The Problem with Christians

[TheRocketSurgeon]

I keep thinking about this...

These people are supposedly studying actual science at an actual proper place. Let's assume that is true.

They have things that they think don't add up about evolution. Do they go and talk to the staff there? Do they go and seek any actual answers? That AAA guy admitted that he hadn't brought any of it up. So they're not interested in learning, to see if they might not understand it properly.

Instead, they turn up here at an atheist (not even science) forum, and write these questions as a "gotcha", as if there is no answer. If those questions are so stumping, why not present them at their university or whatever? And what do they hope to achieve, even if they did manage to stump a bunch of strangers on a forum?

Instead, the questions could be used to learn something. But they don't want to learn, they don't want the actual answer. They want us to say, "Yes you're right. You just busted evolution wide open. Care to insert your personal magical explanation in its place?"

When I was an undergraduate in Bio at a university in the deep South, we had Kent Hovind (formerly known as "Dr. Dino", for his claims that humans and dinosaurs coexisted before Noah's Flood wiped the latter out... and more recently known as Inmate #135733) come to my university to debate one of our biology professors, and I researched his tactics, since I knew most of their arguments were designed to fool the audience, rather than to actually win the debate. I called what I discovered "the machine-gun tactic" (they ask one question, which the professor answers, and quickly move on to the next question so no one would notice that the "GOTCHA!" didn't get anything, until they finally get to one the professor doesn't know, at which point they latch on and say, "Aha! You see, folks..."), and I set up a LAN of three computers on which we (three grad students, with me as a "runner" to take the printout to the professor) could look up the information from the databases online at UC Berkeley and such. After that, since I was the main one visible, I was called "the Evolution Guy" when people from that audience recognized me on campus.

The crazy part isn't the nickname, it's that I was constantly asked "gotcha" questions of their own. They'd ask something in a tone that clearly indicated that they thought they had "busted all of evolution wide open", as you put it... even the really inane questions like, "Well if you think we came from monkeys then why are there still monkeys!?" 

At first, I exercised my patience and tried to explain the facts to them... but after meeting wall after wall of deliberately-maintained ignorance, I finally started telling them that they need to inform the scientific community of their inescapable conclusions, and mocking them with things like, "Oh wow... how did we MISS that!?"

When I was able to leave that place, it was none too soon. The school had great bio and genetics departments/labs... but I could feel my IQ points being sucked away through osmosis, every day I was in that town.