Notes on a creationist encounter
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Eyewitness Testimony
Eyewitness accounts and discussion of the horrors that befell the party of three on that fateful night:
The Ranting
Some notes on an encounter with some hard core creationists in the street a few weeks ago:
- Had a complete package of irrational fundamentalist beliefs
- Believed the bible was written by god
- Believed the Earth was less than 6000 years old
- Believed that stars were put in the sky to worship god
- Believed that evolution was "when something comes from nothing"
- SUBTHOUGHT
- Evolution says little or nothing about how life came into existence, it's mainly to do with how life changes over time.
- SUBTHOUGHT 2
- While the above may be true, it does run into the fundamentalist belief that the earth is less than 6000 years old, since evolution occurs over millions upon millions of years, which immediately challenges what's written in the bible and inferences made from it. The true fundamentalist will not except this because they refuse to accept that ANYTHING in the bible could be incorrect, because they believe it is was written by god. So therefore while evolution doesn't specifically say anything about how life first came to be, it does strongly go against the fundamentalist belief that life and the earth was created in a comparatively short period of time. Does this threaten the entire fundamentalist mindset that everything in the bible is the 100% factual and accurate word of god? Yes it does. This is what it means to be a fundamentalist... to believe that what's written in the bible is 100% fact and true.
- SUBTHOUGHT 2
- Evolution says little or nothing about how life came into existence, it's mainly to do with how life changes over time.
- SUBTHOUGHT
- Believed that god communicated with them
- Believed in the after life / heaven and hell
- Believed that everyone who did not follow their flavour of Christianity was going to hell - NO EXCEPTIONS!!!!
- Had little care for evidence outside of the bible
- Disinterested in explanations as to why scientific evidence is better than most other types of evidence - not interested in knowing what the scientific method was
- Often gave anecdotal evidence
- Could not provide any evidence for their belief's outside of the bible - suggests strongly that this is there one and only source of information, along with the preachers that converted them. I would venture that they haven't actually read much of the bible, and have cherry picked parts to believe and others to ignore, as probably have the individuals who helped them along this path of fundamentalist belief at their local Religious centre.
blokey357 16:56, 20 May 2007 (GMT)
My favourite part was when I was trying to explain the scientific method of how a hypothesis becomes a theory and (why intelligent design fails every test along the way) and his defence mechanism was to act as though he had lost interest and walked away. I followed him aswell, but his thick wall of ignorance could not be penetrated with anything less than C4 or at least a drill. Additional points:
- Claimed to have read origins of species (but knew nothing of the theory of natural selection)
- Claimed that when I went to the gates of heaven my blood would be on my hands not theirs as "they had tried to show me the light"
- Seemed less than resilient to fist waving and the implicit violence in my voice
- Knew anecdotal scientific facts in obvious attempt to seem knowledgeable "A CPU is made of transistors, which is like an on/off switch", "sun burns hydrogen" etc.
- Claimed he could be making $2000 or $3000 a night in (non-descript) "crime", but that the good lord had shown him the way.
- Claimed that the bible was scientific, then later stated that he "doesn't believe in science". Logical extension would assume that he therefore did not believe in the bible, otherwise his first statement would have to be a lie.
- Belief was often put down to logical fallacy of meaning "The stars have to be there for a reason", my answer "No they fucking don't"
I remember clearly telling him he was "fucking stupid" to his face multiple times, and also throwing a shoe and beating walls. I also remember offering to read the bible cover to cover in exchange for them reading origins of species cover to cover, they said no dice and as such one can only assume they value ignorance above learning. Also a major hurdle was their preference for personal experiences as evidence, and disregard for repeatable, testable observations. Reminds me of some people.
One thing I remember feeling sad about is that one of the guys had gotten off drugs because "the lord led him away from it to the church", not sad about the drug abuse etc. but sad that he showed no thanks whatsoever to the actual people from the church who pulled him out of the drug dependence cycle. Pretty damn ungrateful in my opinion.
Dr. Boy
Ah I remember that whole CPU discussion now. What fuck was that about? What was he trying to prove when he asked how a CPU works? From what I remember, I think we were saying something along the lines of "you don't have to be a scientist to understand science", and then he busted out "well how does a CPU work then?!?!" like it was some sort of test for us to tell him how a CPU works, otherwise what we we're saying about people not having to specialise in a field to have some understanding of it would be wrong.
I really don't think these people are anything like these people or even these people. The later are absolute monstrosities in comparison.
I was reading a little today about the Church of Scientology's "Fair Game" policy, which was the official policy from L.Ron Hubbard that stated that Church members were permitted to literally destroy people who opposed the Church (known as "SP's" or "Suppressive Persons"). On their official Frequently Asked Questions Page, in response to the question Why do some people oppose Scientology?, there answer is effectively to say that all people that oppose it are jealous of it and / or hate freedom and individuality. Totally reasonable folk...
Indeed, anecdotal evidence was all that those creationists we encountered really cared for. One of the reasons for this I think is because they don't understand the gargantuan difference between scientific ideas and any old idea thought up of out of the blue, or understand the pitfalls of using subjective personal experience as evidence.
I suppose that they behave like this because their entire belief system is based on faith and not rationality, so by default, decent evidence just isn't important to them, since they've got all the subjective personal experiences to back it up their current belief's.
How do you think we can get through to these people? I think one way may be to perhaps discuss and analyse their personal experiences which have led them to believe what they believe, and present them plenty of evidence which shows that it doesn't necessarily and probably does not necessitate that god can talk to them / god exists / the bible is factually correct / the earth was created in less than 6000 years.
Then again I think we tried that when we were talking to them and it didn't work every well, precisely because they didn't care for evidence too much, and also I think they may prefer their own interpretation of their own personal experiences rather than someone else's, since these personal experiences have been powerful and are there's and not ours.
Given that they're fundamentalists, maybe it's best to go after the bible? It is their official starting point after all and it's the authority they always come back to. Maybe if one can sow the seeds of doubt about the factual accuracy of the bible (with things like the fitting of millions of species of creature inside noah's ark, in mating pairs of course), then they'd start to question their belief's, and perhaps value evidence a little moar.
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blokey357 14:48, 22 May 2007 (GMT)
Yeah we should use the bible, it might just work against a group who speak exclusively in bible quotes. There's plenty of material there and we can be smug, starting every sentence with "I'm not a bible basher or nuttin'". We can mix things up with some old-testamenty sections on the wrath of Jerry Falwell's God and little known facts about Jesus edorsement of slavery (don't let the wording fool you, literal translation from Hebrew is slave but modern translators have decided that the term is "symbolic"). Then we can also ask them WWJD
Unfortunately I don't think people will care if you show them something from the bible as they've probably heard it before and reasoned it away as some kind of symbolism. But if you were to recreate the situation with a different slant on it you could maybe trick people into agreeing that the bible is immoral. For example, if you told them the story of Joshua, but changed it to Ghengis Khan invading China on the authority of some pagan god and then killing every living thing in Beijing, you could potentially get them to agree that the murder was immoral.
Another one may be to tell them that Palestinians have found new ways to try and get Israeli's off of what they consider Palestinian land. By poisoning the water, polluting the air, sabotaging crops and government buildings and then "icing the cake" with blowing up a building on every block in Jerusalem - I'm pretty sure the fundies would agree that it was an immoral tactic. Then tell them it's basically the story of Moses and see what they say.
As for scientologists, I think they're just silly. But that whole "fair game" thing is a little bit 1984. They're also more than a little full of themselves. They claim that people oppose scientology because it is "doing more to help society than any other group". I'm pretty sure these guys would have something to say about that. As I recall scientology's contribution to the Katrina effort was to send people to give massages to rescuers, how naive are these people? I mean really, thanks for the massage BUT COULD YOU SEND MORE FUCKING RESCUERS/EQUIPMENT/MONEY INSTEAD OF FUCKING AROUND?!?!?!!?!!
Dr. Boy
Those examples you give there in how to approach them, I don't think they're necessarily trickery at all. I think that giving a proper analogy like that is a perfectly legitimate thing to do if the analogy is an accurate one.
What the scientologist's did after Katrina sounds a lot like opportunism, and that they see that it's a great opportunity to take advantage of the situation where people have become vulnerable and use it as a chance to recruit more people to their cause. We saw that this is what some evangelists do in that ABC documentary by Andrew Denton.
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blokey357 05:31, 25 May 2007 (GMT)
Yeah true, not necessarily trickery, it would just be detaching them from the situation and hence making them think for themselves about what's going on in the stories.
That Andrew Denton documentary was terrifying, mostly because he didn't have to use any editing whatsoever to make them sound like very deluded, self-important and most of all dangerous people. Those people were constantly making statements that made them seem like fringe dwelling lunatics, unfortunately they have a huge level of financial backing. The part that sent chills down my spine was when they were taking about breaking into "secular Hollywood" by making films that were very subtle in their fundamentalism. The only saving grace for us is that their lunacy pushes them to the fringe, taking that away would be a nightmare.
Also, you may have seen in the documentary numerous preachers stating that in the "end of days" Russia would team up with the Muslim nations to invade Israel. These people have obviously been brought up in a very small box with a very limited view of the world, they probably haven't even heard of the Chechen war. It's an odd mix of what they were brought up to believe to be enemies Russia (Soviets) and Non-Christians (Muslims) and somehow they form the army of Satan (Stalin? could this be a spelling error of the semi-literate preachers?)
This silliness of religious fundamentalism, like the silliness of Communism, is getting dangerous.
Dr. Boy
What to do
Jehovah's Witnesses: Do not accept blood transfusions, so the best way to convert them is to slash their artery and offer to drive them to a hospital. A guy I knew in primary and high school was from a jehovah's witness family, his little sister got into a car accident in primary school and they chose (wisely) a blood transfusion to save their daughter's life. They're no longer Jehovah's witnesses.
In General: I think the damage is already done by the time they're getting smug about small gaps in knowledge about well understood and scientifically accepted theories. I think my patented literary mace would be a good move. Beating them about the head with a copy of origins of species physically as well as intellectually would not cure them of their stupidity but would be fun for the whole family.
What to do that doesn't involve violence
For people who are in their forties and older and are passionate fundamentalists, it may not be possible at all to change their minds. They've spent their entire life believing what these things and you can't really undo the wiring in their brain that makes them think this way. They've probably also built up a strong social environment with people of similar belief's which bolsters their own beliefs.
As for younger guys like the ones we met, it's almost as hard. Trying to convince them of scientific facts just isn't enough. I think we'd need to explain to them how to think scientific and critically, and convince them to take on a critical thinker/scientific mode of thought and attitude so that they could understand the issue in the light of reason and overwhelming evidence, the way we do, even if they only thought like this for a moment.
In the end I guess we can't brainwash these people and make them see reason, I don't think that's the right way to do it. We have to give them the best explanation of the evidence and reasoning that we can, and hope that at least some of it sinks in. Then maybe perhaps they'll go off and have a think about it themselves, as well as not be lazy and just accept what we told them and do some research of their own.
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blokey357 05:31, 25 May 2007 (GMT)
Sidenotes
CPU
- If someone knows a CPU is made of transistors then he/she obviously knows a lot of stuff and therefore is smart. If this individual does not believe in evolution then not believing in evolution must be perfectly rational because this person is smart. Repeat statement ad nauseum. The logic is irrefutable, discuss:
Similarity of these dudes to these dudes
- The similarity is a preference for human experience as evidence over verifiable fact (see Myers-Briggs). Discuss:
