BlackChampagne -- no longer new; improvement also in question.: Creationism Interview
Thursday, April 09, 2009
Creationism Interview
I tripped over this tonight while looking for something on google video to listen to while I made dinner, and found it fantastically entertaining. It's an interview by Dr Michael Shermer of Dr Georgia Purdom. Shermer is a noted atheist, libertarian, and Darwin scholar. Purdom is the "scientific" Director of the Creation Museum in Ohio. As you might expect, they agree on nothing, but it's a fascinating discussion to hear this intelligent, university-educated young woman "explain" Biblical literalism. She's a literalist (about the pseudo-scientific and geological stuff, at least. She fudges massively on all cultural and ethical issues.) on the current interpretation of Genesis. The earth is 6000 years old, created in six 24-hour days, there is no ongoing evolution, etc.
Shermer is very gentle in the interview, letting her answer as she sees fit and never growing exasperate at the logical fallacies she uses, and she's quite game, not outright dodging any of the questions. I highly recommend it, though whether you find it hair-pullingly frustrating, or LOL psychological insight into mental bifurcation (as I did) will depend on where you are in your personal journey of philosophical and scientific understanding.
I could pull a great quote from just about every minute of this thing. I think my favorite part was when Shermer pointed out that almost every Christian was pro-slavery 200 years ago, and that they all had clear justification for it in the bible. And she said that they were interpreting the bible wrong since modern genetics has proven that there's no biological basis for race. Shermer asked how their interpretations were wrong while hers was right, and she said she didn't interpret. There is no interpretation of the Bible, since it's the truth that God wrote. So Shermer asks what will happen in 200 years when Christians all have different cultural and social values and think everyone today was wrong in their intrepretation. And she said that wouldn't happen, since there's only one Bible and it's the truth.
So everyone for the first 6000 years of existence was reading the Bible wrong, even as they were writing it, I mean recording God's dictation of it. But how people view it today is right, and will forever more remain unchanged and correct. Srly?
This is far from the most impossibly contradictory belief this woman holds, but I literally can not imagine how she does it. That's the most shocking example of hypocrisy and relativism I think I've ever heard. It's utter solipsism, the mental failing that Christopher Hitchens often points out is strongly encouraged by religion.
It's a requirement that any one who really believes in their religion is solipsistic, since they think whatever they believe in is true and right and that every other religious and irreligiuos person is wrong. Arguing with such people is like taking on a stubborn 8 y/o who won't take a bath, or eat his vegetables. But this woman takes that a bit further. Not only is every Muslim, Jew, Buddhist, Catholic, etc, wrong... but so is every other Christian! Unless they happen to agree with her understanding of the Bible. (Not interpretation, since there is no interpretation. And I'm sure her Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek are flawless, so she can read the original scrolls, rather than relying on subsequent translations and modifications.)
Another enjoyable moment was when Shermer points out that there were thriving human civilizations more than 6000 years ago, and these dates are attested to by numerous methods; tree rings, ice cores, archeological evidence, Carbon dating, etc. The woman isn't even phased. "Well obviously those dating methods are wrong, since we know the earth was created 6000 years ago, since it says so in the Bible, which is true."
Shermer never asked the core question, "Why do you think the Bible is true, when the only thing that testifies to its truth is the Bible itself?" (An argument most think is rather undermined by the hundreds of obvious contradictions and errors in the text.) I'm sure that question would do nothing to shake the woman's blind faith, and that she would have had a ready reply to it, but it would have been fun to hear how she parsed it.
She'd firmly established her view that the Bible was true. God's word. Inerrant. And that any counter evidence was therefore wrong. Shermer did bring up the two differing creation myths in Genesis, and she breezed right through that one. According to her, one was the big picture of overall creation, while the other was a more specific, detailed account of just the creation of man. Shermer didn't follow up, but I'd have been unable to resist. After all, the book clearly lists 2 very different recipes for human existence. One says that man and woman were created at the same time from dirt, while the other says man was first and then woman was made from his rib. And this is like, one chapter apart. Right at the beginning of the whole tale. But there aren't any contradictions or errors, cause it's all true... Right, k then.
Now obviously there's no arguing with a fanatic, but this one was so plain spoken and grounded in reality (relatively speaking) that I enjoyed hearing her utter these nonsensical tautologies. That interview could have gone on for hours, before I grew weary of it.
