Sunday, August 15, 2010

New target: Theory of Relativity

Some religious conservatives of late have turned their wrath on Einstein's theory of relativity.  Relativity has joined evolution as counter to their beliefs and they are trying to refute it.  Conservapedia's "Counterexamples to Relativity" page offers many arguments, including:
The action-at-a-distance by Jesus, described in John 4:46-54.
...
In Genesis 1:6-8, we are told that one of God's first creations was a firmament in the heavens. This likely refers to the creation of the luminiferous aether.
Their problem with the theory of relativity seems to be the word "relativity", which sounds close to "moral relativism":
So where did moral relativism gain its footing in a nation founded on Judeo-Christian principles?
It actually started in the 1920s when a belief began to circulate in the U.S. that there were no longer any absolutes, specifically, of time and space, of good and evil, of knowledge and above all of human value. This belief system was built on the work of at least two prominent scientists: Albert Einstein and Charles Darwin.
(Note:  this last article in a religious conservative site is actually arguing that Einstein's theory of relativity is being incorrectly applied to morality and sociology (by secular liberals).)

1 comment:

  1. Interesting to see that Einstein's work is apparently still upsetting blinkered obscurantists. Back in the era when Argentina was under the dictatorship of military fundamentalists, libraries were purged of books by Einstein as well as writings of Freud - these were considered contaminated by "Jewish influence" on thought.

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