On Spelling It Out

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Sunday's Doonesbury strip
Sunday’s Doonesbury strip

It is normal today to say we live in an abnormal time. We think everything is damn confusing. Or not at all. We speak out of one side of our mouths that this is a time of all this conflicting data, but ideologues speak with such consistency and confidence. We recognize complex problems and we offer overly simple solutions. This is insane.

Sunday’s Doonesbury strip highlights that challenge by demonstrating how insane our need for simplistic solutions for complex problems really are.

  • Complex problem: the intersection between Christians, their faith, their history, their Scripture, their tradition, their understanding of the world, their belief about interacting with society, how they deal with complex scientific concepts, and belief about the very nature of truth.
  • Simple solution: teach creationism as an “alternative theory”.

For most Christians, rather than deal with the actual challenge given to us by our creator to learn about our environment and our place in it and directed in that very process by our liberator and guided in that very direction by the Wind, we slap a sticker on it, call it “intelligent design” and pretend that it is remotely like our mission and not a disservice to our people.

This unravels, however, when we actually spell it out. When we see it in action. When we see students actually having to learn this crap. It reveals how ridiculous we are, not in those creationists pushing for this, but in our going for this ridiculousness as an actual option. We are the ones tolerating this. We are supporting legislators who think this is an actual solution. The crazies are going to be crazy, but it is we who are pushing this.

Question:

What would it be if we tackled complex problems without looking for the quick fix, that simple solution that makes the noise go away?