In article <web.47e49ba9bd0847b4fe19a56b0@news.povray.org>, 
nam### [at] gmailcom says...
> My problem with creationists and the ID people is that they should not di
tch
> science in favor of the Bible as it makes up for stupid arguments.  Inste
ad,
> they should understand what the Bible says under the light of science.  T
hey
> should embrace science and with such ammunition try to understand how God
 did
> it, instead of simply saying:  "The Lord said so and so it happened".  Th
at
> leads nowhere, it does not take us closer to an understandment of God's a
nd our
> own nature.
> 
Lots of past people, including St. Thomas Aquinas have said things 
*similar* to that, only to ignore their own good sense the moment that 
something sufficiently conflicted with their faith that they would have 
had to question what they believed seriously, or reject the existence of 
the thing that caused the conflict. "Liberal" Christians ranging from 
those that practice, like Atheist Jews, the cultural details of the 
religion while being all but certain the mythical bits are all 
gibberish, to those that, in general, try really hard to shoehorn some 
sort of god into a hole that one can't fit into, because they recognize 
that religion really doesn't do too well at describing the physical 
world (the two magisterium argument, which makes the convoluted claim 
that there is some other world we can't see, describe, know or 
understand entirely, so one can't expect proof of it, but which they all 
have *clear* proof and evidence of...) The "conservatives" range from 
those who where toe tip to drop with the truth, got scared out of their 
wits, and decided to cling to the diving board, rather than *at least* 
closing their eyes and pretending they didn't jump after they got out of 
the water, to those on the other extreme, who know they don't have a leg 
to stand on, fall prey to every sin and evil they claim their faith is 
designed to prevent, the project that idiocy on everyone that doesn't 
follow some self claimed "literal" reading. There are people in between 
the extremes on both sides, but those in the middle are in crisis, and, 
depending on who feeds them information, are going to fall off the 
diving board, and either end up in the water, or land on the cement. 
There doesn't seem to be any way to remain sane, even by the standards 
of the extreme right, and stand in the middle, between the extremes. 
Either you realize the Bible is full of holes, or you panic and hide 
some place under the covers, where a lot of kind, but equally ignorant, 
people pat you on the back and tell you, "Now, now. Don't cry. We'll 
just put a parachute and some floaties on you, and you can pretend that 
the kiddie slide is the high dive."

The people on that side of the fence are not interested in getting a 
closer understanding of anything, unless its the apologistics of their 
personal strait jacket. Its too scary to image a world without it, and 
often psychologically impossible for them to comprehend that most people 
are not as screwed up, paranoid, corruptible and afraid of the world as 
they are. And this isn't just me projecting my own view into the 
situation, this is what a number of ex-fundamentalists and ex-
literalists say about how they thought, and their own families often 
still do think. It took something profound poking holes in their 
floaties, or some aspect of the real world pointing out how dumb they 
looked standing at the kiddy pool and pretending to do swan dives was to 
shatter their positions. Some just find a bigger pillow to hide under. 
Other... start to question everything and learn things. A few eventually 
reach the point where they can say, "I can admit to how Christianity 
shaped the world and that it had benefits, but also that it could have, 
and maybe even might have been better, had something else shaped it, and 
I am no more certain of god actually being out there than the atheists 
are." And, BTW, most of them take a pragmatic approach to the subject. 
No believable evidence and no reason for one? It probably doesn't exist, 
nor is there any reason to think that believing in some random one 
picked with a coin flip will benefit anyone, but if it does exist, it 
doesn't pragmatically change a damn thing about what we **know**, nor 
can we make *any* valid progress in trying to claim which one if the 
right one, so Pascal's Wager is totally useless.

You can't, after all, win a wager if you don't know how many players you 
are betting on, which picks will get you in serious trouble, if any, or 
even if the guy running the game is seriously running some sort of game 
to bet on, or just a crook pretending to take bets, while taking all 
your money. Or, to put it in Homer Simpson's terms, "What if we are 
going to the wrong church ever Sunday and the real god is just getting 
madder and madder?" ;)

-- 
void main () {

    if version = "Vista" {
      call slow_by_half();
      call DRM_everything();
    }
    call functional_code();
  }
  else
    call crash_windows();
}

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