Dinosaur Discomfort Syndrome

How many fundamentalist Christians who claim Evolution is false and Creationism is the truth really believe that, deep down? I know many fundamentalists don't really know the facts and details of Evolution due mostly to their willful ignorance of the subject, but they all know at least something about it. I'm sure there isn't a single citizen of this country who doesn't know about dinosaurs and the fact that they lived hundreds of millions of years ago. Many know about Homo neanderthalensis and Homo erectus. Who hasn't heard about Neanderthal Man? Most everyone has at least a small bit of knowledge about Evolution. Enough, possibly, to make them feel a twinge of discomfort when they think about the story of Genesis. Or at least, it should.

How many fundamentalists protest the fact of Evolution simply because it is what they're expected to do in order to maintain their biblical infallability/literalist views? How many really feel - somewhere deep in their own minds- how shaky that argument really is? How many KNOW that something isn't quite right?

I know of at least one person who has admitted just that very thing. I don't think she even realizes what she was actually admitting, but it came out, nonetheless. This is a person I know very well so I won't name her. She told me that it always bothered her "about the dinosaurs". She said she had always loved seeing drawings of dinosaurs and reading about them when she was a child and that they facinated her all her life. After she reaffirmed her Christianity in her older years (after she was 50 or so) she said knowing the dinosaurs existed millions and millions of years ago "bothered her." Then, amazingly, she said "So I just decided not to think about it." I said something about evolution and she (again, amazingly) said, almost hatefully, "That's just a theory." And then she quickly changed the subject.

Decided not to think about it.

I was completely dumbstruck by that comment. That isn't even cognitive dissonance! She was willfully, consciously denying something she knew was true to somehow salvage her young earth creationist belief! And she has been denying it for a couple of decades now. I've never encountered that before. I have known a lot of people who are in denial about one thing or another, but they don't seem to be quite conscious of that. At least, they would deny being in denial! But to deny a fact on purpose? She didn't even try to convince herself that dinosaurs must have existed more recently, alongside humans. She just decided not to think about the subject at all. How the hell do you even DO that? How do you take something we know is real, that we have undeniable evidence for, and weigh it against something for which there IS no evidence, and choose on the side of no evidence? Choose no evidence when you already accept the side with the evidence? She had already accepted the dinosaurs existed millions of years ago, and she still does. But at the same time accepts that the earth was created 6,000 years ago. And this is actually a sane, fairly intelligent woman. She is forcing herself to believe something that contradicts facts she also accepts. I don't even know what to call that. Desperation?

But this also made me wonder about how many other fundamentalists feel the same way she does? How many are actually aware that their beliefs don't stand up to what we actually know about our world and our universe and our origins? And how many make a conscious decision to just not think about it instead of doing what we non-believers did when we realized the facts of nature don't match what the bible says? Is it that they want so desperately to believe God is really there that they can somehow seperate reality from their beliefs?

That would seem like enough to drive someone insane. Maybe it eventually does.

Angels and Anecdotes

"I was praying about it, and suddenly I heard God's voice just as plain as I'm hearing you, and he said....blah, blah, blah, blah, and blah."

"When my grandfather was dying, he looked over at something in the room and started smiling and I asked him what he was smiling about and he said he could see an angel!"

"I was having doubts about my faith and I went into my bedroom and for some reason I decided to clean out my closet. I hadn't planned on doing that at all, but I just suddenly felt like I needed to. And as I was taking junk out of the top shelf, I found an old bible! I knew that God had put the thought in my head that I needed to clean out that closet so I would run across the bible! I just knew it in my heart!"

"God put a burden on my heart to pray for So and So. I prayed for him and I found out the next day he had been in an accident! It was a miracle he wasn't badly hurt! I knew God had told me to pray for his safety!"

These are some of the anecdotes I've heard from people when they find out I'm atheist. They tell these stories as if it will make me suddenly think, "Wow! I am SO wrong about not believing a god exists!" As if that one story could tear apart the very fabric of my reality. As if it could undo the years of seeking knowledge about our world and universe and our origins and history and the evolution of religion and all the information I have accumulated that led to my rejection of supernatural claims. As if it could transcend my reason and critical thinking and erase everything I've learned in one fell swoop.

You can look in their eyes and know that if you said, "David Hume," they would have no idea who you are talking about. Or Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation. Or Australopithecus afarensis. Or Cassini. Or Aboigenesis. Or a strawman fallacy. Or Pascal's Wager. Or Botticelli. Or Franz Schubert. Or phylogeny. Or theoretical physics (or any physics), Or Thomas Paine. etc., etc......

So how do you even begin to comment on these anecdotes? How do you have a discussion about supernatural beliefs (or anything else) with people who don't care about anything outside their tiny fortresses of faith? I find myself starting to respond and then giving up before a single word comes out. It seems pointless and completely futile and so I end up keeping everything to myself. In my particular work environment and the area of the state where I live, these are my peers. It's almost like a scene from "The Village." Many of the folks never leave the county, much less the state. And no, I'm not kidding.

(I need to write another blog entitled, "How the Hell Did I Get HERE!"

Maybe I just need to move to the city.

Marionettes and Amendment 1

61% of North Carolinians think they have the right to take others' rights away. Amendment 1 passed yesterday. It only adds to the already discriminatory language of our state constitution and I suppose reflects the attitude of the intolerant majority here. Certainly it goes deeper than that. A political move in an election year intended to divide voters? No doubt. And at the expense of many families. Potentially at the expense of many children. But the end justifies the means, right?

No, it doesn't.

Not if you're a thinking person. Not if you care about other people and about truth. Not if you're AWAKE. Not if you rise above the Us and Them mentality and stop allowing yourselves to be manipulated and told what to think.

Otherwise, voters, your puppet masters' strings are showing.