I don't get how someone can hold a belief when they have to knowingly lie to justify it.
Even before the contrary scriptural and scientific evidence against Young Earth Creationist overwhelmed me, it was the DISHONESTY I saw within the movement in the 1960's and 1970's that led to my exit. (And the integrity problems were not nearly as severe then as now.)
{My original remarks named the famous Young Earth Creationists associated with each anecdote. But the YEC world is a litigious one so I decided it wise to show caution. The names wouldn't make my points any stronger and those who didn't witness the events would deny they happened in ANY case. Believe me, as an Evangelical Christian, these memories haunt me and I feel personally responsible for helping to promote what were the beginnings of the modern "creation science" movement in America. Sadly, I share culpability in helping to create an "atmosphere" which eventually gave rise to Kent Hovind, Ray Comfort, Ken Ham and others. So when I point fingers at guilty people, I confess my own guilt in this.)
I'll never forget the looks I used to get from my YEC colleagues when I would ask them, "If we have the truth, why do we have to keep lying?" Examples of such dishonesty:
1) I once asked Dr. X, "During a similar debate just weeks ago you admitted that you had the facts wrong about the Bombardier Beetle.You even promised to correct it in the next edition of your book. Yet, in today's debate you used the same flawed argument---probably because you knew that this audience would be unlikely to know of the prior correction and you find the illustration a "crowd pleaser." [And by the way, when Gish released his next edition of the book, none of the corrections were made.]
2) Why are you "generous" with the bogus illustrations when we are speaking at a Bible conference where we don't have to worry about a knowledgeable person exposing the error in an embarrassing way----but when it is an event with actual scientists present (especially when televised), the "pseudo-science lie list" is kept in your pocket?
3) "We all know that the 'I was chatting with an evolutionary biologist on my flight, and he said that....." anecdotes impress layperson audiences but they are just plain LIES. No university science professor would make the kinds of silly statements you put in their mouths and they CERTAINLY wouldn't misuse basic scientific terms nor use an anecdote that was already a half century outdated when you first found it in some old textbook from the 1920s.
4) "Equivocation fallacies are not just rhetorical devices. When we encourage people to use them as if they are actual arguments based upon evidence, they are LIES."
5) "Dishonest quote-mining may be considered just the rough-and-tumble looseness with the facts of political campaigns, but it is NOT in harmony with the 9th Commandment and Jesus' emphasis upon TRUTH. We as Christians should hold ourselves to a HIGHER standard---instead of saying "everybody plays this game of selective information". I used to get INCENSED at the dishonest use of Darwin's eye illustration----giving people the impression that Darwin thought the eye's complexity meant that it couldn't have evolved."
6) Confusing the debunking of the old "spontaneous generation" tales (e.g., maggots are spawned by raw meat as it rots) with ABIOGENESIS is not only lying, it insults our audience. We all know that Louis Pasteur did not somehow rule out scientists ever figuring out the processes behind the first living cells. (And to claim that some "scientific conclusion" of centuries ago handcuffs modern scientists as to what they can and can't explain/discover treats our audiences like they are mental midgets incapable of seeing through our dishonesty.)
