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Comments: 1164 +- Technology: College Credits For Trolling the Web? on Monday August 10 2009, @08:05AM
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Jafafa Hots writes "Some undergraduate and masters level courses at the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary require trolling as part of their requirements.
In William Dembski's classes on Intelligent Design and Christian Apologetics, 20% of the final grades come from having made 10 posts defending Intelligent Design Creationism on 'hostile' websites.
There seems to be no requirement that the posts contain original writing; apparently cut-and-paste jobs are sufficient. Is this the first case of trolling the net being part of course requirements?"
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One wonders (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It's unclear why this is a bad thing (Score:5, Funny)
I hope you get a good grade.
Parent
It's a bad thing. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you read the article, you'll see that they don't require "discussion" of any kind:
"provide at least 10 posts defending ID that youâ(TM)ve made on âoehostileâ websites, the posts totalling 2,000 words, along with the URLs (i.e., web links) to each post (worth 20% of your grade)."
The only thing this kind of sociopathic requirement causes is hit-and-run troll posts.
Also:
"What ID brings to the table is a new reexamination of facts."
This is wrong. Scientists already reexamine facts constantly. ID does not add anything useful to the discussion, because it postulates a "theory" that can neither be proven nor disproven, and doesn't make any kinds of useful predictions. That's like saying "postulating sock gnomes requires you to reexamine the facts of where you left your socks yesterday." It doesn't.
And finally:
"The other problem with ID is also prevalent in fields such as homeopathy and supernatural research. The attempt to address the issues at hand with a completely open mind leads to bad conclusions."
That, again, is wrong. Scientists are required to have a completely open mind when it comes to everything, even homeopathy. This is precisely why we have useful studies in which scientists tested the claims made by homeopathy and other "alternative" medicine. It's also why we know which of these things work, and which don't.
The ones who don't have an open mind are the people who still believe homeopathy works. Their closed-mindedness makes them unable to accept the evidence.
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Re:It's a bad thing. (Score:5, Insightful)
I have to assume by your denial of sock gnomes that you are trolling. ;p
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Re:It's a bad thing. (Score:5, Funny)
Leave it in your pockets next time you do the laundry.
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Re:It's a bad thing. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not about preaching, this is about setting up an Us vs. Them attitude in the students, to make it easier to accept the irrational. After all, the other side is evil, they wouldn't have been so mean to them if they weren't, they must be wrong...
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Re:It's a bad thing. (Score:5, Insightful)
That does seem to be what it is deliberately designed to do.
Going to a message board and having an actual discussion might, indeed, be an interesting thing to do.
But, no, they have to go somewhere 'hostile' and 'make posts'. Not have a discussion on neutral ground, which does, in fact, exist on the internet. they have to show up in a forum where they aren't welcome, and make posts that are going to get nasty responses.
There is no purpose to this except to get nasty responses, and there is no purpose to nasty responses except to make the students feel like they are persecuted, which is a ridiculously common theme in fundamentalist Christianity.
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Re:It's a bad thing. (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the persecution complex is pretty universal in Christianity, fundamentalist or not. I was brought up a Lutheran, and in the religion lessons in school it was apparently very important to know how cruelly the evil Romans persecuted the early Christians. And later on, the same thing repeats, except it's the evil Catholics persecuting us poor righteous Lutherans.
And come to think of it, it's not only Christianity. Remember that Danish cartoon thing? Lots of people were insanely butthurt by that, resulting in epic lulz.
Bottom line, a persecution complex just seems a very powerful tool to create a us vs. them mentality.
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Re:It's a bad thing. (Score:5, Informative)
More importantly, it creates a "controversy," and then they can teach the controversy [wikipedia.org].
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Re:It's a bad thing. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not a religious man, but I'm going to play devils advocate here.
Ahh.. the old "Prelude to a Troll". Let's see here...
To say that these religious systems don't make useful predictions is false.
No, it isn't. If it is true, you would have pointed to at least one such prediction. Instead, you rambled on about religious domination.
These systems must be useful, or they would have driven their adherents to extinction many generations ago.
See, just like this. You went from "useful predictions" to "useful", and then (later) on to just "full".
Please present the useful predictions that religion has made, or STFU.
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Re:It's a bad thing. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:It's a bad thing. (Score:5, Insightful)
Religions purpose in the past and now was/is to control the populace. We have less need for religion now since most of society has TV and religiously watches it for hours on end.
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Re:It's a bad thing. (Score:5, Interesting)
I am a religious man but I wouldn't defend religion by saying that religious systems make useful predictions. Nowadays you don't see many burning bushes or calls to build arks. If you do start hearing voices, it's more likely some form of mental illness than the Voice Of God. Similarly, I wouldn't say that Intelligent Design has a place anywhere near a science class unless the Philosophy or Religion classroom happens to be right down the hall.
Yes, religions that say "no one can ever have sex and if you do you must kill any resulting babies" are bound to die off, but that the surviving religions have the "correct social framework." I'm Jewish and adherents of the Jewish faith are far from dominant (conspiracy theories aside). Does that mean that we have the wrong social framework compared to Protestants/Catholics? What about Buddhists, Wiccans or even (*gasp*) Atheists?
The real reason that Christianity is the dominant religion today is that, millennia ago, a Roman emperor converted to Christianity. The might of the Roman empire was then put to task converting "heathens." Christianity itself was even altered at times to better position itself to convert non-Christian groups. For example, Germanic tribes values virginity so suddenly Mary was a virgin when Jesus was conceived and husband Joseph was tossed to the curb. Christianity didn't become the dominant religion because it was the "right" religion, but because it had the backing of a powerful empire and was willing to change itself to grow. I guess, in a way, you can say that Christianity evolved to better survive.
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Re:It's unclear why this is a bad thing (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:It's unclear why this is a bad thing (Score:5, Funny)
Why are clams on top of a mountain? Why, could it be because a bird dropped it there a million years ago...
Depends. Are we talking African or European clams?
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Re:It's unclear why this is a bad thing (Score:5, Insightful)
> especially one as hostile to religion as Slashdot
We're not hostile to religion, we're hostile to bullshit.
> ID scientists
There's no such thing, since ID isn't science. Even your buddy Michael Behe admits that in order for ID to be science, Astrology, Alchemy, New Age, Wicca, etc must also be science.
It's funny how you ID'ers can't stop contradicting yourselves:
> ID brushes away the dogma of science and brings the scientific method back to it.
> The attempt to address the issues at hand with a completely open mind leads to bad conclusions.
People like you need to understand that there is no point refuting Evolution. Evolution is the glue that holds Biology together, and without it we wouldn't have: Paleontology, Micro-biology, Medicine, Genetics, among other fields.
Here's a simple thought experiment: If Evolution is false, what created swine flu? The only other possible explanation is that God is a dick, and I don't believe that.
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Re:It's unclear why this is a bad thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Contrast that with "Intelligent Design" which offers neither real evidence or theory, nor any opportunity for falsifiability [wikipedia.org]. So as ridiculous as your claimed invention might be, it's still more scientific than ID.
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Re:It's unclear why this is a bad thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Is there any difference between the blind dogmatic stupidity of ID, and the blind dogmatic intelligence of darwinism?
Yes, one is blind and dogmatic, the other is supported by evidence.
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I wonder... (Score:5, Insightful)
Finally a respectable title (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not trolling, I'm _evangilizing_ . Time to wreck my karma with a mess of '-1 Evangilist' mods.
No (Score:5, Insightful)
undergraduate and masters level courses ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Science lessons must tackle Easter Bunny (Score:5, Funny)
The Easter Bunny should be discussed in school science lessons rather than dismissed, says the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.
"If pupils have strongly-held family beliefs about the Easter Bunny, such ideas should be explored," said Prof William Dembski (D.D, Ph. D. [P.T. Barnum University mail-order]). "Easterbunnyism, Santaclausism or the contemporary militant Tooth Fairy jihadist movement are best seen by science teachers not as a misconception but as a world view. This is more valuable than simply banging on about 'reality.' Reality-based thinking is vastly overrated and certainly won't prepare children for a career in Wall Street or in government."
Simon Underdown of Oxford Brookes University disagreed. "With so much to be crammed into science lessons, it is not a worthwhile use of time to include lessons on Easterbunnyism. We have monthly standardised testing to coach pupils on."
Professor Richard Dawkins [today.com] is working on a childrenâ(TM)s text on useful ways to quickly construct street-corner gallows and burning stakes for rehabilitation of the religious.
Copy-and-paste is okay... scary. (Score:5, Interesting)
Seminarys are strange animals (Score:5, Informative)
Disclaimer: I'm an ordained minister with a Masters of Divinity (Seminary) and a Ph.D. in New Testament (Public University).
You need to remember that seminarys are strange animals academically. The degree of academic freedom runs the gamete from little (fundamentalist schools) to a great deal (liberal seminaries). However, in almost all there is at least a set of shared convictions that are held by all, or almost all, students and faculty. Even at the most liberal, it's sort of assumed that you at least believe in God, or why are you there? Seminaries are professional schools for training pastors, not academic institutions.
SBTS is part of the "new" SBC, and so is basically fundamentalist in outlook, and virtually all students and faculty will be fundamentalist in outlook. If they weren't, they would have gone somewhere else. It's not unreasonable to assume that most students are going to hold to an ID or Creationist point of view.
Moreover, this course is almost certainly an elective, so no student is required to take it. Even then, speaking as someone who is basically Anabaptist theologically who went to a school where none of the professors were Anabaptist, all my professors were quite flexible. They had no problem with me writing from what one called my "peculiar viewpoint" so long as I did so respectfully and rigorously. I imagine a student that really had a problem for this requirement would be able to get out of it.
Last, Bill Dembski is a smart guy (I've met him), although I don't always agree with him. I rather doubt he would give full credit for "CREATI0N1SM R0X, SUX0RZ!"
Um... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is nothing to do with theology. The examples quoted make it clear that this is a political issue. One of the most depressing things for people like me, who went to a small university in the English fens before deciding that engineering was more interesting and of more benefit to the human race, is that US fundamentalists completely confuse politics and religion. The madness is spreading to the Anglican Church in the UK, where Nigerian politics is now more important than good relations with the Episcopalians.
US fundamentalism takes the form of assigning religious worth to capitalism - if God loves you, you will be materially rich - and also aligns itself with backward notions about Creationism and ID which are more about trying to prove liberals "wrong" than spreading light. The simple fact is that it requires really determined blinkers to believe either that Bible literalism has very deep roots (certainly St. Augustine would have wondered what these people were on about) or that the enormous body of information about geology and biology built up in the last 200 years admits of a fundamentalist interpretation.
To be blunt, if these seminaries were doing their jobs they would be teaching pastoral care, teaching how the New Testament (rather than some cherry picked collection of political positions) can be made relevant today, and preparing their students to heal wounds in society and reduce polarisation between social groups. Instead, they appear to be giving course credits for less violent versions of the activities that give the Taliban a bad name.
You say that seminaries are schools for training pastors, and I agree they should be. But we should then not defend "seminaries" that are training schools for bigoted ideologues who will seek to stir up division in society and spread ignorance. If this man Dembski cannot see why he is wrong on this, he needs to be hit on the head with the Sermon on the Mount till he gets a clue.
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Whoa, that site reads like a Scientology manual (Score:5, Insightful)
I was ready to give it the benefit of the doubt - after all, religion without ministry is just jerking off your soul - until I read this gem:
Jeepers, you might as well just write "I spent a full 24 hours giving myself paper cuts with the book while chanting the Lord's Prayer, so I felt I'd leveled up and skipped actually writing the 'reflection.'"
And they keep saying the word "critical review". I do not think that means what they think it means. I think they'd find any actual "critical" writing to be... Suppressive [xenu-directory.net].
Apologetics (Score:5, Interesting)
RTFA (Score:5, Insightful)
I would like to point out that "RichardDawkins.net" is definitely presenting one side of this story, and anyone who takes a brief look at the site can tell which side that is. This is a philosophy course they're referencing and if you look at the tests you'll notice that the questions are just like any philosophy course. They ask you to explain/argue both sides of an issue (one of the test questions even says argue against ID).
Speaking as a student, this is actually a brilliant form of instruction. What better way to make you understand and can use the material you've been taught then to have you defend it against people who will purposely be attacking it vehemently. This course is titled Intelligent Design so I would expect students to learn enough about it to defend it on some level. Why take the course if you're not going to learn the reasoning behind the subject matter.
Also, to everyone who has said that students shouldn't be given an assignment that makes them present/defend a viewpoint outside of their own. Try taking an english class sometime with a christian viewpoint. The stuff they require you to read and write about definitely does NOT fall within my viewpoint most of the time.
Re:That shows a serious lack of initiative (Score:5, Funny)
What do you expect from creationists? Rational thought based on your own judgment of presented evidence?
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Re:That shows a serious lack of initiative (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps not, but you'd be fool (and a hypocrite) to not prepare for the possibility.
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Re:Wait, wait, wait... (Score:5, Funny)
Congratulations, you've earned credit.
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Re:Wait, wait, wait... (Score:5, Insightful)
By the way, notice that defending their position does not include a knowledge of evolution theory. So it's really a pure trolling.
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Re:Wait, wait, wait... (Score:5, Insightful)
Both you and the submitter assume that because the course summary doesn't specify the standards by which the posts will be graded, that means there are no standards. Unless you've taken the course, neither of us is in a position to know if that's true - which suggests to me that you are assuming what you want to believe about those who disagree with you.
Considering that this assignment is 20% of the grade, and (in at least one of the courses) is one of only three assignments for the semester (including the final exam), the instructor could impose very rigerous standards when he grades the posts. Whatever standards may or may not exist, detailed assignment instructions would likely be given in the lecture rather than the course summary; so again I can only think of one reason people rush to assume there are none.
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Re:Wait, wait, wait... (Score:5, Insightful)
Last I checked there were no secular biology classes that require students to go find ID websites and defend evolution on them... Unless of course you mean making an ass of yourself spreading pseudoscientific bullshit as one of the tenets of the school's beliefs.
Here is another fun requirement for the class.
Trace the connections between Darwinian evolution, eugenics, abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia. Why are materialists so ready to embrace these as a package deal? What view of humanity and reality is required to resist them?
In fact...my outrage is that the school is actively encouraging these shit for brains to go forth and share their idiocy. Writing a paper about this crap is one thing, but actively going out and finding 'hostile' websites to post on is just being a douchebag. You might also carefully consider the fact they use the word 'hostile' to describe those who disagree with them. Now, if you are ok living under fundamentalist religion rule like the Taliban, by all means, just let them continue their push and growth. Palin 2012!
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Re:Wait, wait, wait... (Score:5, Funny)
Marketing Students should go on forums and attempt to defend ID. Bonus credit for converting people.
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Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
Bullshit.
The theory of evolution says no such thing. That's a strawman invented by the creationists themselves.
Yes, there is a "social darwinism" piece of bullshit, but it has about as much to do with the real darwinism, as JavaScript has to do with Java. I.e., except for piggy-backing on its name, not much whatsoever.
And, anyway, the real darwinism doesn't actually say "only the strong survive", and it certainly doesn't say "if you are too weak to survive we shouldn't help you."
Social species and social adaptations are in fact cases where a species survives precisely _because_ individual members who are too weak to survive on their own, are helped by other members. Ants or bees are cases where no individual member could survive and reproduce on their own at all. The workers are asexuate, and the queen pretty much can't forrage and feed on its own. The species survives precisely _because_ there is a high degree of cooperation between the individual members.
Heck, even wolves or lions (predators seem to be a favourite of proponents of "might makes right") actually have a group hunting and group survival strategy built in. Wolves couldn't reliably bag the kind of bigger game they normally feed upon, if they didn't act as a group. So, yes, a weaker member which might not survive on his own, nevertheless can survive in a group that cooperates.
Sexual selection and sexual dimorphism are also cases where evolution favours cooperation and specialization. E.g., the male lion is too big and heavy to be a good hunter on his own, while the females aren't as adapted to fight other predators. (That mane is battle armour, for example. A predator going for the male lion's neck will most often just get a mouthful of hair.) A pride survives by the _combination_ of the two specializations. And sometimes they even find more innovative ways to use that dimorphism: e.g., against bigger game, the male lion lies in ambush while the females chase the prey towards him, effectively allowing him to use his greater mass and strength without the handicap of his poorer sprint performance.
Nature and evolution are full of stuff like that. Resemblance to the "if you are too weak to survive we shouldn't help you" canard: zero.
Second, darwinism doesn't judge "fit" as "strong" or anything else. The only criterion that matters is: fit to make more offspring. Period.
For different species that can mean radically different things. For example for rabbits, the criterion isn't strength, it's just being fast and affraid enough to run away fast enough, and making lots of baby rabbits faster than the foxes can eat them.
But even that doesn't even scratch the surface of how many things can mean "the fittest." E.g., being bitter and bright coloured works just fine for ladybugs. (See, aposematism) There is no strength or speed or anything else involved. You just have to be bitter so the first bird that tries to eat you spits you back, and recognizably coloured so it learns not to try again in the future.
For some species, they don't even go the whole way with that. They don't actually have any defense of their own against a predator, but just mimick the colours of a species that does. The "being fitter" there just means the most resemblance to the real aposematic species you're immitating. That's it. That's the whole survival of the fittest in that aspect.
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Re:Wait, wait, wait... (Score:5, Insightful)
Force feeding ID and Creationism seems a bit extremist to me. Christians like my brother and parents are deeply religious weekly churchgoers and believe in evolution, not ID. My brother is even a Rush Limbaugh/Ann Coultier/Sean Hannity loving hard right Republican (and married to a left leaning liberal wife, which is pretty amusing). I'd have to assume there are many other Christians that share that belief.
The issue at hand is the guy is forcing the students to troll, and to troll with philosophy that isn't shared by all Christians, possibly not even by the students themselves. Even if they do believe it, it is kinda like sending a guy in a blue uniform and police badge and a pistol into a gang house full of people with automatic weapons alone and asking them to surrender without a fight (except without the possibility of literally getting killed... I think).
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Re:Wait, wait, wait... (Score:5, Informative)
"Even if they do believe it, it is kinda like sending a guy in a blue uniform and police badge and a pistol into a gang house full of people with automatic weapons alone and asking them to surrender without a fight (except without the possibility of literally getting killed... I think)."
Not so much... It's not that they expect anyone to be won over/surrender. The point of an exercise like this is for the "apologist" to experience repeated abuse and become disassociated to the point where they completely tune out any criticisms of their crazy belief system. That's how a lot of cult-like organizations work. It's quite effective.
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Re:Wait, wait, wait... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Wait, wait, wait... (Score:5, Insightful)
>it contradicts reality.
It also contradicts the omnipotence of God, should he exist.
I have begun asking these questions of certain Fundies: "Who are *you* to tell God what tools he can and cannot use? God created the Universe and everything in it; the quasars, black holes, galaxies, moons, planets, Earth and even the fossils in the ground. If one of God's tools is evolution, then aren't you committing the sin of hubris by saying it's impossible? You know better than God? Who are you to tell me to deny the plainly evident existence of God's tools like physics, emergent behavior, and evolution?"
It also contradicts Genesis itself. In Genesis, God wanted Adam to look around and appreciate His work. These guys say you shouldn't and that Science is BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD and you will go to HELL and burn for ETERNITY for doing the same.
Groups like this do not offer enlightenment. They only offer a worldview that is blinkered and niggardly.
--
BMO
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Re:No. (Score:5, Informative)
You know, when you make assumptions like that without actually checking the facts, you're not helping.
From their site: [swbts.edu]
Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary is accredited by the Commission on Colleges of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (1866 Southern Lane, Decatur, GA 30033, Telephone: 404-679-4500) to award bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees.
The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools [wikipedia.org] is a regional accreditation agency recognized by the DOE.
We might not like the fact that they are accredited (and they're aren't lying either, I looked it up), but that doesn't make it not true.
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Re:Full disclosure (Score:5, Insightful)
I, personally, don't see why the students should have to disclose anything. Their opinions are valid (even if their evidence is... er... patchy), and I don't see how knowing who inspired their comments would do anything but open them up for cheap ad hominem shots.
If they're really so wrong, we should be able to demonstrate it without such disclosures.
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Re:Full disclosure (Score:5, Insightful)
Their opinions are valid (even if their evidence is... er... patchy)
An argument is valid if and only if the truth of its premises entails the truth of its conclusion.
They may have a right to their opinion, as idiotic as those may be, but that doesn't make them valid.
Parent
Re:Full disclosure (Score:5, Insightful)
This seems to be less about ID and more about not getting civil responses. The professors don't give two shits about convincing anybody in the forums of anything.
Getting the students to do this, takes a retarded worldview and forces them to plop it down where it really wasn't invited with the inevitable hostile responses.
Which in turn, indoctrinates or say... brainwashes the students into viewing the outside, thinking world as a hostile place to their kind.
And, thus insures the students stick to their kind and stop looking at the outside world (especially the Internet) as a place to get good information.
This is simply brainwashing. A clever way to do it granted, but that doesn't change the affect on the student. They still come out suspicious and feeling attacked by the internet and non-whack people, the effect desired by the school administrators.
Parent
Re:Intelligent Design Creationism? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah, no.
Creationism = "god did it."
Intelligent Design = "Something Big (possibly called God) did it."
I have a really, really tough time understanding how these are rather distinct. Even those who first promoted intelligent design see them as the same thing, only removing God from Intelligent design, since that was the major reason why creationism couldn't be taught in schools.
Anyways, Neither creationism or ID have anything to do with young earthers (or at least are only tangentially related). Young Earthers took all the dates/ages in the bible, added them up, and came to 6,000 years, so therefore, the earth must only be 6,000 years old.
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An ID'er *could also* believe in evolution (Score:5, Interesting)
I've tried to spend some time examing the scientific evidence for the age of the universe and the evidence for evolution. I've come to the conclusion that the Universe most likely is Billions of years old, because there are just too many things that can't reasonably be explained simply by the idea that God created the Universe 6 or 10 thousand years ago (if he did, why bother making the universe have bizarre things that otherwise would indicate a very old universe).
However, looking at the amazing complexities of life, I still feel that given the long odds, the 'completely random permutation moderated by natural selection' isn't wholly sufficient to explain all life either. So, I fall into the camp of those who believe in God, believe that he had a plan when creating the Universe to cause life to arise on Earth (and possibly elsewhere; the Bible neither excludes the possibility, nor indicates it positively, and science has yet to find evidence of life elsewhere, but allows and renders it likely).
I believe he used a mechanism of evolution in 'creating' life on earth, but I think it's also possible that he fine-tuned the Universe to overcome the 'long odds' that would otherwise be against the random generation of life and rise of very complex organisms. That's not to say he was constantly intervening in evolution. If God is all knowing and all powerful, then it's perfectly plausible that he fine tuned everything from the start of the big bang such that from that point on, everything would happen that was necessary for life to arise somewhere in the Universe.
Am I an IDer? Am I a creationist? Am I an evolutionist? I'd say I'm not really a creationist, and most of the creationists would say I'm not, I suspect. Am I an IDer? My views, I think, would loosely fall into the ID camp because it is much less stringent about the 'how' and 'when' of the way that Intelligent Design was worked out (although, probably most IDers believe in a much more 'active' intervention in the design of life than I do). I do basically believe that evolution is correct, though I view it as less random than pure evolutionary theory suggests.
I think your statement that ID == Creationism (in disguise) is ignorant of the facts of the differing views of people.
However, all that said, I don't think ID should be taught in *science* class. It's not a matter of science, and I have no problem admitting that. I think it would be appropriate for it to be part of a philosophy and religion class, because that's more of what it is. I think it's appropriate for schools, both public and private, to have classes that educate students about the most commonly believed religions and philosophies (such classes, particularly in public schools, should be held from, as much as possible, a neutral perpective - anthropology rather than catechism - learning *what* people believe, rather than trying to convince students to believe one thing or another). People shouldn't graduate from high school without knowing anything at all about Judeaism, Chrisitianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism, Universalism, Atheistic Humanism, Existentialism, etc).
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Wolf in sheeps' clothing (Score:5, Insightful)
The term "Intelligent Design Creationism" seems to me a little unhelpful.
Intelligent design and (young earth) creationism are in general rather distinct, although the rather large differences are sometimes blurred both by proponents trying to gather support and by opponents who want to simply ridicule both groups instead of trying to reason with them.
No. Creationists who disguise themselves as scientists call themselves "intelligent design proponents", IDers are just dishonest creationists.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Of_Pandas_and_People#Pandas_and_.22cdesign_proponentsists.22 [wikipedia.org]
The term "creationists" was changed to "design proponents", but in one case the beginning and end of the original word "creationists" were accidentally retained, so that "creationists" became "cdesign proponentsists".
The basic metabolic pathways (reaction chains) of nearly all organisms are the same. Is this because of descent from a common ancestor, or because only these pathways (and their variations) can sustain life? Evolutionists think the former is correct, cdesign proponentsists accept the latter view.
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Re:Troll, n. - Someone who disagrees with me (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:They don't require trolling (Score:5, Insightful)
The directive is to make ID arguments in, quote, hostile websites.
Why don't they do something easier, like question President Obama's economic policies or the wisdom of a Governmental takeover of the health care system on a site like Daily Kos? At least then you'd be arguing a position in a hostile environment that may have merit -- there isn't much merit to ID and arguing it is the rough equivalent of the 9/11 truthers or the whackjobs that think Obama isn't a native born American citizen.
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