Wednesday, August 18, 2010

So Stupid it Makes Me Mad

This article is so stupid that it makes me mad.

"the scientific metaphor known as string theory[...]the Biblical metaphor known as Genesis[...]"

I don't whether to laugh, cry or try to start a class-action lawsuit against somebody on behalf on common sense.

"what the Bible has been telling us through metaphor since 8,000 B.E. (Before Einstein)"

Wow. Would that be 8000 YEARS before Einstein?

Does the author use dates metaphorically too? Or does he have a whole separate groovy lecture where he demonstrates that Genesis is actually 8000 years old?

"Open yourself once more to the mystical message in the first so-called "day" of Genesis 1:"

I wish more people would open themselves, in the face of poota reconstuctionist intellectual history like this, to the plain truth: that the various authors of the various stories which were eventually woven together into Genesis meant them literally, that most Jews continued to believe Genesis literally for a very long time, that most Christians still did until pretty recently, and that the brightest ones from Augustine to the present -- their numbers have increased explosively over the course of the last century -- who have been blathering on about its "metaphorical," "mystical" meaning (I've been trying for a long time to find out just exactly what mysticism is. I'm coming to the conclusion that it is babble which confused religious people find soothing.) are not on to the real, hidden meaning of Scripture, but are just too embarrassed, subconsciously usually, to see it all, the book, the religion, the whole silly situation, honestly for what it so very plainly is: primitive hoo-hah, pre-scientific attempts to understand a frightening world, and prefer to engage in something on a par with seeing ducking and horsies in puffy white cumulus clouds, rather than fully let go their religious beliefs. (Religious, spiritual -- poTAYto, poTAHto...)

Postscript: here is another Too Hot For Huffpo! comment I made about the same article. Didn't make it past the moderation:

"For me, sometimes the mystical pseudoscience gets so out there that it becomes fascinating, like a fictional trainwreck in a slapstick comedy movie.

"At the same time, though, it makes me angry, because stuff like this and Lanza and Whatsisname, the classical-musician-turned-non-physicist [Ervin Laszlo], and the Naked Archaeologist and the Bible Code and Dan Brown, is so successful, at the expense of actual competent science and history and archaeology. And the thing is: the intelligent stuff, the actual science -- expanding the term "science" to include history. Why does the English-speaking world sometimes not do this? -- is not only based on real evidence and intelligent reasoning, it's actually more interesting than the stuff these crackpots dream up."

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