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To: Nakatu X
As a serious question, why are you so quick to put down evolutionary programming?

As he is unlikely to give a straight answer to that question, allow me... He is so quick to put down evolutionary programming because he and most of his fellow creationists have invested a lot of time, emotion, and belief into the claim that evolution (in general) simply *can't* produce complexity, clever solutions, or novel results.

They believe this as an act of faith, because they "know" that only a "Designer" can produce complexity. And conversely, if something appears complex, it "must" be the result of a "Designer".

They even write long essays and books (or buy and read same) which provide armchair philosophical "proofs" for why evolutionary processes simply "can't" produce complex results. (See Behe, Spetner, Dembski, etc.) This gives them comfort for their "complex things *must* be designed" presumption (and the theistic conclusion it "proves").

So, no matter how overwhelming and undeniable the evidence that evolutionary process can, when put into action, produce beautifully elegant and complex results, they're always going to a) reject the obvious, and b) claim that the test must be "rigged" somewhere, even if they can't quite locate the "fix".

They are, quite simply, the modern flat-earthers, ready to reject any and all evidence no matter how voluminous or indisputable, until the day they die.

"I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives."

Leo Tolstoy (1828 - 1910)


1,407 posted on 05/14/2003 11:20:02 PM PDT by Ichneumon
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To: Ichneumon
The explanation's more complicated with that.

Coming from a religious background, I was constantly surrounded by fundamentalist Christian literature and people. There is an unfortunate tendency to mix very highly political "doctors" and professors (e.g., the philosophy professor who said that we have a 20% chance of living in The Matrix) who have controversial, liberal opinions. Chuck Colson, for example, spends many radio broadcasts on silly Feminist-Ecology professors who are truly the "evil atheists" that G3K seeks out so viligantly. (Then he switches tracks and he will talk about evolution.)

You mix scientific doctors/evolution in the bag, and it's easy to make the connection that the peer-review world is nothing but a political sham, and that all university scientists are like that Matrix philosophy professor or feminazi professors.

Then, you have the "Elizabeth Smart" effect--even though the number of kidnappings are historically low, it seemed last year that kidnapping was epidemic because of over-reporting. When the Piltdown fraud, and the Haeckel fraud are repeated over and over, it's easy to believe that peer review is about as solid as a house of cards.

It's impossible to sympathize unless you've grown up in that kind of culture, but the basic point is--I don't blame AndrewC, Gore3000, or any of that crowd in the least bit for being so suspicious.
1,410 posted on 05/14/2003 11:43:45 PM PDT by Nataku X (Never give Bush any power you wouldn't want to give to Hillary.)
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