I have seen so many talks by and interviews with people who claim to have deconverted from evolution. They all claim pretty similar stuff. Sometimes eeriely similar. Often they talk about being angry. Then they’ll go on to claim that they directed that anger at god, that that was why they bought into the ‘lie’ of evolution and that all atheiests are just like they were, angry at god. It’s funny how closely what they talk about resembles the strawman young earth creationists believe about atheiests and secularists and all those things those people wish where true about us.

I find this very strange because with such large numbers involved on both sides there should , purely statisticly speaking, be a reasonably decent pool of converts each way just down to chance and circumstance. Yet they keep resorting to pushing people who don’t remotely understand the mindset of the groups they claimed they once were part of. Despite that they keep troting them out like they’re a prized bull.

I have seen incel channels full of interviews with random people on the street where they were pushing a narrative of rampent misandry. Interview after interview of women chippily admiting to very hateful stuff about men on camera without an ounce of shame. But of course they wouldn’t have shame they were answering very carefully crafted hypotheticals that they thought were asked in good faith. A few decptive edits to remove their reasonable response’s context and all of a sudden the incels have justification for their anger. The interviews get shared around and around by people who have already decided where they stand but want vindication for their bigotry. ‘Look how common that hate for men is’ they cry, clearly showing how rarely they talk to other people.

I have listened to talks by people who have claimed to have seen the edge of the world or have claimed to have the alien corpses kept at Roswell. I have read statements by someone claiming that they went to a cancer ward, convinced the doctors to inject all the patients with their essential oils which cured everyone of their cancer. I have listened to interviews with anti vaxers claiming to have personally seen wards full of ‘vaccine causalties’ that’s being covered up somehow.

Have some people switched from accepting evolution to young earth creationism? It has to have happened at some point. Are their some misandrists out there? There has to be. Are they anywhere near as prevelant as either of those two groups pretend? Absolutely not. They have a vested interest in pushing the idea that both those things are far more common than they are. Interviews are just ancedotes and no matter how many ancedotes you horde they will never coalesce into evidence.

Do some transgender people regret transitioning? It has to have happened at least once just based off numbers alone Are there a lot? No there aren’t. To an actually surprising degree. But that surprising degree shouldn’t actually be that surprsining; You see before all the irreversible medical procedures there is a bunch of indepth psychological evaluations aimed at filtering out people who would regret it later. We’ve actually gotten pretty good at that. Not that it’s that hard there tends to be some strong and obvious indicators. So I will pose a hypothetical of my own; Even if there was a lot of regretful trangender folk is the answer to ban trans health care altogether or invest in better evaluations and better understanding of it?

Of course there are individuals who regret it. There are individuals who regret any decision one can possibly make in life. But it’s worth noting that, statistically, the regret rates for gender affirming surgeries are among the lowest of any medical intervention done anywhere in the world, by a large margin.

I know you’ve heard their stories, because there are people with very specific agendas who are dedicated to weaponizing their stories. But it’s useful to remember that the plural of “anecdote” is not “data”.