Great article today in Salon.com
Check it out here.
Basically it's about a community of fundamentalist Christian hipsters in Seattle.
If the article is to be believed, what's really interesting is how this movement is springing up essentially in opposition to the secularism, atheism, and moral relativism that's supposed to be the hallmark of today's urban young people. These folks are not your stereotypical Bible-thumpers; they are well-informed, well-educated, tattooed, hip, and probably a million times cooler than me. But they've decided to reject what they perceive as a life lacking in meaning and direction for a very strict set of rules based on a literal interpretation of the Bible.
That this type of movement should arise is hardly surprising. Every day we're bombarded with images and messages that degrade and devalue people, and right now on the internet you're one mouse-click away from the most vile and disgusting stuff imaginable. This is just one front in a cultural assault on the traditional nuclear family. For God's sake, the entire Islamic world condemns the West for our non-existent sexual mores - is it so surprising that a group of people in our own society would turn their back on these attitudes by embracing a philosophy that stands in direct opposition to it?
Although the article touches only briefly on these people's politics, it isn't hard to see where they might be coming from. They see a government controlled by corporate interest and money and globalism leading to the treatment of human beings as units of production or profit-generators rather than as people with a fundamental worth distinct from, and greater than, dollars and cents. Perhaps they see Feminism serving to achieve some very noble goals, but being subverted and harnessed to serve purely economic ends and to undermine the family. They may view us as a self-indulgent society of consumers for whom life has no meaning beyond our next purchase, meal, or sexual conquest. They reject all of this and search for some higher purpose.
What's worrisome is how they reject it. To stand in opposition to what they see as an utterly corrupt society, they also reject reason. A literal interpretation of the Bible means that they reject evolution. They believe the universe was literally created in 7 days. It means that every word in the Bible, with all its well-documented inconsistency, metaphor, and use of literary device, is taken to be the literal truth. I will leave theological discussions on the delicate balance between faith and reason to those better qualified than myself, but let me just say that if there's one thing I am absolutely certain of when it comes to religion it is this: if there is a God, then He gave us our reasoning faculties as a gift and He wants us to use them. I do not believe in any god that would want us to ignore the truth staring us in the face when we use our brains, nor any god that would deliberately trick us by creating a natural world operating by empirically observable laws that turn out to be an elaborate set of illusions.
Mr. Apple dies......
God: "Well, it's off to hell with you Mr. Apple - you spent your life believing in evolution."
Mr. Apple: "But I thought really hard about it! After all my best efforts, the eyes, ears, and mind you gave me all told me that it had to be true! What gives?"
God: "Oh, that was all an intricate and carefully designed set of smoke and mirrors that I built into the world to mislead you. Instead you were supposed to believe a 6000 year old creation story written by an anonymous person you never met based on zero supporting evidence and contradicted by a mountain of evidence suggesting it couldn't possibly be the literal truth. Now it's off to hell you go."
Mr. Apple: "Crap."
Anyway, I have a lot of sympathy for the Bible-thumpers in that article. I believe some of the same things they do but, as usual, everybody except me is going about things in entirely the wrong way.
Basically it's about a community of fundamentalist Christian hipsters in Seattle.
If the article is to be believed, what's really interesting is how this movement is springing up essentially in opposition to the secularism, atheism, and moral relativism that's supposed to be the hallmark of today's urban young people. These folks are not your stereotypical Bible-thumpers; they are well-informed, well-educated, tattooed, hip, and probably a million times cooler than me. But they've decided to reject what they perceive as a life lacking in meaning and direction for a very strict set of rules based on a literal interpretation of the Bible.
That this type of movement should arise is hardly surprising. Every day we're bombarded with images and messages that degrade and devalue people, and right now on the internet you're one mouse-click away from the most vile and disgusting stuff imaginable. This is just one front in a cultural assault on the traditional nuclear family. For God's sake, the entire Islamic world condemns the West for our non-existent sexual mores - is it so surprising that a group of people in our own society would turn their back on these attitudes by embracing a philosophy that stands in direct opposition to it?
Although the article touches only briefly on these people's politics, it isn't hard to see where they might be coming from. They see a government controlled by corporate interest and money and globalism leading to the treatment of human beings as units of production or profit-generators rather than as people with a fundamental worth distinct from, and greater than, dollars and cents. Perhaps they see Feminism serving to achieve some very noble goals, but being subverted and harnessed to serve purely economic ends and to undermine the family. They may view us as a self-indulgent society of consumers for whom life has no meaning beyond our next purchase, meal, or sexual conquest. They reject all of this and search for some higher purpose.
What's worrisome is how they reject it. To stand in opposition to what they see as an utterly corrupt society, they also reject reason. A literal interpretation of the Bible means that they reject evolution. They believe the universe was literally created in 7 days. It means that every word in the Bible, with all its well-documented inconsistency, metaphor, and use of literary device, is taken to be the literal truth. I will leave theological discussions on the delicate balance between faith and reason to those better qualified than myself, but let me just say that if there's one thing I am absolutely certain of when it comes to religion it is this: if there is a God, then He gave us our reasoning faculties as a gift and He wants us to use them. I do not believe in any god that would want us to ignore the truth staring us in the face when we use our brains, nor any god that would deliberately trick us by creating a natural world operating by empirically observable laws that turn out to be an elaborate set of illusions.
Mr. Apple dies......
God: "Well, it's off to hell with you Mr. Apple - you spent your life believing in evolution."
Mr. Apple: "But I thought really hard about it! After all my best efforts, the eyes, ears, and mind you gave me all told me that it had to be true! What gives?"
God: "Oh, that was all an intricate and carefully designed set of smoke and mirrors that I built into the world to mislead you. Instead you were supposed to believe a 6000 year old creation story written by an anonymous person you never met based on zero supporting evidence and contradicted by a mountain of evidence suggesting it couldn't possibly be the literal truth. Now it's off to hell you go."
Mr. Apple: "Crap."
Anyway, I have a lot of sympathy for the Bible-thumpers in that article. I believe some of the same things they do but, as usual, everybody except me is going about things in entirely the wrong way.
posted by Mr. Apple at 11:38 PM
1 Comments:
Mr. Apple I hope to meet you in heaven someday if we fail to meet on our time here on Earth
Post a Comment
<< Home