Article in Stretton Focus, July 2014 (Amended)
You may well have used the word yourself, or had it used against you – as I have. The word has been around for over 100 years, but has only come into prominent use in recent times. It’s a cop-out.
The word is used as an accusation that someone is evading the truth, and using unworthy means of doing so. It refers to a situation that fails to meet standards of honesty and integrity. It’s an excuse for sloppy thinking!
Cop-out is a word that I would try to avoid using, because the very use of it could be a cop-out itself! It’s a kind of sledge-hammer word; lacking in delicacy and with overtones of arrogance. Nevertheless, the concept is real enough, and some situations deserve the condemnation.
The greatest cop-out of all time was back in 1633, when the Church evaded the truth of Galileo’s scientific discoveries by quoting Scripture. Galileo and others had overturned the Church’s belief that the sun went round the earth. But the Church claimed to know better on the evidence of the Bible, and common sense – because they could see the sun going across the sky every day and sinking in the west.
This cop-out by the Church had serious consequences for the life and health of Galileo – at the hands of the Inquisition, who had previously (in 1600) cruelly tortured Gordiano Bruno and then burned him at the stake for the same ‘heresy’.
Thankfully the days of the Inquisition are over, but in some religious thinking today God is still being used as a cop-out. As science discovers more truth about the Universe, so the Church must be ready to embrace new ways of understanding Creation and our place in it. God help us!
Donald Horsfield