QOUT <<

oh little brother wut can I say

Posted on August 28, 2010. Filed under: author: qout, religion, science |

hmmm

My little brother (J5) is a desperately bored human. He’s been calling me nearly every day for the past week.

A little context for that: We are not close. I think he is fourteen or fifteen, and I left their house when he was probably 10 or 11. To the extent that I have a relationship with any of my siblings, it developed after I left, via phone, Facebook, email or letters. Just to amuse myself …

(J1 and I have talked the most. We are friends.
J3 likes me, but we don’t talk very often – he usually calls  to ask for my professional opinion about music.
J4 and I get along okay, and we talk occasionally.
J5 and I have never really talked.
J6 doesn’t approve of me.
J7 has always worshiped me.)

Okay .. J5 called me to tell me how bored he was, and I said “You should go to the library & get some books.”

J5: “Pssshhhhhht, I’m not gonna read all that EVOLUTION crap.”

J2 (me): “.. if you know that you don’t believe it, you can always choose to ignore those parts, right?”

J5: “It’s BULLSHIT” etc etc etc “YOU don’t believe in that crap, do you?”

J2: “Of course I do”

J5: “WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT” etc etc

Long story summarized  .. he called me 12 times on Wednesday – I didn’t pick up – and yesterday, when I did pick up, in order to argue with me about evolution.

I find it sort of distressful that

1) thanks to my parents’ masterful indoctrination program, he is confidant that the world is divided into two groups of people: Christians, and incomprehensible idiots;

2) “-”, he has no concept of what scientific credentials are (hint: they involve an actual science degree, at a minimum; and this guy is not a scientist: he has an undergraduate degree in Religious Education from a non-accredited institution, and a graduate degree obtained via correspondence program from another non-accredited institution; according to philosopher Barbara Forrest, “[his] lack of academic training makes it impossible to engage him on a professional level”);

3) “-”, he thinks that evolution is destroying society, for example look at Columbine, where someone was shot after professing Christianity: that is evolutionism operating insidiously within the minds of youth! -  but he has never heard of the guy who murdered George Tiller, or other incidents of Christian-inspired terrorism.

(But those people weren’t*real* Christians?)

I have no intention of attacking, sabotaging, undermining and corrupting J5′s faith- and, in addition, I have no desire to argue with someone who restates my position as “SOMETHING came from NOTHING, all of a SUDDEN? how can an APE turn into a HUMAN?”

1) to the extent that I’ve studied biology in college (majors cell biology & organismal physiology), evolution has been a pretty useful perspective;

2) to the extent that I am not actually IN biology class, or discussing biology, I don’t think it influences me – in particular, I don’t consider it a factor in my departure from religion (or in society’s departure from the wholesome Godfullness of previous centuries), and I don’t consider it when thinking about morality, unless I’m thinking about, like, altruism in animals;

3) to the extent that J5′s a 15 year old kid whose “science education” consists of 15 hours of watching creationism seminar videos, and to the extent that our parents have taught him that all other perspectives are too worthless to even consider reading (“Pssshhhhhht, I’m not gonna read all that EVOLUTION crap”) .. we really can’t have a discussion about science.

So in the end I sort of called him arrogant, for being so confident in his uneducated opinion, and told him that his religion is teaching him to hate and fear all non-Christian members of society.

Oops.

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