Aussie:
I know how ludicrous this sounds, but I really felt like I had a grip on science. I see the literalists debating here and sometimes I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry. No matter how many well-prepared and precisely-delivered lists of evidence for evolution and an old Earth are presented, they just throw out a new turn of phrase, or another variant in their long list of rhetorical objections, and leave feeling as if they have adequately defended the faith.
You've surely noted the swagger creationists often display when they first arrive at EvC. They've imbibed the idea that 'God and I make a majority' so they burst into the saloon thinking they can whup any cowpoke in the place. Someone told them they're giants packing bazookas in a world of midgets squirting water pistols.
Then comes the collision with reality. Always fun to watch.
The confidence surely comes in part from the myth that science is 'really a religion.' This insistence (so bewildering to scientists) is crucial to fundamentalists. It creates the illusion of knowing.
They don't understand science at all. To them it's an unknown--a blank surface. But they understand how their religion works and how explanations are crafted in it. To be told science is like that gives them a sense of sure footing. They don't really know the terrain.
But blank surfaces are ideal for projecting.
In saying 'scientists are like us' they assume a mirror image of their own fundamentalism with left and right inverted. They debate not with real scientists, but with the mirror image.
What do they see when they look in the mirror? They tell you. It's a revealing picture.
No sooner do they decide 'science is a religion' than they start describing all the things they understand religion to be. They see people deciding all answers
a priori. They see people conducting research that isn't open-minded and honest. They see arrogance and materialism. They see people ignoring, suppressing, or even forging evidence. They see a theocracy that refuses to allow dissent.
They are telling you how religions, in their experience, really do things.
They disclose all the dirt about how fundamentalism works. Under normal curcumstances they would never ascribe these things to religious people. But let that religion go by another name and everything comes out. They point at the mirror and say 'You're a religion. We know what you're
really doing!'
Give a man a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
- Oscar Wilde
Archer
All species are transitional.