Futurama got me out of a cult by making fun of the moving goal posts of the missing link. I always liked science before that, but probably because the religion was so against it I kinda avoided discussing evolution, and a lot of the rest of at least basic science could be rationalized or twisted to kinda agree.
I personally at the time had no issues with the age of the Earth(was told the 7 days were metaphorical and the incorrect orders wasn’t really discussed), didn’t have any issues believing in dinosaurs (there was iirc some argument that God used them to prepare the earth and intentionally had em die out) and other stuff, plus they tried to use stuff like how much Earth is in a “perfect” distance from the sun.
All that aside, human evolution can’t work even with some of the creation myth being metaphors, because said cult also used the Adam and Eve story to justify why God permits evil. If that is just a metaphor, then the problem of evil became too pronounced.
If you want to know the argument I was sorta ok with at the time, it was basically this: Satan convincing humans to disobey God basically put the challenge that humanity didn’t need God and can rule themselves. While several thousand years of allowing atrocities seems long, in the age of the Earth (and theoretically, God) it isn’t much time at all, and the belief God would resurrect all those deserving meant to me at the time that at max 100 years of suffering would be eventually forgotten as we lived eternally after the resurrection (another belief of the cult).
For me, evolution being more accurate broke me out of that logic error, and Futurama was the delivery method that got through the standard mental defenses.
I’m curious: was there a specific episode about this that got you thinking, or was it more the exposure to the whole of the show which kept joking in that particular direction?
Futurama got me out of a cult by making fun of the moving goal posts of the missing link. I always liked science before that, but probably because the religion was so against it I kinda avoided discussing evolution, and a lot of the rest of at least basic science could be rationalized or twisted to kinda agree.
I personally at the time had no issues with the age of the Earth(was told the 7 days were metaphorical and the incorrect orders wasn’t really discussed), didn’t have any issues believing in dinosaurs (there was iirc some argument that God used them to prepare the earth and intentionally had em die out) and other stuff, plus they tried to use stuff like how much Earth is in a “perfect” distance from the sun.
All that aside, human evolution can’t work even with some of the creation myth being metaphors, because said cult also used the Adam and Eve story to justify why God permits evil. If that is just a metaphor, then the problem of evil became too pronounced.
If you want to know the argument I was sorta ok with at the time, it was basically this: Satan convincing humans to disobey God basically put the challenge that humanity didn’t need God and can rule themselves. While several thousand years of allowing atrocities seems long, in the age of the Earth (and theoretically, God) it isn’t much time at all, and the belief God would resurrect all those deserving meant to me at the time that at max 100 years of suffering would be eventually forgotten as we lived eternally after the resurrection (another belief of the cult).
For me, evolution being more accurate broke me out of that logic error, and Futurama was the delivery method that got through the standard mental defenses.
I’m curious: was there a specific episode about this that got you thinking, or was it more the exposure to the whole of the show which kept joking in that particular direction?
What OP’s describing sounds a lot like this scene in “A Clockwork Origin”.
That is absolutely golden. Thanks!