Bob
I challenge you to show where I personally attacked! I have expressed strong opinions, no doubt, but ido not think that I have crossed the line into eith personal attacks nor insults.
So why have I been so harsh on you? Well let's see. It takes a little story telling.
I was YEC myself for most of my life. The bad part was that I simply accepted that position as what I was supposed to believe without ever really knowing why. So I started reading YEC material.
At first, it sounded quite convincing but for some reason it also felt incomplete. Something was missing but I could not put my finger on it.
Then I came across something. A favorite false claim of those in the grip of YECism is that somehow the second law of thermodynamics somehow prevents evolution from being possible. (Now they never seem able to put this into concrete terms. They just equivocate meanings between how they are used by laypersons and by science/engineers. It is easy to be fooled if you are not faviliar with thermodynamics and entropy in particular.) Being an engineer and having studied two semesters of thermo plus having it be a core part of other classes, I immediately saw the problem.
Once I did, I started checking out other claims. As I did, I got more and more angry at what I found poeple were doing in the name of God.
Over and over I saw people who had set themselves up as Christian leaders who felt it was OK to lie for Christ. Usually it involved distorting what a scientists had said.
Sometimes this would take the form of changing what the results were in published papers. A classic example of this is Morris's claims about Funkhouser et al dating Hawaiian rocks.
OThe other popular form was quote mining. In this case, you take a quote from a scientists and you remove the context to make him appear to have an opinion different than what he really has. This is quite insiduous because it seems to be a very powerful appeal to a legitimate authority.
Most people do not have the access or the skills to verify whether the quotes are accurate or not. For that matter, most people do not even think they need to check out the quotes. They blindly trust that a fellow Christian would not lead them astray.
Well they are wrong.
And when they find out, the effects can be devestating. There are plenty of anecdotes out there of people who have lost their faith when they made such a revelation. They just cannot handle the realization that people they had trusted to lead them in their faith had been so blatently dishonest with them. How do they know that the pattern was not repeated in other areas.
Worse, is that you can also find anecdotes of those who are not Christian, who see such activitiy, and who use that as an excuse to NEVER come to Christ.
These lies about evolution have real consequences. Here is a snippet from one anecdote. I encourage you to follow the link to read the whole thing.
But eventually, by 1994 I was through with young-earth creationISM. Nothing that young-earth creationists had taught me about geology turned out to be true. I took a poll of my ICR graduate friends who have worked in the oil industry. I asked them one question.
"From your oil industry experience, did any fact that you were taught at ICR, which challenged current geological thinking, turn out in the long run to be true? ,"
That is a very simple question. One man, Steve Robertson, who worked for Shell grew real silent on the phone, sighed and softly said 'No!' A very close friend that I had hired at Arco, after hearing the question, exclaimed, "Wait a minute. There has to be one!" But he could not name one. I can not name one. No one else could either. One man I could not reach, to ask that question, had a crisis of faith about two years after coming into the oil industry. I do not know what his spiritual state is now but he was in bad shape the last time I talked to him.
http://home.entouch.net/dmd/gstory.htm
So now you see why I have such a strong opinion against YEism. And you see why your behavior disturbs me so much that I come after you so hard.
I have no illusions that I cna change the mind of someone like you. But, because of my experiences, I do have the goal of helping you to eliminate some of the most egregious methods.
A lot of people quote mine or otherwise use some of the false arguments from YE leaders. Most have no idea of the problems with them. They have never checked them out because they mistakenly trust them. But when you show them, their better instincts kick in and they at least decide that it is better to present an honest case even though they do not change their minds.
That is the normal response and the expected response. I consider it a step forward.
But not so with oyu Bob. When you are presented with how you arguments are based on a dishonest quotation, instead of accepting that, no you redouble your efforts to make the same claims using the same quotes. No matter how many times the error is pointed out, you continue to use them and do so gleefully.
That I cannot understand.
But now you should see my perspective.
I call YE a tool of the devil. That is not an ad hominem. That is my opinion on the destructive effects of such deceitful quote mining and the wider deceptions of YE.
I call your ramblings full of blather. That is not meant as an ad hominem on you. It is meant to convey my opinion that such repeated out of context quotations without any semblence of supporting facts really is just nonsensical speech.
I really do think that you are making a lot of noise but that you really do not signify anything at all because your quotes have no meaning without the context apllied. And in context, they do not support your assertions.
You complain of the ad hominem when you are the one calling theistic evolutionists names like "atheist wannabe." I believe that fits every definition of ad hominem.
