To my Brazilian readers
Welcome. Who are you? How did you find me?
In the past couple of days, 10% of my page hits have come from Brazil. I’m delighted. Brazil is a battleground between the acceptors of scientific reality (who can claim some support from the Catholic Church) and invading Evangelicals and Seventh Day Adventists. These last are extreme creationists, not merely science-denying but science-distorting. They maintain that the entire geological record is due to Noah’s flood, that their own position differs from the scientific mainstream only in its choice of interpretation, and that mutations can only degrade and not create information. Students of creationism will recognise here all the worst features of Henry Morris’s Flood Geology, Ken Ham’s Answers in Genesis, and the intellectual distortions of the Intelligent Designers. So if this blog is service anywhere, it will be of service in Brazil.
It is clear why I want to be found by Brazilians, but why should Brazilians want to find me? I did have a public exchange with a creationist on the Brazilian Airforce Academy cultural website, Letras & e-Artes, and am told that my contribution was well received, but that was 18 months ago. I also, more recently, had a tedious Facebook debate with a self-styled Adventist theologian, who presented as if new coined arguments rebutted in the 1920s, but I doubt that her followers would be beating a path to my door.
And yet, I must be doing something that is of special value to readers in Brazil. What is it, and how do I set about doing the same elsewhere?
Why only Brazil?
Posted on June 23, 2015, in Creationism, Geology, Religion and tagged Brazilian Airforce Academy, Seventh Day Adventism. Bookmark the permalink. 4 Comments.
Primate's Progress 
Just for the record, not all Evangelicals are “extreme creationists,” Many of us Evangelicals accept the Big Bang, an old earth, a local flood,and biological evolution.
Regarding your question of why Brazil now, could it be your recent reblogging of “100 Reasons the Earth is Old,” or was that too recent?
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I agree that many Evangelicals accept reality and realise that Genesis is a document of its time. This is important; I feel that Ihave more in common with a reality-accepting Evangelical than either of us have with a bigoted bibliolator. That’s why I was careful to choose my words so that my fullest strictures were directed against the Adventists, who are outliers in the US and UK but making serious inroads in Brazil.
And I had wondered about “100 reasons”. The timing would be exactly right, but I have published many blogs before on the antiquity of the Earth.
We really need some Brazilians to chime in here.
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We might need to get you down here, Paul, if the evangelicals start to interfere in public education. Oddly enough, I think you’ll find an ally in the Catholic church if any public debate ensues.
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Thank God, I am not Brazilian.
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