(This article gets into atheist philosophy. If you're offended by that line of thought, don't read this. "Take the Red Pill and everything will remain as it was"-Morpheus)
Today we loaded the whole assemblage into Robert's big "King Ranch Special" and started scoping this place out. The rain stopped long enough to let us have a really good look.
I said before that I'm not a mountain guy. That will probably change. This is a beautiful place.
The area is part of the Cumberland Plateau formed by regional uplift from sediments laid down under the Tethys Sea 200 million years ago. That is the truth as the best minds have deduced it from careful study. Apparently that's not good enough!
The signage and markers here have been diligently defaced in a very specific way. Any reference to the age of the rocks as in "200 million years" has been scratched through with knives. Even the beautifully done displays in the Nature Center have this disfigurement.
This is a battleground between truth and the enlightenment of "Science" and the revelation of anonymous prophets in the "Scriptures".
The vandalism was done by successive waves of "Young Earth" Christian activists. If you add up all the lifespans in the Genesis stories as Bishop Ussher did you arrive at the conclusion that at 2 in the afternoon of a nice October day 6000 years ago the Judeo-Christian Sky Daddy said, "Yeah, I'm lonely! How about I create something?" And these doctrinaire redactors are a reminder of that "fact".
The scary thing about it is that these probably aren't drooling idiots brought here on the "short bus" for a tour, but otherwise normal folks capable of operating 21st Century technology such as cars, computers, and guns. They also vote. Exactly the way "Brother Johnson" at the Calvary Worship Center says.
Normally this group of people is aghast at the vandalism of the "tagger" and decry the general degradation of public spaces by the young. But they don't see their act as vandalism, but as evangelism. They know the "truth" that those educated in "government schools" don't. They've integrated this truth into their lives and don't see any schism in using a quantum physics derivative such as a High-Definition Plasma TV to watch a carefully groomed millionaire evangelist like Rick Warren on their satellite dish.
My main concern and worry with all this is the redactors' "certainty". These folks are detached enough from reality to be "certain" about this. Science isn't certain. The truth is not an absolute. "Truth" really doesn't exist. We only have maddeningly approximate solutions that explain what we see most of the time. Einstein destroyed the concept of "truth" by showing that even time and space aren't what we believe.
So "Christian Truth" is just a shortcut without all the messy fuzz that is really there. The easy way out. I saw a bumper sticker that said "The Bible said it, I believe it, And that settles it!"
Enough! It just always startles me that such intolerant, wrong-headed, arrogance is elevated to the position of reverence that we allow it. Eventually, people are hurt by this. Whether it is the "auto da fe" and burning in the public square, or the more socially acceptable demands that the people you elect or do business with be "good Christians". Even if they're uneducated boobs.
As for me, I think the majesty of sedimentation over millions of years trumps "Whoop! There it is!"
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