Doug, I can't help but admire your single-minded consistency. Even when you talk about something else, you bring your point across most clearly. Thanks for that.
And you're right, of course. No matter how or what you present the zealous with, no matter how logical, how creative, how sensible, how obvious, they will always come up with the same answer, namely, that their version is the only true one. And everyone else's is blasphemy and thus wrong.
That reminds me of someone I fired once. I had a creative assistant with whom I got along fine, we worked well together, even had fun, except that she had the bad habit to bring everything into religious context, which, quite frankly, bugged the hell out of me. But okay, let's be professionals here, I thought, as long as you do the work, you can believe what you like, just don't preach too much. And she didn't.
However, one day I had had enough, the proverbial drop that made the bucket overflow, so to speak. As an avid dinosaur enthusiast I came into work one day and quite happily told her how they had discovered the remains of a giant dinosaur, T-Rex type, etc. and so forth. Half way through my telling, she interrupted me and said: "But that's not possible." So I asked why not. "God created the earth and everything 6000 years ago," she answered, "so he only made it look like these bones were millions of years old. They weren't really that old."
...
After a memo to my superiors I fired her the same day. Not because I didn't agree with her, not because I couldn't let her have her belief. I fired her because of her mental rigidity, her inability to even consider thinking beyond the little box she had put herself into. And I knew then that somewhere down the line, in a creative field especially, she would become a liability rather than an asset to me. So I took action.
Problem is, you can't convert these people. I think you and me and other people here are willing to consider other possibilities, willing to realize that we may be wrong if provided with enough proof. People like her cannot be changed because change would force her to have to re-examine her motives, her self worth and all that.
If I learned anything about religion it is that is often used as a shield against "the big bad world" rather than a mirror to the self. And no amount of evidence to the contrary is going to change them. They can't cope with change on any level. And for that inability the rest of us have to pay.
Like you mentioned before, one can be an activist and not know it. Count me in.
Vic
