The older I get the less time I have left for bullshit in my life! I am down to only 1-2 people in my life that even acknowledge Trump as a legitimate POTUS. I have religious friends and neighbors but I hold them at arms length because of this. When I see their posts on Facebook I sometimes cringe.

What I don't get is that I lost a close friend to QANON. We grew up together with 99% like mind on events and issues. Then when Trump came to town... He started buying into every conspiracy theory out there. We never landed on the moon, 9/11 was a hoax, jetliners are spraying chemicals, child porn and trafficking at pizza parlors, etc. I don't know how his mind was so weak to believe all this trash. My only though was he was in a car accident and was on pain killers and trapped at home so he watched YouTube a lot. The strange thing is... He looks at ME like I am the crazy one because I am not "enlightened." He's not really religious but his mind bought into every stupid rumor out there.

It's a weird time out there!

I think you have to make the facts and scientific reality more "ancient" to them than their bible. In other words...

They believe the bible is credible because its . It's kind of like your grandma telling you a story they fully believe in compared to a child. You're more likely to believe the older person.

The old person may have dementia... they may be okay with being racist... who knows... but they're old and we're taught to respect that.

My thing is that I believe we attack the bible sometimes too hard which causes a reaction. But... do they truly feel connected to the bible? Or is there some underlying idea that they're connected to that they feel is under assault when the bible is attacked?

I personally think it's all about the origin story. It's about where people believe they came from and were they can believe they're going. The bible is what tells them this so if we don't have better answers they don't want to hear it. And because their answers from the bible are romantic in nature our answers, being the opposite, are repulsive to them.

If you talk to them about how they came from "the stars" and that our closes star is our creator and it gave us all the elements on the periodic table through fusion and fission and it continuously gives us life by radiating energy you may be able to give it to them in an edible form. But the key is that everything we eat, the more healthy it is the worst it seems to taste while the worst stuff is the sweetest. So the lies are the sweetest. Christianity will give you mental diabetes but in reality it causes millions to die. They just ignore that part. They ignore the content or the health risks and consequences because they think they're going to heaven with streets of gold and pearly gates, balanced on some cloud.

So even though the information is correct and scientific, it has to be -coated in a way they can actually swallow.

Bible is maybe 10% historically and geographically accurate...? And that is "the book of truth"?
But science and reasoning has to be 100% correct, all of the time and never be wrong or unsure...

See what I mean Vern?

What really gets me is this growing antagonism is spreading via - computers, cell phones and other highly technical devised created by scientists.

We don't need no stinking 17 year old quote to know this country is fucked up with trump, most republitards and religious fanatics of all kind. Let's start by expectorating the turd and regaining the senate from republitards.

I do not think it is an opposition to science per se, rather than an opposition to science that clashes with what they want to do/think. For example, a Christian may argue with you online about evolution. They will have no trouble with Ohms theorem, Faraday's laws, or even Einstien`s as means of communication that makes the computer go.
All the gas laws, metallurgy, etc. that make their car run will similarly be acceptable. But if a scientist says that their car is burning too much fuel and contributing to climate change? Then that science is wrong.
Rather like a smoker that convinces themselves that its not harmful

A lot of junk 'scientism' infects the public mind masquerading as science and holding itself to be 'settled' and therefore infallible and unquestionable; differing little from theological orthodoxies. Science was born LONG before the 600 year old 'scientific method'. It was and remains an evolving conceptual toolbox that owes it's very existence to human reasoning.

Popes of science have always appointed themselves to self-aggrandizing 'charge' of defining what is and isn't good science. They are throughout history, eventually proven wrong not by their 'faithful' but by original, non-conventional thinking pioneers.

For all of our fascinating technological accomplishments, we still haven't changed that fact.

Having encountered geo-centrists, I ask them to explain Foucaults' pendulum and the phases of Venus as documented by Galileo.

Reading the bible cover to cover made me stop being a christian. You can lead a theist to reason, but you can't make him/her think.

Most theists do not even know their own religion well. They know what they have been told. They rarely read it thoughtfully and analytically.

What is a human without a childhood? What is the sound of one hand clapping?

Very upsetting trend

I have often asked creationists if they actually believe the story of Adam & Eve...that God created Adam as a fully adult man, and then when he slept took a rib from him and created Eve, a fully adult woman. They invariably say yes, they believe everything implicitly because it’s the direct word of god written in the scriptures. I look at them and know that there is no point whatsoever in trying to convince them of any alternative scientific possibility to man’s existence..the indoctrination runs way too deep.

Your post points up the issues of the willfully ignorant and of those who have been brain-damaged by their brain-damaged parents.