Creationism

Part 1

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This is part two of a forwarded email I received the other day. Part One is here.

The rest of this email was all added on sometime in 2006. It was NOT said by Ben Stein. This kind of stuff drives me crazy. People forward emails because they blindly believe what is being sent. They just accept that it’s all true and important, so they send it to me, and you, whether we like it or not. I really can’t stand spam when it comes from someone I know.

Anyhoo, the following is a combination of older items about a TV appearance of Anne Graham Lotz (Billy Graham’s daughter) made just after 9-11 and the false claim that child care expert Dr. Benjamin Spock’s son committed suicide.

In light of the many jokes we send to one another for a laugh, this is a little different:  This is not intended to be a joke;  it’s not funny, it’s intended to get you thinking.

Talking about an invisible man in the sky does not really require thinking. It is blindly believing in fairy tales, but I digress. Read more…

Personally I don’t like to talk to friends and family about politics or religion. The older I get the more strongly I feel about certain issues. While I try to remain open to more information, and am willing to learn and grow and change my thinking, my tolerance for certain behaviors in those around me wanes.

Anyway, the other day I got an email from an acquaintance. She hasn’t emailed me in about 2 years, but I guess this was so important to her that she just had to send it to her entire email list. Instead of deleting it, I thought I’d share it with you.

Here’s the email in its entirety, with my commentary thrown in after each “quote”.

Subject: is quite impressive , what do you think
Remarks from CBS Sunday Morning (everyone should read!)
I can only hope we find God again before it is too late!!

(oh lordy I’m so glad I got this email! Now I can see the light of god and I’m saved from hell! Oh wait, no. It was just a seizure.)

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This is so fascinating to me. I heard this a bit ago and wanted to share it with you. It’s a rough quote, because I’m not good at dictation:

“Studies strongly suggest that beliefs are encoded in the brain differently than facts. Different parts of the brain seem to light up when we recall facts than when we recall thematic beliefs or emotional conclusions or beliefs about things.” Steven Novella from the Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast, episode 163, September 3rd, 2008.

How cool is that? I’ve always kind of vaguely wondered if there was a difference with how a believer thinks as opposed to an atheist. Now, before you go tearing me apart, Steven Novella said that this is all very new and not set in stone at all. If you know of any studies, let me know. He also mentioned that most of the studies were done with FMRI which is hard to do right, so you have to wade through the questionable techniques and stuff.

Still, all that aside, that’s pretty interesting to me, and I wanted to share it with you.

My in-laws were in town for the past week. We went out to dinner and over margaritas that’s what my sister in law said. “I kind of respect Hitler. I have no problem with him. I don’t understand what the big deal is.”

Um, WTF!? For some reason I was shushed from expressing my opinion. (Maybe because I was only having iced tea and wasn’t drinking margaritas?) My husband and his cousin shushed me and took over trying to explain “what the big deal with Hitler is.”

I was astonished that anyone could honestly believe this kind of nonsense. The thing is, this person, whom I love as my own sister, is walking around thinking that Hitler wasn’t such a bad guy, that he wasn’t allowed to be an artist, so that makes it all ok. Oh, and that the systematic extermination of anyone non-Aryan didn’t really happen. Read more…