Idiot Creationist Reviews On Amazon

[SilentLoner]

Okay, so today I was talking with one of my online friends. At some point in the conversation she complains to me about some creationsist books she came across on Amazon and clearly creationist reviewers leaving comments. Example? Ben Stein's "Expelled" has 3.5/4 stars in reviews.

 

In frustration she gave one of the books a 1 star review. She checked back today and finds a (predictable) IDiot reply (all ad hominem, even using other reviews she did for anime series as a basis. Now THAT gets me mad...)

(Here if anyone wants to see it:)

6 Million and Counting: Darwin, Hitler and Genocide, The Darwinian Crisis in America

http://www.amazon.com/reader/0979560853?_encoding=UTF8&ref_=sib%5Fdp%5Fpt#noop

 

So we discuss this a little longer and I advise that its pointless to get into (to quote Barney Frank: "Like talking to a dinner table")

 

But later today I myself got bored and (against my better judgement) decided to look up more of what she was talking about.

Wish I hadn't. Ah well. I'm considering going in on my account and leaving scathing reviews but I don't feel up to it at the moment (too much sleep deprivation these few days).

 

That's my vent for the week. What do you guys all think? Worth doing? Or just speak some empathy for righteous indignation at the brain-dead IDiots?

[HRDWarrior]

There's times I drop in at a christian forum, too, but I think half of my purpose is just to get my hackles up. Unless you can leave a comment without having to argue back and forth it's probably not worth your time and effort.

 

If you do feel like taking the time to do it, I'd be sure to go in with hard core facts and references about the book and what it covers. Just leaving a comment on a book you've never read I feel is not fair, no matter the topic. Christians are allowed to write a book as much as we are, so unless you have specific points to argue from the book itself, I guess I'd just figure it was nothing more than argueing for the sake of it.

[Jedah]

Something I said on another thread in response to an IDiot:

 

===========================================

 

 

Lets take a hypothetical road say everything religious zealots say about evolution is true. It's all a lie. It's all part of some evil conspiracy. So fucking what? All that would mean is that the transition of species would just be another gap in knowledge. A gap that could be just as easily be filled with Buddha, Vishnu, FSM, or the more honest answer: "I don't know". If you think disproving any scientific theory which you feel contradicts your superstitious beliefs somehow automatically makes those superstitions come true then congratulations! You have just failed to understand logic and reasoning on a basic level! You win the fabulous prize of continuing to be a delusional member of the ignorant masses. Well done.

 

 

Be honest with yourself. You don't actually care about evolution. You couldn't care less about any of the evidence behind it. You are just disturbed by the fact that it seems to contradict your beliefs. You see it as scientific proof that your worldview is false, and that deeply frightens you. So it doesn't matter how much proof of it's validity is shoved in your face, as long as there is some vague chance or way to claim it is part of some evil conspiracy or competitive religion you will cling to that straw till the day you either die or realize that the only person you are bullshitting is yourself.

 

 

================================================

 

 

I believe the same holds true for this situation. The idea that their beliefs are not watertight frightens them, so it doesn't matter how good a book is at proving evolution or how bad one is at disproving it. All that matters is their faith. If it supports their faith, it must be Good™, and if not then it is Evil™. The result of this thinking is lots of bullshit reviews from fundies who either haven't even read the book they are reviewing or completely failed to understand it's core points. Confirmation bias trumps reasoning when it comes to the mentality of the average idiot.

[DanH44]

Stuff like drives me crazy too. Did you read the first few pages of Amazon's "Look Inside"? It's full of misrepresentations, misleading comments, distortions and other garbage. For instance, on page 12 it says,

 

The essence of Darwinism is that life proceeds totally in a mechanistical way and utterly without spiritual guidance.

 

Darwinism doesn't say that life proceeds utterly without spiritual guidance; all it does is refute the claim that observed complexity REQUIRES divine intervention. The claim it makes is that the forces driving observed evolution (not life), namely sexual selection and competition for scarce resources, are sufficiently powerful to explain all the observed complexity without having to resort to spiritual guidance.

 

This is not an isolated instance. Everywhere, reality is subtlely twisted and misrepresented. A few sentences later,

 

Many Americans, including federal judges, are hoodwinked by the notion that evolution is an evident truth.

 

Come on! Federal judges are hoodwinked??? Give me a break!

 

I want to go in (to the Amazon review page) and blast away. But I've learned that arguing on the internet with IDiots is like pissing into the wind: you may feel relieved in the moment, but before long you will feel like you need to go take a shower.

 

- Dan

[LastKing]

I had simlar problem after I wrote a one star reviews for both Expelled and the Left Behind movie on IMDB. Most of my reviews either go unnotice or have only gotten one or two people to rate them but with both of these they got hit with over a dozen people trying to thumb them down. After I wrote them both I notce some of my other movies reviews that had nothing to do with religion started to get thumb down as well.