(February 18, 2014 at 11:24 am)Jacob(smooth) Wrote: It's really not. Have you not noticed how Christians thrive on "persecution".About as many as thrive on smug self-righteousness. Like anyone else, they tailor their approach to the response they get. I find that it distracts from the actual discussion (assuming there is one, and not the bald attempts to proselytize that we are getting lately).
Mind you, the insults and disparagement don't bother me, regardless of who it's from. You can be as crude and obscene as anyone and still put forth an interesting or compelling argument, and you can be as gentle and likable as anyone and post useless garbage. I'm less interested in the former and much more interested in the latter. Be nice or be crude, but for fuck's sake, have something worthwhile to say.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould