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Post by Feynman on Dec 30, 2012 22:26:29 GMT -5
The reason you see much backlash towards combining religious beliefs with science is that often (in the US at least) religious groups will try to push bullshit not-science as part of a science education. The most notable example of this is "intelligent design," which consists of burying one's head in the sand while shouting "EVOLUTION DOESN'T EXIST EVERYTHING WAS HANDCRAFTED BY AN OMNIPOTENT BEING LALALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU."
I don't care what people believe up until they start trying to ignore overwhelming scientific evidence or try to force others to live by their religious beliefs (gay marriage bans and such). If somebody wants to interpret science in a way that aligns with their religious views, fine. Completely rejecting good science based on religious views is nuts. Trying to push not-science that is based on supernatural concepts (intelligent design) is not only nuts, it is actively harmful to progress.
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Post by Scylla on Dec 31, 2012 0:04:40 GMT -5
Well, the problem there is with the fundamentalists who take everything in the Bible, specifically the Old Testament, as being completely literal rather than allegorical, which is sheer lunacy. It's hard to deal with people who think the Earth is 6000 years old and Adam and Eve rode around on plant-eating velociraptors, haha.
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Post by Weasel on Dec 31, 2012 0:56:54 GMT -5
Which brings me back to what I was going on about three pages ago: I don't care how ludicrous your beliefs are, I just wish we could all get along and not argue about them!
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Post by Feynman on Dec 31, 2012 1:00:38 GMT -5
Well, the problem there is with the fundamentalists who take everything in the Bible, specifically the Old Testament, as being completely literal rather than allegorical, which is sheer lunacy. It's hard to deal with people who think the Earth is 6000 years old and Adam and Eve rode around on plant-eating velociraptors, haha. Yes, that is true. America has a rather large amount of fundamentalist Christian groups, and they tend to be very loud and obnoxious, particularly given that they get a lot of attention from certain politicians. Loud and obnoxious atheism is to some degree a response to that. After all, when you turn on the news and hear people talking about how awesome Jesus is and how the country is going to hell because of all the people who don't adhere to fundamentalist Christian values, you start to get kind of cranky. |
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Post by Deleted on Dec 31, 2012 12:05:26 GMT -5
Ixnayed.
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Post by Allie on Dec 31, 2012 12:39:07 GMT -5
Which brings me back to what I was going on about three pages ago: I don't care how ludicrous your beliefs are, I just wish we could all get along and not argue about them! Global Geopolitics opened that Pandora's Box for good. |
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Post by Weasel on Dec 31, 2012 12:57:52 GMT -5
you know what, this discussion needs a song.
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Post by Allie on Dec 31, 2012 13:19:36 GMT -5
Playing the US Postal Service Dance of Shit again.
Because even though Harrisburg isn't big, it still has two post offices, I have to wait extra days as a package moves from one facility like 8 miles from my house (Crooked Hill Rd.) to a different facility like 8 miles from my house (Old Jonestown Rd.).
As someone who used to work in shipping/P&D, I'm all too familiar with this crap.
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Post by Ike on Jan 1, 2013 18:55:16 GMT -5
Well, the problem there is with the fundamentalists who take everything in the Bible, specifically the Old Testament, as being completely literal rather than allegorical, which is sheer lunacy. It's hard to deal with people who think the Earth is 6000 years old and Adam and Eve rode around on plant-eating velociraptors, haha. I've never understood why it's so ludicrous for people to want the Bible to be taken literally. It's patently silly to a non-Christian, but to someone whose morality and worldview are anchored largely in the truth of the doctrine, being literally true would be a preferable option. It justifies their worldview in something concrete and represented in reality (as they see it.) If you take the Bible entirely as allegory, it puts the validity of the stories on the same conceptual level as Aesop's Fables. They're manmade, and become fallible, and can be eroded because we can't refer back to 'reality' as a concrete grounding for the veracity of the doctrine. A lot of people are very very invested in the idea that the Bible is literally true. |
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Post by Scylla on Jan 1, 2013 19:40:47 GMT -5
It's silly because it's a relatively recent, mostly American phenomenon. Most Orthodox, Catholics, and Lutherans understand that the Bible is something to be interpreted. It's not a matter of it being true or false, but rather an issue of the words having a deeper, more complicated meaning than their face value. There's also the matter of it being translated from language to language. It's impossible to translate anything without at least some slight details getting lost or changed, so it's silly to get hung up on a specific word rather than the whole picture. There's a reason why no translated version of the Quran is considered a "true" version of the Quran. Yet the people who are most obsessed with taking the Bible literally are typically going off of a translated English version.
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Post by Ike on Jan 1, 2013 19:54:04 GMT -5
Oh yeah, I get that. I'm just saying, it's understandable why some people would want this version to be true, or at least why people get so prickly when you question it, the more literal they believe it is.
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Post by dooz on Jan 2, 2013 5:23:59 GMT -5
I was going to make a silly, condescending, remark about the silliness of faith in Iron Age stories, but then I realized how even more silly the argument that may stem from that may become.
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Post by Ike on Jan 2, 2013 5:40:20 GMT -5
I'm reading William James' "The Varieties of Religious Experience" and it's really interesting that he talks about what we would today call fundamentalist Christianity having been virtually eradicated from the realm of religious attitudes of the majority of people. He never would've seen today's megachurches coming. It's really kind of messed up how far backwards the US has gone from the Enlightenment, spiritually speaking.
edit: should note this book is 115 years old
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Post by Deleted on Jan 2, 2013 10:41:51 GMT -5
Well, the problem there is with the fundamentalists who take everything in the Bible, specifically the Old Testament, as being completely literal rather than allegorical, which is sheer lunacy. It's hard to deal with people who think the Earth is 6000 years old and Adam and Eve rode around on plant-eating velociraptors, haha. Yes, that is true. America has a rather large amount of fundamentalist Christian groups, and they tend to be very loud and obnoxious, particularly given that they get a lot of attention from certain politicians. Loud and obnoxious atheism is to some degree a response to that. After all, when you turn on the news and hear people talking about how awesome Jesus is and how the country is going to hell because of all the people who don't adhere to fundamentalist Christian values, you start to get kind of cranky. Well then deal with it, you at least have the mass media catering to you. It's worse for people of all faiths with all of the bullshit on the news, in movies, and garbage on tv calling us retards for believing in the possibility of a higher power. In contrast, crazy militant Christians tend to only have face time in certain outlets and thus are relatively easy to ignore by comparison. So yeah, don't talk to me about "cranky." |
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Post by Allie on Jan 2, 2013 10:55:19 GMT -5
Yes, that is true. America has a rather large amount of fundamentalist Christian groups, and they tend to be very loud and obnoxious, particularly given that they get a lot of attention from certain politicians. Loud and obnoxious atheism is to some degree a response to that. After all, when you turn on the news and hear people talking about how awesome Jesus is and how the country is going to hell because of all the people who don't adhere to fundamentalist Christian values, you start to get kind of cranky. Well then deal with it, you at least have the mass media catering to you. It's worse for people of all faiths with all of the bullshit on the news, in movies, and garbage on tv calling us retards for believing in the possibility of a higher power. In contrast, crazy militant Christians tend to only have face time in certain outlets and thus are relatively easy to ignore by comparison. So yeah, don't talk to me about "cranky." Kind of gives your "Location : In Hell" line some new perspective, really. I sometimes wonder if what people are most cranky about is that the "Free Love" 60s have never successfully been brought back (mostly thanks to the ugly reality of STDs settling in and making themselves at home). |
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