(And if you do think it’s questionable to lie, then I suppose it’s even better to just be lazy and stupid.)

A creationist defends his lackadaisical know-nothing ignorance about matters of fact so glibly, it hurts:

You are correct in that there are 30 total animal phyla; I was writing a piece to explain this concept to a general audience, and I included the chordates plus insects. You, as a revered Professor of Biology, may find my pique with my carelessness. Fine(after all, I`m not a biologist). Nonetheless, it does not matter to the argument wether there are 2, 8, 15, 30, or 2000 phila (ouch! my knuckles!); the point is that we there was no real crossovers between creatures. I suspect you understood my point, but quibble over it because you think you`ve got me. If it salves your ego to gloat, go right ahead! The fact is, the great point you think you scored was wide of the argument.

Heh. “The argument.” There was an argument? I figured it was just a bunch of wrong stuff.

Seriously. I said something like this before, PZ: These people only appear to be talking to you. They’re not. They’re signaling one another, counting coup and racking up points in an enigmatic and fundamentally irrational social ritual that means something only in their subculture. This fellow now can go off and say how he bested you, no matter how much a fool he has actually made of himself, because he isn’t trying to make a point to you, or convince you of anything.

The evidence is right there on the page: no sane person could mistake such an exchange for an attempt to convince you. He’s talking to somebody else, and he’s declaring something to them: his membership in their tribe, his faith and martyred pride, his superiority to worldly intellectuals and niggling artificialities we think of as “facts”, his strength in the face of the Bad Thing you represent.

You, the nominal correspondent, are irrelevant.