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Likely a dumb troll, but there are some fundamental Christians that believe the world is 6k years old and Satan put fossils into the world to make you question

Likely a dumb troll, but there are some fundamental Christians that believe the world is 6k years old and Satan put fossils into the world to make you question your faith.

mrguyorama 1y ago
Where "some" is, according to polling data, actually a crazy large amount of Americans. >“Human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals.” About 46% of the American public consistently agree with that option, about the same number who back the middle option in Gallup’s surveys. If you let the question trigger the right religion call and response, 44% of americans choose to say that god created humans as they are now sometime within the past 10k years. If you get esoteric to try and lean on how crazy the real fundies get, you ask people about continental drift. 10% of Americans outright deny continental drift being a process that occurs over millions of years. 30 million Americans is the lower bound to the amount of people who hold outright insanely false views on reality expressly for religious reasons. These are people who are desperately looking for reasons to believe that all of modern science is a conspiracy meant to keep them docile or unbelieving or some bullshit or other, and think science as an institution has been perverting the world for, uh, satan. So that's not terribly comforting. >https://ncse.ngo/just-how-many-young-earth-creationists-are-there-us https://ncse.ngo/just-how-many-young-earth-creationists-are-...
- pinkmuffinere 1y ago
  I was (previously) one of the fundamental Christians who didn't believe in evolution, but I certainly never doubted that dinosaurs were real. I think "dinosaurs weren't real" is incredibly niche, I don't know anyone personally that believes that, even though I know people that believe in flat earth, lizard people, etc. Definitely plenty of weirdness in the fundamental Christian groups, but I think "dinosaurs never existed" is weird even for that. For example, many (most?) fundamental Christians believe the leviathan is a type of dinosaur, so it would be weird to doubt they ever existed. But I do still agree with your main point -- fundamentalist religions encourage the kind of belief that persists _in spite of_ evidence, leading to some very strange (and sometimes dangerous) beliefs. fwiw, here are some interesting and mostly-harmless beliefs that my "cohort" held - Men have one less rib than women - Noah's ark is still somewhere on Mt. Ararat, we just haven't found it yet - If you dredge up the Red Sea, you'll find Egyptian chariots from when they chased the Jewish people fleeing Egypt. Evidence to the contrary be damned! - Pokemon, DnD, and Harry Potter have real-world evil power. We were not allowed to read / play / watch these things as kids. But LOTR and Chronicles of Narnia are ok, because the authors were Christian, and the stories are basically the Bible in a trenchcoat. - All languages departed from a single common tongue around 6k years ago, near Babylon - The first humans lived _super long_, like 300+ years. It's only recently that lifespan is reduced to the sub-100 range. There was serious discussion that this effect is because there was a layer of water high in the atmosphere that was drained during Noah's flood (ie, the "waters above"). With that protective layer drained, human lifespans were cut short. I guess the implication is that the sun's rays are somehow super damaging in all sorts of nefarious ways? Just don't think about it too hard lol

Likely a dumb troll, but there are some fundamental Christians that believe the world is 6k years old and Satan put fossils into the world to make you question your faith.

mrguyorama 1y ago

Where "some" is, according to polling data, actually a crazy large amount of Americans. >“Human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals.” About 46% of the American public consistently agree with that option, about the same number who back the middle option in Gallup’s surveys. If you let the question trigger the right religion call and response, 44% of americans choose to say that god created humans as they are now sometime within the past 10k years. If you get esoteric to try and lean on how crazy the real fundies get, you ask people about continental drift. 10% of Americans outright deny continental drift being a process that occurs over millions of years. 30 million Americans is the lower bound to the amount of people who hold outright insanely false views on reality expressly for religious reasons. These are people who are desperately looking for reasons to believe that all of modern science is a conspiracy meant to keep them docile or unbelieving or some bullshit or other, and think science as an institution has been perverting the world for, uh, satan. So that's not terribly comforting. >https://ncse.ngo/just-how-many-young-earth-creationists-are-there-us https://ncse.ngo/just-how-many-young-earth-creationists-are-...

pinkmuffinere 1y ago
I was (previously) one of the fundamental Christians who didn't believe in evolution, but I certainly never doubted that dinosaurs were real. I think "dinosaurs weren't real" is incredibly niche, I don't know anyone personally that believes that, even though I know people that believe in flat earth, lizard people, etc. Definitely plenty of weirdness in the fundamental Christian groups, but I think "dinosaurs never existed" is weird even for that. For example, many (most?) fundamental Christians believe the leviathan is a type of dinosaur, so it would be weird to doubt they ever existed. But I do still agree with your main point -- fundamentalist religions encourage the kind of belief that persists _in spite of_ evidence, leading to some very strange (and sometimes dangerous) beliefs. fwiw, here are some interesting and mostly-harmless beliefs that my "cohort" held - Men have one less rib than women - Noah's ark is still somewhere on Mt. Ararat, we just haven't found it yet - If you dredge up the Red Sea, you'll find Egyptian chariots from when they chased the Jewish people fleeing Egypt. Evidence to the contrary be damned! - Pokemon, DnD, and Harry Potter have real-world evil power. We were not allowed to read / play / watch these things as kids. But LOTR and Chronicles of Narnia are ok, because the authors were Christian, and the stories are basically the Bible in a trenchcoat. - All languages departed from a single common tongue around 6k years ago, near Babylon - The first humans lived _super long_, like 300+ years. It's only recently that lifespan is reduced to the sub-100 range. There was serious discussion that this effect is because there was a layer of water high in the atmosphere that was drained during Noah's flood (ie, the "waters above"). With that protective layer drained, human lifespans were cut short. I guess the implication is that the sun's rays are somehow super damaging in all sorts of nefarious ways? Just don't think about it too hard lol