One of the most shocking aspects of life in Ulster for the outside visitor, is the grip fundamentalist Christianity has upon the Protestant community. I arrived here 2 years ago as an aspiring Physics student from England and quickly settled in, making friends on both sides of the divide. However, as a staunch fan of science and the so called ‘new atheist’ movement launched by people such as Professor Richard Dawkins, I was shocked to find out how many of my new friends were literal Christian believers.
BY DANIEL GILLEN
Now in all respects these people are some of the friendliest and nicest people I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing, but I couldn’t help but be shocked by their opinions when topics such as science and religion came up in discussion.
I found that a significant number of the people I met were wholly ignorant or utterly dismissive of ideas that were taken for fact back in England. The biggest and most controversial of all these is of course evolution. Now when using the word ‘controversial’, I must make it clear that this only applies to the public discourse within the north of Ireland.
With regards to the international scientific community – evolution is a scientific fact. There is not a reputable scientific journal in the world that would publish an article advocating the idea that the earth is only 4000 years old, or that man was created as he is by God. No matter how many tricks the so called ‘Intelligent Design’ lobby play, such as trying to make a big issue of the differences between Natural Selection and Sexual Selection, modern Science holds the theory of Evolution as a fact.
I’ve often heard it said by advocates of creationism, “But admit it, evolution is just a theory”. However this does nothing to discredit evolution, it just highlights the ignorance of those making that argument. In science, the word theory has a very high status attributed to it. You cannot just come up with an untested idea and call it a scientific theory. In science a theory starts off as a hypothesis, and is then rigorously tested by different scientists, and the conclusions are published in peer reviewed scientific journals. After all this, and when it becomes accepted by the scientific community, only then does it become a theory. Evolution is a theory just as the notion of a spherical Earth is a theory, and it is the best tried and tested explanation for what we observe.
However, no matter how often the Christian fundamentalists give off the illusion of wishing to engage in scientific discourse, it is an illusion. For them, rational argument is nothing more than a propaganda tool. They establish their fundamental belief in the bible and creationism, not on reason or the oxymoron ‘Christian Science’, but on faith. And this is not something to be respected. And so I was outraged, but not shocked, upon hearing the news that the Minister for Culture, Arts and Leisure in Northern Ireland has written to the wonderful new Ulster Museum demanding that a creationist display be established. His argument goes that as a third of the people of Northern Ireland believe in creationism, their beliefs too should be given space in the museum. Whilst to some this may sound reasonable, I must ask do we really want our public educational centres to have their contents dictated to by public opinion. Do we wish to mirror Texas, where a conservative run school board can chose to teach a cherry picked and distorted version of history in their school rooms? Do we wish to take our children to history museums where one floor glories Loyalist violence and the other Republican?
I sincerely hope most people will recognise this is not a road we wish to go down. We must demand neutrality in our museums, with respect to facts both historic and scientific. Let the scientific consensus guide us on what to put in our museums. If not they will degenerate into nothing more than a propaganda tool instead of the wonderful institutions that they are. The Ulster Museum must say no to Creationism.
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@Hang on now… : Point well made, but if that isn’t the belief of mainstream Christians we need to hear more of their condemnation as well. A vocal minority only exists because the majority stay silent after all
@ JC
Hey man lightning bolts are my thing, you stick to plagues of locusts and turning the Nile red.
I don’t get why people believe JC’s Dad created the world in 7 days, its way more interesting than that.
In the beginning there was nothing except for the ice of Niflheim, to the north, and the fire of Muspelheim, to the south. Between them was a yawning gap called Ginnungagap where a few pieces of ice melted by a few sparks of fire created the moisture initiating life.
Ymir, the evil frost giant, was to first to appear. As Ymir slept, the sweat from under his arms became two more giants, one male and one female, and one of his legs mated with the other to create a third, a son Thrudgelmir. These were the forebearers of the family of frost giants.
They were nursed by the cow giant Auohumbla who, like Ymir, was created from the melting ice in Ginnungagap. Auohumbla herself fed on a block of salty ice, and her licking sculpted it into the shape of a man and it became the frost giant Buri.
Buri fathered Borr, and Borr fathered three sons, the gods Vili, Ve, and Odin. These brothers killed the giant Ymir, and unleashed a vast flood with Ymir’s blood killing all the frost giants but the son of Thrudgelmir, Bergelmir and Bergelmir’s family who all took safety in a hollow tree. Odin and his brothers used Ymir’s lifeless body to create the universe. They carried it to the center of Ginnungagap and there they ground his flesh into dirt.
The maggots that appeared in his flesh became the dwarves that live under the earth. His bones became the mountains, his teeth rocks and pebbles. Odin strewed Ymir’s brains into the sky to create the clouds, and took sparks and embers from Muspelheim for the sun, moon and stars. The gods placed four dwarves—Norðri (North), Suðri (South), Austri (East), and Vestri (West)—to hold up Ymir’s skull and create the heavens.
The three gods created the first human beings, Ask from a fallen ash tree and Embla from a fallen elm. Odin breathed life into them; Villi granted them intelligence; and Ve gave them vision and hearing. They dwelled in the realm the gods created from Ymir’s eyebrows, Midgard, where the human race could live safe from Bergelmir and his descendants.
So you see it’s relatively simple in comparison, whats more its existed a lot longer than Christianity, plus ya know Giants!.
Feel free to believe what you want, all the creation myths have as much evidence for them as the next one. Just don’t spend to long listening to Quetzalcoatl big feathery fell has a thing about eating hearts and such.
I think the article and subsequent comments do an injustice to the people of faith who have no problem whatsoever with evolution.
McCausland deserves to be mocked for his idiocy, but this should not spiral into a wider attack on religion. Atheists themselves are often guilty of misusing science for their own philosophical ends (as well as general smugness.) The DUP does not speak for everyone.
Just out of interest, what is your academic background Daniel?
Whoops, my mistake, you are physicist – first line of the article!
Took me so long to read through the article, I forgot.
@Thor Norse God of THUNDER!
My apologies, I should know my place. If you need me, I’ll just be chilling and drinking some water here….woah! Wine! Yeah, that’s right. I gots skills…
frankly I find the notion that John B. Dick has actually read “On the Origin of Species” to be the most farcical thing I’ve heard in a long time.
Oh and Thor, are you sure you’re not the Norse god of Thunder?
1In the beginning The Flying Spaghetti Monster created the heaven and the earth.
2And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And His Noodley Appendage moved upon the face of the waters.
3And The Flying Spaghetti Monster said, Let there be light: and there was light.
4And The Flying Spaghetti Monster saw the light, that it was good: and The Flying Spaghetti Monster divided the light from the darkness.
5And The Flying Spaghetti Monster called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
6And The Flying Spaghetti Monster said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
7And The Flying Spaghetti Monster made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
8And The Flying Spaghetti Monster called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.
9And The Flying Spaghetti Monster said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.
10And The Flying Spaghetti Monster called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and The Flying Spaghetti Monster saw that it was good.
11And The Flying Spaghetti Monster said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.
12And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and The Flying Spaghetti Monster saw that it was good.
13And the evening and the morning were the third day.
14And The Flying Spaghetti Monster said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:
15And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.
16And The Flying Spaghetti Monster made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.
17And The Flying Spaghetti Monster set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,
18And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and The Flying Spaghetti Monster saw that it was good.
19And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.
20And The Flying Spaghetti Monster said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.
21And The Flying Spaghetti Monster created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and The Flying Spaghetti Monster saw that it was good.
22And The Flying Spaghetti Monster blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.
23And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.
24And The Flying Spaghetti Monster said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.
25And The Flying Spaghetti Monster made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and The Flying Spaghetti Monster saw that it was good.
26And The Flying Spaghetti Monster said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
27So The Flying Spaghetti Monster created man in his own image, in the image of The Flying Spaghetti Monster created he him; male and female created he them.
28And The Flying Spaghetti Monster blessed them, and The Flying Spaghetti Monster said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
29And The Flying Spaghetti Monster said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.
30And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.
31And The Flying Spaghetti Monster saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.
I think we all know how the universe really started here lads…
@unknownmale
Ah yes, a small mistake that.
I did try to type with my mighty hammer Mjolnir at first.. well not at first actually. At first I tried shouting godly commands at the computer from across the room but alas it would not heed to my will. I then did try to smite the keyboard with Mjolnir but alas that did not serve either.
Having consulted my dad, Odin He The Allfather I was able to solve my dilemma. Now there’s a deity who answers prayers for you.
more so than the flying spaghetti monster?
did you know that the rise in sea tempreature directly correlates with the decline in the number of “avast ye scurvy demon” pirates?
I take it all back about the “real name thing” – this thread is deliriously funny – JC is way too cool for his on good – let the Gods fight it out – but keep McCausland and Creationism out of the Ulster Museum!