Replies

What is it that makes them behave this way? I hypothesise that they conflate their belief in biblical innerrancy with their own lives and behavior. If they are shown to be wrong about anything then that threatens their religion. So confronted with their error they go into denial. "I speak for Christ therefore what I say must be true."

Sorry I'm still catching up. I'll give you my Cliff's Note's version. There is a valid belief that people of faith have, that atheists would use science as an argument against their faith. As an example, look how easily Bible class was removed from public school.

Creationists have even gone so far as to give the atheists credit for inventing a religion of their own. Since atheists rarely acknowledge their belief, creationists have called it "evolution" and have endowed it with it's own characteristics drawn from several scientific disciplines. This effort has become a fairly lucrative business. Anti-evolution literature alone has supposedly topped $1 billion/year.

Evangelical Churches near me routinely invite speakers on "evolution" who repeat pretty much what you see posted here. One of my co-workers spent about 45 minutes at lunch one day explaining to me why the science teacher who spoke at his Church against "evolution" - with the degree in English Literature - should be credible. The ID'ers moved in later to try to give the movement more gravitas (heehee - I love that word since the 2000 election). I think this movement generated the notion that anti-evolution leaders should acquire science degrees to boost the validity of their claims.

Most of the creationist/ID crowd have NO science background - also thanks to the public school system - so they'll believe anything their heroes tell them. And there will always be heroes because there's money to be made in the field. So when you make science arguments to them, it falls on deaf ears. they don't know any science, or very little science, so they don't understand what you're saying. I don't believe that they're lying to you. They just don't know.

Plus I don't think they really want to make a scientific argument anyway. Sooner or later they'll resort to scripture or the argument from ignorance, "Evolution can't explain the eye so it's false". The best approach on these threads is to attempt to maintain your head and respond so that lurkers, who are genuinely interested, can get useful information. It worked for my co-worker.