The flight from Manaus to Fortaleza on the Atlantic coast was long and boring. Mostly I was south of the Amazon River but it was still heavy jungle all the way to the coast. I spent a lot of time flying through little clouds and around big ones all of it over never ending jungle.
I once studied primates in a biology class and spent a lot of time on monkeys, all the varieties produced by evolution in the jungles of South America. Sometime, Google pictures of South American monkys and you'll be amazed by the exotic look of so many of them. Thinking about how interesting evolution was in the jungles led my thoughts off on its own as so many of my thoughts do when flying.
I personally am stunned by the ability of a person to ignore reality and facts. How is it that belief, particularly religious beliefs can lead a person to ignore facts? I sometimes wonder if some fundamentalist group interpreted the Bible to say there is no gravity, believers would try to place glasses in midair and watch them drop and break time after time, unable to believe the facts since it wasn't what they thought the Bible said. The whole evolution isn’t true movement in this country stuns me with the depth of ignorance it requires. Yes, if you think evolution isn’t true you are ignorant. Just as ignorant as if you said gravity isn’t true, or matter isn’t made up of atoms because you’ve never seen an atom. It isn't a difference of opinion. It is ignorance of the most basic scientific truths.
What is it in the nature of beliefs that make them so powerful that all other truths and facts can be ignored or discounted no matter the strength of the evidence? And it isn’t just dumb people, even very intelligent believers are just as susceptible to this phenomenon if they are inculcated early in life.
Galileo didn’t get in trouble for saying the world is round like most people think he did. It was pretty common knowledge among the educated that the world had to be round. Galileo got in trouble for proposing to prove the heliocentric (Sun in the center) model of the solar system. That went against Biblical literalism since the Bible said the Earth was the center of the universe. How could the earth revolve around the sun if the Bible said we were the center of the Universe? Galileo got in trouble for showing the Bible was wrong; not for saying the earth is round. He pushed us off our special place in the universe and to where we really are way off to the side of the universe.
So too with Darwin. He didn’t get in trouble for the theory of Evolution. Almost all intellectuals who read his book accepted animal evolution because he argued and proved it so well. He got in trouble for one sentence suggesting that people were animals and subject to evolution. Once again, the problem was knocking us humans down a peg. ‘I’m not related to no monkey!’ was the rallying cry of the anti-Darwinists. Now of course, modern genetics has shown that we share 98.7% of our genome with the bonobo and chimpanzee. No matter how much you close your eyes to facts, you can’t change the truth. Chimps are our cousins through evolution. But people are able to ignore the truth and don't even need to convince themselves that the truth isn’t the truth. Their beliefs make the truth invisible to them since it is in conflict with their beliefs. Belief trumps obvious facts.
What is it that makes belief so powerful that people can ignore and change facts to fit their belief system? I suspect that the two things these historical examples have in common is that in both cases the furor was more about people being knocked off their pedestal than the science involved. Why would the common man care if we lived in a Geocentric or Heliocentric solar system? They wouldn’t. But tell that same Joe he isn’t the center of the Universe anymore, that the Universe doesn’t revolve around him like his priest has been telling him it does and you’re likely to get a response from Joe Six-pack and not a good one.
So too with Intelligent Design, or Unintelligent Design as I call it. The reason this issue creates such powerful response is it asserts our God Given special place on earth, that we have dominion over the Earth, that we are special and selected above all other things because standard Biblical teaching has been telling us we are special. All of us humans share narcissist tendencies and evolution knocks us off our special place and runs right into that narcissistic irrationality we all have right there. And the more narcissistic we are the more something like Evolution turns on that irrational response. Please keep this in mind, narcissism is a below conscious thought level response and is therefore subject to the irrationalities of our subconscious.
Knowing this, the Intelligent Design movement makes sense, that belief can go against such obvious facts, for it is at base a result of an irrational mental response, our narcissism. Things like Intelligent Design are at the heart of them mental irrationalities based in our subconsious, they are mental illness. Not the kind of mental illness that causes people to shout on street corners, but the kind that holds an irrational thought in place despite all the evidence it isn’t true.
All of us have our little irrationalities. Most of them, like believing that the number 13 is unlucky, or not walking under ladders, don’t affect our ability to be productive members of society so we don’t call them illnesses. But it is just as crazy to believe one day of the month is bad as it is to refuse to come out of your house because Russian agents are following you everywhere you go. One gets you locked up while the other no one even comments on. So it is with the kind of irrationality caused by our challenged belief systems. It is so common and it doesn’t cause people to drool in public so we accept it as part of our culture, but it just as irrational as any paranoid muttering to themselves as they shamble down the street.
And that is the answer to why people can believe something so contrary to known facts, they become irrational when scientifically proven facts, evolution for example, challenges their closely held beliefs supported by their narcissism. Psychologists call this cognitive dissonance. I believe that humans are special and above all others and I like being special. Evolution places humans in the same class as all other animals. I want to be special therefore, I am going to reject the facts I don't like. Yeah, it is a mental aberration but it is all too human. Intelligent Design is simply a mental failing, an insanity caused by the facts which challenge a closely held religious beliefs.
Those of us who are not insane, on this topic, accept that scientific theories are our best representation of reality as it actually is. Theories like Relativity, the Standard Model of Atomic Theory, Plate Tectonics despite the fact that no one has ever seen a continent move, Quantum Mechanics dspite the fact that no onw has ever seen a quark or ever will, and Evolution must be accepted by rational people as our best model of reality. The best definition of insanity is a person being out of touch with reality. Many don’t want to say this because we have such a large portion of our society that are Christians and are insane not because they are Christian, but because they believe that the Bible is infallible.
The really amazing thing about this whole thing is that anyone who reads the Bible critically cannot help but notice all the factual errors and internal contradictions that make Biblical inerrancy a joke. 1,600 years ago, St Augustine wrote that the Bible cannot be read as literal truth because it is so full of factual errors and contradictions. The Bible was written as a fable and the ficticiouness pervades the whole thing. It was never written to be read factually. It isn't a science textbook. How many animals did Noah take on the Ark? There are different answers. Creation? Two completely different myths. It just goes on and on. The fraudster who wrote one of the Gospels, and yes, all of the Gospels are frauds, (See Forged: Writing in the Name of God, by Bart Erhman) even said he wasn't telling the truth but trying to change beliefs. No self respecting Biblical scholar today believes the Bible is literal truth, but no one talks about that. It gets very uncomfortable to say, if you believe these fairy tales as facts you are insane, but we need to accept what our minds tell us. Christians who profess the literal truth of the Bible are insane because they are out of touch with the best definition of reality we have, science. And instead of giving them air time we should start treating them like any other mentally ill person.
Okay, now before you Christians come wth the torches to burn me at the stake I didn't say all Christians are insane. I narrowed it to those who say the Bible is literal truth. Most Christians realize the Bible is a story written to convey certain theological beliefs, not a factual history. That is why there are so many gospels that never made it into the Orthodox Bible; they held different theological positions. You can be a Christian and not be crazy, as long as you realize the Bible is a morality story, not a history or a science textbook.
Something like 80% of Brazils’ population lives on the coast. All of the large cities are on or near the coast. Like many of the tropical cities of Brazil, Fortaleza had a history of importing Africans to work the cotton fields. That gives Fortaleza a mixed cuisine with an African influence like much of the Caribbean. Rice and beans are a basis of every meal. There is also plenty of seafood, it being on the coast. There I go with the food again.
I landed near dusk and took a taxi to my hotel. I had planned to rest a bit at Fortaleza since I would have several long flights across the Atlantic. But I felt relaxed enough because of Kira and Helsa and decided to leave in the morning.
There was a churrasco restaurant next door to the hotel and I went there. Churrasco is called barbeque in Brazil but it isn’t anything like American barbeque. For one thing, traditional churrasco doesn’t allow any seasoning except salt on the meat. It also has a buffet of the sides: rice, beans, feijoada, salad etc. Churrasco is a meat eaters paradise.
In traditional Churrasco the meat is cooked on skewers shaped like swords. There are plenty of different types of meat, mostly beef used. But there are other things like chicken hearts. I tell you, the first time you see a sword lined up with all those little chicken hearts it looks ridiculous. The waiters bring along the meat on the swords and if you want some, you tell him. He stops, and slices off a piece. You have tongs with which you grab the slice and off he goes to the next table.
Before you think, damn, one slice, don’t worry. They keep coming and coming with more kinds of meat. You could eat till you burst. They give you a little token, green on one side, red on the other. Once you have enough you turn over the token and they leave you alone, stuffed to the gills.
Since the meat is slowly cooked over natural wood charcoal, it is delicious and tender. It is some of the best meat I have ever had. Southern Brazil and northern Argentine are the Texas of South America, so there is always good beef. I filled up on beef, some cuts that you don’t ever see in the US like beef neck which is surprisingly good, as well as traditional steaks, ribs, and roasts.
I went back to the hotel fat, dumb, and my brain happy with the good meat proteins, took a shower and fell into bed. I didn’t remember a thing till the wake up call in the morning. At the airport, I took extra time doing the preflight. My next three hops were all to or from small islands in the middle of the ocean. I wanted to make sure that nothing would go wrong.
Once again I thought about how GPS made such a difference. Just a little bit of weather back when the plane was flying in WWII could cause the pilots to miss their destination. Now, GPS could tell you where you were within feet, anywhere in the world, and which way to go to get where you needed to go.
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Copyright Rod O'Steele © 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012