Sunday, March 12, 2017

Evangelical Persecution Complex


This interesting article in the Atlantic, about how evangelical Christians perceive that they are the victims of persecution, is very revealing.

And so is a comment chain on Facebook about it by a guy whose name I will omit. Bracketed comments are inserted by me for clarity. It's like a greatest hits of creationist foolishness.

"They are [indeed discriminated against] and it mostly comes from the left. Which seems to be embracing islam."

"OK if my son who is also a Christian desides he would like to pray or read his bible on his free periods during the day he will be stopped and told that he can't do that in public schools. The same school will turn a blind eye to a Muslim. The poor kid has to listen to and be tested on the theory of evolution which is just a theory because there is no more proof of it than there is creationism. That's pretty big to a Christian. Another thing is Christians are refused certain venues and of course the reasons for that aren't stated because those venues could be sued. If you are a Christian and you want to be a journalist you will have a tough time getting a job at mainstream media outlets other than fox. The list goes on and on. There is a war against the sis white male and that include Christians. Don't act like you don't see it."

"There is not ample proof of evolution. At least macro evolution. There is and will never be proof of one species evolving to another. No such missing link has been found. And yes the sic white male is under attack and will eventually be downtrodden if leftist have anything to do with the laws"

"Whether it is legal or not it happened. I am not mixed up in the slightest bit. You are."

"There is no concrete evidence of it. When scientist discover anything that contradicts the theory of evolution they are laughed at and defunded. They have been standing on that falsehood for years and they refuse to let any evidence prove them wrong. The fact is they have never produced a missing link, they try to prove the earth is millions of years old with radiocarbon dating and calibrate that to striations and when asked how they know how old the striations are they refer back to radiocarbon dating. Circular logic. Most scientist worth their salt will tell you the if the planet was even a million years old there wouldn't be any carbon 14 left."

"Oh no Tim you just showed me a picture of fossils. Sorry that does not prove macro evolution. I do not reject science, in fact I have an engineering degree. Science is very important. The lack of proof of macro evolution is why I have a problem with it. And science has never been wrong about anything, right? I suggest that you look into it farther before you jump on the bandwagon. Here's a question that you won't read in natgeo because they can't answer it without having to throw evolution out the window. There are tons of fossils that are supposed to be millions of years old that still have soft tissue attached to it. By their own guidelines that tissue is not supposed to exist unless of course the animal was alive less than 1000 years ago. So to me I feel sorry for you for being suckered into believing lies. That's fine that you believe them but they don't show proof of any animal in transition from one to another. Fact"

"None of them [the examples given by another commenter] display macro evolution."

"So when they found a t-rex fossil with soft tissue on it. They can't explain why though."

"I did not make that up. Look into it."

"You are a fool. It is useless to argue with someone that has already convinced himself of the lie of evolution."

"Just for the record you have produced no facts of macro evolution."

"That's funny. I don't see an scientific understanding coming from any of you trolls. Your lack of evidence is solid proof of your ignorance"

"I haven't seen any substantial evidence of how old the earth is or real evidence of macro evolution. You guys on here are just trolling. Why is it so important to you that my son learns some thing that is still and will always be labeled as a theory, not scientific fact? Is it because you hate God for some reason?"

"I have studied it and I am not in the least bit humiliated."

"No Ann. I was indoctrinated with the theory of evolution from as long as I can remember. When I was saved I realized that to be a believer I couldn't just pick and choose what parts of the bible to believe. This was a big hurtle I had to get over so I started researching the so called evidence and I have found enough hole in it. I would like for my son to learn about all theories but I don't want him to be miss led into believing the theories are actual facts. They aren't."

"John you are a God less idiot"

"If you all are so smart than why did you start the name calling?"

"Tim, it's hard to find evidence that simply don't exist!"

"John, I wonder if you will say that when you are face to face with Jesus? All knees shall bow."

"I have wasted enough of my time arguing with Godless Sodomites for the night. I will pray for you all."

It's like they exist in a different universe. No fact can penetrate a brain this deluded.

7 comments:

skongstad said...

I laughed out loud, when I got to"I do not reject science, in fact I have an engineering degree".
The Salem hypothesis in action!

dean said...

That article could have been written about christian groups here in West Michigan, evangelical and not evangelical.

I think this point

These numbers cannot explain how different groups develop their perceptions of bigotry, whether it’s the media they consume, their geographic locations, or simply the communities they know best.

is important. For people who believe that the rules by which they live are the only true rules, the reaction to seeing others dismiss their concerns is an attack on who they are.

JimV said...

Sad. All those creationist talking points have been addressed for many years, but the same zombie arguments march on. Carbon 14 is of course continually produced in our atmosphere, and is not used to date anything past 40,000-50,000 years because its half-life is only about eight years. If you list all the long-half-life elements and consider which are still found in the Earth's crust and which aren't (as Dr. Ken Miller did in the beginning of "Finding Darwin's God"), the results support a 4-5 billion year-old Earth.

The soft tissue he refers to is decomposed bone marrow.

He may have an engineering degree of some sort, but he is not a good engineer. My guess would be Sanitation Engineer, since he deals in old garbage.

(I have a degree - Masters - in Mechanical Engineering. In my anecdotal experience you will find as much or more creationism in doctors, lawyers, and philosophers as in engineers. The best engineers ground their work in empirical testing. One of the things that strikes me about the Intelligent Design "theorists" is that none of them have any experience in engineering design development - they are theorizing about a process which they don't understand - it isn't magic.)

nmanning said...

That old 'I was indoctrinated in evolution from k-12!' witnessing kills me. RE: Engineer creationists - I had one such chap declare to me with great certainty that all cells were spheres. I showed him a picture of cuboidal epithelium. He stopped replying to me on that forum, but I came across the same fellow on a different forum about a month later making the exact same claims. And declaring that because he was an engineer, he was totally correct. Then there is the YEC computer engineer who claims that that really is a stegosaurus carving on that Cambodian temple, thus, YECism is true! And he simply dismissed my request that he actually look at the skeleton of a stegosaurus....

Mark said...

JimV--The half life of carbon-14 is about 5,730 years.
But the important thing is there is a whole array of absolute dating methods that cover various ranges, yet Creationists mostly focus on C-14.

Unknown said...

I suppose there's a bit of humor in just how consistently wrong their beliefs are. Or it would be humourous if it weren't causing massive destruction.

JimV said...

Mark, thanks for the correction. I should have said about 6000 years. I looked it up years ago and calculated that 48,000 years was about the limit, but forgot which was the half-life (in thousands) and which was the (approximate) ratio of 48K/half-life, or number of halvings.

(I have been retired for a while and no longer consider myself a good engineer. A good engineer would have re-checked.)

(As my friend and fellow-engineer Mario said, when I tried to get him interested in a new project as a learning experience, as he neared retirement, "At my age I don't need any more learning experiences - I need coasting experiences!")

(Last parenthetical comment: I worked with a couple hundred engineers, technicians, and draftspersons in my engineering career at GE and Rolls Royce Energy Systems. Only one of them was an avowed creationist, and we tended to laugh at him for it - although he was a nice person and a good draftsman.)