Faith-Based Science vs. Schizo-Religious Pandemonium (genesis, America, prophets, atheist)
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I'm brand new to discussing my reflections on the religious world in America, because, as a logical consequence of my having been a Christian for about 10 years now, most of my friends are Christians; and my friends who aren't have no interest in discussing religion to begin with. So I've been struggling and struggling hard with the idea of completely abandoning my faith, modifying it, keeping it or ignoring the matter altogether, and I have no one to talk to about it. Incidentally, I thought I'd post a copy of an essay, (for lack of a better term), that I posted on my FaceBook profile yesterday.
Please feel free to give feedback - constructively, of course - and to add what knowledge and/or encouragement you can. The "essay" is on the topic of Christian science. I think it illustrates my general sense of frustration with the conflict I feel between the faith that I once put all stock in and the logic that seems to negate its reliability. Hope you like it. Here goes:
Faith-Based Science vs. Schizo-Religious Pandemonium
Assuming that you're someone who recognizes science as simply being a means by which the human race gains understanding of the world around it, and that science is neither good or bad - as thinking is neither good or bad, or running, or the color yellow, or Poland - here's a defense against the religious hysteria of American fundamentalists surrounding something as benign as science:
From what I have seen, the supreme majority of working scientists care little or nothing about the trivial bickerings of religious zealots over their profession; in fact, the only time I think most professionals in the science and academic industries even consider religious radicals is when the radicals storm the superintendant's office of their rural Mississippi school district and demand that the theory of evolution is part of a scheme by the devil to supplant their good Christian heritage, that their Granddaddy "wadn't no ape," and that if the local high school science teachers keep teaching established science, they'll make it a topic of dubious rumination at their next KKK meeting. Other than that, scientists pretty much carry on as they have since the first Neanderthal concluded that sharp stones were more effective than his fingernails for prying open clams.
So when modern Christians sit in their booth at Red Robin and gossip... I mean DELIBERATE... about the fraction of a fraction of understanding they have about the sciences, and then proceed to use the latest Ken Ham (Ken WHO?) video as a catalyst for their good Christian witch hunt, I wish they would first read this admittedly jaded missive. I think it would help at least clear the air on the basics. Incidentally, I've created a little analogy that I think most every one can relate to and, hopefully, understand. Here goes:
We all know that medical doctors in the United States undergo a fairly rigorous 10 or 11 years' worth of study in the medical sciences before being allowed to practice medicine professionally. And with that being the standard, it's fair to say that they have at least a cursory grasp of the various advances made in medicine over the last few thousand years. And then, within the world of professional physicians, there are specialists - doctors who specialize in all things coronary, or cerebral, or pulmonary, or renal, or osteo, or rheumatoid, or integumentary, ad nauseum. And, importantly, even a skilled, experienced PHYSICIAN would never suppose himself qualified to perform a medical procedure outside of his scope of expertise, much less a nurse or nurse's assistant. In other words, in the United States, barring a catastrophe, you're simply never going to see a CNA perform a kidney transplant. It won't happen. Ever.
But things work a little differently in the world of "Christian science."
What is "Christian science," you ask? Well, it's really best illustrated by the scene in the movie, "Waterboy," where Adam Sandler, when confronted with the notion that alligators' aggressive behavior stems from their having an active medulla oblongata, responds with, "Mama says alligators are so aggressive because they have all them teeth and no toothbrush." Poignantly, when the professor cites that Sandler's mother is wrong, Sandler boils over with frustration, having had his cozy notion of the world challenged by reason, sprints across the room and tackles the professor. That's essentially Christian "science," except that most Christian "scientists" also fight with each other about whether the Bible really says that alligators brush their teeth or not.
But back to the analogy:
Let's say you have a group of doctors, with varying specialties, discussing modern medicine for five or six hours in a room. Now let's say that some nurses, assistants and technicians make their way in to the room for a portion of the discussion; let's be generous and say that they get in on a full 2 and 1/2 hours of the 5-hour discussion. Now let's say that a small percentage - and I do mean small - of the technicians, and even a couple of nurses, exit to another room, where they proceed to whine and yell, insisting that the human body runs on pancake syrup, rather than blood, and that the organ of the body most crucial to survival is the left elbow, because that's what a medical text from 2nd century B.C. Palestine says. Now let's say that they begin to argue with one another, because some insist that blood is, in fact, the stuff of transport for the body's essential nutrients, citing that the all-important elbow would not survive on pancake syrup alone. And finally, let's say that this spirited entourage of medium-skilled medical professionals spills into the office of a hospital board meeting, insisting that their "alternate theory" of medicine be practiced along side traditional medicine at every hospital in the city.
The important understanding to have is that the majority of Christian scientists, from what I've seen at least, (and I think I've read quite a bit now), hail from the entry level ranks of the sciences or slightly above. So, in keeping with the analogy, most of the pseudoscientific propaganda circulating in the religious world is being created by guys and gals who either received a degree in some fairly general sub-science and proceeded to challenge centuries of expertise from specialized professionals from Oxford, Cambridge and MIT, or by guys and gals who got a degree online from Bob's Barnyard School of Kriss-chin Cy-ince and who took up penning scathing religious reviews of time-tested scientific theories from the comfort of their arm chair. Scratch that. From their pupit. Wait... No... Scratch that. Christian scientists rarely challenge anything directly, because...
NO CHRISTIAN "SCIENCE" IS EVER PEER-REVIEWED.
So, at the end of the day, what I wish religious folks in this country would realize is that Jesus Christ was (and is) not a 6'2" white man with blue eyes who dazzled the Levant with His preaching and miracles. The Bible is not a comfy document that was written by Moses, a few prophets and the apostles, and that is without its fair share of very serious problems. The world is not, in and of itself, bereft with evil, so that you should lock yourself in your basement and hide from your mail man because he's of the opposite gender, or because he's Muslim, or atheist, or Presbyterian, or because he drinks pop through a straw. Jesus was a 5'3"-ish Palestinian Jew who was little more than a public nuisance to the Roman prefecture who crucified Him. The Bible is a book that virtually ALL Bible scholars know is, at BEST, inundated with inconsistencies, complications, questionable accounts and idosynchratic claims of events, people and places whose authenticity, authorship and historicity are up for debate, and at WORST, completely unreliable. And the world is really a pretty good place; the Biblical book of Genesis says it over and over again: "...and God saw that it was GOOD." [Emphasis added].
So a relationship with Jesus Christ has to be a dynamic, candid, romantic, vulnerable and sane thing. God has shown over and over again that He will almost exclusively reveal Himself by means of faith, and not through the latest armchair pseudoscientist to have "proven" using "science" that God exists, that Jesus rose from the ark and that Jupiter was created in literally 9 minutes and 14 seconds because the book of 2nd Hezekiah gives a chronology of Habakkuk's barber's family tree.
God is IN science.
Even **shudder** SECULAR science.
And if you had any real idea what's actually IN your Bible, where it came from, and why it's there, you'd probably be an atheist by this time tomorrow.
So stop your schizo-religious tirade, America.
You're only sawing off the branch you're standing on.
Jesus was a 5'3"-ish Palestinian Jew who was little more than a public nuisance to the Roman prefecture who crucified Him.
Where in the world would you have come up with a height for Jesus? I agree he obviously wasn't a white, blue eyed man but I've never heard any source of information that described his height.
Where in the world would you have come up with a height for Jesus? I agree he obviously wasn't a white, blue eyed man but I've never heard any source of information that described his height.
You got me
I can't remember where I heard that.
Actually - come to think of it - I think it was one of the points Peter Jennings covered in the ABC News documentary "In the Footsteps of Jesus." Seems like I remember a lady, whom I assume was some sort of expert, since she was being interviewed, saying that Jesus's physical stature was one of many common misconceptions about the historical Jesus and that he was probably in the lower 5-foot range. I don't remember the exact number she gave, but I was surprised at how short she proposed He was.
Where in the world would you have come up with a height for Jesus? I agree he obviously wasn't a white, blue eyed man but I've never heard any source of information that described his height.
I forgot about that part MG, but good question. It's said that the normal height for a Judean of the time was 5'0" to 5'6 (based upon skeletal studies), so they must have gone with the middle. All I can figure...unless the Russians have Jesus' skeleton next to Hitler's in an underground Moscow laboratory and his height was leaked out.
That was a fantastic post! I'm so glad you're on this forum. Kudos! I just had to rep you, and I hope others do, too.
p.s. I did raise an eyebrow at the 5' 3" thing, too, but I assumed it was done for dramatic effect and was based on the average height for men of his ethnicity at that time. But now I'm curious, and will run along to go do some research . . .
rpc1, You appear to have a very strong opinion, though miss-lead.
First, you are attacking the credentials of the people that you think are doing Christian science. This is called an add hominen attack. Attacking the credentials of someone is akin to name calling and has nothing to do with a good arguement for evolutionary science. With that said almost all of you arguement is moot.
You claim to have some kind of faith, but then you attack the faith. I think you are already atheistic or agnostic. So figure out what you are before attempting to side with one group or another.
Ken Ham has a good site and is well researched. What arguement of his do you disagree with and why?
Jesus is God, he is the one who we have our faith in. If you had faith, he was the Lord that you had your faith in. Now you are belittling him? Jesus is the core of Christianity. To reject him is to reject the faith.
The fact is that there are many educated people both in the religious camps and in the science camps and the evolutionary camps. Sometime they cross over the lines. For example the inventor of the MRI is a Christian. Is his science bad, because he is a Christian or is his Faith bad because he is a scientist?
I think that you have a lot of angst. Instead of just spitting it out all over the place, you may try to read up on the arguements and even what an arguement is. Making acusations and belittling does not an arguement make.
Maybe you should just ask questions about the topics you do not understand instead.
I'm bearing Nikk's post in mind and I think the answer is that one can be a Christian and believe that Jesus was Son of God, rose from the dead etc, by taking it that those things are outside of science, being supernatural.
But to maul science to make it fit illogical notions like seeing Jesus as a blue - eyed WASP is wrong. To missuse science to make it fit Bible-literalist ideas is illogical.
rpc is perfectly correct in denouncing the mangling of science in the cause of religion. It is not an ad hominem, though Nikk's speculations that rpc is an agnostic of some kind rather than a Real Christian is an ad hominum. What rpc is or isn't is irrelevant. What rpc says is, and what rpc says is on the money.
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