Stumble it!Waldo on creationism.
posted in Creationism by themaiden |Not to belabor a point too much, but creationism– and often, religion in general– does truly terrible things to the mind. Waldo Jaquith, for example, makes an eloquent point:
I wonder which creationism that President Bush supports teaching? My Bible says that God created the earth, the light, the water, then stars, then birds & fish, then land-dwelling animals, and finally, turned some mud into Adam (Genesis 1, 2:7). But it also says that God made the earth and then created streams, and the streams formed the ocean and brought forth life (Genesis 2:4-6). I’m not sure which, between the two, would be taught. The Bantus believe that the god Bumba vomited up the sun, the moon, and the stars, followed by the animals and tribes of people. Raelians believe that space aliens made life on earth as an experiment in terraforming and genetic engineering. Hindus believe that the earth and mankind have always existed. Scientologists believe that when Xenu ruled the Galactic Confederation 75M years ago, he captured (by convincing them to show up for a fake tax investigation) and froze billions of beings in alcohol and flew them to Earth in DC-8s, where they were were chained on the slopes of volcanoes and had hydrogen bombs dropped on them.
The response?
Ahh.. The quintessential anti-Creationist tactic, bring in the idiotic theories of origin, discredit those already discredited theories, and then try to lump Creationism in with them.
To which Waldo appropriately quips…
“making people out of mud” is every bit as discredited as “vomited them up.”
Exactly. Why is it that the faithful will accept the patent nonsense one religion, but haughtily reject the same nonsense in other religions? I can’t quite manage that kind of mental contortion. As I’ve written before…
Well, accepting Christianity, or religion in general, for that matter, would require me to accept ‘facts’ which in most contexts would be considered irrational, if not downright insane. Harsh? What else can one say about a belief system ripe with magic, demons, witches and giants? No one– not the most fundamental of fundamentalists– believes in magic, demons, witches, fairies, gnomes, elves, or hookah smoking caterpillars in any context but the religious. But in the Biblical context, for example? In the Biblical context, anything goes. The animation of dirt-people? Why not? Talking shrubbery? Sure. Sentient storm clouds? Okey Dokey. Sticks that turn into snakes? Yep. Fires that don’t burn? Yes, indeed-ie. Zombies and the living dead? No problem… if Jesus is involved. Pig-suicide-causing evil spirits? Yep, those too. In short, to accept Christianity, I’d have to commit myself to a belief in magic.
But it gets worse. After our defender of religion points out that the Bible says ‘dust’ not ‘mud’, which, of course, makes it all better, there is a rejoinder to the rejoinder.
Wrong. The vomit up stuff was totally an invented idea that has nothing to back it up. The Bible, on the other hand, is an accurate historical document that has withstood the test of time and countless challenges. When the science of archaeology “disproved” a historical event mentioned in the Bible, the truth came out a couple of years later. The Bible was right.
Wow. Ahem…
… I’d be obligated to reject as superstition and myth countless other such very similar tales from around the world– this, despite those tale’s having all the same claims to validity as the tales in the Bible, which, essentially means that people believe them, or used to believe them, and somebody wrote them down. Of course, I’ll not apply the same methods of reasoning– the textual criticism, the archeology, the cross-cultural comparisons– to my faith that I use to discount all those other wrong faiths.
Similarly, I’d be obligated to reject as superstition, fairly tales, and lies a good half-dozen common religions with their numerous associated gods and goddesses. I’d have to maintain that these various faiths were founded on and perpetuated by trickery and deceit, and depend upon human gullibility. I would of course resist applying to my own religion the methods of evaluation that I invoke to criticise other faiths.
Popularity: 1%
