There was a story a few months back where a whole bunch of people got mad at CostCo, I think, because the Bible was put in the "Fiction" section. After my usual disdain, I thought a good joke would be that it was only put there because there isn't a "Metaphor" section. Then I remembered that people would get mad about that, too. Then I got sad again.

Fundamentalists frustrate me. Yes, they're hilarious, but the idea that people can live in one of the most advanced countries in the world and be willfully ignorant of science is incredibly depressing. A literal interpretation of the Bible goes against everything we can witness in the observable universe and is therefore frankly preposterous. Yes, science is complicated, but at the end of the day 1+1 always, always equals 2.

And I keep coming back to that line by Clarke: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic". This is how scientists view fundamentalists. They just can't dumb down reality far enough for them to understand, so it gets written off as preposterous. But this is also how fundamentalists view science. It's all just miracles, happening, it's just another belief structure. And when you think of evolution as just another person's belief system, the "convert" switch in your head goes off. This is why taxpayer dollars are funding creationism in public school science class.

And the bullshittiest thing about it is that there doesn't even have to be a conflict. And the reason for that has always been blatantly obvious to me: fire. Man creates and harnesses fire. it's the beginning of science (ok maybe not the very beginning but man harnessing fire is very evocative so go with me [remember metaphor]).
The Greeks have the whole Prometheus story for it: man acquires a power of the gods. That's what science is, it's man slowly and deliberately and purposefully assuming more and more power over the world he exists in. It's inexorable. Palahniuk said (I don't know if he stole it), "On a long enough timeline, the survival rate of everyone drops to zero". well the opposite is also true. Science keeps fixing things that kill people. On a long enough timeline, sooner or later, they're going to fix death (probably later).

And this has always seemed to me to not conflict with religion at all. Becausew where is the Off button on technological advancement? If God didn't want us to grow replacement organs in a 3D printer, why the fuck did we ever discover fire? Couldn't He just give us a column of it like He did while the Israelites were fleeing the Egyptians?

Religion is great. It provides a sense of unity in a community and a comforting belief in a grand scheme that we, as the only phenomena in the observed universe that seek order instead of entropy, find comforting (brief segue, this is also the reason for the prevalence of conspiracy theorists). Until it conflicts with common sense. Then, the person advocating religion appears to be behaving like a preposterous child, and the person advocating common sense appears to be behaving like a condescending bully. And there is no remedy forthcoming. Religion an science are both businesses and a good fight is good for business. They're both going to try and convert the other, and, like any arguing people, the more the other side tells them they're wrong, the more they're going to dig in their heels. A tug of war only ends with somebody in the mud. And it doesn't matter if you're right if everyone thinks you're an asshole.

This post was brought to you because I thought of a funny joke: "Some people(bigots) think that Islam is stuck in the Middle Ages. 100% of these people fail to realize that Christianity is stuck in the 1950s."