Why Fundamentalists are Beyond Reason (this fellow has a well reasoned site)
sullivan-county.com
As a teacher and a lifelong student of science and history, I must say I sit in dismay at the state of life in America. This country spends more on education than most countries in the world combined. Yet for all the money, talk, and hype on education, America ranks at the bottom of the industrial world in biology, geology, ancient history, geography, etc.
Caught in the endless culture wars between religious fundamentalists and secular humanists, education takes back seat to social engineering extracurricular activities, and after school jobs. Fundamentalists blame low academic achievement on the Left; the Left blames their failures on a lack of money. Illiteracy was here in Appalachia long before forced religion was removed from public schools in the 1960s.
The fact is that many people just don't have the knowledge to understand what separates issues of faith and humanity from the natural world. What is worse, they don't want to know because they have withdrawn from reality
Age of the Irrational
In 1348 a plague would break out in central Asia. By 1349 this plague had reached every corner of Europe. In the cities of France, Italy and Germany, much of the population would die within a year and in England half the population of London would die.
To the Christians of Medieval Europe the long promised Apocalypse had arrived, and Jesus would surely return soon to claim the faithful and punish the sinners. The Church had taught for ten centuries that all events, natural, political, and social must follow the Bible and all knowledge is revealed there.
All events are the work of God for His ultimate purpose. So millions stopped planting crops, stopped planning for the future, and awaited salvation as Christian leaders promised. ( meme )
But Jesus didn't come and the death continued. In 1357-62 a second outbreak would kill millions more, still no Jesus. All of this was made worse by famine, political chaos, and war. "It must be the work of the Devil" proclaimed Bishops while doomsday prophets lined every street corner. But, It must be those in league with Satan, so who are they would ask?
Never mind the seven-year Tribulation had already gone beyond seven years, and anyone who mentioned this must be in league with the Devil! The great Satan hunt would begin. First came the Jews, the favorite target of church hatred and abuse.
Dragged from the ghettos that Papal decree had imprisoned them in, entire families would be burned alive or tortured to death. Thousands more would flee to Poland and to Islamic nations seeking safety.
The screeching mobs failed to notice the clean streets and the lack of filth on every corner. They also failed to notice the absence of dead rats that lay with the Christian dead as whole families fell before the Black Death. Kosher laws were very strict on sanitation.
Murdering Jews didn't stop the plague, so the hunt went on. The Inquisition worked day and night to root out Satan and his followers as the screams of thousands of men, women, and even children echoed in the torture chambers of Europe.
Unabated, the Black Death continued its dance across Europe as thousands of rats danced in the streets. In Germany the Hansel and Gretal fairy tale has its origins in this period as pregnant women and even children were roasted alive in ovens to drive out the Devil.
It wasn't witches (there is no such thing as witches, just those who think they are) it was the Inquisition inflicting this horror. Things became so absurd that even domestic cats were burned at the stake, which produced even more rats.
Even the church itself and the Pope came under attack in the chaos. Jan Huss of Bohemia (1372-1415) openly accused the church of conspiracy and gets burned at the stake for his trouble. This led to the Husite Rebellion under Jon Milic (d. 1574) archdeacon of Prague.
The crushing of this rebellion devastated much of central Europe. Catholics and later Protestants alike engaged in an orgy of murder and brutality that lasted long after the plague ended. In the end the plagues subsided, and Europe's population would not recover until the 17th century.
The witch hunting and Inquisition also ended by the 18th century as well. From 400 AD to the late 1500s Europe had progressed little in science and all learning/inquiry was relegated to religious dogma. Reason never had a chance.
Today we know the Black Death (bubonic plague) is a disease carried by fleas on rats whose bites kills humans and rats. This has nothing to do with anything in the Bible or any Apocalypse. Its death toll would rival a nuclear war today.
It is just a part of nature that today can be combated with vaccines. Science and the scientific method gave us the vaccine. By the dawn of the 19th century science and the scientific method would disentangle itself from superstition and dogma.
A product of the Enlightenment, the scientific method would produce jet aircraft, the Space Shuttle, super computers, and biotechnology. The average person today lives two-three times longer than just 200 years ago.
Yet according to fundamentalists like Phillip E. Johnson in his book Reason in the Balance, the case against Naturalism in science, law, and education, and other Christian fundamentalists, the child roasters and cat killers were correct after all and science has everything all wrong.
Everything we know of modern science is wrong, as he hints at some evil atheist conspiracy to lock out God in the science community. His proof is simply the fact everything that happens isn't contributed to some supernatural theme as opposed to it just happened.
As fundamentalist religion and New Age mysticism consume millions, our nation is falling into a bottomless pit of mediocrity and irrational thought that dominated the Europe for over 1000 years.
The fact is that many people just don't have the knowledge to understand what separates issues of faith and humanity from the natural world. What is worse, they don't want to know because they have withdrawn from reality.
What is fundamentalism? For the purposes here, I'll relate it to social and political themes, not religious. More on this at http://www.sullivan-county.com/news/index.htm |
