Exactly. It’s a kind of “memetic warfare.” They are power-hungry, for the same reason many unintelligent tyrants are power-hungry: they want to control others, for power’s own sake.
They’ll phrase it defensively. They’re protecting their children against secular humanism. But the mechanism is that of tyranny. Running stealth candidates for community office, for example, or lying about the opposition.
(Just yesterday, I was listening, with much nausea, to a Christian radio show where the host was explaining, in tedious – and fallacious – detail how, under Darwinism, there can be no morals. If evolution is true, then there can be no “right and wrong.” We’ve heard this claptrap before, but they never get tired of repeating it.)
I don’t agree with you that fear is always the motivation, although I’m sure it may be.
I have some ultra-religious cousins, science & math teachers, no less, who I can’t say have a fear of questioning anything. But when they question anything in the religious category, their deep-seated but unfounded beliefs color their perception so strongly that any dis-confirming evidence is rationalized away. They are not bothered by this, but consider it entirely logical. I just don’t feel fear is a major factor here (unless you call it the “fear of God”.)
That’s pretty strong language, and pretty dehumanizing. It creates an “us vs them” mentality. We’re the enlightened ones, and they are diease vectors. Yuck.
But I would agree with the notion that the only purpose of a belief is to perpetuate itself. In that light, maybe we should take a closer look at our own beliefs.
It is an us-versus-them situation. The creationists and similarly fervent believers are going to continue to look at unbeleivers as “them” regardless of whether or not the unbelievers in question acknowledge the division.
And yes, they are disease vectors in my opinion; and yes, people who don’t buy creationism are more “enlightened”. The fact is that these people are factually wrong; hugely so. This isn’t a matter of opinion; what they believe is utter nonsense.
Acknowledging enemies as enemies serves you and the people they would like to hurt along with you. Pretending they aren’t enemies just makes you a victim.
No, calling a fellow human an enemy does not serve me in the slightest. They are merely perpetuating misguided beliefs. The best I can do is seek truth and spread it wherever I can.
Der Trish is right. The " intelligent design" tenet does serve an us vs them purpose, just like any shibboleth. Where I don’t -quite- agree with Der Thris is that this is necessarily an enemy or antagonistic thing. it is more of a nest scent thing, like “We love the Beatles, they are Stone-fans” Or X-box vs Playstation. It is more of a nest scent thing. But granted, Playstation fans don’t try and get their beliefs taught in school.
And as for where this is headed? I think the same place where its predecessors were headed. Lamenting about the evils of birth control (pill and condoms), or the evils of women’s rights and divorce (and about one of them would lead to another), used to be the Christian thing only a few decades ago.
Perhaps, but the atheists didn’t start this contamination of state and school. it started when some relis started pushing their agenda for creationism being pushed on all school curricula.
If we atheists didn’t start it, I don’t think it is us who need to turn the other cheek (which is, by the way, one of the least enforced tenets of Christianity).
The “ultimate goal” of creationists is to get religion into school curriculum. Minds are most malleable/moldable at an early age. Mandatory Bible study and the Lord’s Prayer are out (at least in public schools), so creationist pseudoscience is seen as an alternate foot in the door.
I think creationists really believe what they say they believe and that God doesn’t like people saying we came from monkeys (or whatever.) Now, SOME creationists feed on this ignorance for fun and profit and they really don’t like anyone educating the sheep in their flock. Those are the creationists we should worry about.
I loath creationists precisely because they resist being educated. Their debate on this point has been consitently intellectually dishonest. Have you ever tried?
You can’t educate most of them; they are irrational, not just ignorant. Such people are general outlived, not convinced. And “us versus them” is at the heart of their ideology; they have the True Faith, and they are going to try to ram it down the throat of everyone else no matter what kind of lies or pressure or force is needed. As the history of religion demonstrates, if they could get away with it they’d quite likely be torturing people into “admitting” creationism is true or just murdering them.
Sure I’ve tried, but then I’ve realized that it’s futile to waste my breath on them. You can’t really change someone else’s belief system.
But I was wondering – Do we really have more creationists in this country now that we did 20 years ago? Or 50? Or 100? If the number is on the rise, that’s alarming, but I would think that the general trend is that the number is falling. We’ll get there.