(July 28, 2010 at 9:35 am)DeistPaladin Wrote: Standard stages of how religion deals with scientific discovery:The five stages of grief are:
1. REJECTION: Condemn the discovery as blasphemous against the faith, as the scriptures clearly say otherwise.
2. ANGER: Persecute anyone who supports the new theory based on the discovery. Destroy any evidence they can find.
3. DENIAL: Having failed to suppress the theory, they provide alternate ideas (pseudo-science) and call for freedom of debate. Insist that there's a "controversy" and "all sides" should be included in the education of our children. Advancing the theory as fact is met with distain by believers, as if it were dubious or disputed, even if supported by the entire scientific community.
4. ACCEPTANCE: Once the faith-friendly-pseudo-science promoted by the church collapses, they embrace the scientific theory as miraculous confirmation of their scriptures. Obscure (and often vaguely worded) passages in scripture are dragged out and wrenched out of context to be interpreted to support the knowledge discovered by science. These passages are happily copied and pasted all over atheist forums everywhere as proof of the divine origin of the scriptures. All the theologians from history who persecuted those who advanced the scientific theory are reviled as "not true (fill in name of the faithful here)". These fools misunderstood the true meaning of the scriptures.
5. WASH, RINSE, REPEAT: New scientific theory is discovered. Return to step one. Let the dragging, kicking and screaming commence.
Denial- They deny the scientific theory has proven
Anger- They physically try to destroy the scientific theory
Bargaining- They try to find ways for the theory to fit
Depression- They get sad because they begin to doubt their religion
Acceptance- They either accept that religion is not real OR they accept that religion and science are separate OR they think god works in mysterious way.
