Welcome!
I've been thinking of creating a blog for a while now. While I occasionally get a chuckle from religious antics, I'm also concerned about the power and influence of the religious lobby on supposedly secular governments. The attempts (some successful) of the Creationists and their offshoot Intelligent Design(ists? ers??) to have their theory taught in schools, notably in the USA and Great Britain, is particularly concerning. Bobby Henderson's fantastic Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster brought much-needed opposition to the IDer's attempts to push their non-scientific views onto the educational community. However religions do have access to immense sums of money - easy enough to come by when you convince people that eternal life can be purchased - and with money comes political, advertising and educational power.
One example of this is the recent construction of the "Creation Museum" in Kentucky, USA - a multi-million dollar theme park for fundamentalists and evangelists. (The "Ways to Give" link on their website states that in April they crossed the 27-million dollar funds mark through donations). Through static and animatronic displays, each with video explanation (perhaps illiteracy is high in their customer demographic?) they attempt to validate their belief in the literal creation story in Genesis. This is obviously not science, but it is being portrayed as science - to a future generation of trusting and believing kids who are enticed by the exciting dinosaur displays. This pollution of young minds is perhaps the most pernicious aspect of religion. As any scientist will tell you, science relies on and welcomes vigorous and thorough testing of theories. Religion does not.
Let's teach the next generation to observe, use their brains, and question everything they're told.
Marty
I've been thinking of creating a blog for a while now. While I occasionally get a chuckle from religious antics, I'm also concerned about the power and influence of the religious lobby on supposedly secular governments. The attempts (some successful) of the Creationists and their offshoot Intelligent Design(ists? ers??) to have their theory taught in schools, notably in the USA and Great Britain, is particularly concerning. Bobby Henderson's fantastic Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster brought much-needed opposition to the IDer's attempts to push their non-scientific views onto the educational community. However religions do have access to immense sums of money - easy enough to come by when you convince people that eternal life can be purchased - and with money comes political, advertising and educational power.
One example of this is the recent construction of the "Creation Museum" in Kentucky, USA - a multi-million dollar theme park for fundamentalists and evangelists. (The "Ways to Give" link on their website states that in April they crossed the 27-million dollar funds mark through donations). Through static and animatronic displays, each with video explanation (perhaps illiteracy is high in their customer demographic?) they attempt to validate their belief in the literal creation story in Genesis. This is obviously not science, but it is being portrayed as science - to a future generation of trusting and believing kids who are enticed by the exciting dinosaur displays. This pollution of young minds is perhaps the most pernicious aspect of religion. As any scientist will tell you, science relies on and welcomes vigorous and thorough testing of theories. Religion does not.
Let's teach the next generation to observe, use their brains, and question everything they're told.
Marty
1 comment:
The problem with Creationism is that it runs smack against the grain of the scientific method.
Instead of using evidence to justify a hypothesis, the Creationist method uses the Scriptural "hypothesis" to justify and eschew evidence.
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