It sure feels like an endarkenment. I think this period should now be officially known as this. (It probably started some time in the 1980s?)
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Some warned about it…
…others embrace it…
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I think in the past we just told them to go west, and we wished them the best of luck and promised to bury their bones if, in the future, we came across their failed settlement. Sorry, this article made me cranky.
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The bible says there were plants before there was the sun. But also that there was day and night before the sun. And also that there’s water above a giant dome which is the sky.
I suspect the bible was written by a bunch of bronze age primitives who didn’t really have much of a clue how the universe worked. It might be best to just let the bible be itself and not worry about what it has to say about things like science and morality, instead of trying to square it with things.
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i had a friend in highschool from a religious (jewish) family - he believed pretty much in last thursdayism. ( 6000 yearsism )
what i really like was his belief that the bible had contradictions on purpose. contradictions from reality, contradictions from itself. ( hello two completely different
and unreconcilable creation stories in the book of genesis, i’m looking at you. )
where most christians seem taught to sweep all that under the rug, he felt that the contradictions were supposed to spur inquiry. so we could learn about morality and even science by comparing and contrasting what was written with what we see.
i think he had just about the healthiest outlook on religion of anyone ive ever known. let alone a teenager. hope you’re still out there kid.
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Um… OK.
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I would not say most Christians. Biblical Literalism is a relatively recent thing in terms of major theological trends (and its mostly rooted in American evangelist and fundamentalist traditions). Literalism doesn’t really have much of a place in Mainline Protestant sects. Or even in Catholicism. Those sects typically acknowledge the contradiction, not just within a given version of the bible; but between different bibles, translations, non-canon biblical texts and apocrypha, holy books from other religions, and texts dating from different bits of history. And what’s meant by “bible study” there is usually looking at all that shit and the real world history of the text itself and its creation. Not sitting in a room and reading bible passages over and over till you stop being curious about crotches.
I was taught about evolution in Sunday School by my openly gay priest, long before I hit the grade where it was covered in my schools science curriculum. And that’s a pretty damn normal thing to run into in Mainline Protestantism. Had a friend back in the day who’s parents were the ministers at the local Lutheran church (yes both of them). They had a Darwin fish on their car and they had an evolutionary biologist deliver sermons on science topics 6 times a year.
As far as Judaism goes. Young Earth Creationism isn’t terribly common there outside of orthodox circles. But this same approach is the default in Rabbinical Judaism. This is what a Rabbi does, at root they are basically Academics specializing in the study and teaching of the Torah and other Jewish religious texts and their interpretation. And the most important non-Torah text is essentially a compendium of Rabbinical commentary, debate, interpretation, and marginalia on the subject.
There is a frustrating tendency to place American Evangelicals in a spot of primacy when it comes to Christianity. As being “most” or the default form, and of having authority over other sects. Which isn’t the case, they are not even the bulk of American Christians. Their influence comes via politics, where they are just one more vocal minority the GOP relies on to keep the doors open. And they think of themselves as the only “real Christians” in the same way as we get that “real Americans/America” trope out of the GOP. Claiming authority and dismissing dissent through exclusion.
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In New Hampshire our Governor, Chris Sununu (son of HW Bush Chief-of-Staff John Sununu), appointed a home schooler whose children have never attended public schools as Education Commissioner.
The devolution of our species people.
I went to school with his grand nephew. If you’ve never heard a real yazoo accent, take that audio and make it worse. They named the kid for his great uncle, but spelled it like they pronounced it - Jayree
Good to see that hosting the Kennedy Space Center all these decades has had a profound effect on Floridians’ love of science. /s
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…or citrus greening, which is about to kill his business.
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Creationists are their own best argument.
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Just look at who is in charge of the Dept. of Education at the federal level!
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I keep seeing creationists make false claims about what the science says, get corrected… then continue to repeat the same false claim. (Rinse and repeat.) It’s very deliberate. I’m sure they have some way of justifying it to themselves, thanks to that cognitive dissonance.
@FGD135 The irony is that both Buddhism and Christianity both did come out of aniconic traditions (they weren’t allowed to make images of religious figures). In both cases, the earliest depictions are completely different from the later, familiar ones, which were based on collections of symbols intended to convey meaning rather than be accurate representations.
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Yep.
President Donald Trump has called Peale “his pastor” and “one of the greatest speakers” he had ever seen.[16] Fred and Mary Trump, President Trump’s parents, traveled to the Marble Collegiate Church in Manhattan with their children to hear Peale’s sermons. Trump grew up hearing Peale’s teachings from his parents, and Peale officiated his first wedding.[17] Trump credits his survival in 1990 after bankruptcy to Peale’s positive thinking teachings.
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A surefire way to tell if someone is a liar and/or ignorant about science is if they say a scientific theory is “only a theory,”
A surefire way to tell if someone is a racist is if they say, “I don’t have a racist bone in my body.”
I just bet Andy Tuck says that, too.
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That would make a good alternate history novel…
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I want to say I’ve heard of a classic sci-fi novel where techonlogy basically regresses knowledge; a “dark enlightenment”… I just can’t remember what it was called.
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