The ideas listed below have actually been used as arguments for Creationism, particularly Young Earth Creationism.  The trouble is they are formulated as if everyone’s mind could be presupposed to work essentially like one’s own.  In this respect Henry Madison Morris was in a class by himself.  Over the course of at least 29 years he repeatedly argued as if he was trying to convince some sort of alter ego.  At best he admitted the existence of other points of view while still assuming everyone in his audience not to have them.  At worst he argued as if his own personal thought pattern was part of human nature.  How could anyone who would have had all chances to learn to know people around him or her argue like that?  Always trying to blame or punish other kids would not have been a viable option.  Human social interactions are too unpredictable for that.

In some cases, I may have over-interpreted Christian Fundamentalists.  They might not treat most results of social progress as if they were sins spreading epidemically after 1960.  Or expect everyone to obey them just because what they are told is accordance with their own religious fanaticism.  But what they have said outright is bad enough:

1. Stating one’s own Biblical literalism and claim an issue to be settled by that.
It is one thing to have one’s own opinion of a subject decided by Biblical literalism.  It is another thing to demand others to accept an idea for no other reason than one’s own adherence to it.  The later just make one sound extremely egotistic.  Others view neither you nor the Bible as the ultimate authority.

2. Telling one’s opponent how good God is.
This is completely useless for the intended purpose.  Either the opponent is already a believer in which case it would be superfluous.  Or the opponent is a non-believer making (dumbed-down?) traditional missionary talk sound pathetic.  I personally find it absurd to believe in a good God who first constructs the human mind to work in a certain way and then punish us for the consequences of this.  Especially if the claiming this believes him- or herself to be exempted from such punishment.  However, a person believing the latter is probably in denial about the condemned being inevitable.

3. Claim signs of deep time to be created to test our faith.
This not only treat “faith” as synonymous with dogmatic adherence to Young Earth Creationism.  To someone who never truly believed that the claim is essentially meaningless.  It is like claiming 99.9998681% of humanity to consist of p-zombies.  (In my opinion the p-zombie fills no other function than making the word “soul” meaningless.)  If others appear to have souls, they should be treated as if they had souls.  Similarly, a world which appears to be 4,550 million years old should be treated as being that old.

4. Accusing one’s opponents of valuing others for what ideas about the natural world they adhere to.
Either we are having a bad case of psychological projection.  Or we have a person taking it for granted everyone values others the same way as him- or herself.  There are so many other ways people can value each other.  Valuing others for seeing divine intervention everywhere is pretty much limited to their own group.

Expressions like those make me want to ask the person saying them at least one question.  Why am I supposed to have your mental characteristics?  Because people expressing they have different mental characteristics are everywhere.  I can’t see how one could entirely miss this and still have the mental facilities to learn to speak understandably.

What I am comparing to here are the severely autistic.  At worst they may not consciously communicate because they don’t see the point in doing so.  To learn them to consciously communicate one has to demonstrate concrete benefit for them.  In less severe cases you have people which entire language consists of a small number of standard phrases.  Moreover, these phrases are often used incorrectly.  There are even less severe cases where the person learns to construct his or her own sentences.  Yet the person has a fragmentary and often faulty understanding of even simple everyday words.  Expressing ideas like those listed above would be far beyond such a person’s capacity.

Uploaded on the 16th of September 2023.