Have you noticed increased trolling in Biology on evolution vs creationism in the past few months?

I have posted a question/statement on the R&S section that if I see on the Biology board a question that starts with "Atheists...." or "If Evolution is True" and it comes from the R&S section, I will place it back there. Level 7 people here can move questions. That's the simplest way to deal with this...... put them back in the black hole that is R&S. In the meantime, a number of us are fact checking and challenging posters there to provide references for their misstatements about evolutionary biology. Not so much as to change their minds, but to be a presence for others on that board and cite references to counter ignorance. After all, we don't want those Creationists into our school's science curriculums, do we, and we need to have a presence.

So... for all level 7 Yahoo Answer people, MOVE THESE SORTS OF QUESTIONS BACK TO RELIGION AND SPIRITUALITY BOARD when they occur.

What has happened is that since question redirection for level 7 users has come about, some users have redirected this junk to biology where the askers didn't want it. So you folks have had to deal with them. Most recently, it has become even more difficult for a user to direct where a question will go and if the system sees "evolution" it goes straight to Biology and the average fundie is too lazy or stupid to fight the system enough to get it into R & S.

Over the past 18 months I have put a fair amount of time into giving these "questions about evolution" from YECs on R & S highly critical answers. I soon realised that it was pointless explaining the science. There is no point in giving them explanations of the difference between the emergence of life and evolution, or trying to explain what a species or genus is and that "kind" is not defined. You are facing arrogant ignorance and fear of the unknown combined with minds primed with the idea that scientists are in a gigantic conspiracy against "Christians".

Ken Ham has a genuine degree in environmental science from the then Queensland Institute of Technology (1976) and has been lying about this since 1978. So he is aware of at least the bases of biology etc. He also has a staff with degrees in geology, biology etc who have found an easy way to make a living as parasites on religion. With basic qualifications and more than 30 years experience, he knows how to lie and what to lie about.

Now I mostly ask them which industries accept their "creation science" or ask which of the staff of Answers in Genesis etc are listed as inventors on patents or patent applications in biotechnology. To these they have no answers, well at least, not yet.

Aside from all that, Nimrod's post about Dembski's "college points" is interesting.

I have "canned" answers for all their questions. (They tend to ask the same questions.) So it is an easy copy/paste to answer them. What better way to teach good science to those that are confused (not the trolls) by troll questions? I welcome the chance to educate.

My favorite counter-attack:

Ok, lets turn this around: Why do Fundamentalist believe in such a weak god that is a poor engineer?

The rest of the universe is governed by a set of consistent, rational laws that allow the universe to run on full automatic. Why would God design biology to work different and require constant hands-on-control.

Creationists have a weak, stupid god that built a universe that requires constant tweaking. Their god is a poor engineer. It makes more sense that biology would work like the rest of the universe, self correcting, self regulating, and self modifying. Thus, His creatures can change as their environment changes. That is all evolution is, the plants and animals adapting to their changing environment (That is glorious!).

Evolution is an extremely elegant solution to life on a planet with a changing environment. Only a Master Engineer could come up with such an elegant solution for a self-correcting system. The Creationists severely limit God's intelligence and engineering ability by saying He had to sit and create everything by hand when the whole system is automated. Seems disrespectful.

Nah, it's always been like this. Since they instituted the ability to move questions around to different sections, there has perhaps been a bit of an uptick in particularly idiotic questions that started in the Land of Stupid, R&S, as DrJ pointed out, but this stuff has been going on for years. Every now and then you get a particularly devoted troll who will go absolutely nuts for a few days or weeks before getting bored or distracted by something shiny, but there's always a relatively constant background noise of this nonsense here.

We, and the universe are either a cosmic accident or we were created by God.

The creation account in the Book of Genesis agrees with what most scientist claim.

More correctly, the scientists agree with what was written 5,000 years ago.

If we are a cosmic accident we are no more important than the nearest rock.

If God created us, according to Christians we are so important that the Son of God himself came to save us.

When atheists stop making moral judgments I might take what they say more seriously.

It has to do with how Yahoo Answers changed how it picks the category when you post a question. Before it was easier to change the category that Yahoo automatically picked for a question. So get used to it. That's how it has evolved to be from now on.

It's about the same as always. You're noticing them more now because during the summer months, fewer high school students are asking biology questions, so there are fewer questions.

To DrJ... I have learned something!!!! I wondered why that "Edit Category" box showed up. I was too dimwitted to test it. I will be happy to make any contributions I can. NUT UP My Brothers (and Sisters)!

Of course... this suggests that level 7 users in R&S may be sending these questions our way???

I would still like to see more benign neglect, if no one answers their questions, maybe they will grow weary.

My education is much appreciated. Thank You!

This is an old post but it might still be going on. People get "college" credit for trolling.

http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/08/10/1237245/Co...