F...ing Catholics
Wouldn't you know just as I finish my diatribe, there's some fringe Catholic group out there saying that they'll pay $1000 for anyone who can prove the earth orbits the sun. The trick is that they will determine whether or not you're right. Yeah, right. They're some nutcase group that claims the Bible says the earth is the center of the universe partly because some ignorant Pope made a proclamation against Galileo that they interpret as "ex cathedra" or infallible and partly because their literal interpretation of the Bible would be made irrelevant. First of all, there's nothing in the Bible that says anything about the Earth's relationship to the Sun and secondly, Popes are only infallible when they are speaking on matters of morals and faith. Thirdly, they're idiots!! They also hold the same line on evolution, the Big Bang, etc as the F...ing Christians. They're even worse than the F...ing Christians because they should know better. Either they weren't taught properly or just chose to ignore what they had been taught. For heavens sake, a Catholic priest was one of the people intimately involved in the formation of the Big Bang theory and Copernicus was a cleric as well.
It really gets on my tits how reasonably intelligent people can chose to be remain so ignorant. While at my mother-in-law's this weekend, we got into a discussion of how a particular syndrome was heriditary and was actually an adaptation to enviromental stresses of an entire population. My contention was that we had pretty damn good proof of evolution in our lifetime. My mother-in-law just chose not to discuss it and dismissed it out of hand as though I was some 8 year old who didn't know what I was talking about. This is a college educated woman who keeps up with current events, watches C-span and definately seems capable of understanding the concept yet her religious and cultural inhibition is preventing her from accepting the truth. Not everything we were told as children is true. Unfortunately, many of us were taught by people who either didn't know the truth or didn't want to know the truth. I am very fortunate and thankful that my parents (both came from large, rural, conservative families), upon recognizing my thirst for knowledge, encouraged me to learn independently. The Catholic grade school I went to was also progressive and had programs for children to learn at their own pace. As a consequence, I don't take anything for granted and I always corroborate information before I will accept it as truth. One of the things my mother taught me was to never believe anything you hear and only half of what you see.
It really gets on my tits how reasonably intelligent people can chose to be remain so ignorant. While at my mother-in-law's this weekend, we got into a discussion of how a particular syndrome was heriditary and was actually an adaptation to enviromental stresses of an entire population. My contention was that we had pretty damn good proof of evolution in our lifetime. My mother-in-law just chose not to discuss it and dismissed it out of hand as though I was some 8 year old who didn't know what I was talking about. This is a college educated woman who keeps up with current events, watches C-span and definately seems capable of understanding the concept yet her religious and cultural inhibition is preventing her from accepting the truth. Not everything we were told as children is true. Unfortunately, many of us were taught by people who either didn't know the truth or didn't want to know the truth. I am very fortunate and thankful that my parents (both came from large, rural, conservative families), upon recognizing my thirst for knowledge, encouraged me to learn independently. The Catholic grade school I went to was also progressive and had programs for children to learn at their own pace. As a consequence, I don't take anything for granted and I always corroborate information before I will accept it as truth. One of the things my mother taught me was to never believe anything you hear and only half of what you see.
posted by Paul Thomas at 12:23 PM
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