Me depressed about creationism

[PainRack]

Not sure where this topic should be....I put it here due to its being creationism.

I recently been............ hit by constant exposure to how several of my friends, and colleagues believe in creationism.

Now, this wouldn't have been so "bad" if I could simply say they weren't exposed to science, don't believe in evidence based methodology or they simply didn't learn/know about the alternatives. Afterall, evolution isn't taught in Singapore schools until you reach biology in university, and even then, its given short shrift.

Unfortunately....... one of my "pal" has such exposure and is an adamant creationist and had decided to fall out over my group because of my arguments as well as humour directed at Jesus advocation of castration.

No biggie, my friend dynamic got hit bad, but this was over a year ago and I'm busy in my new career as a nurse.

Well...... Now, I find the evidence of creationism entrenched here in my profession too, amongst the young, the old, and the patients. I'm bound by professional ethics not to disabuse my patients of this fallacy, even though it might be very hard, and certainly, to even learn about my patient creationist view actually required me to dig it up as opposed to his evangelising it to me.
Similarly, there isn't any real problems popping up from some of my colleagues belief in creationism. They don't voice it out, its just an internal belief in them, that actually requires me to "dig" to find that out.


So...... I have a moral dilenma and its depressing me. My friends who are creationists......For me to dig and seek to "educate" them regarding evolution. Well, its strikes me as being confrontational and I shouldn't do it, yet, I'm doing it to a certain extent. Yet, like Carl Sagan, I simply cannot stand to just let it slide. I may not be a real scientist, my grasp of knowledge is pitiful, but god... It simply hurts to see creationist propaganda get entrenched in people I do care about without digging it out.

So..... How do you guys resolve this conflict?

[Melchior]

Similarly, there isn't any real problems popping up from some of my colleagues belief in creationism. They don't voice it out, its just an internal belief in them, that actually requires me to "dig" to find that out.

By "your colleagues" you also mean actual medical doctors who must decide on the lives of other persons using, among other things, their understanding of evolutionary biology? A creationist doctor is walking mine.

So..... How do you guys resolve this conflict?

I suppose that I'm lucky that I don't know any; creationism is basically only cited as a punchline, around me.

[Oskuro]

I suppose that I'm lucky that I don't know any; creationism is basically only cited as a punchline, around me.

Same here, but I often notice that, deep down, a lot of people still harbour what they think is a reasonable doubt about it. And they don't react well when prodded.

Really not sure what to say, I just react to these beliefs when they are brought out and used aganist me. People cling so hard to what they've been indoctrinated with that whatever I say will only help them strengthen their position, so I'm quickly sliding into "it's their problem, I don't care" territory.

[CaptJodan]

One of my longest and best friends used to be a non-practicing Christian back when I first met him (Which is almost the best you can hope for in America), but has relatively recently gotten deeper into the scene by going to church every week, then to bible study, then to choir practices. It bothers me. He claims that he won't change because of it (so why do it?) but I've had too much experience seeing people go down that road and change.

I've tried to engage him in conversation. He likes to think of himself as a rational person, so I try to appeal to his rationality, while trying not to sound overbearing or offensive, but he usually just tries to avoid the conversation, no matter how flowery and non-hostile I make it. While he claims rationality, he clearly isn't interested in it, because he simply rejects talking about it. I'm so frustrated that I want to tell him how fucking irrational he really is, and that his faith is pretty shaky if he's afraid to even try to defend it, but I know that won't help.

From what I can tell, he's already lost to it. Critical thinking, when it comes to his religion, is no longer viable. You may have to accept some of the people you try to help are going to be like this. As for how to get those those who you might still have some rational appeal to, I'm interested to hear what others have to say. Clearly my method doesn't work.

[Lagmonster]

It's worth mentioning that Singapore likely has a different cultural climate than the west, so advice that works here (Canada) might be a bad idea there. I've always run in professional circles which react to someone saying "Hey, did you know the earth is only 6000 years old?" with the exact same facial expression that a person gets when they smell an unventilated stable.

I *have* learned that in many cases involving extreme adherence to religion, it's somewhat similar to a tenacious parasite; people adopt extreme religious views for very foundational, deeply-entrenched psychological reasons and emotional needs, and once dug in they can be impossible to remove without harming the patient (in this case, your friendship). If you can't accept that your friend holds irrational beliefs, and he won't listen to what you have to say, and either of you is uncomfortable with a 'this subject is off-limits' truce, then you may have to let him go.

[PainRack]

By "your colleagues" you also mean actual medical doctors who must decide on the lives of other persons using, among other things, their understanding of evolutionary biology? A creationist doctor is walking mine.

Nah. Medical doctors aren't exactly colleagues of mine:D

More like...... Experts who need to realise that they're technical specialists, leaders, managers and mere workers, all rolled into one:D

The "pal" who fell out however was a pharmacist in training... and actually, a scholar with honours...... He now works in the Ministry of Health, tracking insect vectors.

I *have* learned that in many cases involving extreme adherence to religion, it's somewhat similar to a tenacious parasite; people adopt extreme religious views for very foundational, deeply-entrenched psychological reasons and emotional needs, and once dug in they can be impossible to remove without harming the patient (in this case, your friendship). If you can't accept that your friend holds irrational beliefs, and he won't listen to what you have to say, and either of you is uncomfortable with a 'this subject is off-limits' truce, then you may have to let him go.

I can do that for friends..... I can't really do that for colleagues or even patients under my care. Hell, part of my job as a nurse is to protect them from evangelising influences from well meaning "friends" and the like.... and that includes me preaching to them about evolution.

Granted, I never done anything like this yet. The closest I ever done was with regards to a relative where the patient was dying, and I just couldn't resist explaining a bit more about evolution when she epoused her creationist views, before sanity kicked in and I got around to arranging for how to prepare for the patient death and other death procedures.

To be fair, looking over this issue,I'm depressed not because there are people around me who are creationists. I'm depressed because I can't go rip them and their arguments apart.........
grrrr......

[Simon_Jester]

This is, by the way, more or less how the evangelists feel about Jesus.

Which is why they're so persistent. They actually care, and they honestly think that deciding to agree with them is the most important choice you can ever make. And with that much on the line, they can not stop talking, even when you want them to.

[rhoenix]

Honestly Painrack, I hear you. I work for a xtian Healthcare company, and the majority of the people here avidly watch FOX news. In fact, the very idea that some of them acknowledge a "debate" between the intelligent design hypothesis (I won't call it a theory, since it's not) and evolution theory I see as a positive - most of them just get pissed off at "lubruls" trying to "make their kids into atheists."

When the intellectuals here where I work consider themselves enlightened by reading the Drudge report website, that should tell you something.

However, I raise questions, and "softly" debate them - planting seeds of curiosity. It's all I can do.

[Alyeska]

I have a very good friend who used to try and push Creationism on me. One night we had a frank conversation and I asked him why. He said it was because he cared about me and wanted to save my soul. I told him to consider that he has given it an honest try and let it drop as things might get bad from here. He agreed and hasn't broached anything on that subject since. That was over 6 years ago. Since then he has joined the Airforce, learned another language (Korean), and gotten into the culture surrounding it. He has spent time in Japan as well. The different slices of culture have been good for him and his conservative beliefs have significantly lessened and he has become far more accepting of others different from him.

[Enola Straight]

Born-Again Christians MUST believe the literal interpretation of the Bible...lest they spend eternity in unyielding misery. They are also charged with the duty to preach The Truth to the unsaved so they may also be granted Deliverance.

What happens if not enough people "believe" in Evolution and The Big Bang?

[Samuel]

Born-Again Christians MUST believe the literal interpretation of the Bible...lest they spend eternity in unyielding misery. They are also charged with the duty to preach The Truth to the unsaved so they may also be granted Deliverance.

What happens if not enough people "believe" in Evolution and The Big Bang?

The first is sort of important for medicine. With it gone... well, the lie expectancy will drop a bit. The second isn't as applicable to everyday life.

[Ryan Thunder]

Hell, part of my job as a nurse is to protect them from evangelising influences from well meaning "friends" and the like.... and that includes me preaching to them about evolution.

Wait, wait... This isn't actually stated in your job description or anything like that, is it?

[Dave]

Hell, part of my job as a nurse is to protect them from evangelising influences from well meaning "friends" and the like.... and that includes me preaching to them about evolution.

Wait, wait... This isn't actually stated in your job description or anything like that, is it?

I think she means that, as part of the ethical patient-nurse relationship, she is obligated to keep the patient as well-informed as possible. This includes dispelling myths, and if that includes teaching evolution to explain, say, the development of resistance to antibiotics, then so be it.

[Darth Wong]

Born-Again Christians MUST believe the literal interpretation of the Bible...lest they spend eternity in unyielding misery. They are also charged with the duty to preach The Truth to the unsaved so they may also be granted Deliverance.

It's more than that. Born-again Christians have several other syndromes which keep them on the Path:

1. They are often losers. By "losers", I mean "people who have a tendency to make bad choices in life". People like this actually need to be led around by the nose, because their own judgment is so awful. There's no point getting into all of the factors which can produce a person with lousy personal judgment; let's just say that they are legion. The point here is that their need to be dominated just happens to dovetail perfectly with the moral leadership style of a typical fundamentalist church. It actually works for them; these people often find that their lives actually do improve once they are "born again", because mindless obedience to the church works better for them than following their own horrendous personal judgment. While "no sex outside of wedlock or you will burn in Hell" may sound like a stupid rule to you or me, it actually works for the kind of imbecile who has a habit of waking up in someone else's bed with no memory of how he got there.
2. They are "spiritual", which is a nice way of saying that they're irrational. Sure, there may be individual fundamentalists who are capable of employing logic but who make an exception for religion for various reasons (the desire to live forever is pretty powerful), but by and large, they tend to be quite frankly stupid and irrational people who wouldn't know logic if it reared up and bit them in the ass. They vastly prefer intuition, which required no effort whatsoever to acquire: after all, everyone has an intuition. Nobody ever had to pass an exam to get an intuition. Unfortunately, intuition is nothing more than the brain's tendency to follow existing patterns, so a religious devotee's intuition is going to push him to remain with the faith pretty much 100% of the time.
3. Their entire social circle is often based around the church. In these cases, leaving the faith means pretty much abandoning their entire social lives: an almost inconceivable notion for many people. It also means that one must come to the conscious decision that most of one's entire circle of friends is basically mindless sheep: this revelation is all the more disturbing since no one in the group raised these logical issues on their own, and it took an outsider to explain them.

These are powerful factors and probably exert more influence on fundamentalists' adherence to the church than the abstract fear that God will punish the country for its unbelievers.

What happens if not enough people "believe" in Evolution and The Big Bang?

Texas.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Texas.

God damn it Mike. Fuck you, fuck you for reminding me of the truth about my god damn state, and my shitty-ass pre-med bio students . I am telling you man, when the governor can put a creationist as head of the school board, after a massive row in the board of education regarding the evolution curriculum (we won, but barely), and have it not be political suicide you have a problem. My students should have gone through AT LEAST 9th grade biology, and it is as if they have never heard of the term Evolution, or Natural Selection before. Then again this might not indicate anything, as they also seem to not have heard of the term "academic dishonesty" and learned that copy-pasting answers to a question from a peer reviewed paper I had them read is called "plagiarism" So my students just might in general be fucking morons.

I am just happy that as part of my job description I am encourached,no, required, to disabuse them of their stupidity.

Student: So after all of that, can you tell me where God comes into play here?
Me: He doesnt

[PainRack]

Hell, part of my job as a nurse is to protect them from evangelising influences from well meaning "friends" and the like.... and that includes me preaching to them about evolution.

Wait, wait... This isn't actually stated in your job description or anything like that, is it?

Its part of the ethics. To put it simply, nurses are not allowed to preach to patients about their own religious beliefs, and that also includes challenging the patient spiritual/religious beliefs about god.
So yes, I'm not allowed to talk about atheism. Think about it. It makes good ethical sense. if a Christian can't preach Christianity to a patient, an atheist can't do that either.

Technically, that also extends to me protecting their own spiritual beliefs from others.

Lastly, I'm also to know how to refer them to the appropriate spiritual resources.

And no, its not in my job description per se. Its more of an ethical guideline that I'm supposed to adhere to.

[sketerpot]

Texas.

God damn it Mike. Fuck you, fuck you for reminding me of the truth about my god damn state, and my shitty-ass pre-med bio students . I am telling you man, when the governor can put a creationist as head of the school board, after a massive row in the board of education regarding the evolution curriculum (we won, but barely), and have it not be political suicide you have a problem.

That same governor wrote a book about how, as part of defending America from the "virus of secularism", it is imperative that we keep the queers and atheists out of the Boy Scouts. He's a young-earth creationist and a Biblical literalist who firmly believes that non-Christians will burn forever in hell, and he's been trying to make abortions as hard to get as possible. The fact that he was ever even a serious contender for the office of governor means that there's something very wrong with Texas.

My students should have gone through AT LEAST 9th grade biology, and it is as if they have never heard of the term Evolution, or Natural Selection before. Then again this might not indicate anything, as they also seem to not have heard of the term "academic dishonesty" and learned that copy-pasting answers to a question from a peer reviewed paper I had them read is called "plagiarism" So my students just might in general be fucking morons.

I had a student who copied and pasted from Wikipedia. The plagiarism was preposterously obvious. And to top it all off, he then changed the font size to 16 point so it would look longer. And while I'm pissed off, let me mention another guy: he couldn't write a coherent sentence to save his life, and somehow he had managed to get past basic English classes. He was a native English speaker, from America -- he was just really stupid. How does someone like that even manage to graduate from high school, let alone pass college classes? Is grade inflation that great, or is cheating really easy? What the hell?

[Ryan Thunder]

Hell, part of my job as a nurse is to protect them from evangelising influences from well meaning "friends" and the like.... and that includes me preaching to them about evolution.

Wait, wait... This isn't actually stated in your job description or anything like that, is it?

Its part of the ethics. To put it simply, nurses are not allowed to preach to patients about their own religious beliefs, and that also includes challenging the patient spiritual/religious beliefs about god.
So yes, I'm not allowed to talk about atheism. Think about it. It makes good ethical sense. if a Christian can't preach Christianity to a patient, an atheist can't do that either. [...]

Sorry, I somehow misread your statement to imply that you could and were in fact expected to.

[PainRack]

Sorry, I somehow misread your statement to imply that you could and were in fact expected to.

Nah. Not your fault. I reread the statement and realised how misleading it can seem. Thanks for the opportunity to clarify.

[CaptJodan]

I had a student who copied and pasted from Wikipedia. The plagiarism was preposterously obvious. And to top it all off, he then changed the font size to 16 point so it would look longer. And while I'm pissed off, let me mention another guy: he couldn't write a coherent sentence to save his life, and somehow he had managed to get past basic English classes. He was a native English speaker, from America -- he was just really stupid. How does someone like that even manage to graduate from high school, let alone pass college classes? Is grade inflation that great, or is cheating really easy? What the hell?

I currently work at the writing lab on a university campus, and I see Wiki cited all the time (and even sometimes plagiarized, but not to the degree you're talking about). Needless to say I do everything in my limited power to make it clear that it isn't a reliable resource.

I was painfully reminded yesterday about some of the dangers inherent even in respected college courses. I was talking to one of my co-workers who is currently taking a speech class, and she mentioned that abortion and evolution are topics the professor has banned from making a speech on, because of the inflammatory nature of the topic. Already incensed by the idea of a suppression of topics in an academic atmosphere of all places, I asked if a speech on intelligent design was permitted. She said yes. You are also permitted to make a speech on religion in general. Needless to say, I was mortified. I don't remember any such restrictions when I took speech class.

Given the bullshit excuse (it causes controversy), I can only assume the professor is a creationist. It isn't like pro or anti gay marriage doesn't spark controversy, but you don't see her banning that, likely cause she knows she wouldn't get away with it quite as easily.

[Darth Wong]

Yeah, but you're in Florida. You should be glad this prof doesn't make the students say the Lord's Prayer before each class.