- Anything Else -

Yes, it is getting redundant, I suppose

In Reply to: Here we go again posted by Samuel Day Fassbinder on May 16, 1999 at 14:14:23:

: SDF: But why bother with understanding the other side, when refusing to do so keeps one's ideological tortoise-shell intact, and thus offers so much more of an immediate reassurance, so that one won't have to do any scary thinking?

: At least Robert hasn't offered us any need to do any thinking of our own -- fundamentalist dogmatism is easy to understand, so once we know that his psychological defenses rely upon the reiteration of "Biblical truth" as the answer to topics ("speciation") not dealt with in the Bible strictly speaking, no more need be said about Robert. All we need know is that he thinks he knows where all the answers can be found.

Yes, this is the part of fundamentalist religion that really sadens me more than anything else. Robert claims to believe that the Bible contains ALL of the answers to life, but in fact I'm sure he does not actually believe this. Nowhere in either the Old or New Testament are automobiles mentioned, for example, and yet I am reasonably certain that he accepts their reality (they are otherwise a very effective selective filter!). He also obviously accepts the reality of personal computers, or we'd never have heard from him in the first place. And yet the bible makes no mention of their existence.
It surprises me that he, or anyone else, is so determined to reject the evidence of his own senses, but it really saddens me that his arguments are based on this one book that was written several thousand years ago and is, in fact, completely silent about the subject. The Bible actually does not say that evolution doesn't happen. (In fact, there are many areas in the book that can be construed as implicit recognition of change through time.) The problem is that some people are only willing to see their gods as great big humans, full of the same petty bigotry and prejudices (e.g. the anti-gay rants elsewhere in this room) as themselves, and as equally devoid of imagination. This strikes me as a claim that god has to follow the dictates of humans, which seems rather counter to Robert's claims. I don't consider myself religious at all, but I find it confusing that anyone could worship a god that COULD'T work by rational principles.
I also find it odd that people would claim that god gave them these big brains that are capable of understanding so much, but also claim that god didn't want us to use the brains to understand the universe.
Robert and his ilk are confronted with competing paradigms. On the one hand, they've been told that the Bible contains all the necessary wisdom for life. (This is, arguably, a valid claim.) on the otherhand, they are confronted with overwhelming evidence for a process that is not mentioned in the Bible. Because they have mistaken "wisdom" for "knowledge" they are forced to deny the evidence. This is ultimately a problem with the English language, at least in part. Our language doesn't make a clear distinction between "knowledge" of spiritual or philosophical matters and "knowledge" of material, existential and experiential matters. (I used the word "wisdom" above because it seems the closest analogue to "gnosis," or "knowledge of spiritual phenomena" that is in common usage, not because this word is necessarily accurate in any absolute sense.)
(I also have a problem with the selective use of biblical quotes, out of context, with no apparent understanding of the symbolic significance of the whole. This tends to reduce a complex symbol system (Christianity) into a two-dimentional cartoon with no more ambiguity or sense of complexity than Superman comics, but that's another issue entirely.)
I don't really know why I keep letting people like Robert bait me into discussions of this sort. I suppose I'm trying to point out how beautiful and complex this universe really is. I don't much care if people want to attribute all that to a god of some sort, that's a psychological decision that each individual is entitled to make for her/himself. I do care, very much, when people say "it's not in the bible, so it doesn't exist." This strikes me as a claim that (a) the person involved already knows all of "god's" thoughts, (b) people who lived between 2000 and 4000 years ago were more qualified to explain geology, biology, genetics, anthropology, etc. than people who live today, and (c) that "god" can only work in ways that can be understood by simpletons. I know that Robert is reasonably intelligent-he is able to construct a sentance much better than many of my students, for example-so I can't understand why he gets stuck in such obvious logical traps. Oh well. It's his right to choose not to understand, I suppose.
Thanks for joining the conversation, SDF, I always enjoy your posts.
-Floyd

Follow Ups:

• Perhaps this sounds familiar Robert May 20 1999 (0)