Skip to main content

The Proliferation of Ignorance

By Neil ~

I've heard it said that the United States as a nation is losing it's intellectual capacity. That we are quickly becoming (or already have become) a culture of mindless consumerism propped up by the hollow promises of fulfillment by the corporations taking our money. When I look around a Wal Mart parking lot, it's not hard to see some truth in this. A trip through the local shopping mall reveals the same. Browsing the Internet seems only to illustrate a concentrated essence of stupidity and ignorance in many of it's darkest corners.

IgnoranceImage by dhammza via Flickr

Yet I do find that there are many intelligent and intellectually honest people out there. Their own capacity for reason lays mostly dormant as there is not much call for it during the nine to five grind. They are keeping their heads down as they struggle to keep the family fed and the bills paid. They simply don't have the time nor the interest to engage the least of us in public forums. I am speaking of the average citizen here.

We gage the intelligence of our counterparts by what we encounter in social mediums like the news, documentaries. game shows and of course, the Net. It seems that we are beaten over the head with an expectation of mediocrity on a near daily basis. Very few of the Mass Media Networks are interested in taking a stand against ignorance. They appear more interested in exploiting and profiting from it. In this light, I wouldn't expect them to promote the brightest programming. I do believe this further perpetuates the myth that we all posses the mental acuity of cattle. My outlook for humanity isn't quite this bleak however.

I would argue that the Internet itself is where logic and reason now live. It still exists in libraries but there are few who still venture into the dusty volumes contained therein. As with any game that everyone is allowed to play, even the hard core fundamentalists have a voice here. They don't have immunity against reason or impunity to act and thus they lock themselves into members only sites that moderate comments with only the brand of deluded paranoia that they could muster. This applies to many different groups good or bad.

Does it appear that intelligence as a whole is waning because the public is steeped in mindless drivel? Or is it that fact that just about every idiot with an opinion (myself included) now has access to the world wide forum of the Net? Answers in Genesis would be a mere shadow of itself if it relied exclusively on paper correspondence. Their brand of idiocy would have never been so widely broadcasted. Pat Robertson would be even less of a nobody had he not have created his little media empire.

It would appear that having access to information in real time has done much to give the illusion that we're getting dumber by the minute. Idiots are entertaining and thus what is promoted? Religion just as any other business venture has witnessed the exploitable nature of the Internet as a tool to promote their brand of ignorance. I don't think they quite expected the amount of push back that they have encountered however. They can't dominate a conversation unless in is behind the walls of their fort. (Rapture Ready anyone?) For every view, there is an opposing view not far away. Enlightenment depends on which position you choose to hang your hat on.

In conclusion, I don't think that humanity is any less intelligent that it has ever been. Then again, I don't necessarily believe that it is in any way more so either. We simply have more access to each other now. We interact with each other in a way and magnitude that has never before been seen. Bad ideas seem more rampant because they are now capable of growing wings and flying across the ethereal landscape instead of dying on the vine locally. Who will carry the day will be decided by whoever has the most concise and intelligent shot gun with which to dispose of these bad ideas before they find a purchase and procreate.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Are You an Atheist Success Story?

By Avangelism Project ~ F acts don’t spread. Stories do. It’s how (good) marketing works, it’s how elections (unfortunately) are won and lost, and it’s how (all) religion spreads. Proselytization isn’t accomplished with better arguments. It’s accomplished with better stories and it’s time we atheists catch up. It’s not like atheists don’t love a good story. Head over to the atheist reddit and take a look if you don’t believe me. We’re all over stories painting religion in a bad light. Nothing wrong with that, but we ignore the value of a story or a testimonial when we’re dealing with Christians. We can’t be so proud to argue the semantics of whether atheism is a belief or deconversion is actually proselytization. When we become more interested in defining our terms than in affecting people, we’ve relegated ourselves to irrelevance preferring to be smug in our minority, but semantically correct, nonbelief. Results Determine Reality The thing is when we opt to bury our

So Just How Dumb Were Jesus’ Disciples? The Resurrection, Part VII.

By Robert Conner ~ T he first mention of Jesus’ resurrection comes from a letter written by Paul of Tarsus. Paul appears to have had no interest whatsoever in the “historical” Jesus: “even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, we know him so no longer.” ( 2 Corinthians 5:16 ) Paul’s surviving letters never once mention any of Jesus’ many exorcisms and healings, the raising of Lazarus, or Jesus’ virgin birth, and barely allude to Jesus’ teaching. For Paul, Jesus only gets interesting after he’s dead, but even here Paul’s attention to detail is sketchy at best. For instance, Paul says Jesus “was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures” ( 1 Corinthians 15:4 ), but there are no scriptures that foretell the Jewish Messiah would at long last appear only to die at the hands of Gentiles, much less that the Messiah would then be raised from the dead after three days. After his miraculous conversion on the road to Damascus—an event Paul never mentions in his lette

Christian TV presenter reads out Star Wars plot as story of salvation

An email prankster tricked the host of a Christian TV show into reading out the plots of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and Star Wars in the belief they were stories of personal salvation. The unsuspecting host read out most of the opening rap to The Fresh Prince, a 1990s US sitcom starring Will Smith , apparently unaware that it was not a genuine testimony of faith. The prankster had slightly adapted the lyrics but the references to a misspent youth playing basketball in West Philadelphia would have been instantly familiar to most viewers. The lines read out by the DJ included: "One day a couple of guys who were up to no good starting making trouble in my living area. I ended up getting into a fight, which terrified my mother." The presenter on Genesis TV , a British Christian channel, eventually realised that he was being pranked and cut the story short – only to move on to another spoof email based on the plot of the Star Wars films. It began: &quo

ACTS OF GOD

By David Andrew Dugle ~   S ettle down now children, here's the story from the Book of David called The Parable of the Bent Cross. In the land Southeast of Eden –  Eden, Minnesota that is – between two rivers called the Big Miami and the Little Miami, in the name of Saint Gertrude there was once built a church. Here next to it was also built a fine parochial school. The congregation thrived and after a multitude of years, a new, bigger church was erected, well made with clean straight lines and a high steeple topped with a tall, thin cross of gold. The faithful felt proud, but now very low was their money. Their Sunday offerings and school fees did not suffice. Anon, they decided to raise money in an unclean way. One fine summer day the faithful erected tents in the chariot lot between the two buildings. In the tents they set up all manner of games – ring toss, bingo, little mechanical racing horses and roulette wheels – then all who lived in the land between the two rivers we

Morality is not a Good Argument for Christianity

By austinrohm ~ I wrote this article as I was deconverting in my own head: I never talked with anyone about it, but it was a letter I wrote as if I was writing to all the Christians in my life who constantly brought up how morality was the best argument for Christianity. No Christian has read this so far, but it is written from the point of view of a frustrated closeted atheist whose only outlet was organizing his thoughts on the keyboard. A common phrase used with non-Christians is: “Well without God, there isn’t a foundation of morality. If God is not real, then you could go around killing and raping.” There are a few things which must be addressed. 1. Show me objective morality. Define it and show me an example. Different Christians have different moral standards depending on how they interpret the Bible. Often times, they will just find what they believe, then go back into scripture and find a way to validate it. Conversely, many feel a particular action is not

On Living Virtuously

By Webmdave ~  A s a Christian, living virtuously meant living in a manner that pleased God. Pleasing god (or living virtuously) was explained as: Praying for forgiveness for sins  Accepting Christ as Savior  Frequently reading the Bible  Memorizing Bible verses Being baptized (subject to church rules)  Attending church services  Partaking of the Lord’s Supper  Tithing  Resisting temptations to lie, steal, smoke, drink, party, have lustful thoughts, have sex (outside of marriage) masturbate, etc.  Boldly sharing the Gospel of Salvation with unbelievers The list of virtuous values and expectations grew over time. Once the initial foundational values were safely under the belt, “more virtues'' were introduced. Newer introductions included (among others) harsh condemnation of “worldly” music, homosexuality and abortion Eventually the list of values grew ponderous, and these ideals were not just personal for us Christians. These virtues were used to condemn and disrespect fro