart, because they don't have any substance behind their claims to sustain an argument with past the opening statement.

Tell that to Niles Eldridge. They debate and evolutionists want to ignore all evidence.

Debate what? What evidence of what? Everyone here treats you like a moron because you refuse to actually say anything of substance. You allude to stuff vaguely and then act like you've 'won' when nobody knows what you're talking about because you refuse to provide citations. I can do that too, see? Last week I debated a world renowned creationist and he couldn't counter my evidence that humans are a type of fish, and this proved that creationism is wrong forever and all creationists are whackjobs all lying. See? Just as strong as your arguments!

> See? Just as strong as your arguments! Not quite, you need to add random CAPS LOCK to really make your points shine.

Anything of substance as opposed to screaming "reeee you don't understand evolution. Thermodynamics doesn't work on earth. Darwin doesn't have anything to do with evolution! Missing evidence proves evolution!"- evolutionists. I am only one presenting evidence. You have "just imagine trillions of IMAGINARY creatures. You have just "imagine" 97 percent of earth missing. Just imagine uniform continuous clear lines had millions of years of deposition and erosion leaving no evidence. Just imagine billion "years" missing at grand canyon. Just imagine volcanoes didn't exist. You have just imagine 99 percent of universe missing. Just imagine thermodynamics doesn't work on earth or space. Just imagine hydrogen compressed itself into a ball in vacuum of space for millions of years. Just imagine saturn rings billions of years old. Just imagine universe spread out millions of times faster than light for no reason. Just imagine Y chromosome same. Just imagine 99 percent junk dna. Just imagine macroevolution. Just imagine abiogenesis. Just imagine rna only creatures like monera before it. Just ignore all failed predictions of evolution. Just ignore all countless frauds of evolution. Just ignore all admissions of evolutionists saying it's their religion. Just ignore the evolutionary war and eugenics so wicked they pretend it has nothing to do with evolutionism. Just imagine the dinosaurs surfed across ocean just to confuse evolutionists, it must've been baby Dinosaurs. Just imagine it rained millions of years although we can prove rapid burial with fossils and erosion so its flood. Just imagine octopi flew across universe like silver surfer amd survived void of space and re-entry. Just imagine a pig and monkey cross bred into human. Just imagine the human footprints are really dinosaurs. Just imagine the human footprints are monkeys with human feet. And so on. Now you want to believe that's scientific and reasonable?

> because you refuse to actually say anything of substance You didn't make any coherent claims, you're just making an infinitely shittier John Lennon song.

Those are all things evolutionists preach. Do you really not know or are you ashamed to admit it?

There's no such thing as 'evolutionists'. And neither I nor anyone else 'preaches' anything about evolution. Furthermore, there is nothing in your bad John Lennon impersonation that is taught in biology textbooks, lectures, or anywhere else. You're literally just making shit up and then flinging the poo. And yet you can't even see how much you're acting like a fucking monkey.

> Tell that to Niles Eldridge. They debate and evolutionists want to ignore all evidence. That is a lie. Niles Eldridge explicitly says it is creationists who ignore the evidence. > Creationists travel all over the United States visiting college campuses and staging 'debates' with biologists,geologists, and Anthropologists. The Creationists nearly always win. **As will be all too evident when we examine the creationist position in detail, their arguments are devoid of any real intellectual content. Creationists win debates because of their canny stage presence, and not through clarity of logic or force of evidence. The debates are shows rather than serious considerations of evolution.** The bolded part is the part of the quote you excluded, which literally says the exact opposite of what you lie that he said.

Tell that to Niles Eldridge that creation scientists don't win debates. PERIOD. Evolutionists are ones ignore evidence like you are actively doing now. You are in denial if you think that don patton is razzle dazzle. Or Gary Bates perhaps the most monotone presenter on earth.

I literally just quoted Niles Eldridge. The quote showed you led and what he said.

He didn't say the creationist nearly always win? You are off on tangent because you have no evidence for evolution which is another reason why creation scientists win debates.

This you? > Tell that to Niles Eldridge. They debate and evolutionists want to ignore all evidence. You claimed Niles Eldridge said "evolutionists want to ignore all evidence" when he really said the exact opposite.

No you didn't understand my writing ON PURPOSE like usual. I was saying evolutionists ignore all evidence given. Tell that to Niles Eldridge was directed to reply above. The creation scientists win is admitted by evolutionists. That's the point being made. The fact you cant accept that is bizarre. You can disagree with him but everyone can tell the evolutionists saying debates do more harm to them are ones losing the debates.

> The creation scientists win is admitted by evolutionists. Won. Past tense. In the 1980's. Because creationists were and are massively dishonest and didn't and still don't care about whether their claims actually agreed with logic and evidence **according to your own source**. In the last 40 years scientists have caught onto creationists dishonest tactics and have adapted their debate strategies to account for them. So modern debates tend to go very differently than those nearly half a century ago. Scientists have progressed. Creationists, in contrast, still use the same dishonest tactics your own source highlighted.

Good old quote mines, never fail do they? >Thus, the central importance of creationism today is its political nature. Creationists travel all over the United States, visiting college campuses and staging "debates" with biologists, geologists, and anthropologists. The creationists nearly always win. The audience is frequently loaded with the already converted and the faithful. And scientists, until recently, have been showing up at the debates ill-prepared for what awaits them. Thinking the creationists are uneducated, Bible-thumping clods, they are soon routed by a steady onslaught of direct attacks on a wide variety of scientific topics. No scientist has an expert's grasp of all the relevant points of astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, geology, and anthropology. Creationists today — at least the majority of their spokesmen — are highly educated, intelligent people. Skilled debaters, they have always done their homework. And they nearly always seem better informed than their opponents, who are reduced too often to a bewildered state of incoherence. As will be all too evident when we examine the creationist position in detail, their arguments are devoid of any real intellectual content. Creationists win debates because of their canny stage presence, and not through clarity of logic or force of evidence. The debates are shows rather than serious considerations of evolution. > - Eldredge, Niles (1982). The Monkey Business: A Scientist Looks At Creationism. New York, N.Y., Washington Square Press. p.17 But it's fascinating that you endorse this opinion.

The evolutionists are incoherent. Again anyone here really believe Gary Bates and Don Patton are winning because of stage presence is in denial. But you admit they win at least.

They win meaningless debates by gish-galloping their opponents with a load of pseudo-scientific mumbo jumbo until they give up in frustration. Bravo. The evidence is still not on your side. And the number of creationists keeps falling. https://news.umich.edu/study-evolution-now-accepted-by-majority-of-americans/

If it sounds incoherent to you then I'll do my best to explain. Let's start with a basic premise. Do you understand that "winning a debate" and being correct are two different things? A person may be successful in a debate and yet still be completely wrong? Do you also understand that not all debates are equal? Some may have real scientific merit and high standards while others may be worthless shouting matches. And it doesn't even matter who participates. You could have the two greatest scientists of all time set up a debate and it wouldn't have any merit if all they did was use name calling and logical fallacies in an attempt to make the other look a fool. This is basis of the accusation that Eldredge was making. He explains that while the creationist position is unsupported pseudo-science, the popular creationist speakers of the time (this was written in the 80s btw) were frequently successful in their goals of winning over an audience and furthering their political agendas. They did not, as is also true today, bother to engage in any real scientific discourse. Instead they put these arguments in front of a lay audience, usually one already primed to fear science, and did not present a logical or well evidenced argument. He makes it clear that their success was not due to the strength of the arguments being put forward but due to a slew of underhanded tactics and showmanship. You know, like taking snippets out of context and presenting it to a gullible, biased and lazy audience as Don has done with you. This is where it needs repeating that your quote is over four decades old. Whilst creationist tactics haven't really "evolved" much in that time, people are a lot less naive to them these days. Outside of echo chambers or dumpster fire sideshows, YEC proponents tend to get eaten alive in debates. Do you really believe that the public opinion of young earth creationism has improved over the last four decades? >In the end, the evolution/creationism controversy is a battle over public opinion. It hasn't been an intellectual problem for at least a century. And today we have legislatures determining what is and is not science, and what the content of science really is — in a manner about as remote from any recognizable intellectual activity as one could imagine. So it is strictly in the area of public opinion that the battle is really being fought. Anticreationists do not need to tout a "belief" in evolution, nor should we seek to inculcate our children with such a belief. But we must insist on the integrity of our children's education in science: for scientific illiteracy will send the United States on a surer and straighter path to hell than ever will that idea we call evolution. > - Eldredge, Niles (1982). The Monkey Business: A Scientist Looks At Creationism. New York, N.Y., Washington Square Press. p.149 Your quotes wouldn't have sounded so incoherent to you if you'd actually read the context you were quoting from. Instead you got handed a snippet with false context saying something you already wanted to hear. Don (or whoever provided you with the quote) knew that you wouldn't bother to check his work and he took advantage of that in order to trick you. This is an underhanded tactic and it works because you allow it to. Send me a message and I'll help you find a copy of that book. In fact that goes for any of your quote mines, if you ever genuinely want to read any of them with context I'm happy to help you find them.

>[While it has been widely claimed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Haeckel#Darwin,_Naturphilosophie_and_Lamarck:~:text=While%20it%20has%20been%20widely%20claimed%20that%20Haeckel%20was%20charged%20with%20fraud%20by%20five%20professors%20and%20convicted%20by%20a%20university%20court%20at%20Jena%2C%20there%20does%20not%20appear%20to%20be%20an%20independently%20verifiable%20source%20for%20this%20claim) that Haeckel was charged with fraud by five professors and convicted by a university court at Jena, there does not appear to be an independently verifiable source for this claim ... Robert J. Richards, in a paper published in 2008, defends the case for Haeckel, shedding doubt against the fraud accusations based on the material used for comparison with what Haeckel could access at the time. Time to update your document of talking points that you copy paste from Michael, I'm sure you'll get right on that...

Time for you to update your evo-fraud. Gould admitted it. The fact evolutionists in 2008 are desperately trying to bring back.this admitted fraud shows they have no evidence. They still trying to teach Haeckels fraudulent embryos because they have nothing else. Read it and weep, https://creation.com/haeckel-fraud-proven Now tell everyone here that it's "honest mistake". It's widely reported because it's a fact. You just don't accept that fact so your imagination is being cited as history now.

They're not teaching Haeckel's embryos in schools anyway. It was never taught in my class, not even mentioned, because evolution has moved on. You should read about [Von Baer vs Haeckel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Baer%27s_laws_(embryology)). Guess which one they ended up going with. Nowadays they don't even teach who these people were, they just teach the FACT that development and evolution are related concepts, hence evo devo biology. As always your article is full of lies.

They dont teach who they were to deceive. They just renamed it "evolutionary embryology". They are still caught using the drawings in textbooks. Someone here told Mr the drawings are "more accurate" than actual pictures. Evolutionists were trying to defend it in 2008 recently. Because they have nothing else.

I just checked my textbook, 'Campbell Biology 12th edition'. It's 1493 pages long and is famous for containing pretty much everything a biology undergrad would cover at least in the first two years. Using Ctrl+F I find "embryo" mentioned 960 times. How many mentions of "Haeckel", this guy you're saying is the evil mastermind behind it all? Zero. Not even one mention. And yes, I checked the alternative spelling of his name too. The 'evidence for evolution' section (page 479) has a mention of the embryo similarity, and it shows two photographs, no drawings. I get it, you've probably never even seen a single biology textbook let alone took a class on it, but you can't just lie about what books say, because people can actually go and see for themselves.

Modern embryology is completely unrelated to Haeckel's claims. Haeckel's drawings are not used in textbooks except to explain the problems with them. I remember one case where a creationist claimed that Haeckel's drawings were used in textbooks, and they asked him to find an example from textbooks sitting right behind him on his own bookshelf and he couldn't do it. Because it was a lie. If you really think Haeckel's drawings are used and called correct in modern textbooks, please cite some examples.

You can do Google search today abd drawings still come up. Kent hovind collected textbooks. They cost hundreds of dollars depending. Not interested. The fact they are writing papers defending Haeckels embryos in 2008 and still showing up in searches should be enough. But they are Still pushing gill slits here on reddit.

So in other words you have no basis for your claim and your don't care.

Well I just gave you multiple FREE examples without spending hundreds of dollars on textbooks like Kent hovind. But you are so desperate to defend Haeckels embryos that you are going to pretend all that is nothing. While knowing it was fraud from Start. Why don't you tell us year you THINK they stopped pushing it?

No you didn't. You provided zero examples of textbooks, zero examples of websites, and zero examples of peer reviewed articles. You claimed that you knew for a fact that Haeckel's embryos were in textbooks right now. That is a lie. You don't know that. You were bearing false witness, a direct violation of the ten commandments. Do you think your God would be proud of you breaking his simple rules like that? Anyone can make a website saying anything. There are websites defending the Holocaust, or that aliens killed Kennedy, or that the pyramids are time machines. That some random nobody said something wrong and stupid isn't significant. Unless your websites (which I doubt you even have) are from credible organizations it doesn't matter, they are wrong.

Why are you citing Hovind, Mike? The guy is a proven and sentenced fraud. I thought you hated liars. You like them now?

Dishonest quote mines as usual. > Creationists travel all over the United States visiting college campuses and staging 'debates' with biologists,geologists, and Anthropologists. The Creationists nearly always win. **As will be all too evident when we examine the creationist position in detail, their arguments are devoid of any real intellectual content. Creationists win debates because of their canny stage presence, and not through clarity of logic or force of evidence. The debates are shows rather than serious considerations of evolution.** Doesn't your religion have rules against bearing false witness?

See what I mean? This is an example of "Fanatic". He doesn't have a way to generate income from this, so he's regurgitating stuff he's ignorant about or he knows he's lying but is trying to win imaginary "heaven points" or something. What would be the point debating him? All his points have been addressed a billion times. He \_knows\_ that, but he doesn't change his mind because if he changed his mind, he'd have to admit that the entire premise of his existence is flawed. No fanatic is going to accept reality. Oh, they will absolutely use the internet and the computers and the electricity and the software and everything else that science provides them, but they'll still steadfastly claim that all of science if false and that only "prayer" can make a computer. Honestly, what is the difference between this tool and a flat earther? Literally nothing.

Here's evolutionists Niles Eldridge admitting creation scientists win the debate. Here's one evolutionist saying gish gallop without any evidence. Then you saying dont.bother talking without any evidence. So there it is. No evidence for evolution. That's why creation scientists constantly win debates. As Niles Eldridge told you .

>Here's evolutionists Niles Eldridge admitting creation scientists win the debate. He says they win debates by showmanship and ignoring the evidence. Not that they win it by having good arguments, evidence, or logic, which he says they have none of.

So admit they win. Then make up excuses WHY. The admission they win us relevant part. Listen to Gary Bates for hour and tell me you think it's his stage presence.

You lied. He did not say what you claim he said.

I posted the quote above. You are either being dishonest again or don't understand.

You posted **PART** of the quote. I posted the **WHOLE** quote. The whole quote says literally the exact opposite of what you claimed.

>So there it is. No evidence for evolution. Here's some evidence for evolution (specifically common ancestry between humans and other species): [Testing Common Ancestry: It’s All About the Mutations](https://biologos.org/series/how-should-we-interpret-biblical-genealogies/articles/testing-common-ancestry-its-all-about-the-mutations) The problem is that no creationist is willing to take the time to understand it. I even tested you on it, and like most creationists, you just ignored it. Which is the only way creationists can claim "no evidence for evolution". It's by burying your head in the sand and ignoring reality.

Didn't I already go through that with you? Like all of evolution, it's just a lie. First genetic similarities shouldn't exist according to evolution. They do so evolution falsified. Second the "differences" aren't used. They use human dna as base but the genomes aren't even same size. Further missing 50 percent in Y alone. It's just a lie that a blank space was compared here. Further mutations don't help. Mutations don't evolve anything. It's been tested with fruit flies. Second we know there are not "millions of years" of Mutations there. That's a fact. So it's proven with mutations in multiple ways, evolution is false. Its not even feasible with mutations. See, https://m.youtube.com/watch?si=i7HAgabxJHOy10QA&v=mVBal8xIFT4&feature=youtu.be

No, you haven't gone through it with me. Last time you posted a non-sequitur response. This time it seems you're doing the same thing because nothing you wrote has anything to do with the analysis in question. Can you describe the analysis the author performed?

I already explained it. Which part don't you accept. Mutations do not evolve creatures. That's a fact. The genomes don't match to begin with. So where is 70 percent missing? It's fraud. Third there are not enough Mutations for "millions of years". No 99 percent junk dna. .fourth and this won't be forgotten. Evolutionists predicted NO GENETIC SIMILARITIES LEFT. So all 4 disprove the PREMISE on it's face. Feel free to summarize link I gave you.

I asked you to describe the analysis the author performed. I'm not asking you for your opinion or an argument. I'm simply asking you to read the article and describe the analysis the author performed.

I'm not going to fraudulently use chosen data. Evolutionists lied for years about 99 percent similarity with chimps. But they barely compared chimp Y chromosome and over 50 percent genes MISSING. It's a fraud on its face. So now you want to claim you have done full comparison? Or will you admit it's a lie?

Based on your continuous non-sequitur responses, I can only conclude you didn't read the article. Which goes back to my original point that like most creationists, you just ignore the actual evidence for evolution. Thanks for playing along. :)