I do, but I probably shouldn't. Annoyed is probably a better word for it. It is frustrating talking with them sometimes. Two of the most brilliant people I know are creationists, but they refuse to consider any possibility that doesn't fit their religious worldview or timetable. Start telling them about a galaxy that's a few billion lightyears away, or an ancient civilization that's 8000 years old and you'll be promptly informed that you've been deceived by atheist falsehoods.

I suppose it's annoyance most of all with a philosophy and theology that claims to know everything infallibly, and holds disagreement or disbelief as a moral fault. Perfectly well meaning people who believe YEC or ID will assault enterprises like biology or astronomy because they consistently produce results that conflict with the "infallible" worldview that they've accepted. A lot of flack has been put in the air about science's inherent flaws as a "materialist" philosophy, or about our "atheist" ulterior motives that's just not true. The possiblity that science arrives at the conclusions that it does because those conclusions are apparent from physical evidence is discounted.

And how is someone like a high-school student or a disinterested citizen supposed to decide between these two competing models of biology anyway? A student has no firsthand access to evidence or anything. He only hears both sides' allegations and can only make a decision on the truth of something so secondhand and remote from everyday experience based on social pressure.

I suppose the root of it is that when people must learn about things, and make decisions about them secondhand, especially while they're young, there is little they can do to choose between two competing worldviews. And when one of them is promoted by people operating off an entirely different definition of "TRUTH" (with capital letters, for emphasis I guess), and interested in converting as many of them as possible for an entirely different reason than the plausibility of their model to explain the world (in order to convert and "save" them), then people who stand for the other sort of truth (knowledge of the actual state of the world) have to defend themselves.

Will we one day decide what is true based on how popular it is, or how it fits our pre-conceived notions? If that is the case, then any ideologue operating off of an "infallible" source will be capable of leading people over a cliff.

So there is a natural emnity between those who "know" the TRUTH and those who attempt to find out the truth. The former make it very difficult for the latter to operate.


And it isn't just YECs either. In politics this sort of behavior reigns supreme. I have had teachers who would, with a straight face, denigrate democracy and laud communism to our political science classes. There's an endless list of excuses out there as to why one is succeeding and the other failing when, according to the TRUTH it should be the other way around. Many high-schoolers are taught to be communists despite the horrific effect it has had on the world. Fortunately, about half of them are cured of it after getting a job and working for a living.