Uneducated Christians Hold Progress Back

I realized why zealous Christians will never stop criticizing science no matter how much empirical proof is thrown at them. The majority of them have never even taken a science class in their lives, to them, science is just another religion.

In a country where only 10% of the population graduates from four year institutions anymore (ALL four year institutions, including high schools), children are exposed to church basically from birth, but may never step foot inside a biology class. The foundational principals of blind-faith are ingrained in them from baptism and hard study of scientific principal is not explored in-depth at all until at least the ninth grade. Schools are charged with undoing 15 years of damage, which is very unlikely to happen in one semester, or in the week max that students spend studying evolution.

The conclusion, no wonder science doesn't make sense to zealous Christians, they can't understand it. In this country's education system, that's no surprise. On the flipside, biology class can't be much more boring than church can it? The same people who will begrudgingly leave a bio lab for God will go sit in church for fear of damnation if they don't. Well, damnation to hell in a second life that may not even exist for not going to church is obviously more convincing than damnation to poverty for not staying in school. Obviously.

I tried to have a conversation with my dad about Humanity's origins, I explained that we started as unicellular organisms that split and multiplied to create multicelluar organisms and eventually changed into their present day forms over millions of years to cope with their respective environments. "That's how babies are formed, from single cells that split and multiply," I explained. It's not the best argument, but it's an analogy that him, being uneducated from Albania, might understand. He was outraged.

"I don't come from an amoeba!" he touted. "Just look at how complicated living things are! No mistake in nature could have come up with such a sophisticated and complicated system!"

Um, yes, it can and it did and the fact that we're standing here today is proof that it did. No theoretical conceptualized logic-proof (a proof and to prove, two different things btw) that Descartes wrote can undo the fact that we're here, he himself said "I am, therefore I exist."

The only shred of empirical proof that Christians have for God stems from the lack of proof scientists have for certain scientific phenomena. "Oh well explain this, explain that, hah! You can't! Therefore God must exist." We can't explain magnetism either, does that mean it doesn't exist? We can't completely explain evolution but we can see that it has happened and can see it happening just like magnetism, but until you can throw it under a microscope, Christians will not be satisfied, and even then, they'll find a way to keep looking away. It's like how cheating spouses will deny they cheated until you show them a video of them in the act, or how criminals will claim innocence until you show them the surveilance video.

Christian faith in an external God is ironically based on a lack of faith in an internal self. Of all the wondrous and amazing things that the Human mind, body, and spirit are capable of, people don't have the self-confidence to take credit for their acts or abilities, so they attribute it to an external inspiration-source to qualify their feats. It people would start believing in themselves, the need for a God would disappear. Maybe the churches know this, which is why they strive to hold people down and tell them they're incapable worthless shmucks without God--to keep their jobs.

Even professed "experts" who take up the study of scientific principals for the sake of refuting them, religion still came first. Religion set its roots, held its influence, and did its damage long before the school tried to intervene and failed. For some people, there is no hope and no escape and the only thing they can do is what they are programed to do--convert people. Yet for some, they see the light, realize that the ultimate aim of religion is to make good people and decide that they can be good people without proverbs or worship. Some people need religion, and that's okay, but some people don't, and that's fine too, just please someone graffiti over the billboard on the 105 Freeway that says "Pull the Plug on Atheism," I don't want to have to be subjected to this ignorance in this anti-intellectual society anymore.