There was a recent poll that shows that only 42% of Americans accepted evolutionary theory, but 79% believed in miracles.
That is just depressing. Science, that has been tested and tested and tested again is doubted and denied(mostly by people of faith), but magic is perfectly acceptable. The people of this land do not understand that harm they are doing to the nation by refusing to accept the natural sciences and what the learn about this world.
To many of us cling to our perception of the universe that was implanted into us as children and are afraid to allow reveled scientific facts in. The path we are heading down doesn't hold much promise. We deny global warming and evolution. We allow people who claim the earth is only 6000 years old to teach this in schools and colleges. We refuse to allow research not because it is bad research, but because of religiously driven concepts of when live begins, or ensoulment occurs.
Without a willingness to embrace scientific discovery, the path of our nation is on may be depressingly similar to the path that this devoutly religious young man took.
A 14-year-old boy who refused blood transfusions in his fight against leukemia -- based on religious beliefs -- died Wednesday night in Seattle, hours after a Skagit County judge affirmed his right to reject the treatment.
Dennis Lindberg, of Mount Vernon, died around 6 p.m. at Children's Hospital & Regional Medical Center in Seattle, according to KING-5 television. As a Jehovah's Witness, Lindberg objected to receiving blood. Doctors had said he needed it to survive his cancer treatment.
In court Wednesday, Superior Court Judge John Meyer said that Lindberg, though in the eighth grade, was old enough to know that refusing blood transfusions might amount to a "death sentence," and that he had the right to make that decision
This type of thinking leads to situations like this.
KHARTOUM, Sudan (CNN) -- Hundreds of protesters brandishing ceremonial swords and sticks gathered outside Khartoum's presidential palace Friday to vent their anger against a British teacher jailed for allowing children to name a teddy bear "Mohammed."
or this:
It is an ingrained ritual, and the villagers regard industrious labor to be a magical protection against being chosen, as indicated by the Old Man Warner, never selected during his 77 years. When Mrs. Adams tells Warner that some of the other villages have stopped holding the annual lotteries, he replies, "Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon."
I guess religious driven stupidity has no bounds.
1 comment:
John, one of the things I rarely discuss (publicly, that is) is the fact that I was once a Jehovah's Witness elder (pastor). I got kicked out for questioning the authority structure. But cultic beliefs dies hard. It was only after several years of counseling that I could finally let go of the one JW belief that was even more bizarre than their belief that Jesus returned in 1914: that taking a blood transfusion was forbidden by scripture.
I know what Dennis Lindberg felt, because I felt it once myself. It would have been pretty easy to have become the JW equivalent of a jihadist suicide. It's easy to blame it on the religion, but the truth is, I made a lot of stupid religious choices that nobody forced me to make, for the sake of being accepted by my family and friends.
Religious stupidity, as you note, is boundless.
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