I was lucky enough to talk back and forth with Glenn Morton for a few years back around the turn of the millennium and saddened to see what’s happened to him since. Here’s an excerpt below and it is alarming because this is what many conservative Christians are taught to believe:
Link — The powers that be think that everyone MUST be forced to pay for contraception for the YES, slutty life style of Sandra Fluck who gave a speech at the Democratic convention bemoaning that we don’t pay for her contraception. (Rush Limbaugh got in lots of trouble for saying she is a slut, yet it is Sandra who wants to live a life of sex where everyone else pays to keep her from getting pregnant). Why must I as a Christian, who thinks such behavior abysmal, sinful and self destructive pay for her to have sexcapades without consequences?
There are lots more reason to dismiss the guy as a teaparty nut where that came from. He REALLY hates and despises atheists. Clearly, Morton was able to escape the clutches of creationist conmen, only to fall victim to the Limbaugh wing of the larger alternate universe aka Big Con known as the GOP base. But that’s not the point I want to make.
What’s woven almost unconsciously into the inflammable rhetoric and rightwing zombie lies is the real dilemma, imo, Glenn faces. He starts off with an anecdote about the freedom of providing for himself vs living under his father’s roof. He concludes in part that a big part of freedom is the right to be wrong. … I wonder if Glenn is screaming out at the top of his lungs that he not only has the right to be wrong, to believe in a Christian God, but he can’t handle the influx of contradicting data showing him he is wrong and wants it to just go the hell away and leave him be with his false beliefs?
I really think that may be it and I sympathize if it is. Glenn didn’t get to choose to be religious. Millions of promising scientists are psychologically lamed starting at birth in the US and we are far from alone in doing it. The fact is, had he not been indoctrinated with ancient superstitious beliefs from infancy in the first place, I doubt he would be facing a crisis like this now. Glenn would probably be a brilliant, happy, accomplished geoscientist today. But he was, and I have to wonder if the conflict between his innate intellectual honesty, combined with the chasm between empirical facts and superstition which almost destroyed his career as a geophysicist early on, may have now finally lamed him so badly that he’s on the cusp of a breakdown. Whatever the cause, it makes me very sad.
Yeah. What’s this “we pay” crap? Insurance should cover all insurancy things, not just what some person or employer wants it to cover. These shouldn’t be option for, or offered by, an insurer. Just like dental is somehow a fucking separate (or unavailable) option, but with more sexism and control-freakishness.
He’s repeating a line heard from Limbaugh et al. It’s much easier to hate Obamacare and the provision for basic healthcare services it mandates when facts are discarded for nonsense like that. It’s really sad. Genn and I weren’t close friends, but I like and admire him for his courage re creationism. What makes me even sadder is I have very close friends who have also been swindled by the same bad faith actors on the neo right and, like Glenn, that con left them angry and unable to think critically about their own interests, and it has threatened our friendship from time to time.
Breakdown my arse. He’s suffering a crisis of faith and accepted Pascal’s wager. He has given up the pretense of scholarly debate and doubled down on the side of Christianity. “Look at me people. I’m going to heaven and you’re not!”
Usually, people get more concerned with death the older they get, and parts harbouring irrational fears, easily managed by the more rational parts of the mind when younger, start to dominate.
It still amazes me that catholics are against health insurance covering contraception. After all, it reduces the number of children of those who use them, giving catholic women a considerable demographic advantage. Their motto should be: if you can’t convert them, outbreed them.
Certainly. It’s just part of the atmosphere, really. (The Fluck reference belies the origin of this particular instance.) I hardly meant to set my comment against Morton in particular.
As a former fundie and (somewhat later) a former liberal theist, I cringe whenever I see someone retreat into reality denial like this instead of embracing reality and making some difficult personal changes.
Mr. Morton, come back to the real world. It’s really quite fascinating.