Thursday, November 30, 2006

I'M SO TIRED OF THIS

Read this story first. http://articles.news.aol.com/news/_a/giant-prehistoric-fish-had-a-fierce/20061128213509990005 Man is this a long address or what? Thirty three feet long, that's longer than our house is wide or one tenth of a football field and with such a lovely "smile."

So naturally all the fundies are all over the story like white on rice. One poster’s entry was so misspelled and the grammar was so bad that only someone who really knows how English works would have even a slim chance of understanding what he or she was trying to say. Add in the ignorance of how science is really done and the result is appalling to put it mildly. And probably goes a long way to explain the generally f#$%ed up state of the country these days.

 

I know I’m sounding like an elitist, I’m not trying to be. But, it’s terrifying that someone this ignorant may be eligible to vote.

 

Ok, for the bazillionth time, the Bible is not a historical document. It is a wonderful and terrifying record of men and women trying to understand their relationship with God and each other. It is not History. In fact, many of the creation and flood stories are similar to Babylonian mythology only the biblical writers mislaid a couple of zeroes in their time lines. The Babylonian time line stretches out about 430,000 years instead of the Bibles’ 4,300 years. By trying to force it to be something the writers never intended you freeze it in time and it becomes truth with a “small” t.

 

The universe is old, very old and the earth itself is between four and five billion years old. Try wrapping your brain around this. The rocks at the top of the Grand Canyon were laid down just before the dinosaurs exited center stage Say, seventy million years old. It’s a vertical mile to the bottom of the canyon. By the time you reach the end of the day and the bottom of the canyon you are standing on rocks that are nearly a billion years old. I mean, wow!

 

And if that doesn’t give you a tingle, try this. The atoms in us were forged in countless supernovas. The earth, the other planets, the asteroids, everything around us is made of star stuff. When God/dess said “let there be light” there was one hell of a bang and creation keeps unfolding every day. Just because our physical lives are a flicker in time compared to the scale of galactic time doesn’t make us any less special. All the people who live on this planet now and of all the ones who came before us are and were unique. A one off, no copies allowed. Every time a life ends too soon or doesn’t reach it’s full flowering something unique and irreplaceable is lost.

 

I don't know about anyone else, but I find this extremely painful and full of sadness.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yes, it is sad that people have access to science but choose to ignore it. About dunkleosaurus, our local dino museum has a model of him and his mouth is pretty scary looking. There was also an "Ancient Seas" show on Animal Planet about a year ago that looked at the armor plated fishes. It was really cool. I am impressed with the info on how fast this big guy could bite ya!

Anonymous said...

It is sad that there are so many people out there...people with power, even...who need to define the universe according to their limited understanding.  They just can't deal with the idea of something being too great for them to comprehend, so they shrink it to a size they can handle.  To the detriment of all of us, I think...  Lisa  :-]

Anonymous said...

It makes me sad and angry that these religious nuts even have a voice -- let alone the MAJORITY voice.  (tears)

Keep fighting with the writing, Jackie.  I will if you will!

Love,
Russ

Anonymous said...

I feel like I could have written this post myself.  Well, it wouldn't have been as well-written.  What I'm trying to say is that I agree with every word you have written.

Anonymous said...

My rather pointed entry a few times back was to address someone who reads my blog indirectly...they use the Bible to justify everything--and depending on where you look, you can use it to support a lot of cruelty, like slavery, selling your daughter, etc...I used it to support my arguments against the crackdown on illegal aliens just to be a secret bitch..hehehe