I sometimes shake my head at the futility of debating the dedicated faithful. By that I do not mean those who are serious about their religion and think it through, but those who attached themselves, limpet-like, to a movement and then abandon all introspection and attack all dissent aimed at it. Creationism vs Evolution is a good example.
Now, there are some Creationists who know perfectly well that their arguments won’t sustain a scientific examination, but it doesn’t matter. They see their mission as one of “saving” those who can’t (or won’t) parse such distinctions from the murkiness of science, and in that cause they have adopted what amounts to a tactic–formulate their arguments in the language of science so as to reassure those who already dislike Evolution that there is no monopoly on reasoned analysis, and that god can be found in the epistemology of creation science just as in evolutionary science god is eliminated.
Why bother with this? Well, for aesthetic reasons. We live in an age wherein the jargon of science, wherein the fruits of a scientific approach, wherein the Scientist has enormous cachet. Even while rejecting the conclusions of much science, people sort of know that there’s something to it, even while they don’t understand it. And that if you can couple your old wive’s tales, folkore, New Age poppycock, or religious viewpoint with a scientific explanation you can pretty well cover all bases and stop worrying about Anything Changing.
That last bit is important.
What the faithful follower really wants is a cake that never disappears, even after you eat on it for a whole lifetime.
Science is just a downer.
Example. My father is an engineer. My whole childhood, we had conversations that went something like this.
“I want to go to the moon.”
“Okay. You need X amount of fuel per pound.”
“But that means the ship will be too big.”
“Too big for what?”
“For everyone I want to take along.”
“You need several ships then. You’ll need x amount of fuel for each one. And when you get there, you have to have oxygen to breathe.”
“How come?”
“There’s no air on the moon.”
“Where will I get it?”
“You’ll have to bring it with you.”
“But that means the ships will be even BIGGER!”
Frustrating. I just wanted to jump in the family car and launch it moonward and NOT WORRY ABOUT ALL THE DAMN DETAILS THAT SEEMED INTENT ON TELLING ME IT COULDN’T BE DONE!
Better to just fantasize about going to the moon.
Or, when a bit older, and the subject was pollution.
“I think we should go back to using horses instead of cars.”
“Why?”
“Less air pollution.”
“Okay, but everyone would have to have a barn to store the hay for them to eat. A horse needs x amount a day.”
“The garage isn’t big enough.”
“No, it isn’t. And then there’s another thing.”
“What?”
“What do you do with all the feces?”
“What feces?”
“The horse feces.”
When you’re young, these kind of “How do you pay for it?” arguments are intensely frustrating. Some on your most cherished ambitions get shot down by bookkeeping, it seems.
To the followers of creationist arguments, I think something like this is in play. What they adamantly do not want is to think about how all this stuff–the universe, you know?–works. They want to repeal the three laws of thermodynamics and continue on as if nothing they or their parents or their children do to live “good lives” has any impact on anything.
For their part, though, Evolutionists and the like seem to misunderstand this psychology and get frustrated by the appeal of the religious approach. The psychology is different, the aesthetics are different, and for the most part the two sides are speaking different languages.
What the faithful do not want is to feel (a) powerless and (b) responsible. They avoid both by allying themselves with an omnipotent god who does good things for them when petitioned by prayer (evidence notwithstanding) and by believing that this same god has a plan and wouldn’t let all the dire consequence those scientists keep harping on about happen.
Unless we deserve them to happen, which means we’re sinners and deserve it anyway, so trying to do something about it is human arrogance and in defiance of god.
But ultimately it’s the ducking of responsibility that’s so wired into the antiscience religious approach that’s attractive. That cake will never vanish even as we eat our fill day in and day out.
The other part of this, of course, is the way people take things so personally. I recall back in the Seventies when a prominent scientist announced that the sun will burn out in eight billion years and following day the stock market took a serious dip. People are reactive and, at least in aggragate, seem incapable of a sense of proportion.
Not that we should stop trying to debunk Creationism. But I think we need to realize that as we argue with these folks, we’re facing desires and needs we may not be acknowledging. All they see is an argument that’s bent on telling us the cake isn’t there. Or that we’re diabetics and can’t have any. They’re not seeing the positive side.
Anybody have a spare fork?
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