When I was younger I remember a Bernstein Bears book called "Just Me and My Dad". There is a picture I could not find anywhere in my computer of my brother and I intently listening to my dad reading us this book. We were so happy. He was so happy. But...
This blog entry will have no sentiment.
This is not the blog entry where I talk about the good things between my father and I, and this isn't the blog entry where I perfectly sum up my father and his religion. I don't know how to put that together into something comprehensible.
Here it is: My father doesn't understand the way planet Earth works. When I say I do not know much in biology, paleontology, genetics, anthropology, climate science, geology, comparative anatomy I am being truthful and honest. When I say my father doesn't know any of these scientific fields I am being loose with the word "know". My father does not know a single sentence from a single textbook supporting scientific theories that he outright rejects. There is no time to be respectful and polite in this post, as we sometimes are obliged to do with friends and family. Human life is just too short.
I have spent some time explaining to you about my father and how he thinks. I finally spoke with him the other day about evolution and the age of the earth. This is just a few things of what my father thinks:
Evolution is a mass delusion just like "flat earth theory" was centuries ago. Yes, it's all a lie.
A guy in church once told him a dinosaur footprint was found along side a human footprint so humans and dinosaurs existed at the same time in history.
The Earth is young not old.
The Bible is to be taken word for word as literal truth and this is how he gets all these "truth" nuggets.
I began my discussion with him the other day talking about the amazing fact that we have a host of bacteria living in our guts and how this is so fascinating that the human body is it's own ecosystem.
He replied that it's amazing that some atheists out there think there is no Designer to this beautiful design in nature.
I paused, frozen a bit, stumbled over my words as I attempted to present the Unintelligent Designer theory. I couldn't believe this was happening. I have never told my dad I accepted evolution. I talked to him about all the imperfections in nature like how humans are the only mammals that have the same tube to communicate and eat, thus a vast majority of our species have choked to death.
"Let me stop you right there before you continue..." my dad said. "I do not think humans are animals."
And I rest my case.
I did rest for a brief moment then tried to bring us back to a common vocabulary. Where do you go from here?
There is no way of convincing someone who once told me that our Sun is NOT a star that humans are not a part of the animal kingdom. Biology is dead right from the start apparently according to my father.
I realized at that moment that the very soft spot that made my dad react so abruptly was the very thing that made me transition to an atheist. To look at a human as part of the animal kingdom is opening the door to naturalism. There is more to these mysteries of life than "God did it" or magic. We have explanations for so many things that I was never taught growing up in my Christian science classes. Biblical literalism is laughable when you know the slightest amount of science.
My father argued with me about soft tissue found in dinosaur bones (thus the Earth is young) and Noah's ark being real and dating methods of course are unreliable. My father's church is watching what I can only imagine is a young Earth creationist response/reaction to the recent Cosmos series with Neil deGrasse Tyson on Fox in his church every Wednesday night. Each Wednesday night they watch and discuss this: http://www.icr.org/article/unlocking-mysteries-genesis/
Yep.
I don't want to tell you why the Earth is not 6,000 years old or why Darwin was not wrong. I want to tell you what I feel about my father. I think he is afraid to learn. There is something terribly dark and (dare I say) "evil" about being content with living without knowing, and knowingly doing so. People make stupid "truth" statements all the time about how the world works, "the moon landing was faked", "9/11 was an inside job", "that little boy went to heaven and back", "Islam is the only true religion", "crystals heal your ailments", "my dream means something", " in my past life I was...", "Oh, your astrology sign is this that's why your like this", and so on... We are not taught to think critically from birth. This is something that needs to change for the survival of our species, in my opinion. Hyper-Capitalism mixed with non-critical thinking could be a lethal blow to our species, at least those of us so lucky to live in developed parts of this planet.
I realized something once again today. Life is one day. one hour. one minute. one second. right now. There is nothing more. We cannot fill the human deep-search for "meaning" with religion or woo. We can't fill it with New Age anything or self improvement whatever. We can fill it with /Truth/ and the biggest truth I know is that I am an ape and I am peculiarly alive and conscious (comprised of subatomic particles/waves like everything else that evolve over time) on a rock hurling through space. I know this better than I can know most things. And THAT is a total mind-gasm! No need for fairy tales to bask in the mystery of .. how do I eloquently say,... "what the fuck is happening?" I think I may get a red letter criticism from my philosopher friend on this blog entry as well. We shall see.
My father is deep in the Unknown. And I was there too. He raised me there from childhood. I was "saved" when I was 5. Then 7, then 8 then 9, then 12. I kept getting "saved" over and over when I was a child. Not because I loved Jesus and I really REALLY wanted to make sure I spent eternity with Him in heaven. It was that I was terrified of 1. dying and burning forever in hell. and 2. being "left behind" when the rapture happened and then of course getting my head cut off at some point by the AntiChrist one-world government or dying from some plague.
In conversation with New Christian friends I am reminded that a lot of what we do whether theistic or atheistic is based off of emotion and of course most of this can be traced back to our upbringing and our reaction to it, even as adults. There is truth to this, but I want to remind my New Christian friends that this new hip modern Christianity is nothing but Christianity with out the hell-fire and brimstone (you know cause that shit is awkward!), so I really loathe this idea that Christianity is so past barbarism yet some of my New Christian friends knowingly think I will fucking burn forever. No! it's not my strict legalistic past that scars me .. it's the Christian Dogma that at least my father had the guts to tell me straight up-- if you don't believe in Jesus you are going to burn forever, son! The Christian dogma of hell for the unbeliever is the issue here. So New Christians can stop pretending to be my friends when they know I will burn forever, I mean come on!
My father had good qualities, but his deep ignorance in naturalism and all of it's laws and any of it's brilliant scientific theories kept me in the dark. The school I grew up in was drastically unequipped to teach it's students in the natural sciences. My family isn't all kept in the dark, however. I have family members that are nonbelievers, soon to be doctors and some are realists, but my immediate family has been in the dark, so to speak all my life. Simply put: Religion has destroyed my family's intellect. There are ways the world actually works my family has no conceptual clue about. We are all flawed, and I admit my ignorance, but being content and even confident about a worldview that is completely unfounded, unhealthy, and uniformed is not acceptable.
As radical Islam marches through the Middle East (beheading infidels and committing the brave act of shooting little girls in the face who want to educate themselves) and Middle Age-like Christianity (with it's barbaric ideas of scientific ideas about the world) chokes Middle America it's best to cling to the evidence, the facts, the science. It's best to be a skeptic always in everything. Stop being so goddamn gullible! The death throws of religion are wild and violent in 2014 (*See ISIS) . These things will end. Sooner or later apes will grow up. Sooner or later we'll be another extinct species like the 99% of all other species that have ever lived on this rock in this irrelevant point of the cosmos. We are in that stage and it's happening quicker than you may think, quicker than I can see in my personal life.
So Yes, dad. We are animals. we are apes. Our Sun is a fucking star and it's time you grew up with the rest of us apes and accepted this world the way it actually is and swallow the Truth about what we actually do already know. Some of us that have hope still can fight this tendency to be cowards and ignorant and those that do not accept all scientific knowledge because the comfort blanket of their barbaric superstition is too entangled in their lives.
*Originally posted 9/3/14 on my blogger account: https://godsaiditibelieveitthatsettlesit.blogspot.com/
This is my rant about just me (ape) and my dad (ape) .. and here are some related links.
"Just Me and My Dad"
Don't buy this: Unlocking the Mysteries of Genesis:
http://store.icr.org/Unlocking-the-Mysteries-of-Genesis/productinfo/DUTMG/
"Unlocking the Mysteries of Genesis" trailer:
