People who just aren't helping.

This will require a little background...

A few weeks ago while I was engaging in some discussion about evolution in a comments section somewhere I encountered a poster who goes by the name of "Human Ape" who is... well, very angry about some things. That's something I can empathize with, since I happen to get pretty angry about a lot of the same things he does.

I didn't really have much interaction with him but apparently he clicked through the links to my blog, read some stuff here, and posted a comment in "The Creationist Mindset" post stating, and I quote:

"Lance is a typical creationist. Too stupid to understand anything. I admire the patience you have with idiots."

I replied, and moved on. Then the other day while I was wandering through the blogosphere I came across this post on his blog.

First of all, asshole Christians, intelligent design creationism and Bible creationism are the exact same things, and if you deny this obvious fact you're a fucking liar.


If you retards call magic "design" it's still magic. Understand Christian assholes? If not you can fuck off.


...

...and, well, it continued on.

Recognizing the author as the same person who just three weeks ago was admiring my "patience with idiots" I left a comment suggesting that getting that worked up about the issue was counter-productive and he really might want to try taking a deep breath and counting to 10 before posting these things. Which led to this, and this.

Apparently in three weeks Human Ape's position on the possession of patience with dealing with creationists had gone from "I admire that" to "that makes you responsible for terrorism".

That's quite the impressive turnaround in his worldview in less than a month.

Now the problem I have here isn't with some angry person on the internet calling me names. It's with some angry person on the internet running around everywhere making atheists look like people with Tourette syndrome and serious anger management issues. I'm engaged in an effort to employ reason and logic to bring undertanding of certain complex scientific realities to people who don't understand them and don't believe in them... and I really don't need my position being associated with conduct like this. It doesn't exactly make my task easier. I can understand the occasional outburst, dealing with this particular debate can ger *really* incredibly frustrating... but when you start declaring that the only two sides of the issue are that you're either screaming profanity at creationists or you're a terrorist sympathizer we're a little beyond that.

Now apparently making this point to this particular person is not really an option that is available consideering the response it generated the first time I tried it... but for anyone else out there feeling frustrated when you discuss evolution or religion with fundamentalists and feeling the urge to scream obscenities at them... could you please fight it? For me?

I'll give you a cookie...