What a strange day it's been at work today and it's not over yet.

[Arkansas Granny]

When I got to work this morning, the boss has his bible out and is looking for the story of Abraham sending Sarah's handmaiden, with whom he'd fathered a son, into the wilderness with her child. Apparently he was told that this was the beginning of Islam and is somehow proof that there will never be peace in the ME.

Then at lunchtime one of the older employees is telling me how Charles Darwin confessed on his deathbed that evolution was a hoax; just a joke that he made up.

These are really nice guys that I've known and worked with for over 15 years, but I'm constantly surprised at the level of sheer ignorance that I find in people that I consider to be decent and intelligent. This is why I do not discuss religion or politics at work.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

1. Wow, what's up with that?? nt

[Arkansas Granny]

5. Beats me. I've always known that some of the guys here are

regular churchgoers, but they usually aren't this vocal with their beliefs and opinions. I can't even blame this on a full moon or anything.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

24. Well, are you ready for this one?

I moved from Miami to a smaller town (I'm a paralegal).

This new place I work at, PRAYS when they have a conference or seminar that involves a meal.

Ahem!!!!!!!

HELP!

[glinda]

29. Yikes!

[Sarah Ibarruri]

38. I know... nt

[Arkansas Granny]

35. We haven't gotten to that point. If they pray at work, they must do it in private

because I've never seen it.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

39. At the last office Christmas party (which was held on a Saturday night)

the head partner led prayer before we dug in. AHEM!!!! It burns my behind, believe me. It's not right.

[JoePhilly]

2. Tell your friend you have a question ... first show him this passage from the bible ...

Deuteronomy 22:28-29 New International Version (NIV)

28 If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, 29 he shall pay her father fifty shekels[a] of silver. He must marry the young woman, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives.

After showing him this passage, say ...

"The reason I ask is that I raped a virgin and was caught, and so now I need to figure out the exchange rate of sheckels to dollars ... do you know what it is?

[saras]

25. Even worse, you have to get them really young to be sure they are virgins...

[MattBaggins]

26. What I got from that passage is

"don't get caught".

[Vincardog]

3. The story about how Islam began is true. The implication and the joke are not. Conservative

has become a religion. That is why they refuse to be persuaded by facts.
Anyone who insists that politicians be Conservative is insisting on a religious test and that is un-American.

[starroute]

40. That story has nothing to do with Islam, which was more than 2000 years later

Supposedly Ismael was the ancestor of the Arabs. That's it.

[Enrique]

4. please tell me you don't work at a school

put my mind at ease.

[Arkansas Granny]

7. No. It's OK. I don't work at a school. Rest easy.

[csziggy]

6. Tell them the joke about Moses saying on his death bed he made up

All his meetings with God - they were just hallucinations caused by bad food. The Ten Commandments were just a gag.

Then tell them that was just a joke an acquaintance made up.

Then explain that even if Charles Darwin had not published his work, another biologist was preparing to publish very similar theories. Darwin had actually sat on his conclusions for a while then he got a letter from Alfred Russel Wallace asking for help in publishing his own evolutionary theory.

Darwin and Wallace develop similar theory
Darwin began formulating his theory of natural selection in the late 1830s but he went on working quietly on it for twenty years. He wanted to amass a wealth of evidence before publicly presenting his idea. During those years he corresponded briefly with Wallace (right), who was exploring the wildlife of South America and Asia. Wallace supplied Darwin with birds for his studies and decided to seek Darwin's help in publishing his own ideas on evolution. He sent Darwin his theory in 1858, which, to Darwin's shock, nearly replicated Darwin's own.

Charles Lyell and Joseph Dalton Hooker arranged for both Darwin's and Wallace's theories to be presented to a meeting of the Linnaean Society in 1858. Darwin had been working on a major book on evolution and used that to develop On the Origins of Species, which was published in 1859. Wallace, on the other hand, continued his travels and focused his study on the importance of biogeography.

The book was not only a best seller but also one of the most influential scientific books of all time. Yet it took time for its full argument to take hold. Within a few decades, most scientists accepted that evolution and the descent of species from common ancestors were real. But natural selection had a harder time finding acceptance. In the late 1800s many scientists who called themselves Darwinists actually preferred a Lamarckian explanation for the way life changed over time. It would take the discovery of genes and mutations in the twentieth century to make natural selection not just attractive as an explanation, but unavoidable.
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/history_14

Even if Darwin had never come out with his work, the "discovery" was inevitable.

[MattBaggins]

28. Why not just tell him that the urban myth of Darwin recanting

is just that; an urban myth.

[madmom]

33. it wasn't bad food it was.....DRUGS!!!!!

[GoCubsGo]

8. LOL!

Seems like your co-worker doesn't know a hoax from the truth, because he was the one taken in by this one.

[Blue_In_AK]

9. The legend about Sarah's handmaiden is part of Islam,

at least according to discussions I've had with my Muslim son-in-law. I've always found it ironic that all the three major religions share the same father Abraham and yet they can't stop squabbling. It would seem that we're all siblings, after all.

[Arkansas Granny]

12. I knew about the Muslim connection with Abraham. I was rather surprised that he considered

the story as "proof" that peace with the Arab countries is impossible because of a biblical passage.

[Blue_In_AK]

27. I agree.

People who rely on the Bible as "proof" of anything are pretty gullible, in my opinion.

[eyewall]

10. not an uncommon experience.

republicans have their own network of evangelical bible fearin mandatory churches. A man I thought was pretty smart, and a friend, ranted at me one day about how it says in the bible that Arabs are not really people and they would have to be wiped out in the end times. He also said there was no point in trying to recycle or help the environment because we are in the end times and it's god's will that things be as screwed as they are.

He believes, even though he owns a company, that he does not need to take any social or environmental concerns seriously. He also believes that hypocrisy (or anything) is okay as long as he reads the bible.

All of this started about 6 years ago when he was 'recruited' by RNC emails and his peers to join a church and start fearin god. He reads the bible but probably has absolutely no idea how any of it is relevant to anything in his life (clue - it isn't). He just repeats the sermon of the week.

the republican email channels are filled with god stuff now, more than before. I think they're all expecting the rapture soon.

I don't talk to him anymore if I can help it but he also knows not to mention politics or religion around me.

[Ikonoklast]

11. Your boss believes that a mish-mash of Bronze Age tribal histories passed down through generations

who slaughtered the inhabitants of that land in the name of their deity explains everything.

[Arkansas Granny]

14. Yep. Pretty much so.

I've never discussed with any of my co-workers that I am a non-believer. I don't know how they would react to find out that after all this time they have been associating with someone who doesn't even believe in god. I just keep that to myself and try to stay out of conversations about religion.

[Ikonoklast]

15. The funny thing is, he only believes in them by accident of birth.

Most people can't or won't acknowledge that little fact.

If he would have been born in Tibet he would believe differently.

[CJCRANE]

18. Another interesting thing along those lines...

A friend of mine went to Nepal and told me that the legends about Buddha's childhood were very similar to the stories most of us are familiar with about Jesus.

He was amazed that a religion two thousand years older than Chrisitianity had the same themes and ideas.

[Ikonoklast]

22. Ha! I bet he'd be amazed at the stories about Osiris, too!

And learining about Mithras would knock his socks clean off!

[Arkansas Granny]

36. There are several stories that Christians regard as myth that are similar to biblical stories that

are believed with no reservations at all.

[DCKit]

13. While I was more than impressed with the above comments....

a short search of "what Jesus said" should provide you with enough ammunition to re-educate your coworkers within a few months.

Either they're going to go all "Old Testament" or they're going to become humanists, like Jesus.

Since they probably don't want to give up haircuts, their poly-cottton shirts and pants or their love of shrimp, I'm thinking they'll come around.

Love you Granny.

[CJCRANE]

16. That just proves

that Islam and Christianity come from the same roots.

They even mostly have the same stories about the Hebrew prophets and the Virgin Birth, the Miracles, the Ascension and the Second Coming of Jesus. Their moral code is pretty much the same too.

[KurtNYC]

17. So you work at Fox News ?

[Arkansas Granny]

19. Some undercover branch, apparently.

We have climate change deniers to round out the lot.

[madokie]

20. Its when you get otherwise intelligent people that are mixed up with the bible that you get

these nut case
I'm non religious on purpose and for a reason, my sanity

[Ikonoklast]

23. I do know some that are mixed up with the Bible, yet are quite intelligent.

Mostly because they see it as mostly tribal histories, allegory, morality tales, and not as literal history.

Inteligent people can discern the difference between fantasy and reality, it's the others that scare me.

[Poll_Blind]

21. Oh geeze, my heart goes out to you. I have been in a few similar situatiosn myself.

All I can say is...isn't it interesting how you can deal with people one one level and they're really nice folks. And then, when you get a taste of that other side of them you're like "What the fuck?!?"

People are so bizarrely fascinating like that. I long-ago realized I would never need to travel to a distant planet to interact with freaky, unexplainable life forms. They're right here. And, damnit, they vote.



PB

[saras]

31. My sig says it all, in this case

I think that one of the most amazing capacities that humans have is their ability to delude themselves, collectively, into thinking that they're all the same - to blind themselves to the profound differences in mental organization as well as content, and to assert that everyone who gives overt signals of belonging become "us", and those others, whose difference we notice and exaggerate, become "them". And we can do this essentially arbitrarily, including and excluding pretty much anyone we want.

How do the tone-deaf and the conductor who can hear a single out-of-tune violin string in a symphony orchestra EVER agree on what radio station to listen to? Or even on what music is?

And I think this happens with EVERY subject. I am as blind to fashion as Rush Limbaugh is to the beauties of tensor theory, but I am expected to just blend in with people who can reliably distinguish $3000 shoes from $1000 shoes at twenty paces.

People who have only ever experienced power in the world through speech, from infancy on, and people who have only ever experienced power in the world through interaction with matter, from infancy on, simply have "different opinions".

And most of us find it fit to defend equality and cooperation, not because we believe in it, but because we see it work around us.

Utterly amazing.

[Poll_Blind]

32. Great post. Wish I saw more posts like this on DU3. nt

PB

[Honeycombe8]

30. Wow. That is so weird and inappropriate for the workplace.

If it were me, I'd look for new employment when the economy gets better. Until then, I'd keep my mouth shut except to say that I don't share those views (if I'm asked). I wouldn't create waves. You will NOT change their minds. Just as they wouldn't be able to change yours.

I feel lucky I don't have to put up with that. I'm surrounded by Republicans, and there are comments by co-workers occasionally, but nothing like what you've experienced. And they're not my bosses.

[Arkansas Granny]

34. I'm not out to change their minds and they aren't trying to change mine.

I know that they are conservative and they know I'm liberal and we just leave it at that. They really are decent guys and we've developed some good friendships. It's just that the topics of discussion today were a little wierd and out of the ordinary.

[just1voice]

37. Sorry but they are not "really nice guys", they just had you fooled

They'd toss you or me into a torture camp without hesitation or reason. They've just been "civil" with you over the years to keep their employment.

A women in Greece recently said she felt she had betrayed her children because her generation "had traded civility for corruption". It's a question all Americans should be asking themselves right now too, just what will be the consequences of being civil with people like that?