Replies

Nope, not a case of insecurity.

Imagine being raised in an environment where all your family are young-earth creationists. Your family's friends and friends are all young-earth creationists too.

You occassionally make a wisecrack against evolutionists and Darwinists just like we do against Democrats in FreeRepublic. To top it off, you own many volumes of creationist books (they are -very- convincing to those without a scientific background, just like the Moon Hoax websites, and so on).

Armed with tons of information, you spar with your hapless public school biology teacher. And you always win, making yourself look good in front of your creationist friends and managing to stump the poor woman making $25,000 who partied straight through college with poor grades.

It's not a case of insecurity, it's a case of too much security. You really do see "evilutionists" as a whole bunch of fools who can't see the forest for the trees, and who are a conspirational, anti-religious regime driven by fraud and liberal ideology.

You are extremely firmly grounded in your belief. You consider evolutionist-Christians as "misguided" (at best, and hell-bound heretics at worst)--and you consider the atheistic "Darwinists" to be of the same vile stuff that Hillary Clinton is made of.

That, my friend, is what is like to be a creationist. I know; that was me. And that is about 40% of America.

Nope, not a case of insecurity.

Yes, I think your description is a good one -- but only until the creationist is confronted with some cold hard facts. At that point, the creationist is faced with some intellectual decisions that must be made; and all kinds of psychological mechanisms come into play.