Don't get me wrong. I like snopes.com. It seems its purpose in life is in harmony with my values, like debunking myth and rumor by shining the cold light of reason on ALMOST everything.
I have noticed a strange phenomenon. It is that some of the most credulous people around are the first to jump to snopes and wield that racket to deflect any notion anyone has of believing something without proper reasoning, research and evidence.
It is always the most pious, religious, believing person in the office or peer group, often a female, who snaps up the snopes and hands them about like a super rational truth machine.
To use a handy biblical reference...they are so quick to reach to pluck the mote (sliver) from another's eye without seeing the beam (timber!!!) in their own eye.
There should be things on snopes.com for these people like:
-There is no evidence Jesus existed
-The Earth is ACTUALLY far older than 6000 years!
-Humans do share more DNA with Chimps than rats do with mice!!!
-Christian symbolism may very well have been derived from ancient astrology and astronomically observable phenomena...I'm just saying.
What good is Snopes if it does not cause the most duped most credulous among us to be nudged? They, in fact, curiously love this site. Probably because it does not ask them to use the same standards of evidence and level of scrutiny with their own irrational beliefs as it does with others.
Yes, if you read me you know I read the works of scientist/ authors like Sagan and Einstein etc. Sagan talks about how believers cling to the gaps in scientific knowledge as a place to wedge in the role of God. It is true, Science is a way of thinking and arriving at understanding through a rigorous method that has a high standard of evidence and requires experimentation. Science is not a complete explanation of all that ever was...though I think it strives for this.
So there are gaps in the scientific knowledge. Religion has a tendency to place God in the Gaps. "The God of the Gaps" as Carl Sagan says. When science bridges these gaps and fills in this knowledge, the need for that god (now lower-case) disappears.
Every Christian agrees that Zeus and other gods were quaint ancient metaphors for celestial bodies, or astronomical events that were used to explain all that was not yet understood like tides and seasons and fate and events.
The trouble is, no one dares to see the myths of our own time. That Jesus is a character that came from myths that have symbolism for the Sun, solstice, seasons and ages. Jesus may only ever have been a character in fables of Sun worshipers and astrologers.
There IS evidence to prove that our fables our also fables, just like the ancient Greek and Egyptian mythologies. For some reason many just don't want to know it or consider it.
Maybe ignorance IS bliss.
=sw
1 comment:
My experience has been somewhat different. By that I mean that the most religious people I know are the ones most easily duped by the urban legend or chain letter du jour. Even some of these I've vehemently advocated visiting snopes immediately if they feel a burning need to forward something to all their friends -- yet I still get the same type of bullshit from them over and over again.
Interesting how we've had vastly different experiences in this regard. Back when I was a believing mormon, I turned into a big snopes wielder, but I also ended up reasoning my way out of mormonism (and all religion), so maybe that was my destiny and snopes wielding was one important symptom of my eventual awakening. Hmm.
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