science
Gravity is a Lie
There is ample evidence in the bible that if you are devout enough and have enough faith, you are not constrained to the bounds of gravity. First, note the ascension of several people into heaven, body and all:
Hebrews 11-5 : By faith Enoch was taken from this life, so that he did not experience death; he could not be found, because God had taken him away. For before he was taken, he was commended as one who pleased God.
2 Kings 2-11 : As they were walking along and talking together, suddenly a chariot of fire and horses of fire appeared and separated the two of them, and Elijah went up to heaven in a whirlwind.
Acts 1-11 : Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.”
We must not allow the heathens to pollute our beliefs with the “Law” of gravity! For too long, Satan has played a trick on us. Every time you drop something to the ground, expecting it to fall, you are affirming your acceptance of this cosmic trick! We must not doubt the word of God. It is clear in the bible – believe and you can ignore the restraints of gravity. This must be true: we are charged with preserving the earth for future generations. Imagine how much easier we could do this without the need for transportation pollution! The infidels are destroying the planet with their disbelief.
The first step must be to rid our schools of any mention of gravity. First, we must present alternative scientific theories, such as “God did it.” The Law of GDI has just as much scientific merit, and since it has not been shown false, as Newton’s so called “laws” have, it is the most likely explanation. Children should not be swayed by ‘evidence’ to the contrary, as it makes it more uncomfortable to answer their annoying “How?” or “Why?” questions. It may help to discredit science in general, as well. But don’t worry about not using electric lights, computers, cars, etc in the meantime. People don’t generally catch on when you criticize scientific results while using them in day-to-day life.
Next, we should institute government incentives for individuals and groups furthering the reach of the Law of GDI, in order to encourage lower emissions. The more people that believe, the less energy it will require to overcome the illusion of gravity. We’re already tax-exempt, but maybe we could just get some more money in the form of a check, or something. We’ll figure out the details later.
Finally, make it a point any time someone mentions gravity, uses any colloquialism or idiom like “keep your feet on the ground “, or says the phrase “falling down”, to take offense. By accepting the lie of gravity, they are assaulting your beliefs. Let them know how you feel and that they will be going to hell for accepting Satan this way. This tactic is most effective especially when you don’t know them, and they weren’t talking to you. Approach them on the street, if you must. It’s a violation of your civil rights to have someone believe something different than you, if you’re in the general viscinity and you happen to know you’re right and they’re wrong.
</sarcasm>
Or, I don’t know, just accept the evidence like we have for countless other scientific results and don’t read everything so literally. I mean, you ignore half of it anyway. But, whatever’s easier for you. Doing that requires admitting that you’re wrong, so that kind of sucks.
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More (dis)Proof of God
Being somewhat of a math-head, I tend to like proofs. When done well, they’re inescapable. However, philosophical proofs almost invariably leave me unsatisfied (yes, on both sides of the God-debate). But I still like pointing out where they are lacking, because it keeps people from touting them as actual proof. It’s almost funny when a theist comes with the idea that atheists just want logical proof or evidence, and they must not have heard this perfect argument yet. It’s not that we haven’t heard it; it’s that it isn’t nearly as convincing as you think. So, cue phase two of my commentary on the usual suspects in the ‘Proof for God’.
Last time, I discussed the ‘prime mover‘ argument, specifically the formulation put forth by Aquinas, since his annoys me more than most (it’s the way he asserts the Christian god at the end that does it, I think). But I got an interesting comment that reminds me why mathematical proofs are so satisfying to me. The commenter mentioned the idea, “What’s infinity times zero?” So what does math have to say about this? My response was this:
Strictly math-speaking, you simply cannot do that operation because infinity is not a number. It’s tantamount to saying “what is zero times chair?” Infinity is a tricky thing to get a hold of anyway. For example, there are an infinite number of integers. This is a class of infinity called “countably infinite”. But there’s another class called “uncountably infinite”, for example the real numbers. Take my set of numbers here (1.2, 1.22, 1.222, 1.2222, …) You can see how I’m constructing them. I could continue this series forever, always increasing and never reach 1.3. You could not assign an integer in a 1:1 fashion to the real numbers. So is uncountably infinite greater than countably infinite? They’re both infinity…
But it’s even more fun, because I can illustrate a good (dis)proof and play with infinity at the same time. I’m disproving this claim “Infinity is a number”, and using the common understanding of a number as an element of an ordered set that behaves under the usual arithmetic (+-*/). Also, I’m using the understanding that <inf> + x = <inf> (ie, adding anything to infinity is still infinity).
So, if <inf> is a number that behaves like a number,
<inf>/<inf> = 1
(<inf>/<inf>) + <inf> = 1 + <inf>
(<inf>/<inf>) + <inf> = <inf>
<inf> / <inf> = 0
1 = 0
See how satisfying that is? I made a claim, if infinity is a number, then the following must be true… 1=0. One very much does not equal zero, so our premise is false. Now let’s take a look at another proof for God. It’s the standard Ontological Argument (meaning a priori, quite a claim), put forth (I believe originally) by St. Anselm. It roughly follows this path:
- God, by definition is the greatest being imaginable. You cannot imagine anything greater.
- A being that exists is greater than a being that does not exist
- Therefore, God must exist
Now see how unstatisfying that is? It kind of ties in with another of Aquinas’ proofs (number 4) . His follows this logic:
- Things that exist have certain qualities to greater or lesser degrees
- greater and lesser are relative terms, which relate to the maximum
- Something must have the maximum possible of every quality
- That’s God.
One criticism of this I’ve read is that he says nothing that proves that one single object must have the maximum possible of all qualities, but I think this is too easily dismissed. Let’s just add a step, 2.5 that says “One quality you can have is having qualities”.
There, fixed, right? No, they’re both still very flawed. In the first proof, we make no distinction between imagining something and existence when it is actually a very deep divide. How about this?
- I can imagine no greater proof than the proof against God’s existence.
- A real proof is greater than an imaginary proof.
- Lucky me, it’s real and I’m almost done writing it.
- Therefore, no God.
It’s exactly the same as our infinity proof. I said “If your proof is true, then so is mine, so God exists and God does not exist.” A logical contradiction, therefore our assumptions were wrong. The proof cannot be valid.
The problem that arises from Aquinas’ proof is that he does not prove that because we can determine relative relationships between qualities two things possess, we know that something must have to have the extreme of this quality. He says ‘maximum’ and uses it as ‘infinite’. In his text, he uses concepts like goodness, truth, and nobility. But we are not required to believe in an infinitely good being. His proof merely says that for us to use goodness in a relative way, there must be a ‘most good’ and a ‘least good’. We can conceive of infinite goodness, but it is not required to relate the relative goodness between two real objects. We need only something with some amount of goodness as a reference point, and say that there exists something with more good than anything else that exists (but that my not be infinite goodness).
Again this will tie into our discussion of infinity (see what I did there). There are numbers that are greater and lesser than others. For instance 2 < 3. 15,204 > -10. We know their relative “greatness”, and we can conceive of the idea that there is a “greatest”. We call this concept infinity. But infinity is not a number, and the fact that we can use the idea of a “greatest number” does not mean that there is one. In fact, I can prove there is not.
For an arbitrarily large number x,
x < x+1
But since x is arbitrarily large, there can be no largest number.
Now if they would just actually define “God” we could find a similar argument and be done with it….
Failure of the Aquinas Proofs of God
Despite 12 years of Catholic school, the first time I really encountered Aquinas was in a Western Civilization course in college. I remembered reading his “proofs” of the existence of God and wondering if this was really a proof to anyone. As it turns out, his logic is trotted out all the time, and I’ve always found it thoroughly unconvincing. So I’d like to take some time to explain why. For some quick background, you can read up on them here. They’re in Article III.
There are 5 of these proofs, but I really will only spend any time on 2 of them. The last 3 are, even under his own admission, more convoluted and, to me, even harder to follow than the first (which I’m rejecting anyway). You will recognize the arguments in these proofs by the very common “first cause” argument. Really, I’m throwing the two together, because they’re pretty much the same. He simply uses motion specifically in the first, and more general cause/effect in the second. A brief summary of the argument is this: Things are currently in motion. For something to be in motion, it must be moved by something. That something must, in turn, be moved by something. This logic must continue until you reach a first mover, something that moves things, but is not moved itself. In more general terms, for something to be in effect, it must have a cause. There cannot be an infinite regression of causes, for that would mean there’s no first cause, therefore, there must be a first cause that is uncaused, with the kicker, “– and this all men know as God”.
Well, first of all all men do not know this as God. That’s quite a leap to make, even assuming I accept your logic before, which I don’t. So I understand what he’s thinking here. Let’s picture a ball in space moving along. For this ball to be moving, something else had to run into it to cause it to move. But that ball was moving already. In order for that to happen, something had to run into that ball, and so on. But this view of the natural world is outdated. Our understanding of the forces at work makes this not nearly as convincing as it was when he wrote it. For example, let’s consider gravity. Two objects, some distance apart, need no prior motion in order to fall together. Gravity acts upon them simply because they exist and nothing more. If the universe consisted of a bunch of static objects, the simple fact that gravity attracts all matter would cause them to move, and once the chain is started, we have no more need for the idea of God as the first cause.
The argument I anticipate at this point is that we haven’t explained where all this stuff came from. Sure, if it popped into existence all still, we can deduce that it would move, but what does it mean to pop into existence? First of all, I think it’s harder to imagine non-existence than people give credit to. What would it mean for nothing to exist? Not that there is a big empty universe (Really, not that. Quantum physics has some great results about how empty space really isn’t empty at all). The empty space wouldn’t exist. Time wouldn’t exist. What does that actually mean? I challenge you to explain it. If there were no existence at all, we couldn’t ask the question “What if nothing existed?” So why is it so hard to accept an infinite past? To claim that God created everything out of nothing is really just claiming that there is some other plane of existence that we don’t comprehend. It actually solves nothing, because we would just redefine “existence” to that new thing we discovered, and ask the same question.
The other real problem with these kinds of questions is the extremely unintuitive nature of time. Time and space are completely interwoven. We talk about the theory of the big bang, and how everything was scrunched down so small and exploded. But to talk like this conversationally is a little misleading. The fantastic density at this moment just “before” the big bang would have rendered time and space completely meaningless. They would both have been stretched and warped more than any black hole in existence now. And the way that such high gravitational force warps space and time, nothing can escape. This means that absolutely all information is lost once it falls into this gravitational well. Everything. We can’t “look deeper” and glean information from before the big bang.
And here’s my point. What does “infinitely old” really mean when old is just a time-relative term, and time is so dubious? It’s not the flat line extending infinitely into the past and future that it seems to us in our day to day lives. There was no “moment of creation”, because moments can’t mean anything without existence. We don’t have the tools to comprehend all of the universe, but that’s ok. We make progress all the time. Nothing yet has said that we can’t understand, just that we don’t yet. God isn’t necessary, just convenient. Give us some time: we’ve had a good history of figuring things out.
Follow up to atheist morals
I just read a painful post about A Christian Analysis of Atheism. I don’t know what I might have expected with a title like that, but the ideas in this misguided commentary make me cringe. I’m embarrassed for both of us. You because you don’t understand a lot of things, and me because we aren’t explaining it well (apparently).
This reminded me of a recent post I made about atheists and morals. This is, apparently, what some Christians think of when they hear the term “atheist”:
According to Chuck Colson in Against The Night: Living In The New Dark Ages, in the arena where relativism reigns supreme in opposition to the law of God, there is no legitimate ground in which one can exclude the arguments and proposals of Nazis, serial killers, and pedophiles (47). From today’s headlines, the nation is coming to realize in the most brutal of ways that these ideas do not confine themselves to academic journals or newspaper opinion pages. And in the case of school shootings such as Columbine High, this radical antipathy towards God can in fact turn deadly.
If the lawlessness of atheism can wreak havoc upon individual lives, just imagine its affects (sic) magnified across entire societies. The major dictatorships of the twentieth century testify to this blood-soaked historical truth. Founded upon assorted atheistic ideologies, these totalitarian regimes promised secular heavens on earth but instead dragged their nations down to the very borders of hell.
Unfettered by eternal external standards, those holding the reins of power in such societies had nothing to hamper the implementation of their most extreme policy whims, not even the value of innocent human lives.
Oh no. Really? The “lawlessness of atheism”? I get so tired of this argument. There is no lawlessness necessitated by atheism. Read that past post of mine for more of that. Atrocities have been committed in the name of many things, including CHRISTIANITY. Some people may try to blame the religion for them, but in general, I do not. It’s the people using what they can to rationalize what they want, nothing more. Blaming atheism for the Columbine shooting? I seem to remember that they picked that day to coincide with Hitler’s birthday (and lest we forget, he made numerous mentions of his Christian beliefs and motivations). So just drop it! Atheism is not about abandoning morality because you don’t have to answer to anyone. Would Mr. Meekins go on a shooting rampage if he wasn’t worried that he would be punished by an invisible man in the sky? Let’s hope not.
But my main point is this: Atheism is not inconsistent with morality, and it’s completely orthogonal. The discussion of belief in a god has nothing to do with if we lose our morality or not. It’s a complete non sequitur. Saying, “Christianity must be true, otherwise people will kill each other” is not arguing any point of truth about Christianity, it’s appealing to the emotions of listeners who don’t really want to die.
And I’m not done with this commentary. He wants to bring up science, so I’m happy to oblige.
The Laws of Thermodynamics declare that, left to themselves, systems degrade to the maximum level of entropy; or in laymen’s terms, things wear out. Employing this principle, one is forced to conclude that, if the universe is an infinitely-old closed system those like Sagan claim it to be, then the universe would have already wound down in eons past. Therefore, the universe must have had a beginning. And since something finite cannot come from nothing, the hypothesis of a divine creator provides the most plausible alternative.
Now, my thermodynamics is a little rusty, but if I remember from college, thermodynamics deals very heavily in probabilities. That is to say, all of the molecules of air in this room could rush to one corner all of a sudden, but that isn’t very likely. The laws of thermodynamics make predictions based on the fact that, over time, things tend to follow certain rules, because the probabilities of them not doing so are so small. But IF the universe is an infinitely-old closed system, you would need zero probability for an event before you could say it won’t ever happen. Don’t underestimate infinity, it’s quite a long time. I’m not claiming that this is true, but consider the possibility. Some 13.5 billion years ago was the last time that all the matter in the universe happened to get to a state that it was crunched down together so tightly and exploded. Can you say with certainty that this hasn’t happened before, or will again? In another 20 billion years? 20 billion billion? (20 billion billion)^(20 billion billion)?
One more comment on the cosmological argument in general, while we’re talking science and math. The argument is more or less a failure of semantics. We start with a premise: everything in motion has a cause. So, that cause must then have a cause, and so forth until we get to a “First Cause”, which must be God. There is a fallacy here that is less than obvious: you can’t use a timeline argument to discuss something that is not temporal. Give it some time to roll around in your brain. If you want to ask “What happened before time began?” you have already used language to make any answer meaningless. What does “before time began” mean? You’re asking what temporal relation something had when there was no measure of time at all. Time is a tricky thing to think about, but watch out for this mistake. “Before time” is meaningless.
It’s too bad so many people misunderstand these things. But I’ll keep doing my part, one post at a time.
Intelligent Design: What has history taught us?
No, I’m not surprised. But it’s certainly worth pointing out, because this kind of “missing the forest for the trees” is a common mistake. This commentary comes from an intelligent design writer who begs the very apt question, “What has history taught us?” Feel free to read through to see his view on abiogenesis, but it boils down to this: We’ve seen in history that abiogenesis doesn’t really seem probable, and scientists haven’t come up with any proof, so abandon the idea. So first of all, I’d like to make a quick point about an intelligent design advocate missing the point of the scientific process (the one actually used, not the rigid sequence taught to 6th graders to get them used to the idea). Putting forth an idea for something we hope to discover, what he calls “philosophical faith”, has nothing to do with faith. Science makes progress like this: observe, attempt to explain, use explaination to predict, look for prediction, reformulate theory, repeat. It has nothing to do with any kind of faith. The whole point is that you try to explain it the best you can, and when you get more information, you use that to help your explanation. The fact that an idea has been around for some time without evidence either way does not mean abandon it for religious based theories.
But what makes me almost laugh about this commentary is the way he seems to bring up a good point, and ignore the elephant in the room. Exactly what has history taught us about religiously backed explanations for natural phenomena? I’ll tell you: in every instance, EVERY single instance, the religious explanation has been shown to be wrong. It is a crutch during times that we didn’t have the knowledge to actually explain it. Ancient people cowering at the lightning, thinking that Zeus was angry with them look pretty silly to us today don’t they? How can you ask the question “What has history taught us?” and igonore the obvious end to your question? History has taught us that when we think we know, we don’t. The difference between science (real science, not intelligent design) and religion is that science expects to be wrong and has mechanisms to absorb new information and evolve (pun intended). Religion fights it with all its might. Whether it’s today, next year or in 500 years, this one will too. The evidence will pile up until it is overwhelming and we will come up with something new. The common component is science, humming along in the background, making itself better and better all the time. You can try to fight it, or you can swallow your pride and let go of outdated superstitions.
Learn from history: you’re fighting a losing battle.
Re: Atheist Fundamentalism
This comes from an editorial page from a Texas news station, so I shouldn’t be all that surprised. But the sentiments here are not as uncommon as they should be. Rod Dreher writes a collumn entitled, Against Atheist Fundamentalism.
First things first, I’m willing to criticize some atheists he mentions in his post, the Texas Church of Freethought. Now, I don’t claim to know very much about this group, but my first impression is that they are trying to do some ok things in exactly the wrong way. From their home page:
We are a rational approach to religion, offering atheists, agnostics, humanists, and freethinkers all the social, emotional and inspirational benefits of traditional faith-based churches, but without appealing to tradition or superstition.
Guys, atheism is not a religion (which I’m sure they know), and calling yourselves a “Church” is going to hurt your cause more than help it. The article’s writer even says “Texas is so religious even the atheists go to church.” I don’t necessarily think that what they’re doing is that bad, but they open up atheism to so much trouble by calling it a church. Atheism is not about faith.
But let’s get back to the real issue, misrepresenting atheists. Let me pick a gem from his article, and we can all see what boils my blood here. Yes, people apparently still think like this:
Unfortunately, militant atheism in power has repeated all the crimes of religious regimes and, absent ethical restraints, made them vastly worse. Though their ideologies despised Christianity, both the communists and the Nazis justified their own monstrosities as “scientific.”
Oh no. Please, no. We need to squash this one once and for all, but it just will not happen. The Hitler Historical Museum quotes a speech he made on April 12, 1922 saying:
My feeling as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God’s truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter.
We need to stop equating Nazism with atheism. It’s a false analogy, and I suspect it began because there’s such a stigma against nazism that mentioning it in the same sentence, even if shown to be false, casts a shadow that is hard to step out of.
Mr. Dreher would like us to accept that religion and science don’t have to be mutually exclusive and, indeed, can each learn from the other. I don’t whole heartedly disagree with that statement, just the second half. They don’t have to be mutually exclusive, but they do not share any common ground. I know that it’s difficult when the “sphere” of science seems to overstep the line in the sand that religion has made, but we have to understand that science itself is impartial. It’s not trying to step on the toes of what religion claims to know; it just goes where the evidence leads. And if new evidence arises, science takes it in stride. Science can’t learn from religion, not because, as Dreher quotes a speaker, “scientists [have] nothing to learn from religious people, who by definition believed absurd things”. The reason is that the things they believe are not in the same realm. Science builds on itself; each new piece of information must be incorporated and reviewed, tested and retested, peer reviewed and scrutinized. There are few assumptions that science relies on, and the fewer the better. Asking science to just take a little religious wisdom doesn’t make sense, because religious beliefs aren’t purely rational. Notice I didn’t say absurd, stupid, mindless, etc. They are just based on different premises: religious belief is never built from the ground up on rationalism.
Equating science and religion to us taking a cue from the Eskimos about using all parts of the animals we kill is just silly. Science isn’t saying “don’t use all parts of the animal”. Science is saying “the reason that we should use all parts doesn’t seem to be because they gave themselves to us for nourishment.” It’s explaining our world the best that we know how currently. Religion can take it personally if it would like, but don’t drag science down too. It’s just too impartial to play the blame game.
Oh, and Rod: Don’t for a second act like kids “sitting around the campfire, learning from grown-ups that the world is disenchanted after all” is in on any comparable level with kids going to evangelical bible camps, being broken down with criticism, encouraged into trances and “speaking in tongues”, and taught to laugh at science. A camp where kids are told that they can examine the world for themselves is far from a bad thing.
The Critical Thought Black Hole of Christianity
Let’s face it, the United States is dominated by Christianity. It’s a powerful group that reaches all aspects of our country, in one way or another. And they continue to add important social issues to their black hole of mindless following, stuff that had no bearing on any kind of religious debate until they made it so.
I think that this is a very large group of misguided individuals, but I don’t usually subscribe to the idea that the religion in itself is evil. Many atheist themed forums tend to get post after post about “This religious person did that terrible thing”. While this can occasionally be informative and thought provoking (say, for example, parents praying while their sick child dies instead of going to a hospital, or a school teacher having his career threatened because he didn’t share the beliefs of his superiors), I’m not usually the one to push the story around just because it casts religion in a negative light. In general, I think that there are bad people in all parts of society who can do bad things with or without religion.
But to me there is one part of organized religion in general, and Christianity in specific, that makes me worry for my future: they continue to drag non-religious issues into the religious debate ring. Now, any of these issues can be a book of subject matter and debate on its own, so I have no intention of starting that kind of thing in this post. But let me illustrate the problem with a few examples. Let’s start with the big one: Evolution. Why is this such a debate between (some, not all, I understand that) Christians and atheists? It’s because it was made a religious issue by Christians. Let’s look from the point of view of an atheist for a moment. This is a scientific theory which attempts to explain phenomena that we have observed. It’s no different than the theory of gravity in that sense.
(Side note, I cringe every time I hear someone talk about the Law of gravity as if it has some greater proof than merely a “theory” of evolution. First, Newton’s Law of Gravity has been shown to be incorrect. Second, you are misunderstanding the use of the words in a scientific setting. Do the research.)
Now, consider what is motivating the Christian side of the argument. As science continues its steady march of gathering information, it appears to encroach on a more literal interpretation of their holy book. Science itself has no care about any religion. When we understood what lightning really was, and Zeus became a little less plausible, there was no intent from science to detract from that belief, only evidence. There is no significant difference here. It’s a religious issue only because the early writers of Christianity tried to explain something they didn’t understand, and the modern followers have trouble resolving that with what we learn by exploring the world.
While always controversial, that was a relatively gentle example. How about this: Abortion. There are few debates that can get as heated as this one, and I think it separates Christians from atheists even more strongly. Why is this a religious issue? Because there are some cryptic passages in the bible that can be interpreted to have an opinion on this issue. In no way do I pretend that even without religion that this is a simple issue with a cut and dry answer. However, I do contend that religion needs to kindly butt out. Why? Because the people using religion as backup for their opinion aren’t actually thinking. Perhaps someone argues, “Before 5 weeks, there isn’t even a heartbeat, so I am ok with the morning-after pill.” And what if the response comes back, “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. [Jeremiah 1:5]” It’s a non-sequitur that blocks any exchange of ideas. It says “My religion commands this, and no amount of debate will change the words that I’m told to believe.”
Don’t get me wrong, there are Christians who see shades of gray and exceptions to the rule, and there are atheists who may not. But they got to that point by drawing their own conclusions, by thinking for themselves.
There will always be nutjobs around us, doing terrible things, and they’ll find some reason to do them whether we have religion or not. The danger of Christianity in this country isn’t from pedophile priests. They would commit the same crimes however they could. The danger is that 75% of the country is being told exactly what to think on a growing number of very important social issues. It destroys democracy, and the more issues that Christian leaders decide to pull under their umbrella the worse it gets.
And it isn’t just dangers from Christianity that worry me in this topic, it affects atheists as well. If we can’t separate these issues from the debate over religious truth, more people will actively resist free thought. The debate over abortion is a perfect example. I know people who are religious, but have strong feelings about abortion for their own reasons as well. To them, this issue is so mixed up with religion, however, that the word “atheist” might as well mean “baby killer”. They won’t open up to the idea of questioning their religious beliefs because they think that there is a similar atheist dogma that they would be accepting by default. Atheism isn’t about evolution or abortion or gay marriage, but religion has so clouded these issues that it’s become that way in the minds of these people.
Sure, everyone has an opinion about these issues, but they are not critical to the ideas of atheism. You can reject belief in God and still form your own conclusions on other issues.
Jesus Camp and Science Prejudice
I recently watched the documentary Jesus Camp again. First of all, if you haven’t seen this, I would recommend renting it some time. It is really a well done movie, and I’ve seen it at most of the movie rental stores that I’ve been to, even in relatively religious midwest areas. I actually picked up a copy to own at one Blockbuster because the price to own it was only a couple of dollars more than renting.
Anyway, just watching this movie floods my mind with topics that all deserve their own post, so I want to single out one aspect that I feel is the most crushing issue that faces children in this country. As a little bit of background, in case you haven’t seen it, the movie documents some evangelical Christian families during a few seminars. The focus of this aspect of evangelical Christianity is how they indoctrinate their children. There are, in my opinion, graphic scenes of children who are, at most, ten years old looking up through streaming tears and babbling nonsense words to “let the holy spirit come out”. Other scenes depict these poor children reduced to sobbing heaps on the floor because they’ve just spent the last hour hearing about what terrible, horrid people they have been. They’re told to cleanse themselves to be worthy of being in God’s army. One of the children that the movie follows more than the others tells us how he was “saved” when he was five years old. Yes, at five years old, he was of sound mind and judgement, enough to devote his life to preaching the good word. I could go on.
But that isn’t the worst of what happens. A statistic quoted in the movie states that of the home-schooled children in the United States, 75% of them are evangelical Christians. This is where the damage is done. I think a couple of quotes will do more justice to the problem than I can:
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Mother: How would you like to go to a school where a teacher says, “Creationism is stupid, and you’re stupid if you believe it”
Son: I wouldn’t like that.
Mother: How about if you went to a school where a teacher says, “Evolution is stupid, and you’re stupid if you believe that.”
Son: I probably wouldn’t mind that, haha…
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Mother: And how much has the global temperature risen?
Son: About 0.6 degrees
Mother: That’s not very much is it? Doesn’t sound like a very big problem, does it?
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Preacher: You are not just some blob of protoplasm… Whatever that is, heh heh
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These children are taught to mock science and dismiss it before even learning what it’s supposed to mean. The last example makes my blood boil just thinking about it. This man immediately gave these kids the idea that it was stupid to believe that anything that sounds as weird as “protoplasm” could have any bearing on reality. They also watched a movie on creationism where a guy said something like, “We’re supposed to have come from a pile of goo?”. And he looks disgustedly at some green slime that is all over his hands. This tactic is despicable, and it works amazingly well for young children. There is immediately a mob-mentality that sucks up all of the kids learning this crap, because children love to ridicule. Now, instead of sharing ideas with other children, teachers or learning from books, they can immediately band together and laugh at the mockery that’s been made of very real scientific results.
I grew up in 12 years of Catholic school. My fiance spent her childhood in camps and youthgroups just like this, and none of it is insurmountable. I strongly believe that nobody is so indoctrinated that they cannot come out of it. But don’t for a second tell me that these preachers don’t know what they are doing to these kids. They are building up walls to free thought, and it will take years for these kids to undo it. That’s if they are exposed to anything but their evangelical Christian community. This community is nearly 25% of the American population, so you had better believe that they get heard. One particular evangelist in this movie was reported to have weekly meetings with the president. This agenda is a political powerhouse. I can be disgusted that states are pushing intelligent design into public school curriculums, but I honestly can’t be that surprised.
