Why There Is No Hope For Your "Christian" Friends

One of the most constant and consistent frustrations of those opposing Trump is with his supporters, especially with -- and this is most of them -- "Christians." The disbelief that non-Christians have with "Christians" who support Trump is completely justified, but discussions about the lack of compassion from "Christians" is for some other time. This time let's deal with the dismissal of facts and reality by "Christians" in their rabid defense of Trump and the things he's doing.

So let's deal with a hard truth:

There is no hope for your "Christian" friends, and it is a waste of your time trying to talk to them or convince them of anything fact-based or anything having to do with actual reality, even when it comes to things that might be directly affecting them (like the ACA) in the very near future.

Well, that's kind of doom and gloom, isn't it?

Maybe, but it's the truth, and here's why:

From childhood, "Christians" grow up being taught to ignore science, history, and archaeology for the greater truth that the Bible contains. See, sometimes what's in the Bible comes into direct conflict with the reality of the world. In those situations, "Christians" are taught that the Bible is always right and science is always wrong. Always. The Bible is infallible after all, so any fact that goes against something in the Bible is always suspect. It is only a "fact," meaning it is some piece of some liberal conspiracy to undermine the Church.

Let me give you a couple of real world examples that I dealt with over and over again as I was growing up.

See, dinosaurs were my first love. I spent a good 10 years of my life planning to be a paleontologist when I grew up (which is a story for another time). By the time I was four (yes, I said four), I was already neck deep in textbooks about dinosaurs (not little kid books but actual science books about dinosaurs and paleontology). To put it another way: Science was my thing. However, dinosaurs don't fit well within the "Christian" mythos. I mean, where are they even mentioned in the Bible? And how do they fit into that whole seven-day creation myth? "Christians" will go through all sorts of mental contortions to explain all of those very real bones sitting in museums.

Explanation one:

When God created the Earth, he created it with the fossils already in the ground. There were no actual dinosaurs, God just made giant bones and stuck them in the ground.

What the fuck?

Yeah, even as a kid, that was kind of my mental response even though I had no clue about the word "fuck."

I mean, why? Why would God, any god, do something like that? Just to fuck with us? I actually had to have a discussion with my mom about this when I was... oh, I don't know, maybe 12 or 14. Her question to me was, Is it possible? Is it possible that God could have just put the bones in the ground?

How do you answer something like that? Of course, it's possible. But why? I told her it didn't make any sense logically that God would do something like that.

And she said something like, Maybe God did it as a puzzle for us to figure out.

What the fuck?

Look, this wasn't my mom talking. She didn't come up with these ideas on her own. It was some unit or something they were doing in Sunday school and, since it was about dinosaurs, she wanted to talk to me about it. And it wasn't just from my mom I head this theory. But, you know, when it came from the Church, she wasn't ever much for questioning it. This was about as close as she ever got to doing that.

So, yeah, if it was a puzzle, how do you even figure that out? What, then, is the puzzle? If you come up with answers that the "puzzle" would lead you to -- that dinosaurs ruled the world for millions of years then died suddenly -- you are completely wrong. That doesn't make any sense, that God would deliberately mislead us like that, not to mention that there are no clues at all that God had just stuck bones in the ground, so you could never come to that knowledge from the "puzzle."

So she said, "It could be a test?" Like a test of our faith. To see if we would believe that they had been real when what we should be doing was immediately grasping that God had stuck bones in the ground even more proving that He is God.

A trick, then, I said. You're saying that God is trying to trick us. That's mean.

The conversation ended when I said I didn't believe in a God who would make bones and stick them in the ground for no logical reason. It was either stupid or mean. Then I walked away.

We never talked about it again, but that was how I dealt with that particular scenario any other time I heard it mentioned.

Explanation two:
Man and the dinosaurs lived simultaneously upon the Earth. Yes, despite any archaeological evidence, man and dinosaurs coexisted. Some people even believe that Noah had dinosaurs on the ark and that he saved them from the flood... just so that they could all go extinct some time just after that.

One of my youth pastors when I was in high school believed this, that Noah loaded the ark with dinosaurs. Baby dinosaurs where the really big ones were involved. We had... disagreements... about this frequently. So much so, in fact, that he did two separate units about Creationism (in the same year!) with the whole dinosaur/human coexistence as the central point. For one of them, he brought in some outside "expert" on the issue who had a film and various "proofs" that dinosaurs lived with men. The most famous of these being this fossil of a dinosaur footprint with a man's footprint within it. That was the proof.
[If you're interested, this is known as the Paluxy dinosaur/man track controversy and has been debunked by science, though there are still plenty of young-Earth Creationists who believe in the coexistence of man and dinosaur.]

Mostly, "Christians" tend to ignore the dinosaur question or take up the more liberal view that maybe the word "day" where it's used in the creation myth didn't mean a literal 24-hour day.

The point, though, is that "Christians" are taught from a young age to ignore empirical evidence when it contradicts the Bible and that they will fabricate all sorts of stories to get around conflicts.

AND they think they are smarter than you while doing it, because, in the end, they believe that their "foolishness" is greater than your "wisdom":

I Corinthians 1:27 -- But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise...

I Corinthians 1:19-20 -- For it is written: "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate." Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?

I Corinthians 3:18-20 -- If any of you thinks he is wise in this age, he should become a fool, so that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God's sight. As it is written, "He catches the wise in their craftiness." And again, "The Lord knows that the thoughts of the wise are futile."

These are not the only examples of this kind of philosophy from the Bible, so you might be able to understand why some of these people espouse the view that you don't need to have "any learning but what's in the Bible," something I've been told numerous times by numerous people all the way into my 20s when I was going to college. There's a reason why they pride themselves on their ignorance; it's because they've been raised to believe it's a virtue.

Their ignorance makes them "smarter" than you, and you're just not going to talk those people out of that. You can't argue with stupid, especially when it believes it's pulling the wool over your eyes.

The Marvelous Land of Oz (a book review post)

As I mentioned in my review of The Wizard of Oz, I didn't know the Oz books existed when I was  a kid, so I completely missed out on these until I was too old to be interested. Well, as a high-schooler, I wasn't interested. After finishing the second Oz book, The Marvelous Land of Oz, I'm really starting to be disappointed that I missed these books when I was a kid. So far, they are pretty marvelous.

As a writer, one of the things I find most interesting about the series is that there was never supposed to be more than just the one book, the one everyone knows because of the movie. But there was a musical, stage version of Wizard done -- co-produced by Baum -- and the actors portraying the Tin Man and the Scarecrow were so good that people (kids, mostly) began requesting more stories about those two characters. Not about Dorothy, just about the Tin Man and the Scarecrow. The resulting book doesn't even mention the Cowardly Lion.

We also get a book that is much more blatantly about the politics of the day, specifically, the suffrage movement. Virtually every character other than the Tin Man and Scarecrow, which includes all of the "human" characters, are female. Which may be a statement to cause some confusion, considering the main character is a boy named Tip, but you'd have to read the book to understand.

I think I like this one more than Wizard. Well, actually, I do. The one big flaw of Wizard -- that Dorothy wanted to go home, a place she didn't like -- is hard for me to get over. This one has no flaw like that and is even more whimsical. Not to mention that the characters are much more real in this one.

In Wizard, the characters are all "happy happy joy joy" all the time, but that's not the case in Marvelous Land. They bicker. They bicker a lot. Some of them even seem not to like each other much, and the Saw Horse doesn't get along with anyone. Tip constantly threatens the Woggle Bug because of his punning, and Jack Pumpkinhead is... well, I like Jack, but he's a whiner. Most interesting, though, is the Tin Man. He's developed a serious case of vanity and has had himself nickel plated. He's still a nice guy, but he spends more time worrying about his shine than he spends worrying about his friends. Also, I like the contrast between the Woggle Bug, who has lots of knowledge, and the Scarecrow, who has Brains but not lots of facts. It's a bit of intelligence versus wisdom and, mostly, it shows us that we need both.

At the moment, two books in, I'm really enjoying the Oz books and will definitely continue to read them. If you know your history at all -- well, early 20th century history -- there is the added enjoyment of all the social commentary that's been thrown in. Hmm... That sounds haphazard. Weaved in is more like it. In all of the best ways, these books are like the classic Looney Tunes cartoons: Kids find them hilarious, but you can't really appreciate them until you're an adult.

The Problem of People

I'm not a huge fan of people. In fact, you wouldn't be wrong if you called me a misanthrope. Don't get me wrong, I like individuals just fine. Well, at least, I can like individuals just fine, but the mass of humanity... not a fan. I don't believe in the inherent goodness of humanity or anything close to it. I think people are pretty not-good, and it's closer to the truth to say I believe that humans are inherently selfish morons. This is not to say that I don't believe that people have the capacity for good. I do. I believe that (most) people have great potential for goodness. But that's all it is. Unused (or rarely used) potential.

I'm not saying any of this to imply that I'm any better, either. I'm sure that I'm not, but, at least, I'm aware of it, which is more than you can say for most people. It's like that whole thing about wisdom beginning when you realize how much you don't know.

Yes, I have examples:

1. I was driving the kids to school yesterday morning. Driving to school is not something I'm really enjoying having to do, at the moment, although I'm sure my kids are. But the dog isn't crate trained, yet, so she has to go with us, and I haven't been able to have the work done to my bike that will allow her to ride on it with me, so we've been in the car since the dog acquisition. (I'm hoping to get that changed after the new year.) Anyway... We were running a bit later than normal (yes, it was my fault, but I'm blaming the dog :), so I was feeling rushed. However, let me just be clear: I don't speed. (There's a long story about that and being late to a final during college (NOT my fault).) We're coming up the street to where we need to make a right onto the street their school is on. The light is green, and the crosswalk had the big red hand up barring pedestrians from entering the intersection. However, I see on the sidewalk on old woman with a bundle of sticks on her back (yes, I'm totally serious) making for the intersection with no signs of stopping. She didn't look around, she didn't slow down, she didn't act as if she realized she wasn't out in the middle of the woods gathering said sticks on her back. She also didn't stop at the corner. She walked straight out into the intersection and proceeded on her way. This is the kind of behavior that can kill you (you may now refer back to the "selfish morons" comment). Let's pretend that I was driving the same way that she was walking, especially since I was in a hurry. What we would have had was a dead pedestrian, a wrecked car, injured children (and dog), and sticks all over the street. But, as it was, I gritted my teeth and mumbled something about stupid people as I came to stop at a green light so that someone could cross against their own light.

2. Some of you may have picked up on the fact that we're big Star Wars fans in this house. Some of you may also know that Star Wars was recently (I use that term loosely) released on blu-ray. This was a cause for much debate and angst in our household. On the one hand, we own way more copies of Star Wars than anyone needs. I have a very special limited edition collectors set of the movies on VHS that have a leather case, a holographic cover, a book that only came with this edition of the movies and a 4th tape that was also limited to this edition. These are quite old at this point. I also have the last release of the original trilogy on VHS before Special Edition came out along with the Special Edition release of the movies on VHS. And we have them on dvd (it was the dvd release that actually prompted our first dvd player purchase). The original trilogy and the prequels (and The Clone Wars movie and the first two seasons of the show and a bunch of spoofs and parodies (Thumb Wars, R2-D2: Beneath the Dome, Hardware Wars, etc)). As my wife put it, "we don't need another set of those movies. Which is, objectively, true. But there's supposed to be all of this special, never before released stuff on the blu-ray edition, so "I wants it, my precious." (to mix a metaphor (except not)) My kids also wanted it. Hence, debate and angst. Not to mention the complication of the 3D versions which begin coming out next year, and I know I will want to buy those, even if I can't watch them in 3D, at the moment. So... do I buy the blu-rays knowing full well that I'll be repeating that purchase in the near future when the newer versions begin coming out on blu-ray 3D?

I began doing some research into the reaction of people about the blu-ray collection. I also mentioned to a friend of mine the dilemma we were facing, and his response was, "Oh, we pre-ordered them. You can borrow them when we get them." This was awesome. So we're in the midst of "borrowing," right now. But I was still doing research.

When the blu-ray collection came out, people began to immediately complain about Lucas tinkering with the movies again and all of these scenes that got added back in and how they all sucked and how Lucas has just continued to ruin everyone's childhood by messing up a good thing. There were even references to specific scenes in some of the reviews and how they sucked and made the movies suck. Because the implication of every review that I read was that all of these scenes had been edited back into the movies.

IT'S ALL HOGWASH!!!

The collection is 9 discs (which could  have been reduced to 7, thus reducing the price by $20): 1-6 are each of the movies, 7 is special features (including deleted scenes) for the prequels, 8 is special features (including deleted scenes for the originals), and 9 is documentaries and featurettes. There are no new scenes in the movies themselves. The only tinkering is with the sound in a few places, the removal of the scream as Luke falls down the shaft in Empire (which was the only thing added in the Special Edition that I really couldn't stand, so I'm glad they took that back out), some bits of dialogue between holo-Emperor and Vader in Empire (which is the only thing that's a significant change), and a cleaning up of the blaster exchange between Greedo and Han so that it's less clear who shot first (that change having already been made, this new version is better than the first). None of the deleted scenes are added into the movies. They're on completely different discs. In fact, they are no different than deleted scenes from every other movie, and it's just stupid to get all upset that Lucas is letting us see them. Personally, I find it interesting to look at what was cut from a movie, especially if there's an explanation as to why it was cut. (And some of those scenes I've been waiting since I was 7 to see, so I think it's awesome that Lucas finally put them where we can see them if we want to do that. There's nothing to force anyone to put that other disc in or to watch the deleted scenes if you think it will shatter your delusions.)

In the end, the uproar over the deleted scenes is another example of the stupidity of people.

And, although I'd really love to own the blu-ray edition (mostly because of the Luke/Biggs scenes that are FINALLY included in the deleted scenes), I've decided to save my $90 and wait for the 3D releases.

3. Have you seen the news about the post office? In an effort to become more competitive in these troubled economic times, they will be lowering the quality of their service. Not that it will become cheaper.

It's no secret that the post office has been struggling due to loss of business to the internet. Why send a letter when you can send an email. It's both faster and cheaper. Physical letters are on the verge of extinction. Even cards are becoming endangered. Starting next year, in an effort to save money, the post office will be doing away with 1st class, next day delivery. Even if it means holding the mail because it's within the same city. In fact, they're kind of saying that delivery times will be sporadic and unpredictable. This whole move strikes me as something more along the lines of punishing us for not sending enough mail. A move of smite.

See, the smart thing to do here would be to figure out how to become more competitive. But of the three main shippers in the US: USPS, UPS, and FedEx; USPS is the worst. They cost more and offer less already for any kind of service that allows you to track your package. And for anything of any real weight, they cost quite a bit more than UPS, and UPS offers FREE insurance. However, instead of looking at ways that they could, you know, become viable, they decide to stick their tongues out at us and take their ball and go home.

It's a good example of the power of the dark side. Reacting in fear is quicker, easier, and this shows every sign of a fear reaction, which is the general way that people react to these types of situations. I'm not going to start making a list of historical examples of people reacting out of fear due to economic upheaval, but, if you want to do the research, you should quickly find enough on your own.

4. Which brings us to the publishing industry. I only mention them specifically, because their way of reacting in fear to the decline in traditional publishing affects many of you guys out there. They're being the same as the post office in many ways. People are buying less books, so, instead of figuring out how to be competitive, they hike prices and squeeze their authors. This, of course, prompts people to buy less books and the authors to start looking for alternatives.

Fear is the path to the dark side, people! Go back and watch Star Wars again!

>sigh<

I could go on with this stuff all day, I'm sure. As you can see, I'm not overly impressed with people.

Let's just call this post practice for Grumpy Bulldog's upcoming BlahgFest

You know, in the spirit of the holidays.

Merry Bah! Humbug!