And a creationist. . .

July 9, 2017 • 9:49 am

This commenter won’t be posting here again, as I don’t want creationists infesting the site (that’s the road to perdition!), and they have nothing new to say to me.  And almost never are they open minded enough to come around to evolution. It happens, and I’ve heard the stories as well as met converts (e.g., two once-Orthodox Jews I met at TAM, who, learning that evolution was indeed true, left the faith and lost their friends and family).  But this is a site for rational discourse and evolution happens to be true. So is a spherical Earth, but I’m curious how people can accept a flat one, so I’m going to let them comment and, if they wish, argue to the point where it’s pointless to continue.

Anyway, this came in an hour ago; it’s also a comment on yesterday’s Flat Earth post, but this person, named “Mking” wants to harangue about evolution:

Only children believes that (Cartoons) Animation Films do talk. But the adult knew that the voices from this Films are real human voices.
Any adult or educated humans that believes in Evolution is just like a child who believes that Cartoons actually talk.
Evolution till today had no real proof. From non living matters to living matters. Only the biggest of all fools agreed to that.
Anyone who believes in Evolution is telling us that, humans can in years to come develop goat or cow Hoof and in the Same way, that a goat will in millions years to come stand upright and starts walking in humans foot. Fools

This person needs to read Why Evolution is True.

61 thoughts on “And a creationist. . .”

    1. I feel the same with the flat earthers. They are too far gone for my skills. Maybe Richard Dawkins could reason with them, but I don’t have the energy or skill.

      1. Yes, and even if more evidence was necessary, the election of trump and his cabinet appointments becomes more understandable.

        1. You shouldn’t laugh at the afflicted, he’s obviously escaped from somewhere, you just need to find his carers.

  2. Unsure who’s worse, the flat earthers or the creationists. I guess from a sociological stand point, it’s got to be the creationists because of their efforts to undermine education. If the flat earthers had the creationist’s numbers, we would definitely be seeing a similar push against a round earth. Complete with fox news personalities endorsing the firmament position… UHG

  6. This person needs to read Why Evolution is True.
    Given the level of literacy evident in the comment, you will need to produce a simplified Why Evolution Is True for Dummies edition.

    1. It could be that English isn’t this person’s first language as well.

    1. When I was a kid I never thought the cartoons were real. Maybe this person has passed on his intellect to their children. I hope they get the chance of a decent education to help them escape turning out like their parent.

  10. Warning : written during coffee number three:

    I don’t think the book WEIT will help because I think the flat-earthers, creationists, etc. as described in recent posts have one thing in common : anger. About something somewhere. I don’t know what. We may never know.

    But it’s not going to be solved by appeals to the intellect – that domain appears overgrown by weeds of … of … confusion?.. coupled to anger?…. – witness how reason and intellect are tossed around Willy-Nilly – our intellect and reason that produce evolution are their intellect and reason that reject it. (e.g. “Fools”).

    … ‘course they ought to have a copy of WEIT – THE BOOK – on hand!

    … just had a thought :

    First there was
    WEIT – THE BOOK
    Then came
    WEIT – THE “ITS NOT A BLOG ITS A WEBSITE”

    And now….
    Jerry A. Coyne *IS*.. PCC(E) in
    WEIT – THE MOVIE
    SEE Geographical Isolation!
    SEE Vestigial Legs!
    SEE Fossils!

    1. I suspect that Jerry’s legs are just fine – if they were vestigial, how would he wear those magnificent cowboy boots?

      2. Mental image of Professor Ceiling Cat becoming Professor Ceiling Millipede, the better to display his collection of boots.

  11. Maybe English is this person’s second language, or, perhaps, they are a product of home schooling. When completely incompetent parents, usually with no degrees, teach their kids about being illiterate and ignorant. I always remember watching the Duggars on TV: one of the young girls (who knows which one!) opened the door to a bedroom and said “This is where I was borneded.”

  12. There is a staggering lack of intelligence, of knowledge that allows a person to believe this way or think that all we need to know is this religious primitive pile of nonsense to find the answer to all inquiry. Two or three thousand years ago the clock simply stopped for many people because the information was not available and these people will progress no further. They should be discarded and left to drift away because they have no future.

  13. From one fool to another ,hi Doc.
    He could try reading Measuring Eternity ,by Martin Gorst ,i understood it ,so anyone can .

  14. This is a sad but timely reminder that the more evolved and less evolved are Chinese handcuffed to one another in the kaleidoscope of sentient life forms.

    1. Good to see you’re not Chinese handcuffed when it comes to the kaleidoscope of metaphors to mix. 🙂

      1. School me den, Ken. How would you have written my comment (without the element of poetic license, of course).

          1. In that case, I must have committed the thought crime of the century, and it’s only 2017.

        2. I was just funnin’ with ya, Katiness. Go ahead and take all the poetic license you want. If you’re gonna mix metaphors, I always say, jump in the deep-end and go whole hog. 🙂

          2. 😀 That’s really killing two birds with one bird in the hand and two in the bush.

  15. My own exposure to evolution is from Dawkins, Ken Miller, and Darwin. (Sorry, haven’t read WEIT, though my father has.)

    I don’t have the technical expertise to evaluate the earlier sections of Darwin’s OoS, but the concluding chapters on the geological (fossils) evidence for evolution and the geographical (distribution of species) evidence seem to me to be fully convincing.

    Miller gives some interesting takes on why creationism has weird theological implications, and Dawkins conveys Charles Darwins’ sense that there is “grandeur in this view of life” admirably.

  16. I have come to the conclusion that adherence to any form of religious belief is an indication of a subnormal IQ. They can’t help it.

  17. Jerry, I’m sorry I have the unfortunate duty to tell you this, but your book will not help. The poster can’t even write properly, so it’s unlikely they’ll be able to understand a book about evolution.

  18. Ignorance is a horrible affliction. Like jealousy, it doth mock the meat it feeds on.

  19. “Evolution till today had no real proof.”. What do you suppose the writer meant by that?

    1. @Veroxitatis Mking has difficulty putting words in an intelligible order & using tenses. From his/her other statements “Evolution till today had no real proof” equates to “Evolution has no real proof – even today”

      My best guess 🙂

      1. My clumsy writing above: the result of consuming a Flatard post followed by a evotard post.

  20. If I were having a coffee with any of the recent posters, I’d be very careful not to scold them for not understanding e.g. Jerry’s book, or saying as much as “you are an unintelligent idiotic clod” but with other PC words, especially because I suspect there is something else – I’m calling it anger for now – that is producing the comments we read.

    There is a big problem with individuals like this but I think everyone’s pointed at what can be pointed at by now for them. I suspect they actually know this, and understand what they are hearing, to the point of hearing it over and over again. I suspect what’s left is a vast ocean of personal problems. I think if and when we see it, we’ll all stare in hushed silence.

    1. AHHHH “recent posters” means the comments that PCC(E) posted recently – like the flat-earth creationist types, NOT anyone commenting on this here page! Sorry!

  22. A number of years ago, there was a person who frequently posted on Richard Dawkins’ site under the label “Wooter” (and several others) who deployed assertions at about this level of inanity and with a similarly shaky control of the English language.

    I wonder if they might be related?

    1. Of course thy#re related. Unless there has been some recent major advances in teaching any of the “Great Apes” to type, then the typing alone indicates that he’s more closely related to “Wooter” and PCC(E) than he is to, say, Clint Eastwood’s boxing orangutang.

  23. I’m going to say something “blasphemous” here: not all creationists are ignoramuses. They may not think “rationally”(as we think)about this issue, but may be extremely intelligent and well educated in many others. Just because this one creationist (and however many others) are ignorant does not mean that all are. My brother and I test highly on IQ tests, were in gifted classes in high school and have some college (I have a masters.) I’m an evolutionist. He is a creationist.

    I, too, smirked initially when reading this writer’s product. Then, I felt sorry for him/her. Remember our discussions on “free will”? Is this person responsible for beliefs expressed so poorly? How may we expect such to change? They won’t if each of us continues to rank ourselves as “us” and “them”, separate tribes, and make the assumption that they are dumb as rocks, unable to change.

    1. I like your comment on free will, though I really feel I could have resisted writing this reply if I had just tried harder. [And of course, in the era of truthiness, it’s how you feel that counts.] But as to the subject at hand: the story of the cartoon voices might have made some sense if the writer had followed that up with “Only a child thinks natural selection causes evolution; any adult would know it was directed by God.”

      1. I frequently try to resist writing a comment on this web site, but the debbil makes me do it. An occasional comment from those of us poor folks “educated” in the humanities rather than hard sciences and maths shouldn’t do too much harm. We, too, can be good for a chuckle. But, we couldn’t be otherwise, could we?

    2. I, too, smirked initially when reading this writer’s product. Then, I felt sorry for him/her.
      Despite my facetious comments elsewhere (taken to task by Diana MacPherson, so I am contrite), I do feel sad for the writer: regardless of literary skill, each one of us knows exactly what the writer intended and it is a view that limits her/his horizons.

      Something that I think we all find sad.

      1. I agree with you in what you say about “what the writer intended and it is a view that limits her/his horizons.” This happens to us all at some point in our lives if/when we
        decide there’s nothing more to learn about any given topic you care to mention.

        I’m having great difficulty in thinking about
        “determinism” in this context. At what point are the doors closed on learning and potential for change? I would hope never. The alternative is a little too Calvinist for me. I would hope that learning and change is possible for us all as long as we live and that what we may become is always TBD (To Be Determined.)

  25. It is hard to tell if the comment is intentionally or unintentionally confusing evolution in populations over millions of years with non-evolutionary development in individuals over years.

    In any case, it is obviously stupid to claim that evolution specifically claim that life emerged from non-life, since science agree on that. In cosmology, astronomy, astrophysics and – recently – geology that is a solid observation. In those sciences we can observe that cosmos/early planets/early Earth is sterile (too hot for water) and we can observe that mature Earth is not. However the specific pathways the remaining observation is life from non-life.

    1. That should be early cosmos (right after primordial nucleosynthesis, say).

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