DangerousTalk

“I just can’t believe this kind of thing. If I throw a ball up in the air, it falls down to the Earth. So how can you expect me to believe that something that weighs tons can just fly around with people in it? The law of gravity says that whatever comes up must come down, so by your own science, airplanes can’t fly.”

This is a kind of argument I often get from some Christians with regard to Evolution or the Big Bang. How could I explain to my mythical person about aerodynamics and propulsion when they have no grasp of basic science? The same is true with regard to Evolution and the Big Bang. Christians tell me all the time that they never saw a monkey give birth to a human before and so therefore evolution doesn’t make sense. I also hear that something can’t come from nothing and so therefore the Big Bang doesn’t make sense.

I could spend time explaining to them about Natural Selection or the Doppler Shift, but really what would be the point? If they are in their twenties or thirties or even older and they still think that evolution is monkeys giving birth to humans or that the Big Bang is something from nothing they really aren’t going to care what I tell them. For these people I just recommend that they go out and buy a 9^th grade science text book and hope for the best.

Without knowing the basics of the scientific process or of the very theories they are arguing against there is little to no point in getting into higher level discussions. This is why we really need to step up our science education in this Nation. Many of these Christians have no interest in science despite the fact they use the fruits of science every day without even realizing it. We might want to point that out to them next time they are getting ready to take a trip on an airplane.

Filed under: Religion