Conservapedia talk:What is going on at CP?/Archive322

This is an archive page, last updated 12 September 2013. Please do not make edits to this page.

Archives for this talk page:

<1>, <2>, <3>, <4>, <5>, <6>, <7>, <8>, <9>, <10>, <11>, <12>, <13>, <14>, <15>, <16>, <17>, <18>, <19>, <20>, <21>, <22>, <23>, <24>, <25>, <26>, <27>, <28>, <29>, <30>, <31>, <32>, <33>, <34>, <35>, <36>, <37>, <38>, <39>, <40>, <41>, <42>, <43>, <44>, <45>, <46>, <47>, <48>, <49>, <50>, <51>, <52>, <53>, <54>, <55>, <56>, <57>, <58>, <59>, <60>, <61>, <62>, <63>, <64>, <65>, <66>, <67>, <68>, <69>, <70>, <71>, <72>, <73>, <74>, <75>, <76>, <77>, <78>, <79>, <80>, <81>, <82>, <83>, <84>, <85>, <86>, <87>, <88>, <89>, <90>, <91>, <92>, <93>, <94>, <95>, <96>, <97>, <98>, <99>, <100>, <101>, <102>, <103>, <104>, <105>, <106>, <107>, <108>, <109>, <110>, <111>, <112>, <113>, <114>, <115>, <116>, <117>, <118>, <119>, <120>, <121>, <122>, <123>, <124>, <125>, <126>, <127>, <128>, <129>, <130>, <131>, <132>, <133>, <134>, <135>, <136>, <137>, <138>, <139>, <140>, <141>, <142>, <143>, <144>, <145>, <146>, <147>, <148>, <149>, <150>, <151>, <152>, <153>, <154>, <155>, <156>, <157>, <158>, <159>, <160>, <161>, <162>, <163>, <164>, <165>, <166>, <167>, <168>, <169>, <170>, <171>, <172>, <173>, <174>, <175>, <176>, <177>, <178>, <179>, <180>, <181>, <182>, <183>, <184>, <185>, <186>, <187>, <188>, <189>, <190>, <191>, <192>, <193>, <194>, <195>, <196>, <197>, <198>, <199>, <200>, <201>, <202>, <203>, <204>, <205>, <206>, <207>, <208>, <209>, <210>, <211>, <212>, <213>, <214>, <215>, <216>, <217>, <218>, <219>, <220>, <221>, <222>, <223>, <224>, <225>, <226>, <227>, <228>, <229>, <230>, <231>, <232>, <233>, <234>, <235>, <236>, <237>, <238>, <239>, <240>, <241>, <242>, <243>, <244>, <245>, <246>, <247>, <248>, <249>, <250>, <251>, <252>, <253>, <254>, <255>, <256>, <257>, <258>, <259>, <260>, <261>, <262>, <263>, <264>, <265>, <266>, <267>, <268>, <269>, <270>, <271>, <272>, <273>, <274>, <275>, <276>, <277>, <278>, <279>, <280>, <281>, <282>, <283>, <284>, <285>, <286>, <287>, <288>, <289>, <290>, <291>, <292>, <293>, <294>, <295>, <296>, <297>, <298>, <299>, <300>, <301>, <302>, <303>, <304>, <305>, <306>, <307>, <308>, <309>, <310>, <311>, <312>, <313>, <314>, <315>, <316>, <317>, <318>, <319>, <320>, <321>, <323>, <324>, <325>, <326>, <327>, <328>, <329>, <330>, <331>, <332>, <333>, <334>, <335>, <336>, <337>, <338>, <339>, <340>, <341>, <342>, <343>, <344>, <345>, <346>

, (new)(back)

This is their porn.

Karajou pines for the end of days^img. I'm not sure it's healthy to have constant masturbatory fantasies about how the world will go up in flames, Popeye. Christianity has warped your tiny little mind, perhaps you ought to think about giving it up for lent? --JeevesMkII ^{The gentleman's gentleman at the other site} 14:41, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

You have to remember that for people like Kara, and Launchbooty (who entertains similar fantasies) the best part of going to Heaven will be looking down on all their enemies burning in hELL. Because their god is just a bigger, meaner, more bigoted version of themselves. Then again, Kara sees the end of days everywhere. Remember when he posted that video about the Egyptian riots, where it looked like one of the Horsemen appeared? He still went on to say something like "it could be the Horseman, or the reflection of a flag, or place by Photoshop, but it's more evidence that Jesus is coming back soon." Yeah, Kara - if you're looking for signs of the second coming in photoshop mashups, I'd suggest that somebody has a problem... PsyGremlin^{Поговорите!} 15:05, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

If they can't wait to join their maker you'd think that they might cut a corner or two. Генгис^{You have the right to be offended; and I have the right to offend you.} 18:11, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

They have quite the sick fantasy given that their own future happiness and bliss is hoisted upon the dead bones of millions of their fellow human beings. Of course their god is just reflection of themselves, it is the ultimate ego wrapped up in a facade of piety.--BMcP - Just an astronomy guy 21:07, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Criminals and mentally ill editors at Wikipedia

One wonders whether a version of this^img article for conservapedia appears on conservapedia. One thinks not. And shouldn't they be listing KDBuffalo as a mentally ill/unstable editor at Wikipedia? ^{— Unsigned, by: 110.32.38.10 / talk / contribs}

That page is a nice example of how petty and silly conservapedia can be (and how much they'll take anything to slander something they don't like). Any wiki/forum/website which is popular will obviously also be used by criminals or the mentally ill (hell, even here at RW we have "Anonymous user"!). If your website doesn't have an idiot on it, all it means is that noone uses your website. GTac (talk) 12:39, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

Gtac, what are calling me, exactly? I expect a formal apology immediately. Oh, now I see what you did. That's funny. Nice work. ħuman 02:20, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

Oi. --Certified _{Sick Bastard} 13:35, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

Ahh, if you use the history differences to read the page then you can see what GTac did there :-). Which is why I didn't react. Oldusgitus (talk) 13:40, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

I dunno, I'd rather not be a part of a wiki frequented by idiots and malcontents such as Anonymous user. Shakedangle (talk) 13:42, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

:-3 GTac (talk) 14:09, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

Really. Anonymous user ought to take a look in teh mirror once in a while. Alec Sanderson (talk) 14:18, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

...--_transResident Transfan^form! 18:57, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

No actually mention that any of them entered incorrect information though.

I agree with the slandering of the named individual. At least using my account. --Kels (talk) 22:00, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

Ah. I fell for that one on the Fred Phelps page, but I noticed before I hit the save page button. Well. This is embarrassing. --Certified _{Sick Bastard} 22:40, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

:) This is RationalWiki, where we specialize in vandalizing our own site and ripping great jokes on each other. Please ever keep that in mind. ħuman 02:22, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

@Gtac, has editing at CP become a criterion for mental illness?Brenden (talk) 20:28, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

@Brenden, is it possible you've fallen for it too? Whoover (talk) 22:31, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

What have I done?--Mercian (talk) 13:08, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

You know what you did! -GTac (talk) 14:21, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

I see what you did there. Генгис^{Is the Pope a Catholic?} 14:49, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

You are totally out of order victimising me when clearly "Anonymous user" is to blame.--Mercian (talk) 15:35, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

This all looks rather silly when you're not logged in. -GTac (talk) 15:43, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

Hey what the hell have I done? aside from some unfunny snark and a couple of minor slapfights over bullshit I have been the very model of a rationalwikipedian! Judge Holden^{The Judge Smiles} 08:41, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

(gets joke)....oops. Please disregard my comment and the reference to pirates of penzanse. Judge Holden^{The Judge Smiles} 08:45, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

Out of blatant curiosity, where did a seemingly random reference to me come out of the wood works in this discussion? DMorris, on the EIP Network ^{1 855 282 2882} 04:59, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

lol. Think about it for a while and you might figure it out. Damo^Hi 05:27, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

@DMorris2, fergodsakes, while you were editing to add your question you could have looked at the code for the random reference. It's really not that complicated a trick. Whoover (talk) 05:53, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

It's still amusing to see people getting fooled by this. Of course, it does rely on being used sparingly to be truly effective, just like some of the snark - such as crickets or strikeout. Генгис^{RationalWiki GOLD member} 08:53, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, that's an old code, surprised I didn't think of that. DMorris, on the EIP Network ^{1 855 282 2882} 16:45, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

The fact that these types of people edit at Wikipedia shows the lack of management oversight of both editors and content. One approach would be for Wikipedia to hire 100 "senior editors" and train them on how to keep an NPOV editorial process running. They could maintain a decent corporate climate instead of relying upon a corps of immature volunteer admins who have created an environment where mass murderers fit right in. When a brick-and-mortar organization holds an event with a thousands of people participating, appropriate security and logistics are planned to handle a large crowd. Wikipedia does attract a large virtual crowd, but fails completely to plan for that crowd to interact in a healthy and productive way. Hclodge (talk) 12:22, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

Jesus, Ed. Why are you so incompetent?

Ed writes an article on MLK's I have a dream speech^img which, considering it's an Ed masterpiece, is surprisingly non-racist and verbose. For some reason he thinks that the article needs a Rand Paul quote in there, probably to fill his racism quota, but he mistakenly calls him "Paul Rand." No problem, you might think. Simple typo, a quick fix!

But of course this is Ed we're talking about. His "fix" for this problem is not to touch the original typo, but to create a Paul Rand redirect^img to the real article. Fucking hell, Ed. Is this how you deal with other problems in your life? Instead of searching for misplaced car keys, do you just smash the window and hotwire it? If you have no food in the house, do you eat the cleaning products instead of ordering a curry? Fucking hell, you've been editing wikis for years. HOW ARE YOU THIS INCOMPETENT? --JeevesMkII ^{The gentleman's gentleman at the other site} 17:37, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

And of course, he puts in two links to the Moonie rag, Washington Times. Генгис^{Our ignorance is God; what we know is science.} 18:40, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

Good God. It's not enough that he renamed 's-Hertogenbosch. Now he's deciding that Rand Paul can also be called Paul Rand.

He is a genuinely odd duck. Who the hell thinks like that? Phiwum (talk) 21:56, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

The same kind of guy who thinks an old Korean guy is his god, and isn't terribly shocked when his god snuffs it of old age evidently. He's just extremely hard of thinking all round it seems. --JeevesMkII ^{The gentleman's gentleman at the other site} 21:59, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

I think he just can't admit is own mistakes, just like virtually every sysop on CP. Add to this his hamfisted way of trying to cover up for it and you got gold, Jerry. Just these two would kind of make Uncle Ed a bumbling clown, but his constant condescending attitude to "lesser" editors (as if there were a single one there dumber then Ed) is what makes him such an asshole in my eyes. Shakedangle (talk) 22:55, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

One of those cases where the lengths someone will go to to not admit a mistake is far more embarrassing than the mistake itself. --Night Jaguar (talk) 23:33, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

There's no way Uncle Poor Ed wrote that on his own. Can someone with text access to the file do the easy work of finding where he stole it? ħuman 03:44, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

Oh, now I see. It didn't really write much on its own. ħuman 03:47, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘Oh Ed, you know you are really f'ing stupid and crap at wiki editing when kenny boy comes along^img and starts telling you that you are doing it wrong. Oldusgitus (talk) 07:48, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

Dr. Poor? Or is Taj just having a larf? Генгис^evolving 09:21, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

That really made my day: the guy who cannot remember how to unblock someone correctly^img, though he had done this half a year earlier (User:MNCalder and #84181^img) teaches User No. 188 how to write an article on a wiki.

And the most fun thing: Ed Poor needs to be taught! He who claimed that he "didn't see the advantage of having several one-sentence or three-sentence "articles"" writes his crappy one-liners without links and categories and then he expects other editors to polish his turds...

Beautiful! --larron (talk) 20:15, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

What would Ed do with a name like Humbert Humbert? Doctor Dark (talk) 21:04, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

Rewrite himself a happy ending? Robledo (talk) 01:16, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

And now DanAP comes along to rub salt in Ed's weeping wounds by creating pages with mispellings^img and redirecting them to the correct pages. Oldusgitus (talk) 13:09, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

Split this off from the idiots other rantings.

Sorry for the double post, but I'd like to discuss landfills a bit further. Believe as you wish, but if garbage collection was seen as a private business rather than a public service, and state governments told the companies that a new weights and measures regulation required them to start charging customers by the pound rather than a flat fee, do you think they'd complain about the opportunity to start charging people $50 per pound of garbage collected? Do you think more people wouldn't start recycling if they had to pay to throw things away, particularly considering that you actually get paid to recycle things like scrap metal? DMorris, on the EIP Network ^{1 855 282 2882} 12:12, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

Charging by weight for rubbish collection is a good idea in principle. The problem arises with people who fly tip to get round the charges. Ajkgordon (talk) 12:59, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

So, what you're saying is that you want government to penalise landfill disposal so much that recycling everything is an attractive alternative? This is your small government solution to the problem? Your ideas are incoherent nonsense with no relation to the real world. This is what happens when you have all principles and no pragmatism. --JeevesMkII ^{The gentleman's gentleman at the other site} 13:24, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

C'mon, Andy. Step up to DSL. Whoover (talk) 23:11, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

It would cost him a lot less than "business class" to get a very competent VPS. He doesn't know how to do that. Nobody will teach him. He doesn't trust anyone to do it for him. Hence ... 03:24, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

(e/c)Fiber would probably be better, actually. DMorris, on the EIP Network ^{1 855 282 2882} 03:32, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

He could get a cloud server through Savvis Direct or PrQ; that's probably the route I would take. DMorris, on the EIP Network ^{1 855 282 2882} 03:37, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ I asked you what evidence you had that verifies your beliefs that the blocked IPs were engaging in DDOSes. One of the blocked ranges is verizon's antiquated 3g network in NYC. Could you explain how, exactly, an antiquated 3G network would contribute appreciably to a DDOS? Hipo^crite 04:20, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

DMorris: While I do not doubt your sincerity, earnestness, motivation, and goodwill, I think you are very seriously misled about what is going on over there. Your defense of CP, while admirable, sounds a lot like the "liberal whining" / "playing the victim" that the CP admins continually accuse others of. Be that as it may, and ignoring whether defending a bestialty-focused and flying-kitty-focused website is a good use of your time, I have a few questions about your assertion that "Conservapedia blocks IP ranges from where we see nothing but trouble come from."

REALLY? You believe that is what's going on? SERIOUSLY? I have made a number of observations (and reported them, publicly and privately, to Andy), and I'd like you to explain why this policy of blocking IP addresses from even seeing CP is consistent with what you say the policy is. Since you are defending CP's policy, I assume you are privy to the details of the administrative decisions behind it.

"Andy blocks what he thinks is part of an attack on the site, as I understand." REALLY? Is your understanding correct? Or are you just making this up? My guess is that you are nowhere near "inside the loop" on this policy.

First, if CP is just blocking ranges, why is it that I have two computers next to each other on my desk at work, with consecutive IP addresses, and often one of them can see CP and the other can't. It varies from one day to another. Sometimes it's the one on the left that can't see CP; sometimes the one on the right; sometimes both can see it; sometimes neither. This strikes me as a rather surgically precise "range block". And do you (and the CP admins) actually believe that DDOS attacks are coming from a Fortune 500 and Dow Jones 30 company? And that they need to block, off and on, specific computers inside that company? By the way, I have never logged in to CP from either of those computers.

Also, can you explain why, when I sent Andy an email at Wed, Aug 7, 2013 at 2300 EDT, asking if he would please repair the service on a specific IP address (not one of the ones above), he repaired it by Thu, Aug 8, 2013 at 0013, and, in response to my message thanking him, he replied, at Thu, Aug 8, 2013 at 0030 "You're welcome. (The entire site is down for everyone now temporarily, but that should fixed shortly.)" (It was indeed down at 0030, but had been up at 0013.) This does not sound like random malfunctions, overloaded servers, or DDOS attacks. It sounds as though Andy knows what's going on, and has some degree of control over it, though probably not complete control.

If you are defending CP's actions in handling blocks and internet access in general, I assume you are privy to the details underlying this. I assume Andy has discussed all this with you. Why don't you tell us, honestly, what's going on. If you don't know, why don't you go back to Andy and ask him to explain, and then get back to us. Clearly he knows more than he or the other admins are saying publicly.

Peace, SamHB (talk) 05:55, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

It's not unrealistic to think that a corporate NAT or a Verizon 3G device could be part of a botnet committing a DDoS attack. I've seen spam emails and port 445 attacks come from hospitals, schools, major corporations (Exxon Mobil, for example), and even the Federal Reserve Bank. As for the 3G network, I've seen spam emails and port 445 attacks come from dial-up pools registered to Level 3 and AOL, as well as cellular networks around the world and satellite ISPs like HughesNet. DMorris, on the EIP Network ^{1 855 282 2882} 11:50, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

Bullshit, kid. You're lying. Further, if there's actually a ddos going on against conservapedia that is smart enough to have botnetted mobile phones, how is the site ever up? Hipo^crite 13:01, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

He's not lying, he's just a try-hard talking straight out of his ass. Not much of what he's said here makes sense. Residing in an alternate reality where you get to make shit up as you go along must be super nice. 13:39, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

Partial list of things DMorris doesn't understand:

1. Botnets
2. Webserver hosting
3. IP addresses
4. Socialism
5. The Bible

Cow...Hammer^time! 14:04, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

It does always amuse me how many conservatives self-evidently have absolutely no understanding of the things they claim to hate, like liberalism and socialism. I used to know quite a few of the leading members of the federation of conservative students back in the day (early 80's when Harry Phibbs was highly active) and at least many of them had read Kapital and On Liberty. I sometimes doubt that people like DMorris and Anne Coulter and Malkin have ever read a book let alone a political tome like On The Wealth of Nations. It's one of the reasos I treat almost everything that dribbles out of their ids with disdain. DMorris, please surprise me. Tell me that you have actually read Kapital, On Liberty or even OTWoN. Please? Oldusgitus (talk) 15:12, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

Okay hotshot, since you think I don't understand botnets and that wireless IPs and dial-up corporate networks can't participate in botnets, explain this:

Now go and tell me how I know nothing about botnets, silly morons

DMorris, on the EIP Network ^{1 855 282 2882} 19:14, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

Well, you've surely mastered copy and paste. You haven't actually demonstrated any understanding though. --JeevesMkII ^{The gentleman's gentleman at the other site} 19:58, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

Oh jeez, do I have to do this? Take this for example.

2010-10-18T18:49:28-04:00 info dfsrc=96.13.61.180 dst=76.5.12.93 ipprot=6 sport=1199 dport=445 Unknown inbound session stopped (Alltel Wireless, an American cellular company now part of Verizon)

The first part is the year, month, day, hour, minute, and second, Greenwich Mean Time minus four. The "src" is the source, which is an internet protocol address registered to Alltel's cellular network (it traces to Verizon Wireless now, but it traced to Alltel at the time of the abuse). Chances are, in my opinion, this was a Windows based PC with an aircard or tethered to a cell phone, and that device was infected with a virus attempting to propagate to other machines. The "dst" is the destination (my IP address), and it is part of Embarq Corporation's ADSL network (which is now part of CenturyLink). The "sport" is the TCP port at the source (96.13.61.180), and the "dport" is the port on my network which 96.13.61.180 was trying to access. The dport, in this case, was port 445, which is used by Microsoft Directory Services, and is something that 96.13.61.180 had no business attempting to access. The person who owned the device trying to access my network very likely had no idea that their machine was doing that, although it is possible that they did. It is more likely that they had a virus infection that was attempting to spread. Is this entertaining enough, or would you like more? DMorris, on the EIP Network ^{1 855 282 2882} 20:14, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

But did you notice the difference between the sources of spam and the sources of direct attacks? --JeevesMkII ^{The gentleman's gentleman at the other site} 20:34, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

Most of the port 445 attack IPs have zero contributions to Wikipedia even though they're coming from major corporations? Which possibly means it's server level infections vs. individual PCs like the spam sources, and it's not NAT servers that are behind it. Also the fact that the direct attacks are a different kind of virus with a different payload. Other then that, it's hard telling which difference you're referring to. DMorris, on the EIP Network ^{1 855 282 2882} 20:43, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

Sigh. There's a fundamental difference in how you go about sending spam these days and sort of infections you're seeing attempting to spread. You don't understand it because your knowledge is incredibly shallow. You basically learnt a few tricks like how to query ARIN and RIPE, and you're probably not even doing that, just using some website to do it for you. You're pretending to understand how criminals operate on the internet, but you don't really know anything about the underlying protocols, the presently implemented countermeasures and how criminals' command and control networks work. You remind me of the kiddies who infested spamhaus back in the day who fancied themselves security experts but were really just trolls who ended up making legitimate business a pain in the arse. When you've actually worked in software security, then we'll talk. In the mean time, I'm not particularly interested in your bluster. --JeevesMkII ^{The gentleman's gentleman at the other site} 20:56, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

No where did I say I was an "expert" in the matter, I just know more about it than the average person pissing all of their time away on Facebook, and thinking because they know that ♥ makes a heart symbol means they're 1337. I actually do use ARIN, RIPE, APNIC, etc, not "some website" (like SpamCop). What I do know, is that with spam, they're always changing their methods of infection and finding new ways around the security systems put in place, but in the old days, they'd often send an email with an attachment, or a link to a rouge website loaded with malicious javascripts, and that's how a device would get infected. The individual bots are controlled by the command and control server, and the server is controlled by the criminals. Botnets are actively traded by cybercriminals. I also know that there's been chatter on cybersecurity websites about Macintosh botnets and Android botnets. A lot of what I do know is from places like TrustedSource.org. Yadayadayada, what's true today about botnets will change tomorrow, because, well, if they weren't always changing their methods, they wouldn't be successful. If I were an "expert" in botnets, I wouldn't be working in food service. DMorris, on the EIP Network ^{1 855 282 2882} 21:32, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ You know nothing about botnets. You've discovered copy and paste. You also don't have a SINGLE MOBILE DEVICE in your exciting logs. You found a what, 6 year old exploit still gyrating around the net? Bravo, you retard. Also, fuck Florida. Get a job. Hipo^crite 22:47, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

There's an Alltel Wireless IP address in there, it's the very first one on there. If that's not enough for you, I'll waste some time digging up some of the 2G, 3G, and 4G wireless networks overseas that I see generate spam all of the time. Now if you're going to tell me that the wireless providers give aircards IPs out of a completely different pool (and actually have evidence to back it up), I'm all ears, otherwise, STFU. The logs are three years old because they were from an old modem that I haven't used since 2010, back when I used to pull up the firewall log and send in abuse reports all the time (every one of those IPs, other than my IPs obviously, were reported to the abuse contact as infected). BTW, I have job, so fuck off. DMorris, on the EIP Network ^{1 855 282 2882} 22:57, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

By the way, Rick Scott is more awesome than you. DMorris, on the EIP Network ^{1 855 282 2882} 23:11, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

I got off at the turn where my smartphone is a likely botnet member in the great DDoS attack, which is why I haven't been able to read CP for most of the summer. But I am so concerned about the Ken-like statement,

I'm going to be taking computer sciences at some point in the near future, perhaps at some point I can obtain a small server and convince Andy to host Conservapedia off of my own DSL connection, and he only have to pay for the additional cost of business class internet instead of whatever he's paying for hosting. Then, as the host for Conservapedia, I would gladly sue anybody that launches DDoS attacks or spam attacks on the site, rather than have to block so many IPs. That was the one thing that used to be cool about R-W; even though the content sucked/sucks, it used to be hosted off of the owner's little server.

I really hope he isn't writing the same crap in 30 years. Whoover (talk) 00:16, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

DSL? Doctor Dark (talk) 02:47, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

Phiwum

I noticed Phiwum and Human expressed concern about whether their blocks were fair so I discussed the blocks personally with Karajou, and while the block of Human was not overturned, the block of Phiwum was. And for the record, I did do some editing of content pages as a result because I was happy that at least one disagreeable block was overturned. Sort of my way of expressing appreciation that Conservapedia administration was willing to examine past blocks for fairness. Hopefully Conservapedia admins will show some willingness to overturn bad blocks on a case by case basis in the future. I still disagree with the block of Human and hope that will be further examined. --98.220.198.49 (talk) 07:21, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

Kudos for that. Генгис^{Gum disease} 12:13, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

I appreciate the effort, though I don't think I'll take advantage of my newfound freedom. My interest in editing CP was short-lived. (Not to mention that I'm still currently unable to view the site from home anyway!)

Thanks nonetheless. Phiwum (talk) 12:47, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

Liberal cowardice. Ajkgordon (talk) 12:52, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

Sure, I don't know why there are problems with access, I've actually been getting weird page loading problems also. Maybe you could try using Firefox and then in Tools>Options>Privacy changing to custom settings for history and then to 'ask me every time' for cookies? This makes Firefox ask you every time whether to approve cookies. Anyway, from what others said, maybe it's caused by a cookie, and so controlling cookies would prevent the problem?

I think some of the issue may be that CP gets a lot of automated spam attacks, scripts seem to crawl the internet looking for wikis to make spam pages on and then auto generate leads to their sites for ad revenue. When I made a wiki I actually dealt with close to 2 dozen generated spam accounts in under a week until I implemented anti-spam measures. I think Conservapedia may have put in some anti-spam measures that maybe are causing access problems or something.

Sorry this didn't seem to solve the problem though, I'm not sure what's going on with the IP blocking. I wasn't the one who overturned the block so I didn't check what block settings were used, maybe one is still left on, not sure. --98.220.198.49 (talk) 23:11, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

Also in those Privacy settings for Firefox, there's a radio button option to "Tell sites that I do not want to be tracked." I don't know if that would affect the IP mess or not, but it would be another possibility. Again, it seems sometimes like CP has connection problems for me also, and I wonder if I'm actually somehow getting around them due to my privacy settings. --98.220.198.49 (talk) 04:43, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for "trying". I never did anything to harm CP in any way. Take that to Karajerk and ask him why I am blocked. And then take it to Andy and ask him why my IP is 503'd from even seeing the site. ħuman 01:57, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

You could try messaging Andy on Facebook[1] but I'm not sure if he still uses it. I tried speaking with Karajou already, the conversation went as follows:[2] --Jzyehoshua (talk) 02:50, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

Again, Karajou will not listen, and I spoke to him on his user talk page at Conservapedia already. I tried unblocking some people who Markman had blocked and Karajou actually locked the whole Conservapedia database for perhaps half a day or so for 'maintenance' because he didn't like some of the unblocks. He archived our conversation pretty quickly (along with the rest of his talk page). Lets just say I'm getting on his nerves, and he'll probably get even madder if I try talking to Andy about it on Andy's page, which is why by this point I'd prefer you talked to Andy directly if possible. I'm willing to talk to Andy if absolutely necessary, but Karajou will likely go off if I do. --Jzyehoshua (talk) 02:54, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

As much as I appreciate your efforts, the bloom has been off the rose for many, many years. When I was blocked in May, what 2007? for being a member of RW 1.0, I was just getting ready to improve my work on the building trades files, with pictures of big yellow machines, etc. I'm not sure I would care to contribute useful content to that cesspit of hatred any more. And contacting Andy? He has never replied to any contact I have made. ħuman 00:31, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

Karajou Conversation

Some user named Human is claiming they were wrongly blocked. I checked their contributions immediately prior to their blocks and didn't see what they'd done wrong.[3] I notice they edit on highly technical subjects and don't really use sources so I understand where a misunderstanding could occur, but they make decent edits from what I can tell. In looking at their edits, they seem reasonable:

• [4]: Basic grammar fixes, I don't see anything controversial here.
• [5] The internal link additions and typo fix of foreign all make sense, although rewording "prestigious event" was a bad change showing his vocabulary's not that good.
• [6]: A quick Google search shows these are all real people.
• [7]: He inserted some opinionated statements about music here and again showed a poor taste for vocabulary, but his internal link changes were valid.
• [8]: He made good typo fixes here.
• [9]: He again shows poor vocabulary but his actual points appear to be accurate, though instead of saying "the material must contain electrons that are free to move from atom to atom" he should've used the technical term of electron transfer.[10] He was right about electric balance as well, though he should've worded it better.[11]
• [12]: He seems to be correct that the symphony was changed in name, this is mentioned also by Wikipedia[13][14] and sourced here.[15]

From what I can tell he probably got blocked like that for daring to defend Obama here[16], and while I disagree with his point (Democrats ran Congress after the 06 elections and passed the legislation[17], Obama out-spent Bush in half the time[18], and Bush caused the troops to withdraw while Obama tried to keep them there[19][20]) I don't think he should be blocked forever for a difference of opinion if his edits were valid. From what I can tell he was making valid contributions and just had a difference of opinion.

Ultimately, I see nothing wrong with his content edits though, and from what I can tell he got blocked for having a single difference of opinion. --Joshua Zambrano 23:55, 1 September 2013 (EDT)

He has been a member of a website with a record of hostile actions against this site; he supported and/or contributed to those actions. What I see here is an act to look "all innocent/I didn't do nuthin wrong" by using someone else as a go-between. Human stays blocked. Karajou 01:02, 2 September 2013 (EDT)

Meaning because he was a member of RW and apparently edited there, it's an excuse for blocking him? He never requested I speak on his behalf, I saw him mention a complaint of unfair blocking so I'm taking initiative and examining the case for myself. To me it looks like he was blocked immediately after saying something supportive of Obama and is being blocked because he had a single difference of opinion, maybe in just one single comment. Is there a site policy saying that anyone who is a member of RW should be blocked? Otherwise, how could he have known he was doing something wrong? Because again, just from looking at the edits themselves, I do not see what he did wrong. --Joshua Zambrano 01:23, 2 September 2013 (EDT)

He stays blocked. Karajou 01:25, 2 September 2013 (EDT)

I wish to express one more concern, and that is that according to the Conservapedia Commandments regarding administrators, "Unlike Wikipedia, we do not block for ideological reasons."[21] Given the fact that he was blocked immediately after making an ideologically objectionable comment, when none of his edits appeared wrong, it appears very clear this is a violation of the Conservapedia Commandments regarding ideological blocking, and I am going on the record in expressing my disagreement. --Joshua Zambrano 04:14, 2 September 2013 (EDT)

Apparently, JZambrano, you're the type who just looks at the surface; you either cannot or will not look at what's underneath. What I see from you is the stereotypical individual who judges the book by its cover. You're stopping it now, and I mean now. Karajou 15:52, 2 September 2013 (EDT)

I think it's funny that Karajou believes he has the authority to issue orders here. And that being a member of RationalWiki is a bannable offence unless you're an admin, at which point it's totes fine. --Sasayaki (talk) 09:25, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

That whole bit above is lifted straight from CP. Ajkgordon (talk) 09:39, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

Correct. The "user" Karajou linked is not the user here, it's just a copied link. Thanks for the support, JZ, although I can't check your critiques of my grammar ;) Please check out cp:Classical music and it's offshoots around 5 years ago. These cp sysops are delusional, I contributed to their site, all I did here was laugh at them. I thoroughly enjoyed working with the homskollars and learning how to edit a wiki there. ħuman 00:27, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

Conservapedia the star of the new Why people laugh at creationists

[22] Thunderfoot back to the science. I can't access CP, but perhaps someone who can could go through and check that this isn't the work of a parodist. --Damo^Hi 09:46, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

The volcano theory has been on CP almost from the start (ie at least six years now). If a parodist added it, no admin changed it. Sophie^Wilder 09:57, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

It was added by User:Akiva in March 2007 (http://www.conservapedia.com/index.php?title=Post-Diluvian_Diasporas&diff=next&oldid=23184). Akiva edited for three days before disappearing forever. Sophie^Wilder 10:03, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

The source is AiG so I would not define it as parody even if it was added by an evolutionist determined to showcase the crazy. Генгис^{RationalWiki GOLD member} 10:58, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

While I generally enjoy Thunderf00t's series, he does go for the low hanging fruit a little too often. One of his early videos spends too much time refuting VenomFangX's comment that the global flood could have made the Grand Canyon "in five minutes," which was obviously hyperbole. This one was a good refutation, but I don't think the volcano launch theory is embraced by just about anyone. DickTurpis (talk) 11:47, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

"...obviously hyperbole." And therein lies the rub. When you're dealing with people that believe a being fashioned the entire breadth and scope of the universe -and all life in it- in the span of six days... How do you do differentiate between hyperbole and heartfelt belief? --Inquisitor (talk) 18:25, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

As opposed to liberals who think everything popped into existence from thin air (or space) or that aliens seeded life on earth after the aliens popped into existence. Ah, and the oh-so-scientific belief that a baby becomes a human being the exact second they exit the womb and not a moment earlier. --98.220.198.49 (talk) 06:24, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

I think you're falling into the Conservapedia-think that uses "liberals" as a term to describe everybody who they don't agree with on any issue whatsoever. There's nothing about evolution or current theories on the formation of solar systems or abiogenesis that is "liberal"... there are plenty of highly conservative people who accept the evidence for these things. Also, you're doing a wonderful job at that other Conservapedia past-time of straw-manning positions into absurdities that no significant amount of people actually believe, so you can convince yourself you must be right because you believe something else (which is of course faulty reasoning: you could both be wrong). --Editor374 (talk) 07:55, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Actually I go by the American definition used in Gallup polling (the primary pollster here in the U.S.). There are roughly 23% of Americans that identify as liberal.[23] I also favor the definitions used by the Pew Research Center's typology tests.[24][25] I tend to assume the 2005 typology had a very accurate definition of what liberals are, in which 17% of the general population and 19% of registered voters identified as "solid liberals."

I primarily debate the extremists in America's Democrat Party who do hold those extreme positions. I realize most Americans hold more moderate views on creation of life and issues like abortion, but as a general rule I've come to find the most ardent opponents of Christianity and conservatism are these fringe left-wing extremists, liberals, who do hold such extreme views. You're right that both sides could be wrong, and I try to advocate a middle ground. --98.220.198.49 (talk) 09:10, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

At any rate I was just pointing out the fallacious thinking of the atheistic liberals I find commonly level such criticisms at conservatives. It wasn't necessarily directed at anyone in particular (well, addressed moreso to Inquisitor I suppose) so much as pointing out the faulty logic of the opposing side which seems to be making the anti-conservative attacks most frequently. If that doesn't apply to anyone here, my mistake then. --98.220.198.49 (talk) 09:15, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Strawman. Firstly liberals, atheists, evolutionists and so on are not synonymous. While there may be a tendency particularly in the US for a certain amount of convergence, it is nothing like as much as you seem to think it is. Secondly, the "just popping into existence" thing is itself fallacious. Scientists who work in these areas don't just shrug their shoulders and say that. They observe and research and hypothesize and test and theorise about what happened and how it happened. Besides, even if they did shrug their shoulders, it doesn't mean goddidit. There is nothing extreme about admitting a lack of knowledge and wanting to find out. Quoting a bronze age myth as if it were undeniable truth is. Ajkgordon (talk) 10:02, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

PsyGremlin^講話 10:14, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

You're making a strawman in claiming a strawman since I never said they were 100% synonymous. While liberals tend to be atheistic/secular much moreso than other groups, that is not true of them all. I criticized "atheistic liberals", I did not say all liberals are atheists or vice versa, meaning liberals as a whole tend to be atheistic as a broad trait, not that they all are.

According to the 2005 Pew Research Center study I cited, there are 13% of liberals who actually attend prayer meetings or Bible Studies, and while the prayer meetings could be to Satan or perhaps they were lying or using sarcasm, it does seem possible that a very small percentage of liberals actually are not atheistic/secular.[26] At any rate, by the definitions of liberal I'm using per Gallup polling and Pew Research Center studies, there does appear to be a VERY high degree of convergence. Not 100%, just very close. As a general rule, liberals are atheistic and supportive of evolution in general, at least here in the United States.

Ultimately, Creationists also observe, research, and hypothesize as well. There's a variety of Creationist theories just like there are a variety of Evolutionist theories (e.g. phyletic gradualism, savannah hypothesis, punctuated equilibrium). Creationist theories include Gap Theory, Canopy Theory, and the Wiseman Hypothesis (an alternative to the Documentary Hypothesis). There's an extensive field related to Biblical archaeology and manuscript analysis. You make it sound like only evolutionists research and hypothesize, and not creationists. Many of the great early scientists who started the scientific revolution were Bible-believing creationists such as Pasteur, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton.

Ultimately, evolutionists operate from a belief that God cannot be true and exclude the possibility of the supernatural, whereas creationists operate from the reverse. Both have their presumptions which guide their focus in searching. In fact, the leading paper on evolution, An Alternative to Phyletic Gradualism by Gould and Eldredge, begins by conceding evolutionists operate from a faith-based use of theory to guide expectation rather than true inductivism or objective analysis of the facts. I'd recommend reading the paper to see for yourself.[27]

I believe evolutionist scholars are as religious in their adherence to evolution as the religious they criticize, and try to fit the evidence against all reason to fit their atheistic worldviews. The evidence is increasingly pointing against evolution and they are trying to deny it so far as I'm concerned.[28][29][30] We can't witness macroevolution either in the lab or in the fossil record, which is why the theory of punctuated equilibrium had to be invented to explain why the missing links can't be seen, and suggest evolution just magically sped up too quickly to be witnessed in the fossil record. --98.220.198.49 (talk) 10:30, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Many points of sillyness, but "Ultimately, evolutionists operate from a belief that God cannot be true and exclude the possibility of the supernatural" err...what? The study of evolution has nothing to do with God. 'Evolutionists' (which is a dumb term, but still) examine the evidence and try understand what it means. Nothing to do with religion. It is people of faith who try to shoehorn religion into the evolution picture, not the other way round. There is a huge crossover between liberals, atheists and 'evolutionists', but that doesn't mean that those areas are related. I'm not sure that 'God cannot be true' is a good summary for many people's position. Of course I'm in the UK and our classifications of liberal/conservative tend to be far less radical than in the US. Worm (talk) 10:52, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Evolutionists examine the evidence to reinforce their worldviews as conceded by Gould and Eldredge in Punctuated Equilibria. Evolution is based on Uniformitarianism as invented by Charles Lyell, and he created Uniformitarianism (the concept that constant, gradual, natural processes are all that's at work) as an alternative to Catastrophism (that huge catastrophes brought the world to its present state, and which had previously been the reigning theory) because he disliked his mentor William Buckland (another great early creationist scientist) using Catastrophism as support for the Biblical Flood.

"'Catastrophism,' as this school of thought came to be known, was attacked in 1830 by a British lawyer-turned-geologist named Charles Lyell (1797-1875). Lyell started his career studying under the catastrophist William Buckland at Oxford. But Lyell became disenchanted with Buckland when Buckland tried to link catastrophism to the Bible, looking for evidence that the most recent catastrophe had actually been Noah's flood. Lyell wanted to find a way to make geology a true science of its own, built on observation and not susceptible to wild speculations or dependent on the supernatural."[31]

Evolutionists have religious views just like Creationists do and seek to constantly verify their beliefs, making hypotheses which seek to disprove the existence of God at all times to prove their personal beliefs. I see it time and again, they go out of their way in forming hypotheses to try and deny the Bible could be true.

I realize the U.K. differs in its definition of liberal somewhat from the U.S. and there does seem to be a sizable population of U.K. members here just from a quick glance, so I make clear that I'm going primarily by the U.S. definition I am most familiar with and tend to use. --98.220.198.49 (talk) 11:02, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Creationists might have their own theories but they are not accepted by the vast majority of scientists and fail to adhere to some of the basic principles of the scientific method. These failings have been shown time and time again so I won't rehash them here.

You insist on trying to dichotomise everything between creationism and "evolutionism" (a common technique) while ignoring the fact that most religious people are not creationists and have no problem with an old earth, evolution and all the other evidence-based scientific discoveries that so offend your narrow literal interpretation of an ancient holy text. Deeply religious people including Christians have been involved in some of the most wonderful discoveries science has given us. Lamaitre, a Jesuit priest, discovered what became called the Big Bang and saw the wonder of his God's creation unsullied by the petty restrictions creationists insist on giving Him.

Pulling the old "centuries-dead scientist was a creationist" nonsense isn't going to persuade anyone here. We all know that's bullshit. Or rather that the significance of it is. Creationism is largely a US-based modern phenomenon completely unrelated to the prevailing religious views of the time of those scientists. You sound more and more like Rayment with every post. Ajkgordon (talk) 11:42, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Isn't that a form of ad populum fallacy, arguing that Creationists can't be right because most scientists no longer support creationism? There are creationist scientists, and many of the great early scientists were creationists. The theory of evolution itself fails to adhere to the scientific method by claiming that an unevidenced, unrepeatable, unverifiable process called macroevolution has caused all life to reach its present state, even though we can't prove it in any way and the fossil record contradicts it.

Actually, here in America, most Christians are young earth Creationists who say life was created in the past 10,000 years, specifically 46% of Americans, as opposed to just 32% who believe in old earth creationism.[32] Considering that only 76% of Americans consider themselves Christians, this would appear to encompass not only all Christians but an additional 2% of other religions.[33] Furthermore, the 32% of old earth Creationists may include supporters of Gap Theory, meaning they believe in a literal 6 day, 24-hour creation, and life being less than 10,000 years old, but that the earth itself was created older and went through a period of catastrophes.

According to the same Gallup poll, 39% of Americans in 2007 said Young Earth Creationism was definitely true, and another 27% said probably true, a total of 66%. By contrast just 18% said definitely true of evolution and 35% probably true, 53%. At least here in America, the clear majority of Christians support young earth creationism over evolution. Anyone who says otherwise hasn't checked the polls.

Creationism is the original model held by the early scientists and statesmen who started modern-day science and democracy. The original U.S. was more heavily Christian than it is now, as seen from early state constitutions like William Penn's Province of Pennsylvania (which served as the framework in every way for today's U.S. government). I've addressed that in depth here.

This will be my last post for the next half dozen hours or so at least, later. --98.220.198.49 (talk) 12:04, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

No, it's not ad populum. It's how real science works. Theories are produced by scientists and then critiqued by their peers. They stand or fall or are changed (evolved, if you like) by that process. It's collaborative, competitive, argumentative, productive and based on evidence. Creationism isn't.

The only people who really have this micro- macro-evolution thing going are creationists. To evolutionary biologists it's just evolution. They don't have these fearsome artificial demarcations of "kinds" because they have no religious dogma. At least no literal interpretation that they have to adhere to. They can afford to see things how they are and not have to run back to their holy texts to check that it's OK. Creationists work from an inerrant text that cannot be contradicted. Scientists don't, however much you pretend that they do.

By the way, I love how you confuse science with an ad populum fallacy while using polls about US religious beliefs to claim some sort of authority for your creationism. Brilliant! Ajkgordon (talk) 12:20, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

"Creationism is the original model held by the early scientists and statesmen who started modern-day science and democracy." No it isn't. Your modern-day creationism (by that we mean YEC of course) is demonstrably not the same as prevailing religious beliefs of that time. (As for democracy, seriously, leave it. The US doesn't have a monopoly on it nor does it have much to do with science.) Modern US creationism was born as a defence against scientific discoveries of the 19th century in geology and biology and later in cosmology. That early scientists were creationists was because they were products of their time and culture. In Christian societies, the Bible was considered authoritative but not necessarily literal. In many ways, there was less dogma than there is in modern creationism. Science flourished even among Christians because they were not shackled by this nonsense. There were lots of arguments of course and many Christians did find these new discoveries very frightening. But those scientists, many of whom were devoutly Christian, were not frightened and simply wanted to explore God's magnificent creation. Which they did. With open eyes and open minds. No different to the scientists of today, religious or otherwise. Ajkgordon (talk) 13:30, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

And I'm back. You claim atheists have no "religious dogma" but frankly, everyone has opinions, beliefs, and agendas. You seem to have this concept of all evolutionist scientists being these perfectly objective, fair-minded people who can set aside all their human failings the moment they set foot in a laboratory that frankly isn't close to reality. Their religious beliefs will continue to influence the theories and hypotheses they create. Scientists disagree heatedly over all types of issues including taxonomy and many other issues that could be named because they share differences of opinion and belief. There are many cases where opinion masquerades in the name of science, and what's called science is really cherry-picked data designed to support the desired conclusion (as with Climategate) rather than a fair analysis of all the data.

Also, as you probably realize, I never cited the Gallup polls as part of Ad Populum fallacy. I actually cited them in response to your own erroneous claim that "most religious people are not creationists and have no problem with an old earth". It's not ad populum for me to just disagree with your statement about what most people are like and point out that polling shows otherwise. Ironically you were using ad populum there as well and I just pointed out the point itself was not truly accurate, then when I responded to it, you accuse me of using the ad populum.

In your final argument, you make a number of blanket opinion statements such as:

• "modern-day creationism is demonstrably not the same as prevailing religious beliefs of that time"
• "Modern US creationism was born as a defence against scientific discoveries of the 19th century in geology and biology and later in cosmology."
• "That early scientists were creationists was because they were products of their time and culture."
• "In Christian societies, the Bible was considered authoritative but not necessarily literal. In many ways, there was less dogma than there is in modern creationism."

All of these are statements of opinion I strongly disagree with and I think you'd have a hard time backing up. You're trying to distinguish between early Creationism and the Creationism of today even though I see similarly honest organizations today like ChristianAnswers/Associates for Biblical Research and AiG who don't shy away from the evidence in looking with a Christian worldview. If early scientists were just creationists because they were products of the time and culture, does that mean today's evolutionists are just evolutionists because they are products of the time and culture?

Evolutionists today are brought up in a secular, liberal education system and I've had personal experiences with college professors who not only believe they should be able to preach their secular beliefs to students, but that students should conform to their beliefs or suffer academic consequences. The system rewards those who support evolution with huge subsidies, subsidies that are not available to those who believe in creationism. I'd argue the same kind of indoctrination in evolution philosophy occurs that makes evolutionists today a product of their time and culture as any argument you could use of creationists centuries ago.

Jzyehoshua--98.220.198.49 (talk) 18:51, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Well, your beliefs are what they are. You think that everything that disagrees with your creationist beliefs must somehow be biased, prejudiced, even religious in some undefined way. Yet you continue to ignore the fact that there are many religious scientists who have no problem with an old universe, evolution and other scientific discoveries. You simply should not view the issues is such black and white terms and insist that things are either religious (to you, meaning creationist) or secular (to you, meaning atheist, liberal, evolutionist). It just doesn't work like that. Science is a toolkit used by people who wish to know the truth about how nature works. Yes, those people are flawed. But science helps us build knowledge that can be verified through the raw attention of evidence, testing and never being afraid of discarding one theory for a better one. This happens in science all the time. It doesn't in creationism. And that should tell you all you need to know. Unfortunately it won't. Ajkgordon (talk) 19:32, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

I tend to think everyone has biases, prejudices, and religious beliefs regardless of whether they agree or disagree with me. Where I disagree is in the argument that evolutionists have no religious biases or prejudices. I think many supporters of evolution are very afraid to discard their favored theory and do all they can to protect it and adapt it, making it jump through improbable hoop after improbable hoop. Again, there are theories in creationism as with evolution. Ultimately, the scientific method does not stop a scientist from creating theories or hypotheses that are based on their personal opinions and beliefs. The scientific method does not at all address bias in the selection of which theories to consider. There is opinion and belief on both sides. --98.220.198.49 (talk) 20:22, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

"The scientific method does not at all address bias in the selection of which theories to consider." Yes. Yes, it does. It's exactly what the scientific method does. And what creationism doesn't. Of course scientists have opinions and cherished theories and prejudices. But the scientific method doesn't care about that. That's why it is able to produce new theories that replace old ones however loved they are, even if it's a fight to do so. Creationism absolutely cannot do that. The Bible is inerrant and must not be challenged. Science has no such restrictions even if individual scientists do (i.e. being wedded to a theory that is subsequently shown to be wrong). You really ought to try to get your head around this. You might find it liberating. Ajkgordon (talk) 21:11, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

How does the scientific method stop the use of bias in selecting a theory or hypothesis for consideration? The scientific method only governs the process of evaluation once the theory has been selected, it has nothing to do with the actual selection process of which theories to consider in the first place. In other words, a secular scientist can prejudicially refuse to consider any theories that would be consistent with the Bible and select only theories that attempt to prove the Bible wrong. He then approaches these theories through the scientific method, cherrypicking evidence that will make them appear correct, and calls this a scientific process. That's how it works. --98.220.198.49 (talk) 21:17, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

You're too hung up about the Bible. Almost all scientists, even the religious ones, give it no more thought when considering theories than they do about fairies or astrology. It just doesn't feature. Besides, there is more than one scientist! Theories aren't selected in the way you describe. They are developed from observation, testing and prediction. They are built up collaboratively sometimes over a long period of time involving many many scientists. It's organic, evolutionary. And then they are judged by their peers. It's a successful tool that's helped advance our knowledge.

As an aside, isn't it strange how evolution through selection is so uncontentious among creationists in other ways. Languages evolve, cultures evolve, technology evolves. Through analogous processes of selection and drift and changing environment. Even war as punctured equilibrium, for God's sake! It's all there and no creationist questions it. But not when it comes to the evolution that so offends you. Because it challenges creationists' shallow literal faith, it is intolerable. Really, it shouldn't be that much of leap. Ajkgordon (talk) 21:41, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Creationists believe in microevolution, just not macroevolution. We believe species adapt to their environments through kinds or lineages to become different varieties as can be witnessed today. It's the theory of a common ancestor which is unprovable and shaky. --98.220.198.49 (talk) 22:16, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Shiny edit button

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘"Evolutionist" is used as a pejorative term for "scientist" because young-earth creationism requires foundational theories of astronomy, physics, chemistry, geology, anthropology, linguistics and climatology to be wrong, as well as most of biology (molecular biology, genomics, paleobotany, microbiology, phylogenetics, cladistics, phenetics, ...). The fact that the foundational theories of so many scientific disciplines are largely mutualy supportive doesn't seem to bother the Creationists who declare them all wrong, often using arguments that bear little resemblance to logic. This wholesale discarding of centuries of hard-earned knowledge about the universe hardly seems "conservative." The fact that "religion" in the U.S. is proud to be anti-science in so many ways is tragic. Whoover (talk) 17:41, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

And what exactly are these 'foundational theories' separate from evolution? Certainly not involving astronomy, again, foundational astronomers like Galileo and Kepler were Christian Creationists. Biology? No, Pasteur was also. Geology? William Buckland. My point is, those disciplines were around before the theory of evolution itself, and some of their founders were Christian creationists. The fact that those who created those disciplines were Creationists doesn't stop Evolutionists today from criticizing all Creationists as foolish. --98.220.198.49 (talk) 18:51, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

It's hard to know how to answer your question. Is the Big Bang part of the theory of evolution? To many Creationists, it is by definition. To a cosmologist, that's a very laughable assertion. To say that Galieo and Kepler were Creationists (no argument) is not the same as saying they would be Creationists if alive and working today. Not only is Creationism quite different, but the state of human knowledge (which, after all, is what Galileo and Kepler strove for) is quite different for many of us. Whoover (talk) 19:04, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Exactly. Ajkgordon (talk) 19:33, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

The Big Bang is related to the theory of evolution but is something of a different subject from macroevolution; they both kind of stem back to Lyell's theory of Uniformitarianism that everything occurs through steady, gradual, naturalistic processes over long periods of time. Concerning cosmology, the theory of relativity actually is insufficient to explain why 95% of the universe is the way it is. According to predicted theory, the universe's expansion should have been decelerating, instead it is accelerating; we found this out in 1998. To quote NASA:

"Then came 1998 and the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) observations of very distant supernovae that showed that, a long time ago, the Universe was actually expanding more slowly than it is today. So the expansion of the Universe has not been slowing due to gravity, as everyone thought, it has been accelerating. No one expected this, no one knew how to explain it. But something was causing it... It turns out that roughly 68% of the Universe is dark energy. Dark matter makes up about 27%. The rest - everything on Earth, everything ever observed with all of our instruments, all normal matter - adds up to less than 5% of the Universe... A last possibility is that Einstein's theory of gravity is not correct. That would not only affect the expansion of the Universe, but it would also affect the way that normal matter in galaxies and clusters of galaxies behaved. This fact would provide a way to decide if the solution to the dark energy problem is a new gravity theory or not: we could observe how galaxies come together in clusters. But if it does turn out that a new theory of gravity is needed, what kind of theory would it be? How could it correctly describe the motion of the bodies in the Solar System, as Einstein's theory is known to do, and still give us the different prediction for the Universe that we need? There are candidate theories, but none are compelling. So the mystery continues."[34]

Ultimately, the universe's expansion was not slowing down but accelerating, which does not fit accepted theory at all. To try and explain this, scientists have since proposed hypothetical constructs, dark matter and dark energy, which we thus far can find no evidence for. In other words, 95% of the universe was not explained by current theory and does not provide the evidence needed for predominant scientific theory on cosmogony and the state of the universe. I'd call that pretty significant.

You say the state of human knowledge is different. I agree. But I think the evidence does not require the pro-evolution conclusions you think it does, if anything it causes more problems for the theory of evolution than support. We now know the earliest hominids are complex and similar to modern man, bipedal and unusually advanced in nature; for example Orrorin tugenensis, Sahelanthropus tchadensis, and Ardipithecus ramidus. The evidence for this is so compelling it even forced the discoverers of Lucy, Australopithecus afarenses, to admit they messed up and Lucy walked upright after all, just to try and keep it in the human lineage. Furthermore, at least a dozen different hominids claimed as part of the human evolutionary tree are now known to have coexisted at the same times and sometimes even places, making it highly improbable they evolved from one another, leading major publications to concede the human evolutionary tree now looks like a messy bush with branches going everywhere. I've sourced this here.[35] My detailed disagreement with the theory of evolution is here.[36]--98.220.198.49 (talk) 20:22, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

"To try and explain this, scientists have since proposed hypothetical constructs, dark matter and dark energy, which we thus far can find no evidence for." You have it arse about face. The evidence is there in the way galaxies orbit their centre of gravity, how the universe continues to expand, etc. This is observed evidence for dark matter and dark energy. What those two things are remains a mystery. But so what? Science will continue to work at those mysteries until they find better and better theories that fit the data. By testing, prediction and the evolution of the theories themselves. What scientists have done is not at all what you suggested. They have not just made stuff up, fudged it, filled in the gaps with guesses. They've said, OK there's something there that does this. We don't know what it is. But the evidence is that it's there. So let's put this marker here, call it dark because we can't see it directly, and keep observing and hypothesising and testing until we have a better theory. And if it replaces an existing theory then that's great. It's what Einstein did to Newton. Science is full of problems and unknowns. That's what makes it science! Creationism offers nothing but dogma and tired constraint and fear. Ultimately, it's simply boring and not worthy of us. Thankfully, almost all scientists have moved on from the Middle Ages and look. Ajkgordon (talk) 21:25, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

The universe wasn't supposed to continue expanding at all under the original projections of the scientific community. Evolutionists continue to "work at those mysteries" by making new theories when their old ones are proven wrong which refuse to consider non-atheistic beginnings, theories which seek to disprove God and the Bible inasmuch is possible. Ultimately, the prevailing theories about what the universe is like were incapable of explaining why 95% of the universe is the way it is or even where it is, and why its expansion is accelerating at all. As such, I'm somewhat skeptical that they have the Gospel truth when it comes to Big Bang theory and speed of light travel given the trouble explaining 95% of the universe. --98.220.198.49 (talk) 22:16, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

That whole post demonstrates that you simply don't understand science. I'm sorry if that's harsh but it's true. There is no gospel truth in science. Theories are always conditional, provisional. If they are shown not to work, they are improved or ultimately discarded for better theories. That's how our knowledge advances. What we don't know is an opportunity to find out. You dismiss science because it can't explain 95% of the universe. Read up about quantum mechanics, string theory, brane theory, work at the LHC, quintessence, WIMPS, vacuum energy and so on. Science is teaming with hypotheses and tests and experiment and prediction and theories that attempt to explain these mysteries. Burying your head in a myth, a beautiful poetic sacred allegorical myth but a myth nonetheless, is a dead-end. And please, get rid of this idea that theories are static. You seem to have the idea that theories like Darwin's are set in stone. His theory couldn't explain everything. How is that even a surprise? It's over a hundred and fifty years old! Evolutionary biology is a huge field today. While many of the fundamentals of Darwin's original work have survived the test of time, the science itself has moved on. Same in cosmology. Read up. It's all there. As a Christian, you should be revelling in the majesty of His Creation, not trying to restrain it to bronze age goat-herders' tales of origins and the unknowable. Don't waste any more of your intelligence and life on it. Ajkgordon (talk) 08:36, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

No, it means I disagree with some of the conclusions the scientific community has reached on one major issue because I've examined the evidence for myself. The theory of evolution was not discarded when it was finally accepted by the scientific community in the 1970s that the whole of the fossil record disproved Darwin's original theory of phyletic gradualism, showing steady microevolution and then sudden appearance of new species as suddenly created. Rather than considering creationist possibilities as they would have done if they were honest, they designed a whole new theory called punctuated equilibrium to try and keep their pet theory of evolution on life support, seeking an atheistic alternative that would let them deny away the evidence to support secular belief.

I don't dismiss 'science' because it can't explain 95% of the universe, rather I point out that the specific theory (relativity) used for the universe's framework which includes speed of light travel has holes in it and should not be claimed conclusive like it is by evolutionists for the long ages to the universe. NASA themselves concede that the theory is quite possibly wrong, as I already stated.

All scientists including those at NASA will (or should) concede that the theory is quite possibly wrong. It's part of the definition of a theory. Ajkgordon (talk) 17:59, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

You call what I believe a myth. Ironically I have the exact same opinion of your treatment of the theory of evolution. You just blindly assume it to be true and don't seem to be examining the facts of it carefully at all. I've looked at the evidence and simply don't think it requires the conclusions you've reached. The more I see of the evidence, the more I think it is pointing the other way. It seems to me you want to write the Bible off as guilty before giving it a trial, and jump to the conclusion it is faulty before doing an analysis. You say as a Christian I should be "reveling in nature" instead of considering that the Biblical prophecies and records Jesus pointed to as evidence of His authority were accurate, and that God would be powerful enough to both divinely inspire and divinely preserve a record of His commands for humanity and of His interaction with them.

Logically, matter does not pop into existence out of nowhere. There are no little big bangs going on around us. Matter decays, it is temporal, according to the 2nd law of thermodynamics, and should not exist at all. The fact that it does should be indication that more than the physical at work here, so any scientific theories should take into account the probability of the immaterial and spiritual, i.e. God, until they can explain that one simple fact. --98.220.198.49 (talk) 16:26, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

Once again you show total lack of understanding of science, in this case Quantum Physics in particular. Positron/Electron pairs annhilating and appearing is a well observed phenomen in sub-atomic physics. Many of the predictions of quantum physics that predict exctly the spontaneous 'popping into existance of matter' also predict other observed phenoemna. It is experimentally 'proven' in scientific terms that matter does indeed do exactly what you say it doesn't do. What is not scientifcally proved is that a magic man created it all. Oldusgitus (talk) 17:09, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

Pair production involves already-existing positrons and electrons, not spontaneous generation from absolute zero as it were. We do not see matter popping into existence around us as would be expected if random production of matter spontaneously were a natural occurrence in the universe. Given the temporal nature of matter, nothing should exist if the material is all there is. Therefore, until it can be explained how matter can pop into existence from nothing, and why we don't see it occurring all around us constantly if so, the apparent solution is that another dimension is at work, such as a spiritual dimension not subject to the laws of matter with an intelligent spiritual Designer or Designers who created the material that we now see. Rather than an illogical premise, it is the only logical explanation until spontaneous generation of matter can be evidenced. --98.220.198.49 (talk) 18:37, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

I can't be arsed to try to discuss this with someone who is evidently getting his 'education' on this from creationist sources. My source is a degree in Applied Physics from a leading UK university. Go to any leading sub-atomic particle researcher, for exmaple those at the LHC, CERN or the SLAC, and repeat what you just wrote. Then when they stop laughing ask them to help you try to understand what you are wrong about. Oldusgitus (talk) 18:47, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

So if you can't be bothered to discuss this with logical, reasoned points, why are you still discussing it? Also, if you're so certain your view is right, why expend that much typing without making points that will stand up to scrutiny? --98.220.198.49 (talk) 18:52, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

To be perfectly frank, using that line of argument comes across as an attempt by you to declare that you are right without ever having proved anything, refusing to debate while declaring you are still right, and is possibly an appeal to ad populum. --98.220.198.49 (talk) 19:05, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

Although, ad populum is a tough fallacy to avoid and one I suppose that perhaps I fall occasion to at times as well, for example when addressing how the great thinkers of science supported creationism. Nonetheless, I at least try to make numerous points and address the logic and evidence rather than just resorting to an appeal to popularity to write off debate. --98.220.198.49 (talk) 19:08, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

"why expend that much typing without making points that will stand up to scrutiny?". Physician, heal thyself. You do not understand science, this has been explained to you many times, even if you are unawilling to accept that point. I've tried explaining that under the laws of quantum physics quantum fluctations can indeed create or destroy matter from nothing. The reason I can't be arsed is because trying further is because, rather like drinking too much or hitting myself on the head with a mallet, it is pointless and just gives me a headache. Personally I still think you are a troll. And a lying one at that despite your protestations to the opposite. Enjoy your belief in a 2000 year old fairy tale based on superstition, I hope it brings you happiness. Myself, I will go for scientific rationalism, the kind that has given us cures for diseases that believing in the magic man simply does not. Next time you are ill, forgoe what science has discovered and pray to magic man. I'll take anti-biotics. I think I know which one of us is the more likely to recover. Oldusgitus (talk) 19:12, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

That's the argument of a physicist perhaps, but not a historian or archaeologist, because again, there's 5,000 years of archaeological evidence[37] and 3,000 years of manuscript evidence supporting the Bible's accuracy in detail.[38] The scientific method is insufficient for examining history, and if going by it solely, we'd have to discard the entirety of recorded history. The Bible has stronger evidence for its accurate preservation and historical detail than any other literary document in ancient history. --98.220.198.49 (talk) 20:51, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

And as I already pointed out, those quantum fluctuations don't work without particles, pair production requires positrons and electrons which don't just pop into existence from nowhere. You still have yet to explain where the positrons and electrons came from in the first place. Given conservation of energy, you don't seem to be explaining where the energy comes from in the first place. --98.220.198.49 (talk) 19:20, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

He's not talking about pair production. You really really really need to read up on this stuff. It would be an education for you. Ajkgordon (talk) 19:54, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

He has 'read up on this stuff'. It's just a shame that what he read was written by a creationist who either did not understand what they were trying to explain or deliberately lied about it. I know what I think is the more likely. I guarantee you he will not read Hawkins or Cox or any other real physicist or in fact any real scientific paper on this. Shit I hate reading the papers and struggle to understand them and I love physics. He will read Ken Ham or some equally mendacious person and think that the lies they are saying is what I am talking about. And that is the difference between us. And that is why it is a waste of time replying to troll. Oldusgitus (talk) 20:07, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

Quantum fluctuation theory is so recent and the research on it so ongoing that finding established facts about it is proving difficult. Again, I find it interesting that relativity failed to explain why the universe's expansion is accelerating at all, and that the universe was so contrary to the predictions of the scientific community they had to make up hypothetical constructs, dark matter and dark energy, so that 95% of the universe unevidenced and unexplained to fit their theories.[39] That's not what I'd call a good track record. They were wrong about the state of the universe with relativity, that its expansion should be decelerating instead of accelerating. They were wrong in attempts to find an atheistic beginning to the universe before with the steady state, cosmic hesitation, and oscillating universe models.[40] What makes you so sure they are right about their quantum fluctuation theory now? --98.220.198.49 (talk) 20:13, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

Oldusgitus, do you mean Hawking, not Hawkins? I have read some of what Hawking has written actually, he said the Big Bang began with a singularity back in 1999, where all the laws of physics break down. To me that seems kind of a supernatural explanation, claiming the laws of physics break down to explain everything. --98.220.198.49 (talk) 20:13, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

Yet again, you fail to understand how science works. Or perhaps you do understand it but don't want to accept it. I hope it's the former - it's more honest. We have explained over and over how theories are always provisional, how they must change in the face of new evidence, or be discarded altogether. Your willingness to ignore this is telling. Like your willingness to ignore how non-YEC Christian scientists have worked in cosmology and evolutionary biology and other scientific fields which contradict a young universe. You are driven by dogma and religious (and political) ideology. Ajkgordon (talk) 20:26, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

Ahuh. So everyone who disagrees with you must be driven by dogma and religious/political ideology, but you of course are not. So, remind me again how when a new theory is being designed, they take into account the possibilities of creationism? Or do they just assume God doesn't exist and make theories that only fit their dogma and religious/political beliefs? --98.220.198.49 (talk) 20:34, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

Not everyone, no. Of course not. I'm not a creationist! We're going round in circles here. You are convinced you have evidence that Genesis is literally true rather than being either a myth or truthful allegory, and that science is one big conspiracy against creationism. The rest of us don't see that at all, see no evidence for it, especially not those who actually work in science. We trust the scientific method more than we trust millennia-old creation stories, even those of us who are religious. Good luck in your quest. I hope you find the truth. Ajkgordon (talk) 20:56, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

It does seem as though we are going in circles by this point, so this is where I thank everyone for an interesting few days of discussion, and wish you success in finding the truth as well. There is more evidence than the scientific method. --98.220.198.49 (talk) 21:03, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘Oh FFS, show me a single verifiable scientific proof of your magic man and I will campaign as hard as you to include him in any new theory. You may as well ask why noone is postualting a theory that takes into account the Flying Spaghetti Monster (RAMEN) or the pink unicorn? It is very SIMPLE. There is no scientific evidence of any kind whatsoever that suggests a magic man, end of story. And now I will stop feeding our underbridge dweller and leave him to the billy goats gruff. Sleep well RW's whilst BON fears the wrath of his loving magic man because bon can never live up to the standards of the loving magic man who really REALLY loves him but will condemn him to eternal damnation if he doesn't meet an arbitrary standard. And he claims logic? Oldusgitus (talk) 20:43, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

There's 5,000 years of archaeological evidence[41] and 3,000 years of manuscript evidence supporting the Bible's accuracy in detail.[42] The scientific method is insufficient for examining history, and if going by it solely, we'd have to discard the entirety of recorded history. The Bible has stronger evidence for its accurate preservation and historical detail than any other literary document in ancient history.

Ultimately you refuse to consider any theories you label as absurd, and why are they considered absurd by you? Because of your dogma and religious/political ideology. You refuse to consider all possibilities from the start, like the scientific community, which is why your theories keep proving wrong time and again. --98.220.198.49 (talk) 20:57, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Ultimately, one cannot explain the physical through the physical, and there's no evidence that one can. You all assume matter can just poof into existence randomly, even though this denies all the laws of logic which say we don't ever see this occur. With physiological creation of matter, one is kept asking "where did that come from?" and you ultimately have to ask why, if spontaneous creation of matter can occur, do we never ever, ever, see it occur? Why do you take on faith that spontaneous generation of matter can occur without the evidence you claim you require for other beliefs? --98.220.198.49 (talk) 16:33, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

Even if what you say is true, that matter can't spontaneously appear, (which as pointed out above it can), why should I suddenly then make the huge leap that your God did it in the way that some ancient text says He did? Why not some other religious myth? And before you say that no other religion, not even non-YEC Christianity, has any evidence for their creation myths while yours does, the only people who believe that are your fellow creationists. No real scientist accepts your evidence because it isn't the type of evidence that can be used in science. To be frank, it's nonsense.

Your insistence that things like evolution have been disproved by the fossil record or whatever are again simply nonsense. The only people you are going to persuade this is true are like-minded creationists. While individual scientists may hold very cherished beliefs that would take extraordinary claims and extraordinary evidence to displace, that it precisely what happens in science. Cherished beliefs are discarded all the time. Faith is irrelevant. Scientists who fail to do this in the face of overwhelming evidence are quickly left behind by the scientific method. History is littered with examples. That cannot happen in creationism because everyone has the holy text to fall back, to check with, to consult as the final arbiter of truth.

Look, none of us are trying to persuade you here. I'm sure we all recognise a creationist's mind - we've seen plenty of them. But others with more open minds may be reading.

You still haven't explained why many deeply Christian scientists have no problem with science and the discoveries it's made, even by some of their fellow believers. We know a few creationists who insist they are therefore not real Christians. Do you agree with that? Ajkgordon (talk) 17:55, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

I have no problem with science and the discoveries it's made either, so I'm not sure what your point is. --98.220.198.49 (talk) 18:37, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

Also, you have a valid point that the lack of spontaneous matter does not necessarily indicate a specific deity, but it does provide evidence for creationism which is what I thought we were discussing. At the same time however, any Creator who would design matter logically would have the power to communicate with His creations, and to preserve a record of that communication with them. While you're right that it doesn't prove the God of the Bible or the Bible itself is correct, it does show that such a belief is reasonable and logical. Even Einstein recognized the evidence of a Creator, and puzzled over why the universe was at all organized and intelligible, expressing his belief in a Designer. This was true for many of the great thinkers who brought about modern science and democracy.

Your argument seems to be that a religious person will just defer to a religious text unlike a secular person who will defer to their Darwinian text. However, as a Christian, it is because I believe the Bible true that I am fearless in questioning it and expect it to measure up to factual, logical explanation and scrutiny. I argue that one can question a religious text as definitely as one can question a scientific theory and that the process for doing so practically can be quite similar. I think evolutionists are prone to treating their most treasured theories like evolution as a religion and seek to uphold them by giving them the benefit of the doubt in the same way you seem to be criticizing religious people of giving the Bible the benefit of the doubt. We are inclined to give the benefit of the doubt to that which has convinced us. --98.220.198.49 (talk) 18:49, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

You emphatically do NOT question your religious text. That's why you are a literalist creationist. As you say, you expect it to measure up to the data. As you expect that, you make absolutely damn sure that you only consider the small amounts of evidence that could possibly at a stretch be used to support its words, and discard the rest, i.e. almost all of it.

You will, of course, claim that's what scientists do with evolution (and the other scientific discoveries that so offend you). But if you read up even just a little bit on the history and even current work in science, you will see that is simply untrue. It happens all the time. It's documented, recorded. Look it up. Ajkgordon (talk) 20:02, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

If I didn't question it, why would I be creating a giant apologetics website addressing the questions raised by skeptics? That doesn't seem to make much sense.[43] I question the Bible more than the skeptics I debate with, ironically. I'm confident because I question it to make sure that it's right and then find it is. --98.220.198.49 (talk) 20:34, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

Do you ever question why there's such a massive shift in tone between the Old and New Testaments? Jesus seems a much nicer chap than his cantankerous ol' dad. Robledo (talk) 21:09, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

You mean the Jesus who the New Testament portrays as returning at the head of a Heavenly army of saints to destroy the unbelieving world in Revelation 19, 2 Thessalonians 2:8, Matthew 24:30, etc.? That Jesus? --98.220.198.49 (talk) 18:55, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

Silly cunt. Can you seriously imagine OT God allowing himself to be nailed to a cross for the sake of mankind? They're two completely different characters, and Christianity was wildly more successful as a result. Robledo (talk) 01:45, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Evolutionists have been trying to make the point that the tree of life is a messy bush with branches going everywhere for a century. I'm glad that it's beginning to sink in. I really don't see any point in debating whether, for instance, Sahelanthropus is "similar to modern man." I just note that, in addition to having some very strange ideas about hominid evolution, you seem to equate it with evolution in general. Your "Evidence Against Evolution" ignores the first 99.8% of life's history. Evolutionists will take heart that you stipulate that much. I fear, however, that it's more to do with a view that life is either antediluvian or postnoachian. In that case, we must declare the debate at an impasse. Whoover (talk) 21:30, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

You say I'm ignoring the first 99.8% of life's history on my evidence against evolution page, yet I addressed the hominid record in "New hominin discoveries", I addressed the whole of the fossil record in "Punctuated Equilibrium", and I pointed out that the similarity of ancient genera or families taxonomically to their modern-day categories is a strong evidence for Creationism in "Ancient parent species". I'd say I covered life's history pretty thoroughly with my points. --98.220.198.49 (talk) 22:16, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Hi. Do you believe that T.rex was herbivorous before the Fall? Robledo (talk) 23:03, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

No, and I think such an assumption is not necessarily Biblical. Some consider it implied from Genesis 1:29-30 but the verses don't explicitly say that only vegetation was eaten by animals. There are those who argue eating animals didn't occur until after the Flood per Genesis 9:3, but it would appear this pertained specifically to humans and that for animals at least, they ate other animals before this given Genesis 7:2-3. The verses there commanded taking clean animals into the Ark by sevens, and animals are considered clean for purposes of food consumption Biblically (Lev. 11:47) so it clearly appears certain animals were taken on the Ark in extra amounts that were useful for food consumption. --98.220.198.49 (talk) 23:12, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

So there was predation in the Garden of Eden? You should definitely visit this website. Tell PJR I said hi. Robledo (talk) 23:24, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

I'm increasingly favoring Gap Theory and the possibility that while there were literal 24-hour days, the original creation started earlier between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2. The site you mention doesn't look too bad, CreationWiki is pretty good also (which is where I'd been planning to edit in the future if I do more future editing at public wikis). I write so much that I'm actually working on my own personal site which only I edit, BereaWiki.com, as a personal apologetics website rebutting alleged Biblical contradictions and providing evidence for the Bible. After my frustration with Conservapedia blocking policy, I ended up just making my own private site to put all the material I'm writing. I might edit at public collaborative wikis again in the future but for now am just working as a team of one. Thanks for the advice though, it does seem like a good website. --98.220.198.49 (talk) 23:35, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

"it does seem like a good website"
Генгис^{RationalWiki GOLD member} 11:22, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

Lol. This is one of the funniest exchanges I have read on here for a while. We don't get many YEC literalists anymore - most of the dissenters tend to be MRA's and right wingers these days. Hopefully one day you will take heed of the advice above and take pleasure in the beauty around you, rather than paying attention to the exact words of a myth - an elegant myth though it may be. Damo^Hi 11:50, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

You assume it's a myth, I am confident it's not and can be logically, rationally examined. It's got at least 5,000 years worth of archaeological evidence and 3,000 years of manuscript evidence on its side, whereas the theory of evolution hasn't even been able to properly predict that evolution occurs gradually over long periods without being affected by catastrophes (we now know catastrophes occurred and Darwin's original theory of phyletic gradualism has been abandoned by the scientific community in favor of punctuated equilibrium because the fossil record doesn't show steady, gradual evolution but stasis for long periods and then sudden appearance of brand new species as though created).[44] Making blanket statements like that is simple, actually doing research into the issues is a whole other matter. --98.220.198.49 (talk) 16:26, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

You have to admit that prophets and a big book are pretty inefficient forms of communication for an omnipotent deity. It's like he's not really trying. Robledo (talk) 17:05, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

The Epic of Gilgamesh has 3800 years, and Göbekli Tepe has 10,000 years of archaeological evidence. Генгис^evolving 17:54, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

True, the Epic of Gilgamesh is one of the evidences for the Bible and provides external corroboration of the Biblical Flood and book of Genesis concerning the creation of man.[45] I am working on my own pages for the Bible's evidence as well.[46][47] Personally I am curious why Gobekli Tepe was backfilled bout 8,000 years ago and whether this was the result of a Flood. It may be evidence of a preserved antedeluvian culture. --98.220.198.49 (talk) 18:37, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

Do you believe that all the rocks with fossils in them were laid down by the flood? Do you believe that the Grand Canyon was formed by the flood? If so then the idea that Göbekli Tepe was backfilled by the flood is BS. You claim to have researched the evidence but really there is absolutely no evidence in the geological record for a young Earth or a global flood, no matter what cherry-picking your creationist chums might propose. If there was truly evidence for a young Earth then there would be a significant number of geologists who arrived at that conclusion by looking at the evidence. As it is, the only geologists who will posit a young Earth are those who were already biblical-literal creationists long before they embarked on any study of the topic. Генгис^pillaging 19:27, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

If Gap Theory is correct, then you could have an old earth with earlier creations like the angels and dinosaurs that was then destroyed, with another cycle or even cycles of life that God then extinguished before designing the current creation mentioned in Genesis 1. Gap Theory basically implies that there was an earlier creation and that Genesis 1:2 is referring to the destruction or extinction of it, that the Earth was made null and void.

Indeed, Genesis 1:1-2 appears to indicate the Earth itself and the basic universe/creation had already been designed, since the oceans, earth, and wind already existed before God is said to have begun creating in verse 3. There is a LOT of evidence for a global flood, even aside from all the flood myths in ancient cultures worldwide. Mixing of fossil deposits from different climate zones and evidence of rapid fossilization are some examples.[48]

"An injured amphibian and a sleeping cynodont, a mammal-like reptile, shared a home before being trapped by a flash flood 250 million years ago, a new study says."[49]

"In a quest that has taken him from Oklahoma to Morocco and Poland, Brett has analyzed multiple examples of mass trilobite burial. A smothering death by tons of hurricane-generated storm sediment was so rapid that the trilobites are preserved in life position. These geologic 'snapshots' record behavior in much the way that ancient Roman life was recorded at Pompeii by volcanic ash... The mass burials preserve large groups of similar-sized – and therefore similarly aged – specimens, segregated by species and, after molting, 'naked.' 'It’s an orgy,' Brett said. Brett and colleagues found evidence of another behavioral connection to modern arthropods – long chains of trilobites apparently fossilized in mid-migration. 'The recent discovery of rows of more than a dozen specimens provides the oldest evidence of migratory queues similar to those seen in modern crustaceans,' Brett said. Taken together, the mass burials record an array of communal behaviors in ancient trilobites, comparable to those seen in some living crustaceans."[50]

"A new study of prehistoric ocean sediments from an era of high carbon dioxide concentrations shows that warm oceans with high CO2 levels and low-ocean conditions have experienced mass extinctions of marine organisms. Scientists from the UK and Australia examined ocean sediment samples off the coast of western Africa from the late Cretaceous period, 85 million years ago, an epoch of high atmospheric CO2 levels. The researchers found a significant amount of organic matter from marine organisms buried within the deoxygenated sediment layers, indicating that these organisms suffered mass die-offs as CO2 levels rose, ocean temperatures increased, and the oceans held less oxygen."[51] --98.220.198.49 (talk) 19:53, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

Nothing you posted was evidence for a global flood. You have a flash flood of unknown nature, a localized storm surge from a hurricane, and the last one is only related because you don't seem to have read far enough into it. The marine life apparently died due to hypoxemia, a result of greenhouse effects that diminished the amount of oxygen dissolved in the seawater. Floods are mentioned exactly nowhere. If you're using it as evidence of mass fossilization, it's still not quite on point. What they were analyzing was organic material that was dissolved in the seawater and mingled with settling sediments. The article referenced by your link describes the layer being studied as spanning a 400,000 year timespan. So that story is not even remotely evidence of a flood-like catastrophe killing or burying anything, unless you're considering the ocean itself a flood. Unless that Conservapedia link is some sort of trump-card (I can't see it without a proxy because I dared to follow a link from here), all you've shown is evidence of your own bias, quite frankly. -- Ellipsoidal (talk) 01:05, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

BoN, you sidesteppped my first two questions about the flood and presented random items which creationists try to justify their myth. The problem is that no flood geology can construct the bigger picture of how things fit together. See the NCSE article on The Defeat of Flood Geology by Flood Geology. Flood geology is like the blind men examining an elephant; they find one aspect and twist it to try and represent the whole. You obviously have a closed mind on the topic and nothing anyone here can say is going to change that. Генгис{{User:Genghis Khant/sigtalk|} 08:23, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

Ellipsoida, so if it was a "localized storm surge from a hurricane" then why were these mass trilobite burials said to have been found worldwide in places like "Oklahoma, Morocco, and Poland"? I suppose you could make the argument those places aren't THAT far apart, but I'd hardly call that 'localized.' I mean, they are on different continents, North America, Africa, and Europe, so that's one big "localized storm surge from a hurricane". The CP link just mentioned some of the evidence from McDowell's and Stewart's "Reasons skeptics should consider Christianity" in the 3rd section of the book (around p. 200 or so), specifically that:[52]

1) Fossilization itself is indicative of a catastrophe since you must cover the substance rapidly enough to prevent its decay from scavengers, bacteria, and erosive natural forces. A sedimentation rate of .024 inches per year, that predicted by scientists over such a time frame, is too gradual to fossilize anything.

2) The environmental mixing of fossil deposits worldwide is a strong evidence for a Biblical Flood since they show material from all different climate zones of the Earth mixed together as one would expect from a Flood. Examples given are the Pleistocene marine faunas in California, the London clay flora from the Eocene, the Geiseltal lignites in Germany, the Chalk Bluffs flora of central California, and the Amber beds of East Prussia. To give just one quoted example: "Within the lumps of amber are found insects, snails, coral and small portions of plant life. These are of modern type that are now found in both tropical and cold temperature regions. Pine leaves are present, of the types now growing in Japan and North America..." (Wilfred Francis, 'Coal: Its Formation and Composition, pp. 17-18)

3) Evidence of rapid sedimentation like a lobster fossilized in the act of catching a fish, starfish fossilized in the act of eating oysters, and bony fishes fossilized with the flesh outline still intact (meaning they'd been fossilized too rapidly for the flesh to decay) and pressed flat as though a great weight from above was compressing them.

--98.220.198.49 (talk) 18:55, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

Like I said, bias. Your articles don't provide enough facts to support the conclusions you draw from them, so you either have other facts you're not sharing, or you've leapt to conclusions you find satisfying. The trilobite article doesn't say anything about it being a single event, and even if it was, the geology would have been sufficiently different then that those sites might have fallen along the same storm track. I honestly don't know, but I'm not jumping to any conclusions based on the author of that piece using an indefinite article, like you seem to. -- Ellipsoidal (talk) 15:59, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

True, the trilobite article does not say it was a single event, but the fact that the same petrification of trilobites occurred across multiple continents raises the likelihood for me at least that it was a single event. There aren't very many ways you can petrify trilobites instantly like that in mid-migration. A lot of underwater volcanism might do it, or an ice age, or a ton of sediment or something dropping on them from above. A flood's effects on the ocean currents might also produce an ice age as an effect I suppose, and you might have underwater volcanism involved in the underwater activity of the "fountains of the deep breaking up" mentioned in the Bible, so both actually could be explained by a Biblical Flood anyway.

Ultimately, the catastrophism that the scientific community long abandoned in favor of uniformitarianism is now known to have occurred. There's too much evidence of instantaneous destruction and fossilization to deny it. The difference is that evolutionists think many catastrophes occurred, refuse to consider the possibility of a global Flood, and argue that such events occurred at vast time scales.[53] The fact that such a vast extinction occurred should be easily accepted, what is being debated by Creationists is how many events occurred, when they occurred, and whether a global flood was involved. I provided evidence that for me is suggestive of a global flood, but the evidence is circumstantial, and there's still quite a bit of debate, naturally, on what the extinction actually involved. --98.220.198.49 (talk) 01:32, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

It's been pretty well-known for my entire life that you need special circumstances to allow fossils to form, and that those circumstances can include natural disasters, however broad their range. I think you're beating up on a strawman there. Massive amounts of fossils and the way they're formed could conceivably be evidence of a global flood, but a hypothesis like that wants several converging lines of evidence, and they just don't exist. Any one straw that creationists clutch at is just completely surrounded by pockets of vacuum and even evidence that points to such a thing being physically impossible.

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ I did some digging on the trilobite story, for the heck of it, and couldn't find a published paper. Most of what I could find were reprints of the press release you linked, but one of them did include a few additional paragraphs from an interview in which the scientist outright said the burials represented multiple events [54], and referred to them as rare outwith geological timescales. The trilobites didn't need to be "petrified instantly", just buried away from anything that might destroy their remains before mineralization could occur. In any case, a leap to "fountains of the deep" and underwater volcanism was definitely not indicated by the article you linked. If you want to believe those things occurred, were all events proximate in time, and part of the legendary Noachian flood event, knock yourself out. My main objection arises when misinterpreted research or publications are used as evidence. -- Ellipsoidal (talk) 22:41, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

Well, I do think the trilobites had to be petrified instantly, for billions to be fossilized like that in mid-migration and mid-mating. To preserve those behaviors so exactly and prevent decay of the underwater creatures, you'd need to freeze them in place somehow to prevent them from floating off. Again, a bunch of sediment dropping on top of them, underwater lava, or an ice age are the only things I can think of which would do that - all of which could be linked to a global flood.

Concerning whether this strikingly similar occurrence of trilobite fossilization by huge amounts of sediment was one event or several, it does appear in the LiveScience source that the scholars involved are claiming these similar cases were the the result of multiple events per the quote at the bottom of the article:

"We find trilobite beds that we can trace across distances of 80 miles (130 kilometers), all the effect of a single event. The numbers of individuals caught in those must easily be in the billions. These were probably extraordinarily rare events in terms of human scales, but on the grand scale of geological time, you can have a number of these extraordinarily bad days that record these amazing glimpses into what the lives of ancient organisms were like."

At any rate though, I never said that fountains of the deep or volcanism were implied from the specific article. Essentially I provided a source article showing unusual evidence of instantaneous fossilization of trilobites worldwide, and afterward related my own thoughts on the subject. McDowell/Stewart point to other instances of instantaneous fossilization as well. I wasn't trying to say the article itself endorsed a global flood though, a mainstream science article wouldn't really support any creationist conclusions as I'm sure you're aware. However, such articles do report on the evidence from which one can draw conclusions.

Again, the simple fact that huge catastrophes occurred, mass extinction events, is supportive of a flood I think. The whole concept of uniformitarianism and theories based on it like evolution, or methods like carbon dating/dendrochronoloy, has to assume that such unparalleled catastrophes did not exist, since otherwise they could have produced the effects of millions or billions of years worth of uniform processes. That the evidence like this shows such catastrophes occurs raises the question of whether the fossilization process could have altered the fossil record or radiometric dating results enough (and volcanism has been shown to do that[55] - talkorigin's misgivings notwithstanding[56]) to throw off the dating results. In other words, you can't assume volcanism played a role in killing the dinosaurs without considering the carbonizing, radioactive effects it would have on everything it fossilized in aging the radiometric decay.

Again, scholars will claim that many similar events caused the strikingly similar fossilization of trilobites and other creatures worldwide, that multiple such events occurred over a long time frame instead of a single massive one. Since they consider multiple extinction events to have occurred which killed virtually all life on earth[57], one wonders why they assume separate localized events for the trilobite fossilization. Unless maybe it's because the extinction event involved would have been similar to a flood, so they want to claim multiple local events instead of a single large one. Such an explanation would seem illogical given the new acceptance that mass extinction events occurred, however. --98.220.198.49 (talk) 23:36, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

Also, the trilobites case clearly appears to have involved a huge amount of sediment falling on top of them to fossilize them, per the phrase in the original article, "A smothering death by tons of hurricane-generated storm sediment was so rapid that the trilobites are preserved in life position."[58] That these smothering deaths by storm sediment occurred across 3 different continents worldwide, including halfway around the world from each other, is just logically a strong proof for a flood. While scholars are free to argue that these were multiple local events instead of a single large one, you can't realistically expect a creationist not to look at this evidence and instantly think "global flood." --98.220.198.49 (talk) 00:01, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

The other thing is that since trilobites are sea creatures, marine life, it would take a lot of sediment to fossilize them instantly underwater like that.[59] I don't know that your average local hurricane could generate enough sediment to fossilize billions of undersea creatures, do you see my point? Basically you've got these billions of undersea lobster-like creatures scurrying around on the sea bed, minding their own business, and then wham, all around the world, you get a ton of sediment dropped on top of them to preserve them in life position. Scholars say a boatload of sediment dropping on separate groups of large numbers of trilobites occurred multiple times over a long time period, instead of just once, and that these were local occurrences. Frankly, I doubt a local storm could generate enough sediment to create the weight needed to instantly preserve them in life position, for all the dirt and debris to fall through water rapidly enough to freeze them in life position like with Pompei. That requires a LOT of sediment and some unusual circumstances, and for the same thing to have happened worldwide? That sounds like a giant catastrophe, not a local event, and quite probably related to a flood. --98.220.198.49 (talk) 00:10, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

This also relates to other instances of underwater fossilization like those mentioned in the section "Is fossilization evidence of a catastrophe?" for "Reasons Skeptics Should Consider Christianity."[60] To quote McDowell and Stewart from the chapter:

"Other places with fossils-like the Karroo formation-are easily found. The Monterrey shale contains more than a billion fossil fish over 4 square miles. (Source: N.O. Newell. 'Adequacy of the Fossil Record.' Journal of Paleontology, Vol. 33, May 1959, p. 492, cited by John C. Whitcomb and Henry M. Morris, The Genesis Flood, 1961, p. 160.) The Mission Canyon formation of the northwestern states and the Williston Basin are estimated to represent at least 10,000 cubic miles of broken crinoid plates. A crinoid is a deep sea creature. Clark and Stearn conclude,

'How many millions, billions, trillions of crinoids would be required to provide such a deposit? The number staggers the imagination.' (Source: Thomas H. Clark and Colin W. Stearn, The Geological Evolution of North America, New York: The Ronald Press Co., 1960, p. 88.)

With these and other examples, is it really reasonable to believe slow deposition preserved these fossils? How much more reasonable to assume they were deposited rapidly in a worldwide flood such as described by the Bible."

Both trilobites and crinoids were preserved in large numbers worldwide (in the case of crinoids, possibly billions or even trillions of them) and in the case of trilobites it involved the kind of storm sediment one would expect from a global flood. I'd call that tangible evidence the extinction involved could very well have been a flood. --98.220.198.49 (talk) 00:26, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

Honestly, you have just slightly above zero evidence for any of your claims. You've spent a lot of words trying to convince me that you're right and logical in spite of the fact that you misinterpreted evidence because you're willing to draw wild conclusions based on something that amounts to a press release. I don't really care how many apologetics websites you can reference, if you can also read a press release about buried trilobites and conclude they were petrified instantly by volcanoes erupting and mixing with the broken open fountains of the deep, and that the researchers think they're investigating one event that simultaneously buried creatures all over the globe, without even digging deep enough into the topic to know what those scientists actually think. -- Ellipsoidal (talk) 20:01, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

"I don't really care how many apologetics websites you can reference"

Pretty sure I only cited one apologetics article unless you count the apologetics book as well, and that was an AiG article. I even cited a TalkOrigins article to give the opposing side when citing AiG, so it wasn't like I was trying to present just one side.

Frankly, you seem more concerned with what the conclusions of the scientists were than whether their conclusions were right. According to the LiveScience article,

"The first hints that Brett and his then-graduate student Stephen Speyer had that such orgies took place were actually discovered about two decades ago in 385-million-year-old rocks in New York. Since then, a lot of new material has come into light that strengthened those claims — in 390-million-year-old rocks in Germany, 400-million-year-old sites in Morocco, 450-million-year-old groups near Cincinnati, and up to 470-million-year-old areas holding remains of trilobite orgies in Oklahoma. 'There were different groups segregated by species at these sites, yet they all seemed to be molting in synchrony — this is something we see today in modern marine animals as well,' Brett said. 'They may have spawned in response to some external trigger from the environment, such as a new moon tide in a particular season of the year.' Graduate student Adrian Kin of Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland, also recently discovered long chains of more than a dozen trilobites arranged head to tail in 360-million-year-old rocks in the Holy Cross Mountains of Poland. This seems to be evidence of another behavior seen in their living relatives — migration."

Don't you find it a little odd that the same degree of underwater fossilization occurred in strata dated from 360-470 million years apart, and in areas as diverse as Germany, Morocco, Oklahoma, Poland, and New York? First of all, it doesn't seem to bother you that underwater marine life is fossilized in the middle of continents, meaning the continents of North America and Europe were underwater at the time (Morocco is coastal so I won't mention Africa). Secondly, to fossilize underwater marine life with sediment like that would require dumping an awful lot of sediment through the water, enough of it to fossilize acts like mating and migration mid-act; or you wouldn't catch the creatures by surprise.

To find that happen once would be unlikely, but multiple times? Local events probably would not produce enough sediment. Frankly I think this is evidence that the geological column over this time was the result of a single event, a global flood, and the layers were deposited as sediment. To claim such similar fossilization of trilobites occurred from what had to have been a considerable catastrophes multiple times is just too coincidental. I think those alleged 110 million years of geologic time were built by a single catastrophe, given this, and the geologic column is misinterpreted. --Jzyehoshua (talk) 23:07, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

I missed this before, so just to clear something up: There wasn't enough evidence presented in the articles I could find for me to raise any objections, or even really to agree. The conclusions attributed to the scientists seem reasonable enough given what I know, but without an actual paper, an in-person conversation, or something more substantial, all I could do is trust the conclusions or make wild conjectures like you. My main reason for calling you out is that you presented these articles as evidence for the case you're making, but you didn't read them carefully enough to know what they actually said or meant. You can search your feelings and intuitions about the topic all you like. It's not persuasive to me in the least. But it also doesn't bother the me like saying, "modern geology is a complete hoax; here's a ref-link to an article that proves it, as long as you don't click through and discover it's on sock-knitting", which is something I wouldn't put past you at this point. -- Ellipsoidal (talk) 21:13, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

The only thing interesting about this discussion is that rational people get sucked into "debating." I caught myself and stopped, realizing nobody is going to have any opinions changed. If somebody asserted that pregnancy is caused not by sex, but by red lipstick and all the so-called "experts" who spout "theories" to the contrary just don't understand the equally convincing dye-based pregnancy mechanism, nobody would waste the bandwidth to refute it. Why the hell do we care what these people think? More significantly (say we care because we hate the idea of a new Dark Age), this is never a debate where logic can prevail. It's just a form of troll-feeding and a great waste of time. Whoover (talk) 07:07, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

Which is largely the reason I decide to try bow out. Oldusgitus (talk) 07:45, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

I never even got started. I personally have never engaged in a debate under any illusion that I was going to change the mind of my opponent. The reason I debate is for the audience. To reach those who are still on the fence. Die hard young earth creationists are nearly impossible to reach; because they have mastered the art of holding mutually incompatible beliefs as true. As an example, many creationists believe that the Flood was so catastrophic that it carved canyons, raised mountain ranges, and moved entire continents. Yet, was tranquil enough to allow Noah et al (not to mention those cute sea otters living on vegetation mats) to survive unscathed. Even though they hold their own "theories" in compartmentalized isolation, they treat the theories of their rivals as near-monolithic. Should they be able to discredit one tiny facet of an entire body of knowledge... then the whole thing can be dismissed. It's akin to finding a broken thermometer and thinking you've just debunked the laws of thermodynamics. --Inquisitor (talk) 07:50, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

We all know, from our exposure to the likes of PJR, that it's useless to try to convince these people to see creationism for what it really is. I engaged with BoN, probably foolishly I admit, because of the audience and to defend science against ignorance. Probably not very well! Ajkgordon (talk) 08:38, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

I'm watching World War Z

It's a damn good thing Terry Hurlbut isn't in that movie. Brad Pitt is always getting people to help him by dropping that he's with the UN. I can just imagine Hurlbut, being the pilot of the passenger plane in the film, saying, "I don't recognize your authority" after Brad Pitt hands him the phone.

Anybody else see this movie? You know what I'm talking about. Guy'd be a turd in the punch bowl (not including zombies). I'm watching it right now, I'm two thirds of the way through, and I think "man, what if that was Hurlbut?!"--"Shut up, Brx." 21:31, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

Nah. Terry would be going, "I've got the generator! Respect mah authority!" --PsyGremlin^Hable! 06:35, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

Piffle. Terry would have been bitten five minutes into the apocalypse.

I presume you all know the movie predicted one of the summer's big bits of casting news. No, not Bat-fleck. Peter Capaldi plays one of the World Health Organization's medical types. The credits list him as "WHO Doctor"... MDB _{(the MD used to be for Maryland, but now means Magically Delicious}^{the B is still for Bear)} 11:24, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

In the case of a zombie apocalypse, I suspect that depending on Hurly's level of psychosis he will either flee for the nearest government shelter/rescue station and demand to be afforded more protection than anyone else, or if he truly believes his own bullshit will try and use the chaos to enact his dystopic fundie takeover of NJ....and be promptly and messily devoured when his neighbours trick him into turning his generator on to act as loud bait while they all escape. Judge Holden^{The Judge Smiles} 13:07, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

So you don't see him standing in the front line resolutely brandishing a crucifix? Генгис^{Our ignorance is God; what we know is science.} 13:41, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

I can see it. Just not the human front line. --Kels (talk) 21:52, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

A small inconspicuous edit

[61] Apparently "Opposition to the death penalty for homosexuals" is a something "A liberal supports many of the following political positions and practices". I wonder if this will be allowed to stay and become official policy of Conservapedia,after all they did express support for Uganda's strong rejection of the homosexual agenda. --Mercian (talk) 02:10, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

Parodist. It's been removed and he's been blocked. Whoover (talk) 05:50, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

I really wouldn't bother commenting on stuff like that. It's not our job to point out parody and it's not notable unless one of the usual suspects adds it. Генгис^unbelieving 07:28, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

Karajou was on RW???

Is this his actual profile? When I posted the conversation here I saw he has a profile here, and the original history of it says:

http://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=User:Karajou&oldid=485620

"Hey, I am Karajou at Conservapedia. I've become fed up with Aschlafly and TK giving me crap, so I'll secretly be sabotaging CP from the inside out from now on."

And he removed it back in 2009 with the edit summary:

"crap, I forgot ТK watches this website"

http://rationalwiki.org/w/index.php?title=User:Karajou&oldid=486192

If so, looks like my worst suspicions about Karajou are confirmed. --Jzyehoshua (talk) 03:00, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

You are obviously moderately retarded. Hipo^crite 03:03, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) No, that's a parodist account. It used to be hip to try and sow uncertainty and doubt amongst CP sysops by "coming out" on RW--"Shut up, Brx." 03:04, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

Ohh... I wasn't sure if that was a real account or not, and expressed that concern. Since it was such an old account I thought it might well have been real. So Karajou is who he claims to be. I'm not sure if that's less confusing somehow. --Jzyehoshua (talk) 03:13, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

In effort to communicate with Hipocrite using his own language: [insert random ad hominem mudslinging character assassination retort here] --Jzyehoshua (talk) 03:24, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

On a side note, if that's what passes for a popular fad among liberals, you can see why I've come to associate liberalism with dishonesty and hypocrisy. I guess if I'd thought about it further, I'd have realized that a conservative wouldn't have said that on their profile while claiming to be conservative as such traits are distinctly liberal. --Jzyehoshua (talk) 03:31, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

Is this guy for real? My troll sense is ringing mildly. Tielec01 (talk) 03:41, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

I am beginning to have some doubts as well. All we know is that he is a seemingly good faith editor on CP, but that doesn't count for much, after all Bugler and Markman etc were seemingly good faith editors for a while as well. Maybe he has decided not to be a parodist at CP and will be one here instead? It is a possibility. Damo^Hi 09:30, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

I don't understand the progression from posting as an IP because RW is yucky to signing as as a non-account "--Joshua Zambrano" to creating an account as Jzyehoshua in the course of one day. You could argue that his WP history is trolling, but I wouldn't use that term in his case. Whoover (talk) 14:36, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

BTW, "moderately retarded" might be a tad harsh, but you were a click away from "Karajou"'s talk page, wherein he posts, "OK OK. I admit I'm not really Karajou. It was just a joke." Is it a conservative trait not to investigate the obvious? Whoover (talk) 14:42, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

Did not see it, I was checking the page's history, and didn't think to check the talk page. Again, the liberal interest in parodying opponents to make them look bad strikes of dishonesty and reflects the fact that they need to pretend to be their opposition to make them look bad. Whether the 'Crash the Tea Party' movement or the type of parody seen here, it does show something about the flawed sense of ethics by liberals that on a wide scale they find this kind of thing acceptable. --Jzyehoshua (talk) 18:28, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

Hello troll, you still here? Noone believes you, you are trying just a little too hard. And face it, no liberal needs to parody conservatives. People like coulter, Malkin, the faux news presenters, Andy and Karajou do not need parodying. They think they are being all serious and important but the rest of the world just points at them and laughs. Oldusgitus (talk) 19:05, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

We call it humor. Admitedly, humor presumes the audience knowing it's humor, which sometimes requires a bit of effort on the part of reader. But that's ok, I don't get conservative humor. For instance, Mallard Fillmore cartoons this week depict MSNBC talking head Al Sharpton saying things he never said, which would be racist if he had, and then calling him a racist. It's on the "funny pages," but I don't get the humor. But I know conservatives do, so I'm fine. It would never occur to me to rant about how conservatives lie about what liberals says and forget they made the quotes up to prove how awful the things liberals say can be. I know it's just humor I don't get. And I know you're not trolling; you're really like this. Whoover (talk) 19:08, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

Wow, is Tinsley still doing that crap? [62] ħuman 00:19, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

A valid point, I've seen some distortions from the right as well, and it frustrates me when they occur. There are enough valid criticisms to be made of Obama and the left anyway that such distortion should be unnecessary. But you are right it occurs on both sides. --Jzyehoshua (talk) 20:00, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

Jzyehoshua, this is not CP, some liberals are hypocritical but far more conservatives are, the gang of four at CP to name but a few: Example: Karajou whining about censorship when he blocks people who prove him wrong. Just about everything Ken or Andy says. Read a little RW and decide for yourself about hypocritical conservatives. Troll.--Mercian (talk) 19:36, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

AH, I can see what your are doing Jzyehoshua, You dared to take on Karajou and he must be really angry and you're scared that you are about to feel the ban hammer. So to appease your masters you decide to post here to show your true hypocritical conservative values. Nice move--Mercian (talk) 19:46, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

Tough to tell if you're being really dishonest or just have poor reading comprehension, with liberals sometimes it's a tossup. I was posting here before my recent disagreement with Karajou ever started, in fact this recent confrontation with Karajou only occurred because I took action as seen here on behalf of banned users posting here, Phiwum and Human, by speaking with Karajou on their behalf. I brought my concerns to Karajou and Andy openly in both cases, just like I bring my concerns openly here. Unlike some people I do not shy away from confrontation. --Jzyehoshua (talk) 19:57, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

Furthermore, I run my own personal wiki site at http://bereawiki.com so it's not like I need to post at other wikis. I'm here for the discussion and I contribute to Conservapedia only when I feel they are moving in the right direction, as a matter of generosity to help spread truth in helping a conservative site. If I want to just wiki contribute, the natural place to do so is on my own wiki - I only contribute elsewhere when I'm convinced the wikis are honest enough to deserve my contributions. --Jzyehoshua (talk) 20:06, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

Yep. It's a troll. It's just like markman never went away really isn't it? All the right words, in all the right order. I could do this too, I just have more intelligence and integrity. Oldusgitus (talk) 20:02, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

I don't think you've made a single logical point since I've met you, just an unending supply of ad hominems and slurs. I'm not convinced you even know how to discuss the issues, Oldusgitus.--Jzyehoshua (talk) 20:06, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

By this point talking to you might as well be talking to an insult machine, put a nickel in and get a random insult coming out. You have no concept of logic or integrity, all you seem to know how to do is bash to distract from your utter ignorance of the matters at hand. --Jzyehoshua (talk) 20:09, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

You're what Biblically would be called a scoffer, someone with no ability to think for themselves, only to criticize the statements of others. There apparently is nothing inside that little head of yours other than spontaneous insult generation. I tried being nice and ignoring your repetitive attacks on me and my arguments since you provided no points of substance I could respond to, but at some point you force me to call attention to what you are doing and how you are distorting the truth. I just call 'em like I see 'em. If you don't want to be judged then don't judge others. Judge not that ye be not judged. --Jzyehoshua (talk) 20:45, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

So far, you're the only one who's complained about being judged. Oldusgitus just seems to take the judgements you pronounce on him in stride, and goes back to calling you a disingenuous toad. Personally, I think you've earned that. If you're not a troll, you've at least had your skull replaced with a concrete pillbox, prior to starting your hobby of arguing on wikis. Ellipsoidal (talk) 22:46, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

Aboslutely correct Elipsoidal, considering the troll appeared here a bon and started out by immediately accusing RW of supporting markman despite massive evidence that we didn't he didn't start well. Then after having the evidence presented to him he started the now deleted thread on cp accusing markman of being a member here, which he wasn't until long after mm started his vandal campaign on cp BON obviously wasn't improving. So I, not unreasonably imo, called him a liar. He replied with a childish sub-school yard ad-hominem on 'liberals'. And really he's not improved since then. Sure he sometimes trots out creation ministries inspired drivvle as if it were intelligent thought and expects others to spend time refuting all the shite that has already been refuted thousands of time. And when they can't be arsed he calls them LIBERALS. Same question to our former BON. Have you ever read On Liberty? Do you have the faintest idea of what liberal ideology actually is, not what faux news tells you it is, not what coulter and malkin tell you it is. But what it actually is? I call you a troll because you are a troll, and not a vey good one at that to be honest. 05:30, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

I may have to change my vote. I just checked CP via proxy for the first time in a while and saw that JzJesus here busted "Karajou" on Andy's talk page. I didn't get that part of the story. Absolutely hysterical. Whoover (talk) 21:54, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

He's sincere. I've had a look at his wiki and there is just too much work for it to be an elaborate hoax to troll us. Damo^Hi 09:48, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

That's so scary if he's sincere. Bevo74 (talk) 16:34, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

He's sincere and has been at this for years, but like Maratrean, is totally indistinguishable from a troll. From what I can see of his self-indulgent verbal masturbation on other fora, he won't shut up and go away until you can muster the self-control to stop engaging him. 21:14, 7 September 2013 (UTC)