Thoughts, Mostly Regarding Indoctrination and its Effects

I need to come up with a simile that involves explaining the scientific method to a creationist for the hundredth time.
Something really witty that I can bring up in mixed company to vent just a little of my frustration.

Maybe...
-Starting your car with no gas in it? You can go through the steps over and over, but you won't get anywhere.
-Taking a bath in a lake? You can be as thorough as you want, but you'll still feel dirty when it's all over.

...eh. Work in progress.


It's difficult to form a straw man of religious fundamentalism.
Just like it's difficult to satirize American rightwing politics nowadays.
Attempting to skirt ahead of reality and depict it as MORE ludicrous than you think it could ever be is an exercise in eventual futility in both cases, since both appear to be hurtling away from "comprehensible, decent, and rational" territory at the speed of light.

That there are people operating the accelerator pedals in both camps simultaneously isn't a coincidence.
It makes me wish there really WAS a leftist conspiracy to institute communism or that there really WAS a plot by the scientific community to oppress religious groups into oblivion.

At least then the ranting and raving would have SOME basis in reality.
Instead of simply being violent delusions spewed forth by victims of generations of indoctrination.

And they continue to spew, even as many their children turn back on them with fact and cited sources to counter their indoctrination.
Many, sadly not all.
Though the Internet and the free and infinite availability of information has put a dent in the age-old cycle of ideological repression and worship of the irrational, there are still families who manage to squelch their offspring's intellect beneath the weight of dogma, and send them out into the world to make another generation of mental midgets who think themselves giants-by-divine-appointment.
These families are mainly of the Duggar or Duggar-fandom variety who REPRESS *irony* their children and keep them away from any and all sources of actual-not-dogmatic information.


While there have been a few voices expressly against religion in the scientific community (Carl Sagan comes to mind), most researchers, experts, and students, if they acknowledge religion at all, express at least some level of devoutness to a religious tradition.
Which, to the rational people in the peanut gallery, demonstrates perfectly that there isn't some cosmic chessgame between Science and Religion.

Science does its work and mostly keeps to itself.
Religion, at least in the fundamentalist circles, can't seem to comprehend that, much less do it themselves.


And just to clarify my terms, here's a nice breakdown:
1) Religious people say, "This is what I believe."
2) Evangelical religious people say, "This is what I believe, and it would probably do you good to believe it as well."
3) Fundamentalist evangelical religious people say, "This is what I believe, and you really believe it too, which you would realize if you STOPPED LYING TO YOURSELF AND SENDING YOUR KIDS TO HELLRAAAAAAAR!"


What I think the more rational and/or altruistic religious and evangelical religious people are afraid of is that a point made by the Agnostic and Atheist communities is in fact true, or coming true.
That being that all the altruistic efforts motivated by religion over the centuries cannot counterbalance the atrocities committed in its name, and that by this stage in our societal development, we shouldn't NEED the proddings of a Sky Father to get us to take care of each other.

That we will eventually outgrow religion, having finally learned to take care of each other because "It's the right thing to do," not because Heaven or Hell depends upon it.

Even as a Christian, I hope this is true, that we will one day take care of each other simply because we should, not because of morality or bribes or threats.
Notice I separate "should" from "morality".
Every other communal species on this planet has a biological imperative to care for and protect all individuals within a particular group.
Whether it's a single family or a group of families which interbreed.

Yet for some reason we humans need some abstract-made-physical thing to focus on in order to get us to do what every other communal animal does naturally.

Read Warren Ellis' Supergods for a larger breakdown of that concept.


On an unrelated note, it's nice to post a conservative-run discussion board, and get three "likes" from members and an infraction from the site admin.