I remember watching a debate between Bill Nye and Ken Ham…
Thank you for sacrificing your intellectual sanity to explore the ‘down home’ universe. As a biracial. Baha’i, artsy, NOVA watching, Info Lit librarian I don’t think I could cross the threshold without convulsing.
yeah, I saw that debate in my Google searches but didn't go there--I almost included a link to the hilarious "interview" between Richard Dawkins and the creationist/"concerned moms" type Wendy Wright. That's worth watching for her genuinely bizarre affect if nothing else. She keeps saying "where is the evidence?" and Dawkins is so exasperated---"It's in the museum! Why don't you go and look at it!"
So many thoughts, reactions and semi-convulsions in reading this. So here go a few disjointed thoughts:
This "museum" serves those "predisposed to believe," but also "reassured by the professionalism of the display" and the "calibrated mood music." This reminds me that science is actually premised on the continued attempts to disprove itself, that only a "theory" -- such a misunderstood and misused term -- and hypothesis that continues to resist disproval can be sustained.
It also, however, reminds me how easily swayed we are by such things as "professionalism." Several points in this piece made me revisit my anxieties about what happens when a Trump/DeSantis is as handsome and well-spoken as Obama (if that's not counterproductive -- another theory) and how much contemporary American fascism could be better received if its proponents didn't seem stupid / unattractive / socially awkward. (See above parenthetical.).
Liberalism or progressivism, in the first half of the 20th century, had a strong populist core, which it seems now largely to have ceded. Prominent "white supremacists" increasingly have Latin surnames. Given that the general American public doesn't know its own history and isn't terribly sophisticated/educated, what happens when the right-wing populist who speaks well and looks sexy makes the largest number of people feel better about their insecurities and replaces "creepy animatronics"? Does he (she? hmm) make most of us feel better about our lack of successful education? All the more powerful reaction to those few elites!
Are there 20 to 100 million YECs? Doubtful. But I'm sure there are that many people swayed by the wording of questions. They might well point out the truth of "species" being a "man-made term." Who else do you think came up with it? And if you don't think "the average size of a dinosaur" is "actually the size of a sheep," you might not know how much more likely people believe new "facts" just slightly surprising, especially when they hear them repeatedly.
Many thoughts in response to your thoughts -- one before I take my run is about the Latino (&some Latina) "white supremacists" -- I've seen this issue addressed in some of the WS material, and there is an understanding that some people can be what they call "white adjacent."
Even though the origins of people with Latin surnames are not the same as the hallowed Anglo-core insisted upon by so much of the white supremacist tripe, as long as those (not too dark skinned?) people are on board with the anti-black, masculinist, socially conservative, often but not always religious, anti-government (but not really, right?) programme of the far right, they can be admitted to the fold. Which frankly needs their numbers.
In my class I use an essay about assimilation where George Fredrickson talks about non-white groups historically being deemed (by whites) either "unfit" or "unready" to participate meaningfully in white-dominant society. Some groups like Hispanics and Native Americans--and at one point Irish--are seen as "unready" until a certain amount of assimilation has occurred, while other groups like Asians and Blacks (both terms too huge to even be useful, I know) are seen as constitutionally "unfit" and considered by many whites to be "eternally foreign" (borrowing a phrase from Gordon Chang) to the imagined national identity.
SO . . . the flexibility of racial affinity if not identity we're seeing among American white supremacists in the face of changing demographics is similar to the flexibility required of creationists when they need to incorporate facts such as dinosaur fossils into their mythology. Not exactly the same process, but perhaps a similar "happy ending" kind of thinking, which is the opposite of what both scientists and historians ought to be doing, as I discussed a little in the first post on the Creation Museum.
It was a lot easier for these creationists in the 19th C when they could just say the devil put those fossils there to confuse people! And on the white supremacy end, slavery was simply the mark of Cain. It's interesting to see the arguments develop as society becomes more secular and (a little) more scientifically literate. They're having to work a lot harder to articulate their positions now, but widespread racism and poor education make their job easier than it should be.
Probably could have shared those thought more succinctly! :0
So you're saying the Devil did NOT put those fossils in the ground to confuse people?
Does Frederickson specifically mention the Irish? What's the essay?
Further proof here that race is socially constructed. The "white adjacent" thing also reminds me that often the most patriotic, to a fault, Americans are sometimes the newest immigrants.
As to what the devil was up to, aside from pissing in the snow, I can't say. As I have been told, think about it! Was I there when the devil put fossils so many layers down in the sediment that actually just happened to settle that way after the Noahic Flood
I remember watching a debate between Bill Nye and Ken Ham…
Thank you for sacrificing your intellectual sanity to explore the ‘down home’ universe. As a biracial. Baha’i, artsy, NOVA watching, Info Lit librarian I don’t think I could cross the threshold without convulsing.
yeah, I saw that debate in my Google searches but didn't go there--I almost included a link to the hilarious "interview" between Richard Dawkins and the creationist/"concerned moms" type Wendy Wright. That's worth watching for her genuinely bizarre affect if nothing else. She keeps saying "where is the evidence?" and Dawkins is so exasperated---"It's in the museum! Why don't you go and look at it!"
So many thoughts, reactions and semi-convulsions in reading this. So here go a few disjointed thoughts:
This "museum" serves those "predisposed to believe," but also "reassured by the professionalism of the display" and the "calibrated mood music." This reminds me that science is actually premised on the continued attempts to disprove itself, that only a "theory" -- such a misunderstood and misused term -- and hypothesis that continues to resist disproval can be sustained.
It also, however, reminds me how easily swayed we are by such things as "professionalism." Several points in this piece made me revisit my anxieties about what happens when a Trump/DeSantis is as handsome and well-spoken as Obama (if that's not counterproductive -- another theory) and how much contemporary American fascism could be better received if its proponents didn't seem stupid / unattractive / socially awkward. (See above parenthetical.).
Liberalism or progressivism, in the first half of the 20th century, had a strong populist core, which it seems now largely to have ceded. Prominent "white supremacists" increasingly have Latin surnames. Given that the general American public doesn't know its own history and isn't terribly sophisticated/educated, what happens when the right-wing populist who speaks well and looks sexy makes the largest number of people feel better about their insecurities and replaces "creepy animatronics"? Does he (she? hmm) make most of us feel better about our lack of successful education? All the more powerful reaction to those few elites!
Are there 20 to 100 million YECs? Doubtful. But I'm sure there are that many people swayed by the wording of questions. They might well point out the truth of "species" being a "man-made term." Who else do you think came up with it? And if you don't think "the average size of a dinosaur" is "actually the size of a sheep," you might not know how much more likely people believe new "facts" just slightly surprising, especially when they hear them repeatedly.
Many thoughts in response to your thoughts -- one before I take my run is about the Latino (&some Latina) "white supremacists" -- I've seen this issue addressed in some of the WS material, and there is an understanding that some people can be what they call "white adjacent."
Even though the origins of people with Latin surnames are not the same as the hallowed Anglo-core insisted upon by so much of the white supremacist tripe, as long as those (not too dark skinned?) people are on board with the anti-black, masculinist, socially conservative, often but not always religious, anti-government (but not really, right?) programme of the far right, they can be admitted to the fold. Which frankly needs their numbers.
In my class I use an essay about assimilation where George Fredrickson talks about non-white groups historically being deemed (by whites) either "unfit" or "unready" to participate meaningfully in white-dominant society. Some groups like Hispanics and Native Americans--and at one point Irish--are seen as "unready" until a certain amount of assimilation has occurred, while other groups like Asians and Blacks (both terms too huge to even be useful, I know) are seen as constitutionally "unfit" and considered by many whites to be "eternally foreign" (borrowing a phrase from Gordon Chang) to the imagined national identity.
SO . . . the flexibility of racial affinity if not identity we're seeing among American white supremacists in the face of changing demographics is similar to the flexibility required of creationists when they need to incorporate facts such as dinosaur fossils into their mythology. Not exactly the same process, but perhaps a similar "happy ending" kind of thinking, which is the opposite of what both scientists and historians ought to be doing, as I discussed a little in the first post on the Creation Museum.
It was a lot easier for these creationists in the 19th C when they could just say the devil put those fossils there to confuse people! And on the white supremacy end, slavery was simply the mark of Cain. It's interesting to see the arguments develop as society becomes more secular and (a little) more scientifically literate. They're having to work a lot harder to articulate their positions now, but widespread racism and poor education make their job easier than it should be.
Probably could have shared those thought more succinctly! :0
So you're saying the Devil did NOT put those fossils in the ground to confuse people?
Does Frederickson specifically mention the Irish? What's the essay?
Further proof here that race is socially constructed. The "white adjacent" thing also reminds me that often the most patriotic, to a fault, Americans are sometimes the newest immigrants.
Yes, the Irish are included in this essay
As to what the devil was up to, aside from pissing in the snow, I can't say. As I have been told, think about it! Was I there when the devil put fossils so many layers down in the sediment that actually just happened to settle that way after the Noahic Flood
https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1999-02753-001
Got it. Thanks!