I received an e-mail recently from someone whom I banned for trollish behavior, which seemed to me to be wasting the time of not only myself, but also other commenters. The individual in question was demonstrably dishonest, and refused to interact with evidence. The e-mail illustrates the same persistent claim or belief that the individual in question had presented evidence for their own viewpoint, and that others had not adequately responded, when the reverse is true. I’m not sure whether the individual is dishonest or delusional or both. But I wonder whether to respond, and if so how.

How would you try to get through to someone who wrote the words below?

Hello, [NAME] here whom you banned from the forums for supposedly being a troll. Which I contest. In fact it is you who has been name calling and being disrespectful but I am going to forgive and overlook that behavior. I am unclear as to what you want me to say or do in order to be unbanned. I stand by the scriptures which state that entropy started after a literal day six of creation (sun up, sun down, Yom) because of man’s sin and effected everything including plant life. (Thorns and thistles now appear). I do not see any evidence for the geological time periods where fossils appear as they draw the chart in science books. They don’t even show a real picture. I have shown clear scientific evidence that chalk cliffs can form rapidly and did so during the flood period where many marine animals died rapidly in different parts of the ocean due to volcanic and mass flooding activity. This also distributed and layed down the fossils we find today. You can put dirt and water in a jar, shake it up and see the same results. No one has observed a planet forming nor the earth forming. There is no possible way to measure the age of the earth unless you answer how many and of what isotopes were there when the Earth began to be a solid sphere. I have asked you numerous times and you have not answered that question. Also, since the scriptures say that God “stretched out the heavens” I do not see how we can give an age to the universe either. I do not feel that I am being deceitful in any way. Quite the opposite. I think many of the scientists that come to certain conclusions about things we can’t observe, test, nor repeat are the ones coming to the wrong conclusions and it certainly is not a bad thing to be able to openly discuss these things, regardless of which conclusions we accept or do not accept. As long as it is done in a civil fashion.

How do you get through to someone who makes claims about shaking a jar that they have clearly never tried? Perhaps I should show them this video, which addresses that claim, and also addresses chalk formation?

Should I direct them to mainstream scientific sources such as those made available by the NCSE, and specifically Christian sources such as this article at BioLogos that address the Biblical and scientific evidence?

The problem is, I think that I and commenters on this blog have tried all that multiple times with this individual, and more, and he just keeps pretending that we have not done so.

I hate leaving someone in ignorance. But I also hate to let someone just repeat the same things over and over again, while those who actually know something about these subjects are forced to repeat the same answers over and over again.

How would you respond, if at all?