Another camp is the religious and social conservatives. I’ve been having difficulty figuring out why these people insist that global warming isn’t real.

Last year I saw a news report about an island I think in the Caribbean where the sea level had risen about a foot and flooded the entire island. When the reporter asked one of the people there why they hadn’t left yet, one said basically that God’s covenant with Noah after the last world flood meant there was no way they were in danger. As the water swirled around her knees. Talk about SLB.

My grandparents are fairly conservative Southern Baptists, and while they don’t know about the current spiritual beliefs I have…it will stay that way. I know that for some, being a Christian is part of who they are, and it brings them peace. But I’ve come to realize that it’s not, and never will be for me. And it’s not always easy to keep “in the closet” about Jesus when you live in a state that has a pretty strong Christian base. I always like to say that around here, you can’t chuck a Bible without hitting a church. I can’t wait to move elsewhere.

“Mythology shouldn’t have that kind of stranglehold on our emotions as a species. Not in this day and age!”

Agreed. In recent years, I’ve become rather embittered and cynical about religion, and generally mistrustful of the whole setup. Coming to this blog points out and helps me see even more of the ridiculous fallacies in the Good Book that I might have missed the first time. It’s quite enlightening, and I learn something new nearly every day. I will say that living in the Bible Belt beat the religion right out of me.

I still, to this day, feel really weird bringing up religious topics with my family (primarily for my parents’ sake). They know I’m not a church goer, but I stop short of telling them I don’t believe in the dogma anymore for fear of breaking their hearts in their old age. I know many non-believers disagree with this decision, but I don’t want my parents to spend their remaining years wondering where they went wrong with me. I’d rather they die thinking their kids are doing just fine and without worrying about my soul.

Mythology shouldn’t have that kind of stranglehold on our emotions as a species. Not in this day and age!

In fact, I would posit that the TLB is rarely used honestly. It is just a hail mary pass to distract from the obvious “I don’t want this to be true”. And that is truly a conversation ending position. At least in personal discussions. In matters of public policy, their feet must be held to the fire and the medieval dragged kicking and screaming into reality.

Perhaps, I am missing your point at the end of this, but to me the TLB is just a post-hoc justification when their SLB is assaulted.

I think you summed up perfectly why the global warming denialism is so rampant in the white house, besides the fundies, I think, on some level, they KNOW it (the super rich oil magnates) exists, they just don’t want those bad, ebil liberals to hijack that gravytrain on biscuit wheels. It makes me kind of sick that they’re only thinking about themselves, and not about the future. Surely they have kids, families? Don’t they think about the kind of planet they’re going to leave to their children, grandchildren? The lack of foresight in these people just shocks me. I wish they’d get it through their really, REALLY thick skulls, that it isn’t a liberal OR a conservative issue. It impacts ALL of us.

*shakes head*

And on the religious indoctrination thing. I’m gonna tell a quick little story here. I have some relatively fundie relatives. (who, ironically, are left-wing supporters. Oxymoron, eh?) My aunt and grandmother told me about “the coming rapture” when I was eight. I guess since I had “heathen” parents (well…my dad’s a Christian, my mom’s the hippie, mother-earth type) they felt they needed to save my immortal soul. Well…telling an eight-year-old that the world’s gonna end in fire and brimstone…well, it does things to a kid. It had accomplished its intended effect. I was a good little Christian for a while, reading my Bible, praying to Jesus, etc. I was bound and determined to stay on the straight and narrow. Evolution was a lie, God was the great truth, I was going to heaven, and all the bad people were going to burn, the athiests, the Buddhists, the Wiccans, the homosexuals, all the other non-believers.

Well…when I was about 16, I got interested in Wicca, and pretty much abandoned Christianity. However, as the years went by, I bounced around with different spiritualities (I finally found one that suited me, over a year ago) but…whenever things went wrong, I’d try to turn back to Christianity, come back to “God.” But…I was never able to “feel” or “experience” God’s love. I asked for JC to come into my heart, I begged for forgiveness, in hopes that the invisible deity would grant me absolution. There was always that fear in the back of my mind. I questioned myself. Was I a bad person? Had God turned his back on me? Why wasn’t he hearing me? Why wasn’t I experiencing the peace and joy that God promised when you let Him into your life?

Not surprisingly, it didn’t happen. In short, I experienced a whole lot of nothin.’ No burning bush, no arcangel, no booming voice, no grand revelation, no choirs of angels.

Zero, zilch, nada.

What I’m getting at here is that indoctrination is pretty powerful, and it took me years, YEARS to fully deprogram myself, but I managed to do it. It wasn’t easy to fully shake loose the deep-seated fear of the divine wrath of the Lord Almighty, should I step out of line. I finally broke free of the chains of religion, and find I’m more clear thinking than ever. It really is dogma, and I see religion for what it really is: a tool of fear and control to keep all the sheep in line. I’m glad I’m not part of that, and I never will be. I’m too much of an independent thinker, and I’ve seen far too much to ever go back.

What about believers of “woo”, or all of the crazy anti-science things like astrology, homeopathy, dowsing, ESP, etc.? There’s probably a variety of explanations here.

Do you remember when you were a kid and fell down, hurting your knee or elbow? Your mom promised: “Let me kiss it and make it all better”. You hurt and wanted so much for it to be all better and when your mom kissed you, you were! I think that many people are still like that. They have hurts - physical, emotional, psychological – that they want to be all better, magically, just like mom used to do. They want it so desperately.

A lot of these “woos” promise to make things all better, pretty much magically, from my viewpoint. Follow the advice in astrology and your life will be all better. Use these homeopathic remedies and your health will be all better. Use your mind to create or manifest what you want and you will get it, you just need to make a strong enough manifestation and it will be all better, magically. Wouldn’t that be great – to be able manifest that parking spot at the entrance to a shop or that new job or relationship or home you always wanted? And, wow, it works!

Of course, you don’t notice all the times it didn’t work because, well, you wanted so much for things to be all better, that you are blind to the rest. And if you do notice, well it must be because you did something “wrong”. You didn’t quite follow the advice correctly or you used too little of the remedy or mixed it incorrectly or your manifestation was not clear enough. Maybe, the next time it will be all better….. And they never seem to figure out that had they done nothing, the results would have been no different.

“Trumpeting evidence in science to discredit someone’s beliefs who doesn’t care about evidence isn’t going to help your case much.”

That’s exactly the response we give to Fundigelicals who try to convince us that they’re right by quoting the Bible. We immediately reject the Bible because it’s proven to be worthless. They reject Science because it tends to refute the Bible. (SLB). They are also not well versed in the scientific method (TLB) because they don’t WANT to know what science can tell them. So how do you get through to someone like that?

I haven’t figured it out yet.

It seems to me that childhood indoctrination builds a huge SLB wall that cannot be broken until one’s TLB is pushed back by education sufficiently to realize what the SLB actually is: dogma.

Despite those like JW and myself who overcame indoctrination, I think the social reinforcement of others who are equally brainwashed and do not want to let go of mythology can plug the holes in the SLB damn, even with a sufficient level of technical knowledge such that the TLB is not as much of an issue.

In fact I saw this happen recently with a friend of mine. He’s atheist and his girlfriend was, I guess, a weak agnostic. As in, leaning more towards there being “something out there” resembling the Christian God, but not a church goer or dogmatic. Anyway, she had to move for work to a fundie town and her new friends got her to start going to bible study after about six months. Next thing you know, her weakening SLB was reinforced and now she’s a church goer and, well, they broke up! She believes in evolution and so forth, so I don’t think the TLB was the problem. (Remember, there is no “technical limit” issue with belief in a non- (or weakly) intervening deity. It may be a logical fallacy to “prove a negative” but, well, to somebody looking for a mythological crutch, that doesn’t matter, they’ll believe it unless the negative is proven.)

What I mean is, if someone gives me enough evidence that the Bible contradicts science, I will eventually have an emotional reaction. This is what happened to me. I believed in God, not because I didn’t see how it was possible for evolution to have happened or because I wasn’t interested in science. I believed because I was told there was a God and I WANTED there to be a God. I “felt” the love of Jesus. I thought atheist were illogical idiots. I made excuses for religion. “Well, the bible could be interpreted to support science. After all, the people of the time weren’t sophisticated enough to understand science or comprehend such a vast universe so it was explained metaphorically”

Eventually, I found enough facts in science that were contradictions to the bible and the excuses I made to still believe the Bible got so abstract that I was sort of exhausted from forcing these religious beliefs on myself. I realized my behavior was a result my social upbringing because I could no longer use the TLB to shield me from the SLB.

It was then that I sought out reasons why I “felt” the love of God and learned about how psychology plays such a huge role. Brainwashing.