80sU2isBest said:
As I said before, I don't care whether you're talking about me or not. So you can throw that "persecution complex" garbage out the window. What I take issue with is that you deem those who who don't believe certain of the same things you do as "dangerous", because science says it, and if science says it, it must be true. To me, that is intellectual snobbery.
Irvine, you said that believing that every word in the Bible to be true is dangerous. You said it several times, in fact. Then you say that it's only dangerous when people believe every word even when those words contradict science. Well, there are indeed ideas in the Bible that contradict popular scientific thought. So, if I or anyone else believes that every word in the Bible is true, we are by default believing in things that contradict popular scientific thought. So, we are, by default, dangerous, according to your definition.
okay. plain and simple: if one is going to insist that the world is only 4,000 years old because the Bible tells them so, and if the best science we know has reached a virtual consensus that the earth is 4.5 billion years old, then i am guilty of intellectual snobbery when i think that people who believe THEIR OWN INTERPRETATION of the Bible is correct are willfull fucking idiots.
they're being purposefully ignorant, and i'm going to calla spade a spade. and, yes, that is dangerous. closed minds are dangerous.
what i think is just HILARIOUS, 80s, is that you are making the assumptions that ALL christians (or perhaps it is all true Christians? are you looking to play that game?) believe every word the Bible says? or that belief in every word the Bible says is necessarily predicated upon scientific ignorance?
if so, then God help you all.
i wrote this in another thread, but i'm going to post it again here because i think it elucidates what Melon, and I, and others are talking about:
this has nothing to do with intelligence, it has everything to do with willful self-deception.
let me tell you something:
i am currently helping to produce a series of educational DVDs about math. the company i work for believes that a big potential market for this particular education product will be home-schoolers. the business assumption -- which comes from research -- is that the majority of home schoolers in the US are of a fundamentalist Christian stripe and will not purchase anything that goes against a specific worldview. and we know what the specifics are, because marketing and research has laid it all out for us. we cannot have any of the following things in our programs:
-- no tattoos
-- no mention of "evolution"
-- no mention of "contraversial" science, i.e., the age of the earth, when the dinosaurs lived, etc.
-- some claims must always be prefaced by, "Some scientists believe that ..."
-- no card games
-- no billards
-- no horse racing
and that's just for starters. i didn't make any of this up, and these rules weren't drawn simply from stereotypes -- they were created via research and marketing and product testing.
this is the Know-Nothingism of which i speak, and it terrifies me that, through my work, i am acquiescing and therefore economically legitimizing a segment of American society that ultimately seeks my social death as a gay person.
and, gosh, if these people knew just how many homos, jews, unwed mothers, divorced people, and childless married people who worked on these products ...
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