Time for another editorial piece, motivated by a post I’ve just presented elsewhere, and which will be abridged for this place. I’ll start by reminding people of a phrase by one Henry Morris:
Indeed, that infamous utterance by that arch-charlatan and professional liar for doctrine, was what cemented in place my view of the modus operandi of mythology fanboys, and creationists in particular - “if reality disagrees with my mythology, then reality is wrong and my mythology is right”.
Apart from being pathetically and woefully wrong in and of itself, said modus operandi brings with it a host of corrupting and corroding adjuncts, the first being the development of an entirely unwarranted and poisonous self-righteousness, the hubristic view that one’s adherence to a “sacred” doctrine and its prescriptive"axioms" confers upon one a frankly disturbing level of infallibility. That those thus affected cannot even agree among themselves what the “sacred” doctrine is purportedly telling them, merely highlights the blind arrogance endemic to becoming a doctrinal adherent. The hilarity that is creationist inability to agree among themselves what a “kind” purportedly is, for example, is an insight into the requisite failure that is at once amusing and frightening.
Worse still, of course, is that immediately following the acquisition of said unwarranted self-righteousness, arrives the even more dangerous presumption that the doctrinal adherent purportedly possesses a sort of “divine right” to enforce conformity to said doctrine, regardless of how much reality pisses on this presumption from a great height. Once the adherent has cloaked himself in the mantle of the emperor’s new infallibility cape, it’s only a matter of time before those not conforming to doctrine are viewed as a wilfully malicious species of vermin to be extirpated, instead of reasoned individuals with proper, reality based objections to the diktat of the doctrine.
This visceral hostility to those who don’t conform, of course, can be seen across a vast set of arenas of discourse. Facebook routinely places on public display truly venomous instances of this on the part of creationists in particular, who exude a level of this tendency in that environment that not merely borders upon, but on occasions actually transcends the fascistic.
Viewing the bile in question leaves no doubt in the mind, that Storm Jameson’s warnings on this matter were, if anything, an understatement of the dangers. One is left with the impression that a good many of the adherents of this noxious doctrine cannot wait to drag the rest of us, kicking and screaming, into an anachronistic Inquistional hell, cannot wait to begin the business of torturing and murdering their way to hegemony. One only has to read the assorted screeds of a certain Tom Willis to see this mindset displayed in all of its hate-driven intensity.
Of course, to prop up the lies upon which the doctrine is based, adherents have to resort to at times sub-foetal levels of conspiracy theorising, where the diligent labours of thousands of honest scientists working within evolutionary biology, prebiotic chemistry and cosmological physics, are demonised for providing the data destroying those doctrinal lies, and accused of being a part of organised scheming and conniving that is, of course, yet another piece of blatant projection on the part of the doctrinal adherents in question.
Said projective conspiracy theorising is used as a pretext for the venomous displays of outright hatred, that is the stock in trade of those who prefer doctrinal assertions to reality. The more successful that scientists are in providing nuclear depth charges to detonate under the requisite pretensions, the greater the hostility, and the more fulminatingly rabid the conspiracy theorising becomes, including utterly fatuous accusations of de facto bribery by fat corporations who are far more likely to profit from pandering to the doctrinal adherents (though within limits of course).
This pestilential epistemological disease has of course now crossed over and infected politics in some places, most especially right wing politics, which in my own country alone is starting to take on an aura disturbingly reminiscent of the rise of Nazism, and if left unchecked, will almost certainly leave an even bigger body count in its wake than it already has. The Trumpistani brand of right wing lunacy is at least an order of magnitude worse, because it’s eating away like a cancer at the heart of a nuclear armed superpower, in a manner even more pernicious than the capture of Russia by Putin’s naked corruption, and the Cult45 members are, like their Klan forebears, ready to translate their brand of lunacy into a brand new Kristallnacht the moment they think they an get away with it.
It’s notable that doctrines of this sort also lead inexorably to an apocalyptic view of the future, an endless “war” that has to be fought in order to achieve hegemony for the doctrine, even if that war erases life from the planet altogether. And, of course, the need for perpetual “enemies” means that even if they succeed in imposing their nightmare upon the rest of us, the moment they’ve snuffed us out won’t be the end, but merely the prelude to them turning on each other. As, of course, European history teaches us via some especially bitter lessons.
Some of the nastiest and most egregiously brutal wars have been fought between rival tribes of mythology fanboys, differing from each other only in minor details with respect to doctrine. The zeal for ideological purity blinds them to the possibility that the people they’re slaughtering as “heretics” could be useful allies in a war against armed and militant adherents of a completely different doctrine, but once you throw one piece of rationality out of the window, the rest tend to jump without being pushed, so to speak.
All of the above will, of course, be wasted on those who need to heed the lesson most - the very people who sold themselves to a lie.