woe is me, cries the creationist
“Woe, woe is me,” cries the creationst! “O, vexed the life that spurns reason!”
Once upon a time I let creationist questions get the better of me. Ever since my life has been hardship and suffering.
I can’t maintain a career because employers keep letting me go. They don’t believe entropy makes heat disperse throughout the whole patty, so it isn’t necessary to flip the burgers. Imagine how much labor could be saved!
My marriage is in shambles. My wife keeps threatening to leave unless I give her reasons for everything. Reasons, schmeasons. “Because I said so” is good enough for the kids, why isn’t it good enough for her?
Movies don’t make sense to me. How’d all those people in The Matrix fall asleep with metal spikes in their heads? If rule number one is that no one talks about Fight Club, how’d they know to make a movie about it? And if the One Ring was so powerful, why didn’t Frodo slip it on and kill the bad guys?
My financial portfolio is a disaster. The calculator said I owed the IRS a quarter million dollars, even though I clear barely a tenth of that in a year. But God gave me the calculator, and I’m sure He knew what he was doing. I took out a loan so I could write the IRS a check. You wouldn’t believe the interest the bank is charging me. But that’s okay – every day I buy a lottery ticket and pray over it. God’ll fix it up soon. Besides, my calculator tells me my odds improve with every ticket I buy.
Then there’s doctors. They insist on drawing my blood, but I know better: a little blood here, a little there, and before long I’ll be bone dry. Oh, and they can’t fool me with that antibiotics placebo, either – I know bacteria are the devil’s lie.
One doctor wanted to remove my appendix. “Surgery?” I said. “I don’t take part in sodomy!” No one shoves their body parts – hands, feet or whatever – into any parts of mine; homos go straight to hell. So I get all my medical care from magnets. I keep trying to convince the hospital to put the MRI in reverse, but they won’t do it, so I have to keep using those water massage coffins at the mall.
I didn’t realize creationism would mean I’d have to reject all the sciences, but it does, and that has its own troubles. I ripped the electrical wires out of my home because I don’t trust fire running through the walls. I’m never sure if gravity will drag the water down every time I flush; with a lot of prayer it’s been okay so far. Seasons are frustrating – I keep writing Congress to repeal Daylight Savings Time because I’m sick of shoveling snow. Cold, hot, cold, hot: according to the Flat Earth Society it’s nothing but a conspiracy to fuel the economy. And what’s with mirrors, anyway? Spooky.
Speaking of mirrors, if creationism has done me any favors, it’s opened my eyes to realities that scientists reject. Like the ghost that keeps ringing the bell in my telephone. And those UFOs that keep passing overhead. And fairies, referenced too often in literature to be myth. A few fairies have contacted me in my dreams, so I’m destined to meet one in person. I’ll take photos to prove the Smithsonian wrong.
I wince every time I read the Bible ’cause I never know what huge sacrifice it’ll ask me to make. My hands caused me to sin so I cut off the left one, but then I didn’t have a hand to cut off the right. Every day I lug a heavy wooden cross around my neighborhood ‘cause that’s what Jesus would do. I’m still working on fitting a camel through the eye of a needle, but I doubt even a thorough dicing will work – and then how will I get into heaven?
“Woe, woe is me,” cries the creationst! “O, vexed the life that spurns reason!” Nothing works right, nothing makes sense, and there’s certainly no place for me in the world. But I know the ultimate sign of faith is to reject rational thinking as the devil’s tool. It’s a ponderous sacrifice but I make it anyway, hoping in exchange for an eternity of harps and wings.
Since I don’t know how the internets work, I’m paying a web design firm ten thousand dollars (another high-interest loan) to transmit this warning. I can only pray it will make it through all those underground tubes to reach you. No matter what you do, don’t allow yourself to ask questions about evolution, like I did. Your brain just might fall apart.
(Written by a creationist.)
Tags: creationism, evolution, science
December 28, 2007 at 12:10 pm
I’m continually amazed by the disconnect between ominous warnings about creationism’s dire consequences, and the harmony of my own life and mind.
If I’m so brainwashed … so illogical … such a threat to the fabric of a modern society … then how are the successes of my life possible?
Meet me in person, please. Meet my family, my coworkers, my friends. What toll has creationism taken? What has it dismantled? I support evolutionary research (it’s all God’s creation). I don’t demand that creationism be taught in public schools; in fact, I insist that all students in public, private and religious institutions receive a rigorous training in evolutionary thought. I read the latest evolutionary news regularly.
Despite creationism my life is progressing quite well, really.
December 30, 2007 at 10:59 pm
That was too much much. I had to read this post out loud to my wife, but I kept having to pause with laughter. It would be funnier if I didn’t read it that way. Too tough to be serious though.
You are far too talented for your own good.
January 1, 2008 at 11:47 pm
My favorite is:
Great stuff.
You mention that you support rigorous training in evolutionary thought in school. How do you feel about the concept of ID being… mentioned as an alternate or parallel explanation for the spark of life? Something like the stickers that were placed on Connecticut textbooks explaining that evolution is a theory, and that ID is another theory?
As bad as all of your examples above are (while simultaneously being hilarious), I have to point out that my beliefs put me in a much worse predicament from the opposite perspective:
My soul will burn forever in the lake of fire because I believe that there are fossils older than 6,000 years old. My soul will burn forever in the lake of fire because I don’t believe that Adam and Eve and a Snake were the first talking creatures on earth. My soul will burn forever in the lake of fire because I don’t believe that the argument for irreducible complexity. My soul will burn forever in the lake of fire because, well, just in general, I suck, and I believe that my father’s father’s father was a monkey.
For the record, I don’t believe the monkey is a direct relation - but I do believe that we had a common ancestor.
January 2, 2008 at 6:29 am
I’m content with requiring ID to duke it out in the worldwide scientific community before being mentioned in public schools. Along with that should come a defense of freedom of speech beyond public schools, as my position derives less from my estimation of evolutionary science (with its capacity for entrenched groupthink) than it does from my conviction that truth cannot be suppressed forever. I would object, for example, to a ban on ID material in public libraries.
The only sticker I’m aware of was in Cobb County, Georgia schools:
I agree with one evolutionary scientist who concluded (can’t find the link right now, it was a video dugg about a week back): the sticker didn’t go far enough. All material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered. A sticker to that effect should be placed in every textbook printed for every discipline, not just science, for the rest of time. Bible included.
January 3, 2008 at 6:58 am
Yikes, I hope I haven’t given you any such impression in my creation/evolution blogging. If so, I’m sincerely sorry. You and I write such satires because we hope for affirmation of the opposite — and I am very glad I can do that for you.
Damnation or salvation doesn’t depend on creation/evolution beliefs. It hardly has to do with specifics at all. Look at how this guy was saved:
Salvation isn’t a reward for a correctly filled out application or a stacked resume. It’s a free gift in a relationship between a human being and Jesus Christ. All the second criminal had to do was ask.
I’m very, very sorry for giving any other impression through my writing. To my knowledge, not even the most ardent creationist organizations charge evolutionist Christians with apostasy (breaking away from God). Hypocrisy, compromise, even heresy, yes, but not outright apostasy.
One of the most beautiful things I see in Christianity is that it isn’t about philosophy or theology, it’s about knowing a person, a real person who was killed yet who is alive today. Ideological correctness tends to fall away in the face of the person of Jesus. I took a stab at conveying this in my old piece God the extrovert. A better portrayal is found in John chapter 9, in which a common man pwns the leading Jewish theologians of his day, simply by sticking to the facts of his (brief but profound) encounter with Jesus. It’s a great story so I hope you don’t mind my quoting it in full:
I love this story. I love the way this man confounds the logic of his intellectual superiors simply by staying true to his personal experience. The little denouement at the end, after he’s thrown out of the Temple, underscores the fact that the man didn’t even know who Jesus was — Jesus had to tell him afterwards.
This shows me that a person who encounters Jesus can take Christianity in a direction different from my own while remaining wholly true to God (or even truer!). Indeed, I’ve seen this illustrated dramatically in both Uganda and China.
Part of my personality is perfectionism, striving after better and better ways of doing things, and of course this carries over into my spiritual walk. How freeing for me, then, to find my perfectionism thwarted in Christianity, where God prioritizes people over concepts.
So thank you for raising your objection. You are spot-on, creation/evolution beliefs don’t figure into salvation or damnation. The universe did begin somehow, and that’s a matter we can be right or wrong about, sure. But as far as God is concerned it’s no entrance exam.
January 3, 2008 at 9:32 am
Just a quick followup:
I in no way meant to attribute the comments to you, but rather to the background chatter of comments and reactions I run into when perusing the internets on this topic. Perhaps it is just a matter of perspective - but it seems that there are some pretty amusing jabs from the scientific folks towards the ID crowd (many of which you summed up better than I have seen previously)… while the jabs from the ID side seem to go straight to the jugular, by wholesale condemnation of those who do not believe.
As to whether or not I put any credence into the voracity of their condemnation approach, I put that right around the level of your toilet suddenly not flushing for no other reason than you believe in ID (and forgot to pray when you hit the lever).
January 3, 2008 at 11:05 am
probably you meant vEracity, but it’s more intriguing with the typo left in — just how hungra are those ID’ers anyways?
January 3, 2008 at 11:05 am
One good typo deserves another: “hungrY” of course!
January 4, 2008 at 9:45 am
Maybe it is perspective. I’m sure there are some wackos out there, but my impression is that most creationists or IDers online stick to the issues. Compare that to the overwhelming majority of evolutionists I encounter online who declare (rather gleefully) that nothing exists between my ears but ground beef.
I guess we pay most attention to the shoes that don’t fit.
You, who know me personally, can imagine how strange those accusations are for me to hear. A more effective alternative would be to acknowledge my intelligence (everyone possesses some degree of reason), yet accuse me of deliberately misapplying it for the insidious purpose of thwarting science and promoting superstition. Responding to that would take some work. Alas, the sophistication of such an argument lies beyond the scope of many, leaving me to write silly mockeries like the one above.
(BTW, I’d fix RubeRad’s typo up there, but the turnabout is funny.)
January 17, 2008 at 4:05 pm
Damnation or salvation doesn’t depend on creation/evolution beliefs.
Unfortunately that’s not the case in most fundamentalist and many evangelical churches today. This has become such a devisive issue. I was told that holding an old earth creationist view was incompatible with a ‘real’ understanding of Genesis and called into question my understanding of the rest of Scripture. Suffice it to say, from that point I became a recovering fundamentalist.
January 20, 2008 at 12:54 am
Very unfortunate. This issue shouldn’t cause divisions in the church. I know many Christians whose trust in Scripture is sound, but who don’t agree with me on creation/evolution.
That’s not to say we can’t disagree, discuss, even debate the issues. I’m sorry to hear your experience with that has been sour.
Nice to meet you, then! I’m a recovering reformer myself.
January 30, 2008 at 12:01 pm
Little Brother,
I am curious about the extent of your religious beliefs. Are you comletely athiest? Agnostic? We may share some similarities in our relationships with our older sibling (at least at one time). I was at one time a complete naturalist, while my brother (Howard that commented above) was the exact opposite. Although now a Christian, I spent many conversations with my older brother debating Biblical truth vs. Science. Although so much of my world view has changed over the years, I cannot let go of certain ideas. Such as the planet is obviously older than 6,000 years.
If I can see a star at night that we agree (theist and athiest) is light years away, then the universe must have existed at least long enough for that light to travel here. I cannot imagine a planet that can hold all known species (alive and fossil record) in existance at the same time just a few 6,000 years ago. There just aint enough darn space.
Although your brother is comletely correct that the only thing that REALLY matters to Jesus is that I believe in him, that will be enough for my salvation. But at the same time how do I believe in him, but do not believe what he says is (everything) is truth. How can my savior be wrong about the age of the earth? So for now I struggle with these things. For now I accept there can be mulitple truths that will not be multiple when they are revieled to me in absolute through debate and personal revelation and one day perhaps devine revelation.
Both sides of the creation/evolution debate make many mistakes in attacking the other side, but only (usually) the evolution side envokes the right to call the other side less intelligent. mainly due to the lack of compliance with mainstream science. Although lack of compliance with mainstream science is responsible for every major scientific breakthough.
Jim
January 30, 2008 at 12:17 pm
Naturalism can never explain the creation of existance itself. it can explain everyhing that follows and it would not matter what that was that followed. If everything defyied gravity there would be a natural reason why. If we could draw in the air with our fingers there would be a reason why. There can be no proof for the supernatural that could not be explained with natural causes. So the proof for supernatural is in the fact that there is an exsistance. If there were only naturalism there would be no existance, just void, nothing, kaput! The fact that there is existance is proof of supernatural.
Of course this means nothing about the Bible or Jesus. It was just the start of my worldview turnaround
January 30, 2008 at 12:17 pm
But at the same time how do I believe in him, but do not believe what he says is (everything) is truth. How can my savior be wrong about the age of the earth? So for now I struggle with these things. For now I accept there can be mulitple truths that will not be multiple when they are revieled to me in absolute through debate and personal revelation and one day perhaps devine revelation.
Jim,
First, all truths are God’s truth. By definition, a statement can’t be both true and not true. So, whether you’re talking about science or faith, truth is truth, and the only thing that differs is our interpretation of it.
Your savior was not wrong about the age of the earth, because He never brought up the topic. People imply that “God said the earth is 6000 years old,” because that’s their understanding of it. Anything contrary to their position is (by their definition) a challenge to their faith.
January 30, 2008 at 3:28 pm
Steve,
“multiple truths” was a very poor choice by me in getting my point across. Of course there can be only one truth. What I mean is that the information that currently appears contrary may end up not to be.
I dont think anyone is implying that God says the Earth is 6000 years old. Adam was made in the first week and Generations are counted since (or something like that, not sure exactly how 6000 is arrived at). Reguardless of the inaccuracys you cannot get to millions of years with a literal translation of Genesis.
There is a passage (not sure where) where Jesus talks about the old testament being accurate (I am sure someone can quote it here). My guess is you will tell me about my understanding of the actual meaning of Genesis not being accurate through that whole “day” actually meaning “age” thing.
January 30, 2008 at 4:02 pm
Here is a link showing how scripture determins earth age
http://www.albatrus.org/english/theology/creation/biblical_age_earth.htm
Was the star light really taking millions of years or is scripture correct?
Or to my point, will we actually find out the universe expanded faster than light or God made the light “en route” or some other definition of truth that allows for both observations to be true
January 30, 2008 at 4:23 pm
Here is a link showing how scripture determins earth age
Jim,
I would change that slightly to say “Here is a link showing how someone used Scripture to determine earth age.” I’d be cautious when someone implies certainty of an event or an interpretation when the truth is not plainly evident in Scripture.
Likewise, you can’t ask ‘is starlight really old or is Scripture true?’ When there’s an apparent discrepancy between science and Scripture (since both are ‘true’), it’s probably a problem with our interpretation, either of science or Scripture or both.
As for your earlier supposition, I wouldn’t classify myself as a day-age creationist, but as a pan-creationist, meaning that whatever is true will pan out in the end. General and special revelation (meaning the word of God and the natural, observable world around us) when taken together, seem to show an old earth. I’m willing to be convinced either way, but in the end, the whole old-earth/young-earth debate is secondary to our call to reach a dying world with the Gospel.
January 30, 2008 at 6:46 pm
Or even more correctly, “Here is a link showing how someone used Scripture to support their view of the earth’s age.”