For a supposed "man of science" my father is definitely on that list of people who try to force science to fit inside their own personal faith based cosmology and make wild leaps of logic to support these ludicrous systems of thought, ignoring anything which would disprove or contradict them. A convert to catholicism from an Oklahoman Southern Baptist upbringing, my father claims to be a reasonably rational scientific mind who disputes things such the theory of evolution. One should be intensely surprised at hearing such talk from a physician, but my father did receive his medical degree from the University of Oklahoma med school. University of Oklahoma being a school with strong connections to Oral Roberts and Christian faith healing, both of which were large parts of my father's upbringing, who actually met Oral Roberts as a child and attended many faith healing sessions at his church growing up. Need I say more? Though in defense of University of Oklahoma, while I have no idea what their policy was in the 1970's, their zoology department where my father studied for his undergrad has since passed a departmental statement validating and affirming the need to teach evolution. Ironic. If you would argue still that this isn't clear evidence for the man's bizarre state of mind, he claims he was accepted to both Yale and Harvard med schools on full scholarships but turned them down after touring because at the time what they were teaching conflicted with his personal beliefs.
Despite scientific evidence to the contrary, and just about any person who's ever met me, my father is convinced that I'm not gay that I only think I'm gay and that its a passing phase. My father has made statements to effect that if indeed I do have ADD (which I have indeed been classified as but my father does not believe exists, he thinks I'm just lazy) that it must be the reason that I've been suckered in by the malevolent forces of the world to being convinced that I'm gay. That somehow I went away to college and the liberals turned me gay, I being the child who begged for a New Kids on the Block doll for his 5th birthday and had to be expressly forbidden from being allowed to take ballet.
My father is a radiologist, he is not a psychiatrist, psychologist and has taken nothing past some mandatory undergrad classes in psych back in the 70's, and yet he claims to be an absolute expert on the subject. Like most physicians, he believes that because he is so "God touched" that he is brilliant enough to become a physician he must be light years ahead of anyone else that isn't, and in fact many that are as I've heard him on many occasion talking about what an idiot some other doctor is because he disagrees with them on subjects pertaining to their particular specialty. Physicians think they can do it all, like severely socially retarded aspergers kids, they lack the understanding that the type of intelligence related to science and math amounts to absolute squat when dealing with anything outside that realm. Every physician thinks he or she is a master pianist, artist, philosopher and any other "lesser" discipline that walks the face of the earth. They fail to understand that raw mental bandwidth is not enough. Aside from the basic fact that there are several different types of intelligence and mathematical intelligence does not translate into the required spatial, intrapersonal and existential intelligences required for making art of any substance in the contemporary world, the time and dedication taken to become a physician would completely atrophy any other talents they might have had at one time or another. It takes years to become an artist, I don't remember a single semester of college when I didn't have a minimum of 40 hours a week of homework in addition to the class time I had to devote, there is no possible way someone could keep up with that and do what it takes to become physician and maintain their knowledge to keep it up to date. The idea that someone should parade themselves as an expert in an entirely different field of medicine that they have no formal training in is ridiculous.
This evening my father brought up an article from the journal of pediatrics. My father knows I'm considering returning for a second bachelors in character animation. If you are unaware of this article, its sketchy to say the least. Its basic idea was that children who are allowed to watch fast paced cartoons have temporary attention deficit. The study seemed unreasonably biased. They compared the effects of watching spongebob to those of Calliou. The kids watched the shows then took tests. It seems to me that you might have compared it to other things that are fast paced and hold children's attention such as games like tag. The study is already been ripped apart on the web and people are making some really valid points, I'm not going to dive into them here. So regardless of the fact that I've had ADD my entire life and when I was going to college I had little to no television time yet still had a lot of trouble with my condition, my father suggested that all of my problems with ADD were caused by cartoons. He suggested that I should stop watching cartoons altogether and that that would make my ADD go away. In true Freudian fashion, his underlying message was stop watching cartoons and you'll lose the ADD symptoms, grow up and turn straight. There is no evidence that the effects of television are long term, and in fact the study seem to suggest they last maybe a few hours at most. I might go days, even months without seeing a cartoon, even now I rarely go a minute without thinking about guys. How's that fit into your cosmology dad?
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