ABSTRACT
Rhetorical questions are a ubiquitous element of Evolution Wars communications. This chapter relays how such queries can enhance media influence by inciting doubts about adversaries, while identifying how these types of questions serve as emotional expedients and are employed by antievolutionists in conjunction with recurring Darwin-skeptic conspiracy narratives. An overarching trend in Evolution Wars media involves the use of negative rhetoricals to deride opposing individuals and ideas. This occurs most frequently in antievolutionist and New Atheist communications, with hostile queries asked not truly for their answers but for their effects. In punctuating the apparent folly of rivals, such questions engender the mental processing of communications, while provoking audience interest regarding the source delivering the messages in which such rhetoricals appear. It is observed that many Darwin-skeptic rhetorical questions connote that evolutionists are covertly doctoring data and that Young Earth Creationism is the victim of a corrupted scientific establishment. Such queries feature the same types of assertions central to most conspiracy theories. The chapter thus considers the influential qualities of conspiracist ideation and how conspiratorial claims are part and parcel of antievolutionist broadcasts.
