Dover, PA- God Hates You!
Recently the people of Dover, PA voted out the school board members that tried to teach our kids crap in the place of science. More precisely, they voted out the members that strove to subvert the teaching of the scientific method, permitting "intelligent design" as a scientific model describing the origins of life. Wisely, voters realized how important it is to keep facts and beliefs as separate entities, and not teach myth, legend and fable as empirical evidence.
Yesterday Pat Robertson, the famous foot-in-mouth, corrupt leader of the 700 Club and the Christian Coalition, expressed his opinions. He said, "I'd like to say to the good citizens of Dover: If there is a disaster in your area, don't turn to God. You just rejected him from your city... If they have future problems in Dover, I recommend they call on Charles Darwin. Maybe he can help them."
Well Pat, I think we need to take your thoughts just a little bit farther:
Nobody ever flew a jetliner into a skyscraper in the name of Charles Darwin.
Nobody ever killed a physician rendering medical aid to women to satisfy Charles Darwin.
A president never invaded another country, killing 2051 brave American soldiers, because of an edict from Charles Darwin.
Nobody ever threatened the life of someone for not believing in Charles Darwin.
Millions of Muslims were never slain in Crusades ignited by a belief in Charles Darwin.
"Heretics" were never tortured and killed because church felt their actions were inconsistent with the teaching of Charles Darwin.
The Spanish Inquisition didn't use their love of Charles Darwin to pour boiling oil into the mouths of those who criticized the church.
Catholics and Protestants in Ireland never killed each other over their interpretations of evolution.
Charles Darwin never created a storm, he doesn't let children die every day from preventable disease. Darwin doesn't let people suffer, influence leaders into genocide. Nobody has ever used coercion of satisfying Darwin to get into an alter boy's underoos, and then used money donated to the House of Darwin to wiggle out of it.
You get the point. Perhaps if we all started to read the teachings of Darwin and hold the scholarly, objective, pursuit of hypothesis-driven science as sacred we could faster distill fact from belief and physical constants from myths. Most of all, we would not have to endure the endless hypocrisy of Robertson and the other evangelicals that claim to have all the answers, passed along from an invisible man in the sky.
So Dover PA, God and his followers hate you. However, you'll find a throng of supporters out here that recognize your actions and commend you on a wise decision. Your children will be the next generation of doctors and scientists while the Kansas kids will mature into God-fearing twits that preach to you about what a moron you are through the drive-thru speaker.
If disaster or misfortune ever hits Dover, pray to God. Then email Schmootzie. See who shows up first and does what is right to help a person in need.
posted by Schmootzie @ 5:25 AM
12 Comments:
RIGHT ON SCHMOOTZIE
If you were a chick I'd marry you!
Yup, I'd have to be a chick because the same people that want to teach our kids fantasy also don't think that legitimate intimate love can exist between two dudes.
The Bible is in control pal, smell the chloroform, do what it says...
schmootzie:
Ah, but you neglect the 80 million in the 20th century who have been killed by Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot in the name of atheistic materialism, who propose a paradise without the opium of the masses, religion. Add that to your selective memory.
logician-
No doubt, my rather unselective memory freely acknowledges that there are plenty of atheist assholes that dot the history books. You can find atrocities committed by them too.
However, they are not the ones claiming to be pius and holy. They are not the ones using a supernatural magic force to threaten and control people. Maybe you'd even expect it out of people that boast the absence of a moral compass.
The day we start teaching religious bullshit as science will be a sad day for America. Why? Because ultimately time shows that religious perspectives on physical realities are generally WRONG. Ask Galileo.
BTW... The majority in the Hitler regime were Christians.
So we've established that atheists kill people and that Christians kill people.
What does Darwin have to do with either? Whether I magically appeared here yesterday or am the culmination of a few billion years of organic molecules bopping around at random has absolutely nothing to do with whether I should or should not kill other human beings.
Contrary to the Logician's implications, Darwin has little to do with communism, or atheistic materialism, or even Social Darwinism, all of which predate the publication of his theories. Hitler and his ilk may have cited Darwin's theories as justification, but he also cited Christian doctrine...
Regardless, a bad interpretation of good a good idea does not make the original idea bad. It just makes the interpreter wrong.
The same thing could be said of much of the bible.
I thought about this more today. History shows that Pol Pot, Mao, Hitler, etc were deplorable. We identify that their tactics and movites were inconsistent with the progression of civilized society. We hold them accountable. We vow not to repeat their heinous actions.
On the other hand, the atrocities committed for God continue. They are excused, hidden and even endorsed by fearful followers. Molesters and financial con men use the name of god to hide from prosecution. Followers give them a free pass.
Time will show that the refutation of scientific evidence that does not fit conveniently the chrurch's narrow paradigm to be another crime of the church.
Of course, they'll never be held accountable or admit to being wrong, at least for 500 years.
Last I checked the earth is NOT flat, 3000 years old and in the center of the universe.
Rest assured, that if someone on Hitler's staff claim to be "Christian," they'd be unlike any Christian Christ would favor. A lot of things are done in the name of God and Christ and are deplorable. I also think Robertson's comments are over the top. It's inflammatory.
I think I kick into gear when the crusades are again brought up. There is so much myth and legend mixed in with the history that I get miffed over it. Another is Galileo. No doubt the Church made mistakes, but intelligent design doesn't fall into that catagory. There's a huge dialogue taking place now in the philosophical community over it. It's a rethink of one of Thomas Aquinas' five ways. So it's not the voodoo you think. It's a sound argument that has more grounding than evolution. Yet, I think Christians need to back off a bit on their polemics against evolution. The search for truth by honest scientists will unearth all sorts of stuff if we let them.
UL-
That is a very fair assessment. Kudos to you. Although I don't believe in a higher power, I certainly am open to the possibility. All I need is a little proof. We've had this discussion before.
Christians etc would be well served to accept hypothesis-based objective finding and build them into their assertions of Creation. They should use legitimate evidence to bolster their beliefs.
Instead they discount scientific evidence because it does not fit their idealistic and simplistic models. It is such a joke here in scientific academia. Everyone's presentations and talks at conferences has and "intelligent" component that says, "well we don't understand it, so it is too complex and we're not going to bother looking at it".
If they would no spend so much time fighting what is real and proven they would find much more support. I don't think anyone hates the idea of an almighty overseer and eternal life. It's a comforting fantasy. It is just that we teachers of fact and reality take offense when our hard, careful work is deemed as "junk science" by people that believe in an invisible man.
I give the gold standard of proof, yet that is cast aside because it does not fit their model. then I'm asked to accept a model with no tested, reproducible basis?
Eeek. It just subverts the way you engage science.
Schmootzie:
The model for evolution, "natural selection," is a failed model, for it wrongly asserts a simplicity of life gradually being upgraded over a long period of time.
More biologists and physicists are asserting that life is fundamentally complex than ever before, and the argument is logically compelling. A single cell ;of life is fundamentally complex. A cell cannot begin at a simplistic level, for it has too many multiple, simultaneous and mutually dependant functions to start simple and evolve into complexity, and that being according to chance.
There's a physicist from Iowa, can't remember his name, was in yesterday's Wall Street Journal who illustrates this fundamental complexity by using a mousetrap. He asks his students to remove just one part of the trap, the spring, the hammer, the trip, whatever, and then see if the trap works. Of course, it will not. Hence, even a stupid mousetrap is a complex machine that requires intervention from a designer. When you go to more complex systems like eyesight, there must a host of physical properties of the eyeball that must be simultaneously in place for the eye even to work.
This is Aquinas' argument of design that is taking root in the science community. It makes sense. The only thing about the argument is that you cannot jump from his argument to a Judeo-Christian God. You could come up with a pantheon of gods from the argument. To get to the God of the Bible gets into religion.
UL-
Good post. Fair enough. I understand the reasoning and logic behind it. If the mouse trap does not work without a certain part, then it must have been created.
I'll defer from a simplistic model to a complex one. When we take antibiotics we select only for resistant strains. When we grow crops we generate herbicide resistant weeds. Evolution and natural selection is alive and well. The resistant bacterium was not manufactured or created, it became resistant. It came from a parental genotype that changed, and that change instilled an inate ability to outcompete its contemporaries.
The idea of "it's so complex that it must be a creator" is so much not fun. To me, I've always said that if it looks too complex then I don't understand it well enough. We use science and hypothesis testing to break down a problem. It has taken us a long way so far.
In your model scientists should have looked at heart disease, cancer, diabetes etc and said, "Well that's the way we were created, so end of story, why bother to think about it".
Luckily people like me said, "Let's challenge this complex problem, study it hard with the best tools and solve it".
Today we have modern therapies, drugs, treatments, surgeries etc that came because we attacked a complex problem. We didn't have people saying that cancer is a bogus claim of the science devils (except for a few, but since everybody wants medical care they pipe down about challenging that too much).
Why is in-depth exploration of science good in the latter and not the former? Why is not all science suspect? Why do religious people accept treatment? Shouldn't it just be up to the way they were created (and destroyed) buy a holy overseer?
I find it hard to have it both ways.
Ultimately, science allows questions to be asked, and when evidence shows that past hypotheses were incorrect, it's okay to admit that, and not to shout "This so-called physical evidence that I can see and touch and taste and smell does not fit my my hypothesis, so it must be HERESY!"
Give me science, please.
YEahhhh Bucky!
I'm always happy when a hypothesis is rejected. I'm happy when one is not rejected. It means you did an objective and technically correct study.
I'm more than happy to throw evidence of evolution into the garbage can it other evidence supports the hypothesis better. No problem. I have no bias and no agenda.
I have yet to see one shred of testable evidence indicating the existance of a Creator, flat earth, earth in center of universe.
But, unlike evolution's vocal detractors, I keep an open mind!
Post a Comment
<< Home