Success?

[Kitsune]

I am curious, has anyone here ever successfully converted a Young Earth Creationist or an Old Earth Creationist to a supporter of Evolution?

[Darth Wong]

I am curious, has anyone here ever successfully converted a Young Earth Creationist or an Old Earth Creationist to a supporter of Evolution?

There are a few former YECs on the board. In person, the most I've ever accomplished is to get one to admit "you may be winning this argument, but I'm still right." Fundies ...

[Kitsune]

I have gotten at least one person swaying back and forth to accept evolution but that is the best I ever succeeded at myself.

[Darth Wong]

Old Earth creationists are much easier to talk to. I've had better success with them. But ironically, the YEC position, which is so much easier to logically dismantle, is also far more deeply entrenched and resistant to argument. You can almost see the walls going up around their minds as you try to talk to them.

[Ford Prefect]

While I understand what Young Earth Creationism is, I still don't know how Old Earth Creationism is - anyone care to give me a heads up?

[SirNitram]

Old Earth creationists are much easier to talk to. I've had better success with them. But ironically, the YEC position, which is so much easier to logically dismantle, is also far more deeply entrenched and resistant to argument. You can almost see the walls going up around their minds as you try to talk to them.

Faith is the answer, of course. The YEC position is, full stop, faith. The OEC allows that tiny smidgen of doubt in, in the form of age, so you just need a sufficiently large hammer to smash away at the crack. But YEC may be logically flawed but it is mentally unassailable. There's no cracks in the iron ball around their heads.

The last bit, of course, is something I stole from Small Gods where the God Om spoke of the one everyone knows is the next Prophet. It goes to the tune of.. 'He doesn't hear me. I'm not going to say anything stupid about putting people to death or torture. He's hearing himself, echos in his own mind, because nothing gets in or out of there.'

[Cyborg Stan]

I usually define Old Earth Creationist as someone who accepts an old age for the Earth, but doesn't believe that humans and other organisms share a common ancestor. (Note that they also go further and state that no species above a certain classification point share a common ancestor, but it's mainly humans to worry about.) And naturally, God is behind all this.

[mr friendly guy]

While I understand what Young Earth Creationism is, I still don't know how Old Earth Creationism is - anyone care to give me a heads up?

Essentially they admit earth is billions of years old. This is done by interpreting the Bible passages allegorically. For example, days are interpreted to mean millions of years, the 2 differing contradictory accounts of Genesis is interpreted to mean that God created things again after an extinction (of the dinosaurs) etc.

Their weakness isn't so much the science, but their ability to shift goal posts with post hoc rationalisations in how they interpret the Bible.

[Kitsune]

Can Christians who support evolution get through better to a creationist than a nonj-christian.

For example, I just don't think this way:

The intricate and elegant structure of the physical universe and the laws of nature, as revealed by scientific inquiry, cannot help but inspire awe in every thinking person. To me, it stretches the limits of plausibility to believe that the intricacy and elegance is merely the result of randomness. I believe that the universe is most likely the result of design; furthermore that the entity that made that design is, by definition, the God of the Hebrew Bible. I do not see a contradiction between the concept of the universe as the result of design and the theory of evolution, which is one of an infinite number of natural laws that implement that creation.

The scientific method is inherently limited in scope to answering questions using the tools of falsifiable hypothesis, repeatable measurements and controlled experimentation. While the theory of intelligent design may be true, at the heart of the theory is dependence on the existence of a supernatural creator. Supernatural phenomena cannot be studied with the scientific method. Therefore the theory of intelligent design would not be within the proper scope of a science class.

[Darth Wong]

There are advantages and disadvantages to being a "fellow Christian just trying to explain evolution" to a creationist. On the one hand, a fellow Christian gets more respect. On the other hand, two Christians arguing about anything will often end up spiraling down into theological debates which inevitably go nowhere.

The nice thing about being an atheist is that a lot of Christians honestly have no idea how to argue if the other person won't accept the validity of the Bible and the existence of God, and it throws them completely off their game.

[Dark Hellion]

I have seen one person go from a YEC to an pro-evolution christian. The problem is that it wasn't a method of convincing here through argument as much as it was simply giving her access to resources she never had, and her being smart enough despite her indoctrination to decide that evolution was obviously correcct. In about 2 months here posts went from "jesus 4evar" to a descent summary on the basic evidence behind macro-evolution.

[Gaidin]

Faith is the answer, of course. The YEC position is, full stop, faith. The OEC allows that tiny smidgen of doubt in, in the form of age, so you just need a sufficiently large hammer to smash away at the crack. But YEC may be logically flawed but it is mentally unassailable. There's no cracks in the iron ball around their heads.

The last bit, of course, is something I stole from Small Gods where the God Om spoke of the one everyone knows is the next Prophet. It goes to the tune of.. 'He doesn't hear me. I'm not going to say anything stupid about putting people to death or torture. He's hearing himself, echos in his own mind, because nothing gets in or out of there.'

It's a matter of standards. Believe it or not, while they won't admit it, it is far easier to shake the faith of a YEC because of the logical flaws in the idea they hold. They've got a straight and narrow path to walk down, and they like it(see all of the Gospel references about the straight and narrow vs the wide and easy). You're right though, for this reason its much more difficult to break their faith regardless of how much you push the buttons. Best case scenario, statistically, is to turn a YEC into an OEC.

It's a bit different than the OECs. It's actually a lot more difficult to shake their faith because they're more adaptable. They tend to view the story of creation in Genesis as a symbolic poem that answers nothing more than the 'Who', 'What', and if you're lucky, you can find one that will claim the 'Why' when they look at Genesis alone. They'll claim the 'Why' when the Bible as a whole is considered, but thats neither here, nor there. Most of the OECs I know tend to look to science for the 'How' and the best guess on the 'When'. 'Where' is somewhat irrelevant given we're talking about the universe and how it game into being. With this in mind its actually harder to break the faith of an OEC, and their adaptability is the key.

[Lagmonster]

I've had a lot of success at Rapture Ready, actually, but my methodology is something that comes from my career, inasmuch as I'm very good at breaking down large arguments into small points and taking ground a little at a time, even going so far as to offer them concessions so as to not shake their belief system too much at one time (generally, the more volume and scale of opposition you present at one time, the more a person behaves in a reactionary and defensive way as opposed to considering your argument and trying to respond).

While I haven't seen wholesale conversion to atheism, I *have* succeeded in getting even some fundies there to argue on behalf of several points I've made with them. While this more or less simply amounts to them abandoning those arguments which are so ludicrous as to be easily disproven even to a layperson, I consider it a major step forwards (even the fundies will now chastise newbies for things like the 2nd law of thermodynamics argument, and many have acknowledged the physical flaws in a global flood theory).

I'm sure Mike will agree that getting people to recognize basic scientific principles so that they can understand scientific reasoning for themselves is more important than even showing them the evidence and saying, "Look, this has been demonstrated to be correct, that's it".

[Darth Wong]

It is sad, however, that I consider it a major triumph simply to get a creationist to acknowledge the concept of the open vs closed system in science: something that is first covered in grade school.

[petesampras]

If someone believes in religion soley based on faith and doesn't attempt to reconsile their beliefs with science or logic then their are no arguments which are ever going to change their minds. If you have that kind of faith then in clearly overrides any other form of evidence to you.

At least they are honest though. It's the Christians that try to use scientific arguments to support their views and attack evolution on a scientific basis that tend to comment gross acts of disception, misrepresentation of facts and dishonest debating tactics.