scigirl

I was thinking this morning about the best way to convince people to accept evolution. Certainly, attacking their religion doesn't work, and it doesn't appear that educating them about science works either (if they refuse to be educated).

How about an exercise in common sense?

We should put together videos of people doing common everyday scientific things, except instead of using science texts, they are trying to use the bible. Here's some scenes we could do:

1) Engineers are trying to build a bridge, and they are consulting the Bible to figure out the best materials to use. Since steel is not listed in there, they choose to use wood. We then cut to a scene where the bridge breaks and falls into the river, killing 3 people in the process.

2) A person walks into a doctor's office with pneumonia-like symptoms, and asks the doctor "What's wrong with me?" The doctor consults a Bible, and fails to find the word "pneumonia" in it. The patient leaves without any antibiotics and later dies.

3) A chemical engineer is attempting to determine if a chemical is toxic to the river. She consults the Bible, and, once again, does not find the toxic chemical listed in this book. Therefore she concludes that the chemical is not toxic and advises the company to dump it into the river. All the fish die, destroying the economy of a small fishing village.

So what is the point? They seem totally ridiculous, don't they? Why is that? Because we, even as a predominantly Christian society, have recognized throughout the years that the Bible is frankly not a science text. We have recognized the value of science and technology in all aspects of our lives - no matter what religion we are. And we've been enormously successful too.

So why not start doing it with human behavior? Science (i.e. evolution) has loads of things to say about why we get diseases, why we are violent, why we cheat on each other, etc, etc, etc. Are we going to let a few fundamentalists allow our current society to make the same ludicrous mistake that the people in the 3 scenes made? Our future as a human race depends on our ability to understand ourselves. Science has given us the tools and data to understand a great many things about the universe. Now let's see what it has to say about us.

scigirl

Albion

Well, you know the response already. We've heard it from Vanderzyden just recently. It'll be "We have no quarrel with REAL science, we love REAL science, we just disagree with these unproved philosophies being presented as science."

Undercurrent

I don't think it would work. The three examples you give are instances where the bible is incomplete but not flat-out wrong. There is definitely a gap between "Bible isn't a science text book, and therefore doesn't contain every piece of scientific knowledge you might need for any given application" and "Bible says something which is false (or, to weasel out, shouldn't be taken literally)". The latter realization is what is needed to defeat creationism.

Taking the more aggressive tack and making stories where the parts of the bible that say something definite which is false are highlighted, would, I think, trigger the standard fundie defence mechanisms ("You're trying to destry my faith you meanie!!" or "You have your faith, I have mine,") that are nearly impenetrable through rational discourse.

m.

tgamble

So do talking snakes and magical fruit trees and craming thousands of animals onto an ark to avoid a world wide flood.

It's a nice idea but creationists are immune to common sense as they are to science. They'll just insist that while the bible doesn't cover everything, what it does cover is the ABSOLUTE TRUTH directly from GOD!

Besides, they'll just say that the kind of science you describe is REAL Science. But rocks turning into people or plants turning into a dog isn't.

Biff the unclean

Er, umm, Scigirl you are dealing with people whose alternative theory to evolution is stage magic. "Hey Rocky, watch me pull a universe out of my hat."
I would suggest that when confronted by anti-evolutionists that you take the heel of your open hand and smack them on the forehead with it. The Three Stooges coconut sound that will result should at least be amusing.

Dark Jedi

I gotta get a new hat.

thebeave

I had a similar idea about using videos, but instead of it being science based, make a legal based video. There could be a courtroom with a judge who can use only the words in the Bible (never our existing laws) to judge the morality of the misdeed and deliver the punishment. I can just see mainstream Christians being so delighted at the beginning of the tape when they see the title and theme of the video, only to be horrified when the trials proceed and the judge sentences unruly children, gays, lesbians and non-believers to death (often cruel deaths by stoning), and forces rapists to marry their victims, etc. Do you think at that point they might get it?

Albion

What do they do about serial rapists? Does the Bible permit polygamy under those circumstances?

Camaban

Mormons

Happy Wonderer

Oddly enough, I had a similar thought about evolution this morning. What if we were to imagine what the world would be like now if we had all the technology that we do, but didn't understand the theory of evolution?

Suppose that we didn't have our understanding of antibiotic resistance -- so we have no idea why our antibiotics seem to stop working after awhile. Novel new germs seem to keep popping up all the time. So there is a great scientific debate over whether we are really seeing new germs, or if we are just encountering existing germs that now have a chance to kill us because we have killed off so many of the old germs.

The "new germ" people have a theory that these germs, which were never seen on earth before, must be coming from outer space. So they argue for a "germ defense shield" over our cities. The "already existing" camp argues that we are "just about finished exterminating the germ population" and all we have to do is make sure that everybody takes their broad-spectrum antibiotics. "There are only so many germs that we don't yet have antibiotics for, each new antibiotic lessens that number and we will eventually get to zero!"

So billions get spent. Everybody takes Cipro, but diseases we thought that we had conquered keep coming back. The "old germ" people loose credit, so the "germ defence" people gain ascendence. People walk around wearing germ hats; cities get covered in mylar -- yet people still get sick and the drugs are of no help. As fast as we can innoculate everybody, it seems that new germs come in -- devilishly designed to defeat our antibiotics.

Finally, one conclusion is left to us. Some enemy is using super technology to create these bugs! How we don't know, but they must be really clever and evil -- perhaps witchcraft? We begin piling up the firewood...

HW

[ November 13, 2002: Message edited by: Happy Wonderer ]</p>