Demanding a Verdict: Science and the Apologetics of Biblical Literalism

2021 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-75
Author(s):  
Anne Mydla

For many Americans, fundamentalist Christianity is associated with movements to promote biblical literalism and its key tenet, young-earth creationism. Fundamentalism has, for this and other reasons, garnered a widespread reputation for anti-intellectualism in America. However, an effort has been made within certain fundamentalist and evangelical groups to support literalist beliefs with rhetoric and data that imitate scientific discourse. This paper examines examples of science writing from three sources within popcultural apologetics: the bestselling book Evidence That Demands a Verdict: Life-Changing Truth for a Skeptical World; the fundamentalist apologetics ministry Answers in Genesis, and the evangelical parachurch organisation known as the Institute for Creation Research.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Olshansky ◽  
Robert M. Peaslee ◽  
Asheley R. Landrum

The Flat Earth movement appears to have emerged from a combination of Biblical literalism (e.g., young Earth creationism, geocentricism) and conspiracy theorizing (e.g., belief that NASA faked the moon landings). Interviews with participants of the first International Flat Earth Conference in 2017 revealed that the majority of Flat Earthers have come to endorse Flat Earth ideas only within the last few years after watching videos on YouTube. However, the novelty of the movement means that there is a lack of literature on this group, including what exactly convinced these new Flat Earthers and how that conversion took place. Here, we provide evidence for a gradual process of conversion after multiple exposures to Flat Earth YouTube videos to which viewers were initially skeptical but report failing to adequately debunk. Furthermore, evidence is presented here regarding the crucial role YouTube played in their conversion process, suggesting the platform is potentially a strong avenue for changing beliefs. The narratives provided here also support much of the research on conversion, describing a gradual process of deep personal change, via the relatively new mechanism of social media, where one finds a new center of concern, interest, and behavior, as well as a different view of reality.


Fachsprache ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 24-46
Author(s):  
Christopher Gledhill ◽  
Mojca Pecman

In this paper, we examine the alternation between pre-modified and post-modified nominals, such as aspirin synthesis as opposed to synthesis of aspirin. This type of alternation has been previously explained in terms of rhetorical function (whether the item is ‘given’ as opposed to ‘new’), and phraseology (whether the item is seen as a ‘packed’ lexicalised term, or an ‘unpacked’ expanded nominal). In this paper, we suggest that other factors may also be involved, and we examine four specific cases from two different varieties of scientific English (Scientific Research Articles vs. Science Forums). Here we investigate the underlying constraints that govern this alternation, and we try to establish whether there is a preference for writers to ‘unpack’ nominal groups early on in a text and then to ‘re-pack’ them later on. Overall, we suggest a number of parameters that may explain the choice of one structure over another. Finally, and more generally, we show that this grammatical variation is a particularly productive resource in English nominal groups, and as such contributes to the rhetorical and cognitive construction of scientific demonstration in particular and scientific discourse more generally.


2019 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giulia Frezza ◽  
Pierluigi Zoccolotti

Abstract The convincing argument that Brette makes for the neural coding metaphor as imposing one view of brain behavior can be further explained through discourse analysis. Instead of a unified view, we argue, the coding metaphor's plasticity, versatility, and robustness throughout time explain its success and conventionalization to the point that its rhetoric became overlooked.


2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-184
Author(s):  
Onur Kemal Bazarkaya

Orta Çağdan hemen sonra gelen Yeni Çağın başlarındaki bilimsel tartışmalarda şarlatanlar çok büyük bir önem taşırdı; çünkü o dönemde söz sahibi olan bilim insanları onları olumsuz örnekler olarak görür ve bu olumsuzlukları kullanarak bilim için ideal ölçütler saptarlardı. Bilimde bu şekilde “negatif figür” (Hole Rößler) olarak gösterilen şarlatanlar, edebiyatta daha çeşitli ve kompleks biçimlerde ortaya çıkmakta, hatta kimi zaman karizmatik kişilikler olarak tasvir edilmektedir. Bu durum özellikle şarlatan figürünün yoğun bir şekilde sahnelendiği Alman Edebiyatında 18. yüzyılın sonlarında, 19. yüzyılın başlarında görülmektedir. Aynı zamanda söz konusu devirde yazılmış eserlerdeki şarlatanların neredeyse hiçbirinin yerleşik yaşam insanı olmadığı göze çarpmaktadır. Bitmeyen yolculukları gibi bu bağlamda sürekli kıyafet değiştirmeleri ve rol yapmaları da onların kişiliklerine esrarengiz bir hava katmaktadır. Bu çalışmada, Christoph Martin Wieland, Friedrich Schiller ve Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’ye ait eserlerdeki şarlatan karakterinin farklı işlevleri irdelenecektir. Çalışmanın sonucunda şimdiye kadar gözardı edilmiş şarlatan figürüyle birlikte Göç Edebiyatı kapsamındaki araştırmalara yeni bir bakış açısı kazandırmak hedeflendirmektedir.ABSTRACT IN ENGLISHCharlatan Traveller and Migration Literature: A Reading with the Conflict Model At the beginning of modern times, charlatans emerged as of great importance to the scientific discourse of those spokesmen of the scholar community who use them as negative examples and thus define ideal standards for their profession. Charlatans were seen as “negative figures” (Hole Rößler) in science; however, the way they were judged in literature was more complex and varied, and, in some texts, they even seem congenial and charismatic. This phenomenon can be noticed in German literature especially around 1800 when the charlatan figure is used very often. Moreover, it is conspicuous that charlatans in literary depictions of this period generally have no home and travel around constantly. Furthermore, the fact that they change their clothing and camouflage permanently offers to their identity a mysterious dimension. In the field of studies designated as ,Literature and Migration’, this paper aims to provide interpretative perspectives and, in this respect, examines the issue concerning the poetic functions of charlatan travellers as rendered textually in a number of relevant passages chosen from the works of Christoph Martin Wieland, Friedrich Schiller, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. 


2009 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-96
Author(s):  
Elena del Río

This essay looks at Fassbinder's Berlin Alexanderplatz to trace the  film's transformation of a mechanistic scientific discourse into  affective indeterminacy. Through patterns of repetition of a key event, the film considers its protagonist as a complex web of constantly shifting forces – a network of biological, social, political and semiotic flows coalescing in a body that exists in a state of perpetual oscillation between force and mutilation, ecstasy and pain. The role of physics and other materialist discourses in the film is thus not to fixate subjectivity, but rather to provide a passage into its affective transformations and the intense desubjectification that results.


2010 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 21-25
Author(s):  
Andrea Jain

This paper is an exploration of preksha dhyana as a case study of modern yoga. Preksha is a system of yoga and meditation introduced by Acarya Mahaprajna of the Jain Svetambara Terapanth in the late twentieth century. I argue that preksha is an attempt to join the newly emerging transnational yoga market whereby yoga has become a practice oriented around the attainment of physical health and psychological well-being. I will evaluate the ways in which Mahaprajna appropriates scientific discourse and in so doing constructs a new and unique system of Jain modern yoga. In particular, I evaluate the appropriation of physical and meditative techniques from ancient yoga systems in addition to the explanation of yoga metaphysics by means of biomedical discourse. I will demonstrate how, in Mahaprajna’s preksha system, the metaphysical subtle body becomes somaticized. In other words, Mahaprajna uses the bio-medical understanding of physiology to locate and identify the functions of metaphysical subtle body parts and processes in the physiological body.


2005 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 105-121 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rémy Delage

Using as the example of the pilgrimage to Sabarimala (Kerala, South India), I propose here to explore the links existing between sources, research hypothesis and research theory in social sciences. The choice of research materials in the process of investigation, sources of knowledge about the studied object, is not mere random sampling; it is processed in accordance with the questions of the researcher. It inevitably assumes a selective dimension. After a critical reading of the sources used by Indian studies, I will highlight on the connections between the sources and the methodological tools on the one hand, and the major research hypothesis about pilgrimage on the other. The links between the data taken from the field and the legitimacy of scientific discourse on India will be examined at the end before providing some keys for the interpretation of Sabarimala phenomenon in South India during the contemporary period.


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