cognitive dissident

My local paper printer this letter yesterday:

Cartoon showed ignorance of science and Christianity

I am appalled at your political cartoon on March 7. It shows your complete ignorance of mainstream Christian views. If you would open your eyes and ears, you would find that science and Christianity are coming more into agreement the more science understands what happened in the long history of this planet.

If I were one of those radical Muslims, I presume I’d be up there throwing stones and fireballs at your facilities. Since I am obviously not, I will try to help you understand Christianity better and pray that God’s Holy Spirit will work in you in that regard also.

[name redacted, emphasis added]

Since I refuse to cede discussions in the public square those who represent the lowest common educational denominator, I was compelled to correct the writer's primary error. Here is my response:

Christianity and science do not agree

One of Sunday’s letters to the editor stated that “science and Christianity are coming more into agreement,” but the evidence does not support that opinion.

For example, a majority of Americans believe that the creation fables from the book of Genesis are literally true. This belief requires such inanities as a universe and an earth only six thousand years (miscalculations of 12 billion and 5 billion years, respectively), humans who co-existed with dinosaurs (an error of a mere 65 million years), and our descent from a single pair of humans (also incorrect, according to genetics). The rest of the Bible, from Noah’s Ark onward, contains many more tales that vary from highly implausible to outright impossible.

A literal interpretation of biblical mythology is irreconcilable with current scientific understanding of our world and ourselves, from biology and geology to cosmology and elementary physics. “Coming more into agreement” with science would require that religion discard its unsupportable ideologies of literalism and inerrancy as being both erroneous and harmful. The fact that many Christians recognize the validity of science does not mean that science and religion agree; it means that Christians recognize the necessity of living in the real world and are forced by reality to eschew some aspects of their religion’s dogma.

Lest my comments seem too negative, I would like to commend the vast majority of Christians—even most fundamentalists—for leaving their bloody fanaticism in the past. Without the civilizing influence of secular ideas such as representative democracy and the separation of church and state, though, our political discourse would be as fraught with violence as that of the Middle East.