Further Light and Knowledge

..."talking" with a born-again. There are preachers who come and harangue students passing through one of the plazas on campus, and I walked past this one tonight and overheard him tell some guy that scientific theories on the age of the universe are flawed because "if the universe is billions of years old why isn't the sky filled with light from all the supernovas that have occurred?"



So I stopped and lost three hours of my life while he tried to tell me that all science supports a young Earth and biblical literalism and I tried to explain science to him. Gah.

_________________
Fear will keep the local systems in line.

Love it -- The Keepers of Ignorance hanging out at a University to fight science with shit they made up.

Sorry, but I think they felt you gave them a sense of credibility by engaging with them.

Wow. I think you would have had better luck if you had been sucked into a black hole. Poor you!

I know. ><


There were funny bits. Like his insistence that he and his ilk were the world's only REAL christians. But mostly scary bits. Like when he said that when jeebus returns, he'll rule the planet in a "benevolent dictatorship" where the slightest deviation from jeebus' law will get you smited into a little crater.

_________________
Fear will keep the local systems in line.

On another board I read a quote from Gandhi about engaging abusers...and I found it. He said that if you don't respond to anger or abuse, the person will soon grow tired of it.

I don't necessarily agree with this response, or non violence all the time, but I agree that engaging some people simply feeds them. Ignoring them can help, depending on the person and situation. A street preacher (to my mind) is a good example of this.

But maybe he will rethink, Np. Who knows.

_________________
my blog

I read the title of the post and I was wondering why in the world you went to church on Sunday.

NP, I didn't mean to come off as judging you for what happened. My biggest fault is that the way I express myself makes people think more of subtextual contingencies rather than the fact that I'm trying to relate to what they're saying.

My daughter ran into the same unfortunate situation. She was walking across campus, and was blind-sided by a campus crusader. This person asked her if she believed in god, and whatever she said sent this person off onto some pulpit-pounding tirade. My daughter at the time was coming out of her mormon beliefs, but still held onto a form of god-and-jesus-love-me belief. When the person who accosted her accused her of not really having faith in god, my daughter broke into tears and called me sobbing. She thought she could have a real human interaction with this person, sharing her honest feelings about religion and god, but was only shouted at.

She learned her lesson the same as you. She gave a person the benefit of the doubt, but instead learned to avoid such people in future. It took me over twenty years to learn the same lesson, so good on you both.

You didn't come off that way in the slightest!

_________________
Fear will keep the local systems in line.