And then I see our 15 year old creationist visitor, and I just cringe from the sadness. Ah, well, hopefully be reading up on this stuff now they will perhaps start thinking for themselves someday. Hopefully.

I know plenty of good arguments for the Bible’s inerrancy, infallibility, accuracy, divinely inspired revelation,etc.

Most atheists have heard all of the best of those arguments, but even the best ones are completely unconvincing.

You may not believe this, but nearly every atheist in the US was, at one point, a Christian, often a literalist fundamentalist. So the reality is that most atheists have experienced the same, or similar, teachings that you have. Those who ultimately reject those teachings tend to do so only after a great deal of study and contemplation. Much more study than the typical believer ever attempts.

When you say:

There is absolutely no way that any thinking individual in their right mind could believe that their nose just evolved by random chance, that they themselves evolved by random chance from something, a loooonnnggg time ago that was floating out in outer space and randomly went BANG

It sounds as if you are hurling a deliberate insult for some reason. But the real insult is that you have apparently been indoctrinated into an utterly false vision of what evolution theory is all about. You have been cheated and misled.

Where do you get the idea that those who accept the modern synthesis of evolution theory propose that their noses evolved solely as a consequence of random events? No legitimate biologist will tell you that evolution is a completely random process.

It would take a great deal of time and effort to educate you properly about the theories of evolution, but the primary obstacle to your understanding is that you have a grossly erroneous preconception about the processes. Unlealning can be much more difficult than learning from the ground up.

You may want to check out the TalkOrigins archives that describe the various processes and evidences of evolution in a clear but thorough manner. They include links to creationist web sites, such as AnswersInGenesis, too.

Good luck, anonymous creationist. You will need plenty of luck to counter balance the disinformation that has been fed to you.

When you learn that evolution is not incompatible with faith, you will find that the world makes much more sense.

I often wonder just how many good, smart people we lose from society because they are religiously indoctrinated at a young age and end up, like this pastor, with his head up his posterior. It’s a shame.

A lot. We lose a whole lot of people with good brains, if they’d just use them, from rational, thinking society.

Look at the comments we’ve been getting on here recently from young people (like Anonymous, above) parroting that very indoctrination word for word. I could spout it myself without any trouble, that’s how strongly the teaching is embedded in my own mind, even though I started thinking for myself and rejected the indoctrination a few years ago.

But ignorance – enforced, taught, “sacred” ignorance – is all around.

And I can say from personal experience that it absolutely is a crying shame.

I think the South Park movie already had Gandhi in hell. At least the pastor didn’t beat around the bush on that one: most of the greatest people in history are going to be in hell.

In general, Hamant, your discussion with this guy is very similar to the discussions I had with my wife’s pastor before we got married. Except my guy brought out the moon dust argument. He just didn’t know any science to speak of. He got confused and called radiocarbon dating “carbon fibre dating”. Out to lunch these guys.

The accuracy of the Bible has been demonstrated and is accepted by all but the most radical scholars.

Surely he can’t really believe this. The vast majority of scholars know the exact opposite of what he states here.

Finally, Michael Behe is on to something with his term irreducible complexity. (See Darwin’s Black Box.) We still don’t have plausible explanation for how the eye could develop, or for the thousands of examples of orchestrated chemical processes.

Oy vey. I went to a presentation yesterday given by Nick Matzke of the NCSE. He did a lot of the research that was presented at the Kitzmiller v Dover trial during Behe’s cross-examination. Behe made an utter fool of himself on the witness stand and his “irreducible complexity” idea was totally demolished under a mountain of scientific evidence. The judge pointedly blasted Behe specifically in his decision.

Anyone who’s still pointing at Behe as a credible person is way behind the times.