I watched this witty lecture by Richard Dawkins tonight, one I hadn't seen, and it made me reflect upon my understandings of myself and the affect science, religion, and politics have had on me for the past 24 years.
I felt inclined to pay homage to science with a little commentary because well, I don't have much else to do tonight. :)
Around second grade, I took a vested interest in primates by the sheerest accident. I read about Dian Fossey, the late anthropologist, in a children's book and saw the film, 'Gorillas in the Mist'. What particularly drew my attention to primates was the likeness they were to humans in relation to their subtle mannerisms, nurturing capabilities, the fact that they were able to learn sign language. At a young age I was rather awe struck by our intellectual similarities that they were able to grasp like us, and I steadidly became more engrossed in areas of zoology (all before I even understood evolution). In elementary school, I created a diorama of a habitual environments for Mountain Gorillas, in which I also gave a little presentation/lecture on how the largest of the great apes make use of their habitat. I won second prize.
I was first introduced to Richard Dawkins at a early age on PBS. I saw his Christmas lectures 'Growing up in the Universe'. He eagerly opened up my acquisitiveness for an array of explanations that I had previously only pondered in my own private thought as nothing than meager trivialities; daydreaming if you will.
I was given a sensible understanding of how organisms have evolved from bacteria to mammals in a slow, gradual, incremental process, such as that of the human eye.
During this, I still attended Catechism and had a workbook in which I still memorized Catholic assertions pertaining to how God created the Earth, and why Jesus makes me moral. I very much understood the contradictions I was seeing with both of my after school activities, but I didn't dare question it. I didn't know I was allowed to ask a question, and if I did so at a young age it probably would of disconcerted my parents, or made me the subject of ridicule amongst my peers. Though as I gradually got older, my understanding of science cultivated, just as the creationist movement became more strident, revolutionary, and absurd.
I felt inclined to pay homage to science with a little commentary because well, I don't have much else to do tonight. :)
Around second grade, I took a vested interest in primates by the sheerest accident. I read about Dian Fossey, the late anthropologist, in a children's book and saw the film, 'Gorillas in the Mist'. What particularly drew my attention to primates was the likeness they were to humans in relation to their subtle mannerisms, nurturing capabilities, the fact that they were able to learn sign language. At a young age I was rather awe struck by our intellectual similarities that they were able to grasp like us, and I steadidly became more engrossed in areas of zoology (all before I even understood evolution). In elementary school, I created a diorama of a habitual environments for Mountain Gorillas, in which I also gave a little presentation/lecture on how the largest of the great apes make use of their habitat. I won second prize.
I was first introduced to Richard Dawkins at a early age on PBS. I saw his Christmas lectures 'Growing up in the Universe'. He eagerly opened up my acquisitiveness for an array of explanations that I had previously only pondered in my own private thought as nothing than meager trivialities; daydreaming if you will.
I was given a sensible understanding of how organisms have evolved from bacteria to mammals in a slow, gradual, incremental process, such as that of the human eye.
During this, I still attended Catechism and had a workbook in which I still memorized Catholic assertions pertaining to how God created the Earth, and why Jesus makes me moral. I very much understood the contradictions I was seeing with both of my after school activities, but I didn't dare question it. I didn't know I was allowed to ask a question, and if I did so at a young age it probably would of disconcerted my parents, or made me the subject of ridicule amongst my peers. Though as I gradually got older, my understanding of science cultivated, just as the creationist movement became more strident, revolutionary, and absurd.
The truth is I care very deeply about the truth. I care about consequences that arise when the truth is defiled and distorted. I care about the truth of my genetic disposition and how Christians are manipulating it. (This was one reason why I felt compelled to leave the US for some time.) It effects me as it should effect most homosexuals. The raging argument amongst the three Abrahamic religions today criticize and construe homosexuality as a free willed choice, and not that of a biological disposition. Obama's invocation speaker says he doesn't really care if in fact being a homosexual is a matter of biology, but tries to rationalise in this perspective:
Aside from him proclaiming that he actually has gay friends, I'm troubled by his outlandish paradox that he is equating anger, promiscuity, or any other unhealthy forms of counter-propitious acts of human conduct in the same understanding as being a homosexual. This is now become a common strategic argument the Christian right implement. Instead of using the words 'temptation' and 'sinful', because it immediately implies religious dogmas; they now have found a new tactic to conceal their contempt for 'un-Christian virtues'. They use social scientific analyses in the same regards a therapist would feem compelled to remark that it's time one might need to have an intervention due to a spouses obsessive compulsive antics that's causing tension in his or her marriage, or perhaps a young girls addiction to sniffing aerosol cans. We would all concur these are matters that could and should require a call for legitimate interference and mediation.
However, the way one could articulate this mentally to a vulnerable, young gay person in respect to coming to terms with his or her sexuality is a disgraceful infringement on the practise of remedial treatment, and an abuse of power of psychology. Like drug addicts, they believe homosexuals should be subjects for rigorous rehabilitation. This is a travesty and what's most worrying is that people actually believe and postulate this concept of synthetic psychology as right mind, when in actuality it's nothing more than rudimentary proselytizing in disguise.
When former Evangelical head of the New Life Church Pastor Ted Haggard admitted to soliciting a gay prostitute for sex and methamphetamine for a duration of a few years, he was removed from his leadership position, and then underwent three weeks of comprehensive counseling, overseen by four ministers. Three months after the scandal first broke, one of those ministers stated that Haggard
"is completely heterosexual".The minister said he meant to say that therapy
"gave Ted the tools to help to embrace his heterosexual side."Dawkins had a interview with Ted shortly before his scandal broke:
Religion is huge threat to my genetic disposition, just as important, it narcissisticly perverts the truth of science. I wouldn't object to devoting myself to a career, which I will likely do, that would advocate science and reason over contriving methods of religious entrapment, which are hell-bent on keeping societies from progressing naturally and maturely.
1 comments:
If only more people had the viewpoint you had on religion and science, it would make America and the world a better place.
I had forgotten about the Ted Haggard scandal, just another example of hypocracy by evangelicals.
Post a Comment