Steven Dutch, Natural and Applied Sciences, Universityof Wisconsin - Green Bay
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There's no way to get people to stop believing in conspiracy theories, so why fight it? The government brought down the World Trade Center. The Chinese discovered America in 1421. Ancient astronauts built the Pyramids.
Think about it. If you really wanted to undermine Christianity, what would be good way to do it?
If that's not a perfect description of creationism, what is?
In the May 2001 issue of the Institute for Creation Research's Acts and Facts, President John D. Morris wrote about two high school shooting rampages, both within a few miles of ICR and within three weeks of each other. Of course, he traced the root cause to evolution and its erosive effect on traditional moral values.
Or could it possibly be that creationism causes high-school shooting rampages? Two shootings within a few miles of ICR headquarters and only three weeks apart. If that's not evidence for a causal relationship, what is? Add to this the fact that virtually every school shooting rampage in the last decade has happened in communities where large numbers of people endorse creationism?
Again, think about it. Here we have large numbers of adults sneering at authority, and in all likelihood also proclaiming that the government is controlled by evil forces. Many of them insist they need guns to ward off possible dictatorship. (How well this will actually work in practice was shown a couple of years ago in western Wisconsin, when six deer hunters were killed by one guy who really did have some military training.)
If this doesn't create a fertile climate for unstable high school kids to think it's legitimate to lash out at authority with lethal force, what does?
Funny think about conflicts between militant atheists and Christianity. The things they complain about in Christianity are precisely the things that are most scientific.
Ask a scientist if the speed of light depends on your values and he'll say "where do you come up with this New Age nonsense? Insist that moral principles are fixed and invariable and the same person will say that's exactly why he dislikes religion: it's so rigid.
Or bring up any of the traditional arguments for the existence of God and the militant atheist will retort that the Universe is entirely indifferent to humans, that evolution doesn't care about individual organisms, and that it weeds out the maladapted without pity or remorse.
One of Dawkins' more useful notions is the idea of a meme. It recognizes that in human culture, the genetic transfer of information is far inferior to cultural transfer of information. A meme is a unit of cultural information, analogous to a gene. The concept of memes has been criticized because nobody knows how exactly to define a meme, but it's still a useful notion. It's a way to begin grappling with how ideas are selected and evolve.
The Old Testament has little to say about genes - presumably people with bad genes would be culled by natural selection, not so much by failing to survive as failing to mate. It is, on the other hand, the most fiercely evolutionist book ever written in its demands to weed out bad memes. The Book of Deuteronomy, for example, calls for the death penalty for a wide variety of acts, all justified by "You must purge the evil from among you." That expression is repeated nine times.
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Created 12 October, 2005; Last Update 24 May, 2020
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