Yes, I agree ... All creationists are evil.
A rarity! You actually made a true statement. Could somebody please look up the weather report in Hell to see if they're issuing frost warnings.
But then you go and spoil it all with the subsequent BS:
Good people are products of evolution, whereas evil people - such as creationists - are products of evilution. Dat's de awful troof.
We are
all the products of evolution, as are all species. Simple obvious fact, like the one that all mammals breathe air.
But what, oh what, is "evilution" supposed to be? Definitely
not evolution. Instead, in my experience that term, a standard puerile creationist pejorative, is more appropriate as a label for creationist misrepresentations (AKA "lies") about evolution and the other sciences. Or more simply, that "evilution" is everything that creationists mean by "evolution" even though it is entirely different from evolution. Again, creationists' "evilution" is nothing more than a pack of lies. And that is where creationist evil comes from.
Creationists aren't born evil. Nor were they already evil when they first became creationists. OK, I'm giving creationists the benefit of the doubt, but maybe too much. Maybe some creationists did start out evil, but that is neither here nor there. It is not the initial levels of evil that are important, but rather the far greater levels of evil as they were inevitably corrupted by the false theologies in their religion. False theologies such as "creation science", "Intelligent Design", and really stupid ideas about Divine Creation (which end up telling you that if the Creation is really as it actually is, then that would disprove God, that being an incredibly stupid teaching which is why we cannot understand how creationists could fall for it. Oh, and also that stupid one that if something (like life) were produced by natural processes, the exact same natural processes that a Divine Creator would have
created, then that somehow would disprove God. What is
wrong with you people?).
No, I do not expect you to understand any of that. You are too willfully stupid, so you would never even consider trying to read any of this, let alone try to understand it. You are a creationist, so that is your corrupted nature. You are already lost.
However, others may find this discussion interesting or even useful.
This is the fundamental problem for a creationist. His stuff is pure crap, but he doesn't know that at first. And then as he learns through bitter experience that his stuff is nothing but pure crap, he's too invested in it so he enters a spiral of self-deception and rampant dishonesty (actual trajectory into complete and utter religious depravity varies between customers). Or else he decides to cut his losses and leaves creationism (and usually also religion) behind.
Being too invested in a theology. There was a documentary about Scientology on HBO, "
Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief"; I just found it again on HBO Max. They suck you in with their galvanic skin response BS, compile many notebooks of inner-most personal confessions as you're trying, though galvanic skin response, to "go clear" (AKA, blackmail material ... ever notice how completely compliant major celebrities involved in Scientology are with the Church?).
Well, after you have advanced far enough in "going clear" (AKA, donated enough money to the church), then you reach a level where you are allowed to read L. Ron Hubbard's actual notes ... Revelation itself! They hand you the briefcase with his writings and what you find inside is really bad science fiction. Really bad. But that is the central dogma. So what do you do at that point? You've sunk so much into this church only to discover
this? Do you go out and tell the world what a complete idiot you have been? Don't forget the Church's army of lawyers who will sue you into oblivion and beyond. Or the stack of notebooks filled with your inner-most thoughts, AKA blackmail material. Or do you double down on your stupidity and continue to play the game?
For me, the main difference between Christianity (especially fundamentalist) and Scientology is that Scientology waits to show you the actual craziness only until you are far too deeply invested to be able to pull out. Christianity in all its 45,000 myriad forms, at least shows you the craziness up front. Or at least very shortly into the process of assimilation -- first they insist that you only need to accept Jesus as your personal Savior, but then they start to pile on the rest of the theology that you are required to belief or else Jesus will no longer be your Savior. That is an entirely separate discussion. But at least in this one (and possibly unique) respect Christianity is more honest than Scientology in respect to when they reveal to you that they are
nucking futs.
But creationists have no such out. They are trapped within their system of false theology that can only be supported and served through lies.
The false theology that creationists have become enslaved to requires them to reject reality. Creationism makes them believe that if the physical universe were really as it actually is, then that disproved God. For example, their theology says that the earth has to be young, so an old earth would disprove God ("If the earth is more than 10,000 years old then Scripture has no meaning.", John Morris, 1986, Institute for Creation Research (ICR)). And so on.
The problem is that everything that the creationists tried to claim conflicted with science, the actual study of the real physical universe.
With reality! So in order to maintain their faith, they must reject reality and try to disprove reality. But the only way to disprove reality is to misrepresent it, to
lie about it.
So then every creationist claim has to be a lie. Which means that creationists using those false claims can remain innocent (ie, unaware of their transgressions) only so long as they do not receive any feedback revealing the truth about their claims, that they are spewing utter BS. They can only keep that up if they isolate themselves from the outside and instead remain in the bubble of their religious community.
The moment they venture out of the safety of that bubble (eg, in order to proselytize or to fight against the teaching of evolution in public schools or participate in forums such as this one), their false beliefs will be challenged as they repeatedly stub their toes on reality as it maneuvers to bite them in the ass. If they accept reality, then that will destroy their faith and "disprove God" (according to their false theology). Some will accept reality and leave creationism and the religion that teaches it, brushing its dust off of their sandals as they leave it forever. Some will flee back to the safety of their bubble never to emerge again.
And some will continue to fight against reality, but at such an enormous cost. They have to misrepresent reality and lie about it
even to themselves. And the more they collide with reality the more they must delude themselves and others -- ie, the more they must lie about just about everything.
And a very important aspect of lying to themselves is to avoid learning about reality, so creationists must cultivate the constant practice of
willful stupidity. If they do not practice willful stupidity, then they run the risk of learning the truth about reality which will disprove their false theology, etc. For some inconceivable reason preserving the pack of lies which is their false theology is far more important to them than the truth.
As they interact with non-creationists, they cannot afford to ever act in good faith. That is especially true when those non-creationists are knowledgeable, because a good-faith discussion would result in exposing the creationist's errors and misrepresentations (AKA "lies") and revealing the creationist's position to be completely untenable and indefensible.
Therefore, a creationist has to and will do everything he can to thwart any and all attempts at honest discussion. Even to the point of refusing to answer simple direct questions such as "What do you think evolution is and how it works?", "Why do you think there's any conflict between evolution and God?", or just simply "What are you talking about?" Or the one that candle2 refused to answer, "What would that trace C14 in coal and diamonds possibly have to do with radiocarbon dating methods?" It is virtually impossible to ever get a straight answer for a simple direct question from a creationist. In sharp contrast, creationists rely on "gotcha" questions that are intended to be impossible to answer, analogous to "Describe in complete detail every single step taken by the Israelites during their forty years in the wilderness, including the exact location of every single one of their encampments."
Of course, a very large part of the reason why creationists won't answer any of our simple questions is because their willful stupidity has its cost. They quite literally do not know what they are talking about. They don't even understand their own gotcha questions, so they are at a complete loss when we do answer their stupid questions and try to discuss our answer with them.
They are literally completely ignorant. And their very sad, sorry state is directly caused by the corrupting effects of their false theologies, including creationism.
It is the nature of creationism that corrupts creationists and turns them into dishonest, deceptive, and morally bankrupt bad-faith actors. In my four decades of studying "creation science" and 35 years of dealing with creationists, there is only one single creationist I can remember as being honest and acting in good faith. That was Merle on CompuServe circa 1990. Being an honest creationist, he did not remain a creationist for long; within a year he had dropped that nonsense and started arguing
against other creationists' stupid false claims. It was because he would actually research his creationist responses to non-creationists that he learned the truth and that creationism was false.
So anyone who remains a creationist for a long time has to be dishonest, since that's the only way he can protect his beliefs from the truth.
A few years ago, I started a study of creationists, trying to develop from my decades of observations in the trenches a theory of how creationists function. My intention was to include that on my website. Of course, the problem with such research is that, since no creationist will answer any simple direct question, it can only rely on observations and not on interviews with the subjects.
My approach was to consider the progression of creationists up the ladder from mere rank-and-file consumer of creationist claims to initial contacts with non-creationists, to active proselytizer, to activist, to debater, to professional. What I found is that the further up that ladder they progress, the more dishonest and self-deluded they must become just to remain creationists.
At each rung of that ladder, I considered the effects of their increasing encounters with knowledgeable non-creationists (bearing the truth about reality) and a few different outcomes from those encounters. Basically, the higher you are on that ladder the more encounters you will have to deal with and with non-creationists who are increasingly expert in the sciences in question. And, of course, the lowest rung on that ladder is the rank-and-file creationist whose contacts are exclusively with creationists and not with any knowledgeable non-creationists; basically, they stay in their bubble wrapped up safely in their abject ignorance and their lack of desire to learn anything.
The possible outcomes at each rung would be:
- If you're honest, the shock of learning that your creationist claims are wrong sends you back down to a lower rung, most likely back down to the bubble on the bottom. Since you must delude yourself in order to forget the truth, you are no longer honest, but at least not as dishonest as you could have become.
- If you're honest, realizing that your creationist claims are false leads you to seek out the truth, which results in your leaving creationism and the religion that depends on that false theology. You remain honest.
- If you are already dishonest, you double down on self-delusion and dishonesty, which prepares you to go up to the next level. You have become even more dishonest than before.
So we see a kind of natural selection process in play here. The honest creationists do not survive, whereas it is the
dishonest creationists who survive and become ever more dishonest.
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