The story we want to tell is not always the story that people hear.
The Catholic Church has run headlong into this problem—a problem entirely of its own making—as the ugly truth about sexual abuse continues to shake the Church at its foundations. And these foundations, as with those of all religions, are based on stories. Not just the ones in the Bible, but the story the Church tells about itself, in which it is the moral center of the universe. But its crimes and cover-ups are so many and so vast that the telling of them is drowning out the Church’s own hollow tales.
In Scotland, state-funded schools require students to take part in religious observances, telling a story about the country’s Christian heritage. But now that the majority of Scots are nonreligious, parents want their children to be told a different story, one about a Scotland that does not stigmatize those who no longer find the old stories relevant.
Not even Batman can control his own story. The Caped Crusader was revealed to be an atheist...or was he? That’s not the story the writer intended to tell. But as we’ll see this week, there is a lot of sense in the idea that superheroes, the gods among us, would find religion’s stories less than compelling.
It is also true that the story we want to hear is not always the story that’s being told. New research sheds new light on the curious overlap among creationists and conspiracy theorists, united in their desire to hear stories that are simpler than the truth and validating what they already believe.
Finally, this week we also learn more about the stories of our beginnings, as Carl Zimmer shows us a remarkable discovery about two different branches of prehistoric humanity, as well as our end, as we look into deep time to the darkness at the end of everything.
Don’t forget: Richard Dawkins is coming to Dallas and Nashville this October with special guest Carolyn Porco! Get your tickets now.
Robyn E. Blumner
President & CEO, Center for Inquiry
Executive Director, Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason & Science
