Why *I* get so bloody annoyed

[avevale_intelligencer]

First, one point on which I agree entirely with lil_shepherd and all the rest:

Religious creation stories should not be taught in science classes, by science teachers, as a scientific explanation for how our world came to be.

I concur, assent, and whole-heartedly endorse this one hundred per cent. If it were a brand of tomato soup I would buy several cases. You will never find me disputing this point. Were I asked to walk up and down the main street of any nearby town wearing a sandwich board with these words writ thereupon, assuming the weather was decent and I had nothing else planned, I would gladly do it.

And if they only left it there, how happily we could all get on together.

But two things make me angry. One is when they blame religion itself for this, when they make religion itself the enemy, when they talk about "getting rid" of religion as if this would cure humanity of believing wrong things, and seem to be telling me that I no longer have a right to decide what I think in my own head. That I will not have. They are perfectly free to hate religion if they so desire, to attribute to it all the ills for which it is responsible and ignore all the good that has been done by people because they believed it was God's will that they should. But my head is mine, my thoughts are mine, my beliefs are mine, and you will not touch them. And the same goes for anyone else. What people may do in the name of their god may be judged, especially if they harm another. What they believe about their god may not.

And the other is the stupidly, moronically, criminally wrong-headed way they go about it. Someone sets up a Creation Museum, not (as far as I know) affiliated to any legitimate educational institution, not (as far as I know) funded by the government. I know of no reason why this should be prohibited, except possibly as a confidence trick (they are soliciting donations). Do they explore that avenue? Do the atheists write to the organisers pointing out that through some clerical error they have omitted to include a disclaimer stating that this is not science? No.

They ridicule the believers.

Now I don't have demographics for how many people have been persuaded to change their minds as a result of being made to feel ridiculous, but I'd bet it's a lowish number. This approach is not going to succeed, and anyone with half a brain cell would know it. When a devout creationist sees comments like "Well, if you mention numbers, you've already lost half your audience," they're bright enough to know what's meant, and they retreat further into their belief. I hate being sneered at. I think most people do. It does not make me receptive to the sneerer's point of view: exactly the reverse. If the atheist/agnostic community wants to reinforce the prejudices of creationists everywhere, not to mention swelling the coffers of the Creation Museum and similar organisations, they are succeeding brilliantly. lil_shepherd wants children to be educated properly, and gods know so do I (with certain differences), but no-one is going to take advice on education from someone who has plainly written them off as a moron and doesn't even bother to hide it.

I know it's painful and demeaning to think about it, but if the desire is to gain support for anti-creationism, then what's needed is to, er, gain support. This means, among other things, canning the jokes and treating one's opponents with the basic respect that one wants from them. Once that is done, then maybe we can start to get some sort of dialogue going, and maybe I can start to respect the anti-creationist point of view. I can't respect anything that's delivered from such a height of imagined superiority that I get neck strain.

I'm disabling comments on this, because I can't deal with another two-day ding-dong.