trinityvixen (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
trinityvixen) wrote2004-11-23 10:35 am
trinityvixen) wrote2004-11-23 10:35 am
Creationists are at it again...
So, an ABC News brief popped up about people who want to leave the US because it's not the country of freedom any more (people from mild-mannered college professors to a woman managing a gay/lesbian wedding planning/vendor site who's received so many threats she's already moved twice). This was great...then I saw what's really ticked me off: an article titled "Conservatives Demand Changes at Nation's Parks."
At first, it's irksome, but, I think, fair, that Reverend I'msuchagoodperson wants there to be footage from pro-life, anti-gay marriage protests shown in with other protests that have been held at the Lincoln Memorial Plaza...if there were any. The Park Service grumbles about changing the video, but, in the spirit of fairness, if...and this is a pretty big if...if there were such protests, they ought to be included. There will be no left-wing revisionist histories at public places any more than there will be right-wing histories. However, if that Holier-than-thou idiot insists and WINS the right to remove footage from the tape shown at the memorial because it shows pro-gay marriage, pro-choice marches, I'll scream. He wants one scene in particular removed: the one of a gay man holding a sign saying "The Lord is my Shephed and knows I'm gay." I can see why that might upset his carefully constructed gays=the antiChrist stance, but fair's fair, and that guy definitely was at the Memorial. When Mr. Preacherman can bring up the dead baby proof, he can have some time, too. It's just that the Lincoln Memorial has historically attracted the oppressed--you know, like the Jews were under the Pharoah in the O.T.? Or like the draftees in Vietnam? Or gays?
What really, really pissed me off was the inclusion of "The Grand Canyon: A Different View" at the bookstore associated with that national park. This is written by an author who's declared himself born again and says that there's no way the geological record can possibly be right because the Grand Canyon--in fitting the the Biblical timeline--is only a few thousand years old. He prefers to believe that the Grand Canyon was caused by the Biblical flood, the one with Noah and the ark and all that, which he believes because he met the Lord...those are his words, too.
The Park Service, to their credit, are bristling, as the stated purpose in their mission is "to promote the use of sound science in all of its programs, including public education." This isn't the freakin Galapagos Islands. Hell, this isn't even Hawaii with its convergently evolved spiders and their similar webs. This isn't supposed to be an evolutionary debate, just a "HOW OLD IS THIS BIG CRACK?" (he he). The fact that someone, despite accepting physics and chemistry, the less 'controversial' sciences, can then sit back and say the findings using applied theories of those disciplines (carbon dating, other forms of radioactive decay, etc etc etc to age rock however they do it) are bullshit....God, it makes me SO mad.
Why? Why is it that the Earth can't be older than the Bible? That one has absolutely ZERO Biblical support. In the beginning, as the story goes, the Earth was a dark planet devoid of life....kinda like rocks. Rocks don't need the breath of God to crack, break up, build up, crumble, or turn into mountains. People can, even from the Creationist viewpoint, still be only 4,000 years old (if they spontaneously pop into being as Adam and Eve and get started from there) even if you admit the Earth is older. The Earth's natural formations could and did occur for millions, even billions of years before lightning zapped primitive molecules into being RNA, then DNA, and so on upwards. Why does it have to be man-made? Or, rather, God-made directly? There's no Biblical evidence that God wanted anything to do with the Earth until Genesis, so therefore nothing could happen? GROWL...
And they're selling this asshole's book next to LEGITIMATE SCIENCE BOOKS. So, someone's going to pick it up expecting "The story of the Grand Canyon dates back the first fissures some 1,000,000 years ago, in the such-and-such period," and get "OMG GOD MADE THE WORLD AND MAN AND EVERYTHING!!! IF YOU BELIEVE OTHERWISE YOUR GOING TO HELL! THE GRAND CANYON CANT BE OLDER BECAUSE GOD MADE IT!!! AND THE BIBLE SAYS ITS NOT THAT OLD!!!!!" (punctuation errors are intentional--I doubt that anyone who can't trust geological time could find the marks on the keyboard--he's probably still writing in manuscript form because the electronic word is the Devil)
At first, it's irksome, but, I think, fair, that Reverend I'msuchagoodperson wants there to be footage from pro-life, anti-gay marriage protests shown in with other protests that have been held at the Lincoln Memorial Plaza...if there were any. The Park Service grumbles about changing the video, but, in the spirit of fairness, if...and this is a pretty big if...if there were such protests, they ought to be included. There will be no left-wing revisionist histories at public places any more than there will be right-wing histories. However, if that Holier-than-thou idiot insists and WINS the right to remove footage from the tape shown at the memorial because it shows pro-gay marriage, pro-choice marches, I'll scream. He wants one scene in particular removed: the one of a gay man holding a sign saying "The Lord is my Shephed and knows I'm gay." I can see why that might upset his carefully constructed gays=the antiChrist stance, but fair's fair, and that guy definitely was at the Memorial. When Mr. Preacherman can bring up the dead baby proof, he can have some time, too. It's just that the Lincoln Memorial has historically attracted the oppressed--you know, like the Jews were under the Pharoah in the O.T.? Or like the draftees in Vietnam? Or gays?
What really, really pissed me off was the inclusion of "The Grand Canyon: A Different View" at the bookstore associated with that national park. This is written by an author who's declared himself born again and says that there's no way the geological record can possibly be right because the Grand Canyon--in fitting the the Biblical timeline--is only a few thousand years old. He prefers to believe that the Grand Canyon was caused by the Biblical flood, the one with Noah and the ark and all that, which he believes because he met the Lord...those are his words, too.
The Park Service, to their credit, are bristling, as the stated purpose in their mission is "to promote the use of sound science in all of its programs, including public education." This isn't the freakin Galapagos Islands. Hell, this isn't even Hawaii with its convergently evolved spiders and their similar webs. This isn't supposed to be an evolutionary debate, just a "HOW OLD IS THIS BIG CRACK?" (he he). The fact that someone, despite accepting physics and chemistry, the less 'controversial' sciences, can then sit back and say the findings using applied theories of those disciplines (carbon dating, other forms of radioactive decay, etc etc etc to age rock however they do it) are bullshit....God, it makes me SO mad.
Why? Why is it that the Earth can't be older than the Bible? That one has absolutely ZERO Biblical support. In the beginning, as the story goes, the Earth was a dark planet devoid of life....kinda like rocks. Rocks don't need the breath of God to crack, break up, build up, crumble, or turn into mountains. People can, even from the Creationist viewpoint, still be only 4,000 years old (if they spontaneously pop into being as Adam and Eve and get started from there) even if you admit the Earth is older. The Earth's natural formations could and did occur for millions, even billions of years before lightning zapped primitive molecules into being RNA, then DNA, and so on upwards. Why does it have to be man-made? Or, rather, God-made directly? There's no Biblical evidence that God wanted anything to do with the Earth until Genesis, so therefore nothing could happen? GROWL...
And they're selling this asshole's book next to LEGITIMATE SCIENCE BOOKS. So, someone's going to pick it up expecting "The story of the Grand Canyon dates back the first fissures some 1,000,000 years ago, in the such-and-such period," and get "OMG GOD MADE THE WORLD AND MAN AND EVERYTHING!!! IF YOU BELIEVE OTHERWISE YOUR GOING TO HELL! THE GRAND CANYON CANT BE OLDER BECAUSE GOD MADE IT!!! AND THE BIBLE SAYS ITS NOT THAT OLD!!!!!" (punctuation errors are intentional--I doubt that anyone who can't trust geological time could find the marks on the keyboard--he's probably still writing in manuscript form because the electronic word is the Devil)
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He could have created the neurons in our brains to simulate the memories of everything that had gone on before, and created the world in such a way that it would look like it had been around for billions of years. Hey, he can do anything, he's God :)
So anybody who doesn't believe in evolution solely based on the bible? Is an idiot, because there's absolutely nothing contradictory in the concept that, 5765 years ago, God created the world as though evolution had always existed, and that the rules of it have been in place ever since. Why not?
Besides which, why do they have to take the whole seven-days-of-creation thing so damn literally? No reason it can't represent the passage of billions of years, especially given that days didn't really exist in the concept we know of them before the Earth settled into its current orbit and rotation...
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Where I think Creationists *really* miss out is in considering the beautiful, poetic irony-that's-not-quite in the way the Bible describes the creation of the world and the way that science does. The best origin of life explanation is the primordial ooze that was struck by lightning. Why isn't that a less dramatic (or, perhaps, a more dramatic) reality that is metaphorized in the Bible's description of man being culled together from dirt? What, exactly, do people think the primordial ooze was? It's basically wet dirt and more water, mud and ocean, where millions of tiny particles just lay drifting until a catalyst bonded certain atoms and molecules together, which gave rise to cells, bacteria, protists, and other multi-cellular. If the lightning bolts aren't the breath of God breathing life into the planet, what is? Isn't it terribly romantic to think that the men who inscribed the Torah and later the Bible were, in some way, accounting for the mystery that is all life beginning by noticing what was going on in their world? That life often, seemingly spontaneously, sprang from nothing? From dirt?
Thinking about evolution, and where higher organisms came from, it all dominoes back towards that one bacteria that survived better because it encased its DNA in a membrane. It out-competed, and then, millions of years later, suddenly the eukaryotes that were multicellular were the hot item of the week. Then it was tissues, then organs, and you don't need to get much farther along the development process before you have man. It's all he is, really, a bunch of better-constructed cells than the other guy, some tissues, some organs, and systems to coordinate.
If we go back to your notion that maybe God had us pop into existance yesterday with the idea that, because he's God, he's able to make up all our memories and experiences, it begs the question: why? Mostly, I reject that line of argument because if God is who we believe He is, who the people who might argue such a theory believe He is, He wouldn't do that. There's no point to the free-will we are given if free will has never really existed. Also, if you believe that God is the sort to do that, to be dishonest with man and to build a planet solely that man's intelligence, stolen from the Garden of Eden's apple tree, would be faulty, you're describing a different God from that most religions believe in. That's okay, too, but if you suddenly start ascribing the Creationist theory support that undermines belief in the God that Creationism is supposed to hold up, well, the argument just falls apart doesn't it?
That was a bit circular, but I think I made the point. Might have to give it a go again later...
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Though, to add, the truly wicked part about all of this is that in the US the bible in its english translation is taken to be the word of God rather than the original hebrew and greek. It's been claimed as "our religion" and seperated from its source and all the possible connotations involved within the languages and cultures of its origin. It's a religion which has forgotten its basic history and now sees the present as everything of importance... except that nothing existed before x-thousands of years ago, that they care about, and the story of Jesus, that too.
What I'd like to know is at what point in Genesis it describes the parts in which God placed all of the fossils and petroleum into the ground. Seems like they'd have mentioned something about the bones of giants being pushed beneath the earth or something like that. Unless of course all the bones are really those of fallen angels and demons who were sent here before God started to make any cool stuff, and who happened to look a lot like many animals still around. Wow, it's so easy to spin off and have fun with this. Animals are really demons!! Fear your pet dog!!
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Woah, I missed this one. What is the deal with this? Articles?
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http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=235904&page=1
The Park Service woes:
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=273668&page=1
I think she mentioned death threats, this poor woman. But, Lord bless her, she's staying because of business reasons. If only all people thought capitalistically...
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And most of the sites I find are about the battle between creationists and geologists on this point. Even the scientific articles I found at least make passing mention of creationist theories!! What the hell is with these people? It probably isn't productive to say they should shut up and go home, but they should shut up and go home.
I'll add that no one anywhere else in the world believes in any of this sort of shit. I remember hearing once about a column were Stephen Jay Gould talked about having to explain about creationism and how he had to spend too much time defending against it to European scientists who'd never even heard of it. I'm not particularly enamored of most of the rest of the world, but it's one (more) place where it's a total embarrassment for the USA.
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I hate that we're so Puritan. Wasn't the whole point of this country to escape religious oppression? Isn't that what we're supposed to be commemorating Thursday? Or was it just that the most asshole-y uber-religious nutjobs got kicked out of England?
I'd watch the news over Thanksgiving if I were you people. See what they try to turn *that* holiday into. I think I might really enjoy or REALLY REALLY DETEST this holiday season. If, as I suspect, the uber-right tries to re-write the first Thanksgiving as triumph of religion over paganism versus the search for freedom of expression and brotherhood with your fellow man (no matter how many feathers are in his cap), I fear for this country more than I already do. On the other hand, THanksgiving's story might put a well-needed kick to the right, reminding them that we are a free people first, and a Godly people on our own damned time as we see fit. Christmas should continue the joy? Does the Christian Right seriously expect it to be any less crass and commercial this year now that "The Passion" is on DVD and Dubya holds court in DC? Bullshit. I'm going to enjoy the umpteenth repeat of "Dominic the Christmas Donkey" and "The Chipmunks Christmas Album" a lot more.
*THAT* is what the stupid religious right should worry about--they preach too had and they'll find even the religious among the left leaning back just to spite them. Let's spite the right! Everyone vow only to sing songs about Santa this Christmas!
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It's not just one, believe me. A lot of damage has been done. How they expected us to learn biology without evolution is beyond me. I had to do a lot of outside studying to pass the tests.
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See, I would think that most of these places, the majority of which are the states that cheer the "No Child Left Behind" regimen of testing kids, would want them to know all the information they're tested on. Yeah, for sure, tell those Red Staters that Evolution is BS, but have them learn it so they can decide for themselves...and pass those exams...
Meanwhile, us blue-staters will grind our teeth about how come the 'theory' of evolution will never be taken as fact because of such school systems...::sighs::
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...which is the problem in its entirety. People read to interpret, yet somehow they're offended when outsiders suggest that the word of God is metaphorical in many respects. Clearly, the laws of Leviticus, about a woman having to be forced out of her village when she has her period, brother's of deceased men having to marry the widow, having many wives in general, are no longer practical. I wonder, if confronted with these laws, and told "You must choose: all or none," how soon fundamentalists would sign up for those old restrictions.
If the word is perfect, you cannot question any of it. If you choose to question or negate by ommision, that's tantamount to sin. So, either it's all or none, baby.
Interesting thing about the English translation you mentioned above--wasn't there some woman in Texas who said "English was good enough for Jesus, so it should be good enough for them" re: Spanish-speaking immigrants from Mexico?
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ENGLISH WAS GOOD ENOUGH FOR JESUS!!!!!!!!!!!