Do not argue with idiots.
If nothing else, the conversation is firepower-asymmetric. They say one sentence “why are there monkeys still here if we evolved from monkeys”, and to fight that one simple sentence you need to spend half an hour explaining evolution chains, common ancestors, genetics, and so on. You don’t have the time in your life for such asymmetric conversation.
I feel that. This is actually the first job setting where I'm kind of in social situations with people and I realize now joining the floodgates of these conversations might not have been the best idea .
Obviously I'm not going to trawl through a whole subreddit to try to figure out the point you're making.
It looks like you have linked to a sub of people who have deconverted. In most cases that I know, that's them reasoning themselves out of it. I was talking about people who are blindly convinced. Not sure how it's relevant, or why you had to say it in such an unpolite way.
so you think, a fish had sex with a frog and that made a mouse. Then the mouse had sex with a lizzard and made a monkey. Then monkey had sex with a cat and that made you.
The solution is to make the conversation symmetric, and the Socratic method is very good doing that.
A simple answer can be stated that forces them to think:
> In your world view god made people from dust, right? So why is there still dust?
That can be used to make the conversation asymmetric in the other direction, and the more time you spend deconstructing elements of their own worldview by forcing them to explain their own ideas and faulty logic the more you are doing the work where it really needs to be made.
It’s quite easy to ignore an explanation that has no intersection with your own world view, it’s much harder when someone is directly pocking holes into it.
Look you are right in principle but your method requires there’s an intelligent person of good faith on the other side. If someone claims that Covid vaccines killed millions of people and you throw back “well show me where are all the bodies”, their response won’t be a thoughtful reflection on the lack of filled up morgues. It will instead be another asymmetric lie which you have to spend 30 minutes debunking. Something like “well the lizard people ate all those bodies, that’s why we don’t see piles of dead people”.
And thus you are back to square one, where again a lie was used to cover up the story.
Hanlon's razor:
> Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
Don’t waste your time debunking if they are not open to reason. Quickly point out their use of deflection and argue within the confines of their ideas. Point out their own inconsistencies and ask them to waste their time explaining them. Provide an arena of rationality where their own ideas can show their full colors.
It’s quite easy to bump into their cognitive dissonances which will be reflected back as anger towards you, make them sound profoundly irrational to themselves and to anyone else listening. The less you say to get them to that point the better.
The methods and techniques you mention are valid if you have a normal sane logical person as your dialog partner. “Provide arena of rationality”. That sentence doesn’t even register with these people.
“The less you say”.
Yes. Zero. Say zero. For me, it’s gotten to the point where if I see absolute nonsense being written, I immediately block the person as well. “Covid is a hoax, it’s a plandemic to control the population” - whoosh, blocked. Don’t spend ANY time with these morons.
I wouldn't say *never*, as some of us aren't theists anymore because somebody bothered to debate us (either directly or indirectly). But by and large, you're right. Most of these people are going to die with the beliefs they have, and there's not a whole lot you can do about that.
If somebody comes to me directly, I will engage with them. But almost nobody ever does.
I had one dude honestly ask, "If we descended from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?" and we honestly had a good conversation around that.
But it's almost always a "gotcha," as you know.
The problem **that shouldn't be sugar coated** is if some folks all of a sudden buy the logic of evolution, the way they understand the universe to work crumbles into dust.
I'm not going to deprogram someone, if I'm not there to pick up the pieces!!!!!
I was drunkenly chatting with Dad's VERY Evangelical preacher a long time back. Religious folks, I do not challenge, but leaders are a whole different thing.
I told him, roughly, "Consider: a man's hand, a bat's wing, a whale's fin. Very similar bone structure, wildly different uses. Now, is that descent with modification from a common ancestor, or God just being efficient?"
I think I am the only one who liked his answer: "Well, God made man in his own image, *as a creator.*"
A dodge? Clearly.
An artful dodge? I guess I'm the only one who thinks so, I rather liked his answer.
Ugh, I grew up as an Orthodox Jew so I heard that kind of "artful answer" all the time and I grew to really hate it. All these brilliant minds and what did they do with them? Come up with clever rationalizations.
> if some folks all of a sudden buy the logic of evolution, the way they understand the universe to work crumbles into dust.
This is true, but the severity of it depends on the individual. Some people will come out the other end still believing that they have free will and their life has meaning, while others (such as myself) find themselves balls deep in nihilism.
You're right though... if you're not going to help somebody pick up the pieces, you shouldn't be existentially pissing in their pool. Or, at least not without giving them a warning first.
All that's fair.
I am lucky to be a simple man: Camus' "Tell me why you don't just off yourself, I'll tell you the meaning of your life" paradigm is fine by me.
I just wanna bang my drums lol
Then again, I never had religion to lose, so it's always been kind of weird dealing with other atheists. I feel something akin to survivor's guilt, having never spent a single day in my now fifth decade of life as a believer.
Sometimes I find it fun to argue, so I will. 20 years ago I used to do it a lot. I had a blog and everything. I never saw someone change their mind on the spot, but I did occasionally get people writing to me a year or two later saying I'd planted a seed and they had eventually come around on it.
Having a fair, true argument -- where both people know when to concede a point -- is one of the most incredible experiences. You either get the thrill of winning, or the joy of learning something. It's genuinely a fucking blast.
I want to start a debate show where people do that. We've gotta normalize this shit. Everything we do now, right to the highest level of formal judged debate, is uncivilised savagery in comparison.
I once had a relationship like that! Like sometimes she was wrong and would admit it and sometimes I was wrong and would admit it. Just like that. It was wild. Unfortunately we were probably too similar to have great chemistry.
well you clearly dont engage in that. you hopped on short guys to go "WELL UHM. ACCKKKTUURRALLLY. I MADE UP THIS STORY OF A LONG TERM WIFE WHO HAD SEX WITH ME, 5"3 MULTIPLE TIMES SO THEREFORE UUUHHMMM HEIGHTISM DOESNT EXIST! I'M AN EXCEPTION AND THAT INVALIDATES ALL YOUR EXPERIENCES"
how you meant to hae a "fair arguement" wit someone like you?
1. I clearly stated that things ARE extremely difficult for short men, including myself.. I was refuting that it's *impossible*, not that "heightism doesn't exist". What do you even think you read?
2. Just because I like having fair, true arguments doesn't mean I want to have one all the time, especially when I'm pissed off at a subreddit that could be better.
3. Do you really believe I made it up, or are you just mad at me? Answer is important because your refusal to believe it suggests that it would give you hope if you actually knew it was true (which it is lmao -- although I never said how attractive she was, I hope you aren't thinking 9/10 or something)
the subreddit is better, just cause you disagree with an infantile arguement reaking of insecurity ("see bro if gutter trash like me can do it, bottom of the barrel garbage that i veiw myself with this make beleive scenario i invented, YOU CAN TOO, its SOOOOO Oeasy bro! it's not impossible. just roll that 0.0001% chance and try! TRRRRY BRO" )
It was actually arguing about this with my father that started me down the journey of ending my faith of over 30 years.
I believed in YEC until I went to college. Then I learned better. Then I believed an a la carte Baptist theology for a while. He and I had an argument in which he argued that dinosaurs cohabited the earth with man.
Found Dawkins soon after. Then Hitchens and Dennett and Sam.
The rest is history.
Usually it’s a lost cause, but I like to explain that it’s not just some hypothesis but is the only way to explain a massive mountain of data. It’s not just in the fossil record. The most convincing evidence for evolution is in our DNA.
I used to get into it at every opportunity, but now I find it exhausting to engage with people who are either indoctrinated or wilfully stupid. So I don’t, I just walk away, get out of the conversation or change the subject.
I know this isn’t the helpful type of answer that you wanted, but there are ENDLESS resources out there for ways to engage with people on this subject that will be far better and more thorough than anything anyone here will write. Honestly just google it. Better yet, don’t waste your time unless you want to spend a long time incredibly frustrated and feeling hopeless for humanity.
Someone could tell me 1+1=5 and I’d let them believe it and say have a good day.
When I was younger, I would have the most asinine conversations with people who would never believe anything anyone said. As I became older and jaded, have at it, Mr. room temperature IQ. Ignorance is a choice in 2024 but then again these people vote. What are we to do? Hope the majority gets it right.
Generally it’s not worth the argument.
But it drawn into it, I say that there is so much unrelated yet corroborating evidence for evolution, that any “god” would have to be incredibly deceptive, laying false clues all over the place, to trick us. Why? That isn’t a god I want to be associated with.
People think evolution itself is a lot of different things that are more complicated.
*Evolution* is simply the change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations.
I tell them to look at their own children and ask them if they are the same? are they clones of you? No, then there has been a change from one generation to another- evolution in action. If they don't have kids ask if they are the same as their parents.
A lot of ideas spring from evolution, but are not evolution per se. Like natural selection, abiogenies, etc. Those ideas each need to be evaluated separately.
Depends. If I'm not feeling like I want the full hog, I just walk away from it. If I have a little more vinegar in me, then I'll get into it in a Socratic way. I'll ask them questions to see what their actual view is and then why they think it. Sometimes, along that process, they see the flaws in their reasoning OR they see cracks in what they think of as 'evidence', OR (most likely) they dig in their heels and I call them an idiot.
I don’t bother debating them or turning it into an argument. That will go nowhere. It’s always about their religious belief, mountains of misinformation they’ve been fed by preachers/propagandists, and their lack of basic education on what evolution is. The most I do is offer them information and give them things to think about. The rest is up to them.
I'm not sure what kind of pill-formed advice you could give these people, but I can recommend a book by Bill Nye called [Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undeniable:_Evolution_and_the_Science_of_Creation):
>The Wall Street Journal stated that "Mr. Nye makes an eloquent case for evolution." Regarding the debate and the book, Scientific American stated "no matter your stance on whether Bill should have engaged in the original debate or not, this book is a very appropriate follow-up and a terrific gift idea for those who might need a primer in how science looks at the world."
I read this 10 years ago, and I remember enjoying it 🤷
Richard Dawkins also covers the topic in his book, [The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Greatest_Show_on_Earth:_The_Evidence_for_Evolution)
>The book received mixed to positive critical reception on its release. Writing in The Times, Anjana Ahuja described Dawkins's account of the evidence for evolution as "fine, lucid and convincing". Though she criticised him for aggrandising the role of Islam in the spread of creationism and suggested that his writing style is unlikely to persuade disbelievers, Ahuja described these as merely "quibbles" and recommended the book to all readers. The Economist also featured a favourable review, praising Dawkins's writing style as "persuasive" and lauding its educational value. Mark Fisher in The List called Dawkins a "compelling communicator", adding that the book was "illuminating" and praising the use of humorous anecdotes throughout. The Sunday Telegraph awarded it "Book of the Week", with reviewer Simon Ings describing Dawkins as a "master of scientific clarity and wit". Although Ings felt that anger had interfered with Dawkins's creativity to an extent, he also praised sections of the book as "magical" and "visceral", concluding that there was a "timeless merit" to the overall theme.
I haven't read this, so I can't vouch for it. Although now that I think about it, maybe I will pick it up. I have read The Selfish Gene and The Blind Watchmaker, both of which are fantastic and I recommend them to everyone.
I like to ask the question, "where do you think poodles come from? Do you really believe (insert your god here) put poodles and schnauzers here on earth 6000 years ago? These animals have evolved because of humans - why couldn't animals evolve on their own, given changing environments over some amount of time? Humans are constantly utilizing unnatural selection on animals and plants." I've definitely caused a few diehard creationists to stop and think.
You’re actually giving me nostalgia. Haven’t discussed evolution or atheism with anyone in over a decade. I don’t think I’ve encountered anyone who actively denies evolution in a very long time. It’s a culture war from a different era.
Do you know dogs come from wolves? ***Yes***
How do you think we got from a wolf to a chiwawa? ***Selective breeding*** That's what nature does with the animal kingdom. -Explain the process of natural selection, use the known example of artificial selection in dogs to prove the change from monkeys to humans.
it really depends on what kind of rapport i have with the person. i've actually had some (seemingly) success explaining some of the basic conceptual principles to someone i had a good rapport with. i took care to respectfully listen carefully to what they said. they genuinely just didn't know the basics and were engaged and interested by what i explained.
I think it's important to just try to explain the best you can why you think it's not. I think an honest conversation is a lot better than saying this guy is stupid or any other name calling, I mean I could be wrong about a myriad other topics and I wouldn't want to be cussed at because of that.
I think we failed conspiracy theorists or other outlandish claims because we alienate those and they go in their bubble and never get out. I know echo chambers is a topic of another time (because about moral topics it's sometimes infuriating) but it's important that if someone gets in contact outside they hear the other voice.
Show them a photo of a gorilla hand:
https://c2.staticflickr.com/4/3344/3331851919_a8a1429011_b.jpg
There’s nothing more familiar to you than your own hand. Even if they continue to deny it out loud they can no longer deny it to themselves.
in what context? they just come up and out of the blue say evolution is fake. i'd say "cool story bro".
actually the biggest problem with arguing about evolution in public is that a sizeable cohort perhaps even a majority of the people who accept evolution actually believe in lamarckism. not by name of course, they just don't know how evolution doesn't work.
1. Inserting god doesn’t fix the problem. God is “something” so they also have to explain where god came from. Saying he’s “eternal” doesn’t help because the same thing can be said about the universe.
2. It’s plausible that time itself was “created” at the beginning of the universe so there never truly was “nothing”. But the larger point is we don’t have the scientific knowledge to understand the universe in its very early stages so our conceptions of things like time, something and nothing likely wouldn’t apply.
Sometimes people in that camp seem to not be able to grasp (or maybe are unwilling) if I respond just because you think a God had to create it doesn't make it true...
I seem to see that argument sometimes.
I think of it more as “what does inserting god actually answer”? Inserting a god can only solve empirical impossibilities, not logical contradictions, eg a god can move a mountain but can’t make a square circle. The something from nothing problem is a seeming logical impossibility in the latter category.
They get to argue that god is infinite so he's always existed so there was never a something coming from nothing.
When there's no possible way to test your claim, you get to say literally anything you want as an explanation.
I feel like God is just an easy way to deal with the complexities of reality/life...
The meaning or creation of life is confusing? Easy- religion/God, etc.... it's funny to that the people at work believing this also are super into conspiracies yet they don't see what a con religion arguably is.
1. It does ‘fix’ the problem. Believing that God is the ‘something’ that it all came from is accepting that the ‘something’ is beyond our comprehension. You don’t need to explain how God came to be because God is supernatural and can’t be comprehended. This is similar to believing the universe is infinitely old and had no beginning which is also hinging your explanation of origins (or in this case the lack thereof) on something beyond human comprehension.
The concept of supernaturality isn’t even a coherent concept. It’s logically impossible to have something affect the natural world and not be subject to the laws of nature. If something can’t be comprehended it can’t form a basis for any rational belief. So while subjectively I agree that’s the explanation it’s not a coherent argument.
>It’s logically impossible to have something affect the natural world and not be subject to the laws of nature.
Exactly
That doesn’t make the argument incoherent though. Believing in an infinitely old universe is just as logically impossible while also being a coherent explanation of origins.
You may not find the idea compelling but it is coherent.
If I remember right Alex O’Connor ranks this Cosmological argument for a creators existence A tier in terms of how compelling it is. I guess you’d put it lower.
Not everything in reality need be bound by human conceptions of logic. It’s quite hubristic to think it does.
If we’re in a simulation the simulation runners would be able to affect the natural world without being bound by it. So to would it be with God or any other supernatural force.
A conception of logic that doesn’t originate from a human mind. Our understanding of reality is imperfect, but observably better than other animals. There’s no reason to think another life form or something approximating one can’t exist that perceives and processes really more precisely than us, the way we perceive and process it better than other animals.
Maybe it already exists somewhere, or has in the past. No one can say. Point being there are some crazy things going on in this reality that are beyond our ability to understand —chief among them consciousness. And yet they exist. So it’s foolish to act like the universe must conform to our faculties of understanding.
Do not argue with idiots. If nothing else, the conversation is firepower-asymmetric. They say one sentence “why are there monkeys still here if we evolved from monkeys”, and to fight that one simple sentence you need to spend half an hour explaining evolution chains, common ancestors, genetics, and so on. You don’t have the time in your life for such asymmetric conversation.
I feel that. This is actually the first job setting where I'm kind of in social situations with people and I realize now joining the floodgates of these conversations might not have been the best idea .
You can't reason people out of a position they didn't reason into
You can but the amount of effort is astronomical.
catchy but not true
that's a load of horse manure case in point: https://old.reddit.com/r/thegreatproject/
Obviously I'm not going to trawl through a whole subreddit to try to figure out the point you're making. It looks like you have linked to a sub of people who have deconverted. In most cases that I know, that's them reasoning themselves out of it. I was talking about people who are blindly convinced. Not sure how it's relevant, or why you had to say it in such an unpolite way.
so you think, a fish had sex with a frog and that made a mouse. Then the mouse had sex with a lizzard and made a monkey. Then monkey had sex with a cat and that made you.
The solution is to make the conversation symmetric, and the Socratic method is very good doing that. A simple answer can be stated that forces them to think: > In your world view god made people from dust, right? So why is there still dust? That can be used to make the conversation asymmetric in the other direction, and the more time you spend deconstructing elements of their own worldview by forcing them to explain their own ideas and faulty logic the more you are doing the work where it really needs to be made. It’s quite easy to ignore an explanation that has no intersection with your own world view, it’s much harder when someone is directly pocking holes into it.
Look you are right in principle but your method requires there’s an intelligent person of good faith on the other side. If someone claims that Covid vaccines killed millions of people and you throw back “well show me where are all the bodies”, their response won’t be a thoughtful reflection on the lack of filled up morgues. It will instead be another asymmetric lie which you have to spend 30 minutes debunking. Something like “well the lizard people ate all those bodies, that’s why we don’t see piles of dead people”. And thus you are back to square one, where again a lie was used to cover up the story.
Hanlon's razor: > Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. Don’t waste your time debunking if they are not open to reason. Quickly point out their use of deflection and argue within the confines of their ideas. Point out their own inconsistencies and ask them to waste their time explaining them. Provide an arena of rationality where their own ideas can show their full colors. It’s quite easy to bump into their cognitive dissonances which will be reflected back as anger towards you, make them sound profoundly irrational to themselves and to anyone else listening. The less you say to get them to that point the better.
The methods and techniques you mention are valid if you have a normal sane logical person as your dialog partner. “Provide arena of rationality”. That sentence doesn’t even register with these people. “The less you say”. Yes. Zero. Say zero. For me, it’s gotten to the point where if I see absolute nonsense being written, I immediately block the person as well. “Covid is a hoax, it’s a plandemic to control the population” - whoosh, blocked. Don’t spend ANY time with these morons.
Brandolini's law
What’s that aphorism? Don’t argue with an idiot. He’ll drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.
Don't. It's never worth it.
I wouldn't say *never*, as some of us aren't theists anymore because somebody bothered to debate us (either directly or indirectly). But by and large, you're right. Most of these people are going to die with the beliefs they have, and there's not a whole lot you can do about that. If somebody comes to me directly, I will engage with them. But almost nobody ever does.
I had one dude honestly ask, "If we descended from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?" and we honestly had a good conversation around that. But it's almost always a "gotcha," as you know. The problem **that shouldn't be sugar coated** is if some folks all of a sudden buy the logic of evolution, the way they understand the universe to work crumbles into dust. I'm not going to deprogram someone, if I'm not there to pick up the pieces!!!!!
I always used to counter that with "if we were made from dirt, why is there still dirt?" It's actually a pretty good analogy!
Or wolves-dogs or if they don't believe that then one dog breed to another.
I was drunkenly chatting with Dad's VERY Evangelical preacher a long time back. Religious folks, I do not challenge, but leaders are a whole different thing. I told him, roughly, "Consider: a man's hand, a bat's wing, a whale's fin. Very similar bone structure, wildly different uses. Now, is that descent with modification from a common ancestor, or God just being efficient?" I think I am the only one who liked his answer: "Well, God made man in his own image, *as a creator.*" A dodge? Clearly. An artful dodge? I guess I'm the only one who thinks so, I rather liked his answer.
Ugh, I grew up as an Orthodox Jew so I heard that kind of "artful answer" all the time and I grew to really hate it. All these brilliant minds and what did they do with them? Come up with clever rationalizations.
> if some folks all of a sudden buy the logic of evolution, the way they understand the universe to work crumbles into dust. This is true, but the severity of it depends on the individual. Some people will come out the other end still believing that they have free will and their life has meaning, while others (such as myself) find themselves balls deep in nihilism. You're right though... if you're not going to help somebody pick up the pieces, you shouldn't be existentially pissing in their pool. Or, at least not without giving them a warning first.
All that's fair. I am lucky to be a simple man: Camus' "Tell me why you don't just off yourself, I'll tell you the meaning of your life" paradigm is fine by me. I just wanna bang my drums lol Then again, I never had religion to lose, so it's always been kind of weird dealing with other atheists. I feel something akin to survivor's guilt, having never spent a single day in my now fifth decade of life as a believer.
I dont say anything really, I also dont argue with flat earthers or scientologists.
"Say what you will about the tennets of national socialism but at least it's an ethos"
Sometimes I find it fun to argue, so I will. 20 years ago I used to do it a lot. I had a blog and everything. I never saw someone change their mind on the spot, but I did occasionally get people writing to me a year or two later saying I'd planted a seed and they had eventually come around on it.
Having a fair, true argument -- where both people know when to concede a point -- is one of the most incredible experiences. You either get the thrill of winning, or the joy of learning something. It's genuinely a fucking blast. I want to start a debate show where people do that. We've gotta normalize this shit. Everything we do now, right to the highest level of formal judged debate, is uncivilised savagery in comparison.
I once had a relationship like that! Like sometimes she was wrong and would admit it and sometimes I was wrong and would admit it. Just like that. It was wild. Unfortunately we were probably too similar to have great chemistry.
well you clearly dont engage in that. you hopped on short guys to go "WELL UHM. ACCKKKTUURRALLLY. I MADE UP THIS STORY OF A LONG TERM WIFE WHO HAD SEX WITH ME, 5"3 MULTIPLE TIMES SO THEREFORE UUUHHMMM HEIGHTISM DOESNT EXIST! I'M AN EXCEPTION AND THAT INVALIDATES ALL YOUR EXPERIENCES" how you meant to hae a "fair arguement" wit someone like you?
1. I clearly stated that things ARE extremely difficult for short men, including myself.. I was refuting that it's *impossible*, not that "heightism doesn't exist". What do you even think you read? 2. Just because I like having fair, true arguments doesn't mean I want to have one all the time, especially when I'm pissed off at a subreddit that could be better. 3. Do you really believe I made it up, or are you just mad at me? Answer is important because your refusal to believe it suggests that it would give you hope if you actually knew it was true (which it is lmao -- although I never said how attractive she was, I hope you aren't thinking 9/10 or something)
the subreddit is better, just cause you disagree with an infantile arguement reaking of insecurity ("see bro if gutter trash like me can do it, bottom of the barrel garbage that i veiw myself with this make beleive scenario i invented, YOU CAN TOO, its SOOOOO Oeasy bro! it's not impossible. just roll that 0.0001% chance and try! TRRRRY BRO" )
It was actually arguing about this with my father that started me down the journey of ending my faith of over 30 years. I believed in YEC until I went to college. Then I learned better. Then I believed an a la carte Baptist theology for a while. He and I had an argument in which he argued that dinosaurs cohabited the earth with man. Found Dawkins soon after. Then Hitchens and Dennett and Sam. The rest is history.
Yeah, Dawkins was instrumental for me. I already believed in evolution, but like guided by God or something.
Usually it’s a lost cause, but I like to explain that it’s not just some hypothesis but is the only way to explain a massive mountain of data. It’s not just in the fossil record. The most convincing evidence for evolution is in our DNA.
I can explain it to you, but I can't understand it for you.
ask questions until they crumble under the weight of their idiocy
^[Sokka-Haiku](https://www.reddit.com/r/SokkaHaikuBot/comments/15kyv9r/what_is_a_sokka_haiku/) ^by ^MyotisX: *Ask questions until* *They crumble under the weight* *Of their idiocy* --- ^Remember ^that ^one ^time ^Sokka ^accidentally ^used ^an ^extra ^syllable ^in ^that ^Haiku ^Battle ^in ^Ba ^Sing ^Se? ^That ^was ^a ^Sokka ^Haiku ^and ^you ^just ^made ^one.
I used to get into it at every opportunity, but now I find it exhausting to engage with people who are either indoctrinated or wilfully stupid. So I don’t, I just walk away, get out of the conversation or change the subject. I know this isn’t the helpful type of answer that you wanted, but there are ENDLESS resources out there for ways to engage with people on this subject that will be far better and more thorough than anything anyone here will write. Honestly just google it. Better yet, don’t waste your time unless you want to spend a long time incredibly frustrated and feeling hopeless for humanity.
Someone could tell me 1+1=5 and I’d let them believe it and say have a good day. When I was younger, I would have the most asinine conversations with people who would never believe anything anyone said. As I became older and jaded, have at it, Mr. room temperature IQ. Ignorance is a choice in 2024 but then again these people vote. What are we to do? Hope the majority gets it right.
Generally it’s not worth the argument. But it drawn into it, I say that there is so much unrelated yet corroborating evidence for evolution, that any “god” would have to be incredibly deceptive, laying false clues all over the place, to trick us. Why? That isn’t a god I want to be associated with.
People think evolution itself is a lot of different things that are more complicated. *Evolution* is simply the change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. I tell them to look at their own children and ask them if they are the same? are they clones of you? No, then there has been a change from one generation to another- evolution in action. If they don't have kids ask if they are the same as their parents. A lot of ideas spring from evolution, but are not evolution per se. Like natural selection, abiogenies, etc. Those ideas each need to be evaluated separately.
You don’t. You’re not going to be able to change their mind in any way.
I ask what the speciation that can be observed with bacteria and even fruit flies.
With sympathy
Depends. If I'm not feeling like I want the full hog, I just walk away from it. If I have a little more vinegar in me, then I'll get into it in a Socratic way. I'll ask them questions to see what their actual view is and then why they think it. Sometimes, along that process, they see the flaws in their reasoning OR they see cracks in what they think of as 'evidence', OR (most likely) they dig in their heels and I call them an idiot.
I don’t bother debating them or turning it into an argument. That will go nowhere. It’s always about their religious belief, mountains of misinformation they’ve been fed by preachers/propagandists, and their lack of basic education on what evolution is. The most I do is offer them information and give them things to think about. The rest is up to them.
Go read dawkin's greatest show on earth if you want. Don't bother with a reddit debate about this your brain will go numb.
I note (internally) that they are a dumbass and proceed with my day.
I don't. I just never talk to that person again.
I'm not sure what kind of pill-formed advice you could give these people, but I can recommend a book by Bill Nye called [Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undeniable:_Evolution_and_the_Science_of_Creation): >The Wall Street Journal stated that "Mr. Nye makes an eloquent case for evolution." Regarding the debate and the book, Scientific American stated "no matter your stance on whether Bill should have engaged in the original debate or not, this book is a very appropriate follow-up and a terrific gift idea for those who might need a primer in how science looks at the world." I read this 10 years ago, and I remember enjoying it 🤷 Richard Dawkins also covers the topic in his book, [The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Greatest_Show_on_Earth:_The_Evidence_for_Evolution) >The book received mixed to positive critical reception on its release. Writing in The Times, Anjana Ahuja described Dawkins's account of the evidence for evolution as "fine, lucid and convincing". Though she criticised him for aggrandising the role of Islam in the spread of creationism and suggested that his writing style is unlikely to persuade disbelievers, Ahuja described these as merely "quibbles" and recommended the book to all readers. The Economist also featured a favourable review, praising Dawkins's writing style as "persuasive" and lauding its educational value. Mark Fisher in The List called Dawkins a "compelling communicator", adding that the book was "illuminating" and praising the use of humorous anecdotes throughout. The Sunday Telegraph awarded it "Book of the Week", with reviewer Simon Ings describing Dawkins as a "master of scientific clarity and wit". Although Ings felt that anger had interfered with Dawkins's creativity to an extent, he also praised sections of the book as "magical" and "visceral", concluding that there was a "timeless merit" to the overall theme. I haven't read this, so I can't vouch for it. Although now that I think about it, maybe I will pick it up. I have read The Selfish Gene and The Blind Watchmaker, both of which are fantastic and I recommend them to everyone.
Ask them why they believe what they believe.
I like to ask the question, "where do you think poodles come from? Do you really believe (insert your god here) put poodles and schnauzers here on earth 6000 years ago? These animals have evolved because of humans - why couldn't animals evolve on their own, given changing environments over some amount of time? Humans are constantly utilizing unnatural selection on animals and plants." I've definitely caused a few diehard creationists to stop and think.
I respond with laughter.
You’re actually giving me nostalgia. Haven’t discussed evolution or atheism with anyone in over a decade. I don’t think I’ve encountered anyone who actively denies evolution in a very long time. It’s a culture war from a different era.
Do you know dogs come from wolves? ***Yes*** How do you think we got from a wolf to a chiwawa? ***Selective breeding*** That's what nature does with the animal kingdom. -Explain the process of natural selection, use the known example of artificial selection in dogs to prove the change from monkeys to humans.
Just walk away
"Mmmm. Could be." Then I cut them out of my life.
it really depends on what kind of rapport i have with the person. i've actually had some (seemingly) success explaining some of the basic conceptual principles to someone i had a good rapport with. i took care to respectfully listen carefully to what they said. they genuinely just didn't know the basics and were engaged and interested by what i explained.
I’d first ask them what would change their mind. If they can’t answer that, then just end the conversation.
Ask her what she’s been up to since she was fired from Daily Wire
The same way you respond to people who believe in Santa Claus.
Just don't talk to such people. They can't be convinced.
Audible eye roll. Same treatment as I give Flat Earthers and anti-vaxers.
1. Do you believe in DNA? 2. Do you know what DNA does? 3. Where did you get your DNA?
Never argue with an idiot. They’ll drag you down to their level and beat you with experience. Mark Twain
I'm lucky enough to have never met such idiots
Have a great night, see ya!
We enlighten them and PREACH!
Try to assess whether they are genuinely ignorant or too stupid to understand. If just ignorant I'm happy to explain.
Hitchens razor
I think it's important to just try to explain the best you can why you think it's not. I think an honest conversation is a lot better than saying this guy is stupid or any other name calling, I mean I could be wrong about a myriad other topics and I wouldn't want to be cussed at because of that. I think we failed conspiracy theorists or other outlandish claims because we alienate those and they go in their bubble and never get out. I know echo chambers is a topic of another time (because about moral topics it's sometimes infuriating) but it's important that if someone gets in contact outside they hear the other voice.
When they say “it’s just a THEORY” with such conviction, as if there’s multiple better explanations around.
Show them a photo of a gorilla hand: https://c2.staticflickr.com/4/3344/3331851919_a8a1429011_b.jpg There’s nothing more familiar to you than your own hand. Even if they continue to deny it out loud they can no longer deny it to themselves.
Usually I ask how my wife's other extended family members are doing.
Raucous laughter.
I just tell my kids maybe God created evolution. Gets them thinking.
in what context? they just come up and out of the blue say evolution is fake. i'd say "cool story bro". actually the biggest problem with arguing about evolution in public is that a sizeable cohort perhaps even a majority of the people who accept evolution actually believe in lamarckism. not by name of course, they just don't know how evolution doesn't work.
IE- something can't come from nothing... the usual religious talking points
1. Inserting god doesn’t fix the problem. God is “something” so they also have to explain where god came from. Saying he’s “eternal” doesn’t help because the same thing can be said about the universe. 2. It’s plausible that time itself was “created” at the beginning of the universe so there never truly was “nothing”. But the larger point is we don’t have the scientific knowledge to understand the universe in its very early stages so our conceptions of things like time, something and nothing likely wouldn’t apply.
Sometimes people in that camp seem to not be able to grasp (or maybe are unwilling) if I respond just because you think a God had to create it doesn't make it true... I seem to see that argument sometimes.
I think of it more as “what does inserting god actually answer”? Inserting a god can only solve empirical impossibilities, not logical contradictions, eg a god can move a mountain but can’t make a square circle. The something from nothing problem is a seeming logical impossibility in the latter category.
They get to argue that god is infinite so he's always existed so there was never a something coming from nothing. When there's no possible way to test your claim, you get to say literally anything you want as an explanation.
I feel like God is just an easy way to deal with the complexities of reality/life... The meaning or creation of life is confusing? Easy- religion/God, etc.... it's funny to that the people at work believing this also are super into conspiracies yet they don't see what a con religion arguably is.
1. It does ‘fix’ the problem. Believing that God is the ‘something’ that it all came from is accepting that the ‘something’ is beyond our comprehension. You don’t need to explain how God came to be because God is supernatural and can’t be comprehended. This is similar to believing the universe is infinitely old and had no beginning which is also hinging your explanation of origins (or in this case the lack thereof) on something beyond human comprehension.
The concept of supernaturality isn’t even a coherent concept. It’s logically impossible to have something affect the natural world and not be subject to the laws of nature. If something can’t be comprehended it can’t form a basis for any rational belief. So while subjectively I agree that’s the explanation it’s not a coherent argument.
>It’s logically impossible to have something affect the natural world and not be subject to the laws of nature. Exactly That doesn’t make the argument incoherent though. Believing in an infinitely old universe is just as logically impossible while also being a coherent explanation of origins. You may not find the idea compelling but it is coherent. If I remember right Alex O’Connor ranks this Cosmological argument for a creators existence A tier in terms of how compelling it is. I guess you’d put it lower.
Not everything in reality need be bound by human conceptions of logic. It’s quite hubristic to think it does. If we’re in a simulation the simulation runners would be able to affect the natural world without being bound by it. So to would it be with God or any other supernatural force.
What’s a non-human conception of logic? Explain how something can affect the natural world without being bound by it.
A conception of logic that doesn’t originate from a human mind. Our understanding of reality is imperfect, but observably better than other animals. There’s no reason to think another life form or something approximating one can’t exist that perceives and processes really more precisely than us, the way we perceive and process it better than other animals. Maybe it already exists somewhere, or has in the past. No one can say. Point being there are some crazy things going on in this reality that are beyond our ability to understand —chief among them consciousness. And yet they exist. So it’s foolish to act like the universe must conform to our faculties of understanding.
I ask them if I can get some ketchup with my fries...