by Stoneburg » Tue Apr 15, 2008 10:24 am
I think the problem here is that the scientific minded people expect the religious nutcases to be susceptible to logical argument. There's no point in trying to explain evolution or bio-genesis, or why ID is such a ludicrous idea (and one which most of the world left behind a few hundred years ago).
First of all, they do not come to conclusions the same way as rational or scientific people do. Someone rational will observe something, formulate a theory and then test it. Religious nutcases already "know" the truth, and then try to make the observations fit. And the worse the arguments get, the louder they speak.
The fact that the extremists in religion are so afraid of evolution and science in general is actually pretty easy to understand. Religion and science are in many ways eachothers opposites, and the more people learn, the less influence religion will have on them. Science is indeed undermining the authority of religion, and will most likely, and hopefully sooner rather than later, make religion something of the past. That is of course a very scary prospect for the people who don't really have much else besides religion to prop up their influence, but for the human race it will be a good stride into the future once we relegate these superstitions and sillienesses to the history books where they belong.
Until then, just ignore the religious parrots, or ridicule them if you can't ignore them. Whatever you do, don't bother trying to reason with them in any rational manner. It's a waste of breath/ink/electrons. Focus on the people with the mental capacity to process and appreciate the value of scientific research instead, they're the ones that matter.