When confronted with right wing social conservatism, the left usually adopts one of two strategies. On the one hand, it can argue for tolerance of differing viewpoints, but this argument is only persuasive for those who themselves are not so certain of what they believe as to legislate it. In other words, the tolerance argument only works for people who were already susceptible to accept social progressivism. Alternatively, the left sometimes approaches this problem by rejecting the existence of god so as to undermine the foundation of the conservative belief system, but in order for social conservatives to exist in the first place, their level of confidence in their belief in a god must be very high. These arguments, in many cases, are doomed to fail. So what else can the left argue? Well perhaps the left can seek common ground with the right by accepting, for the purposes of argument, the existence of god.
Tag: Christianity
Bill Nye the Anti-Creationism Guy
A few days ago, before it went viral, I happened upon this video from Bill Nye (of Bill Nye the Science Guy) commenting on creationism:
The video certainly struck me as interesting, but not particularly controversial. Big Think, the YouTube channel that put out the video, frequently posts intellectually engaging videos that encourage viewers to reassess their ideas or consider new ones, and videos like this one are what I’ve come to expect from them as a subscriber. However, a few days later I discovered that it had attained over a million views, and as I check today the count is over three million. I’d like to discuss Nye’s comments and why they seem to have struck a nerve, for good or for bad, with so many people.
Benjamin Studebaker 