A while back, I watched a NOVA episode about “Intelligent Design.”
Anyone who’s known me for more than 30 seconds can guess what side I fall on in this “debate.” But what cracks me up is, why do some people take such offense at the thought of having descended from apes? You’ve seen it, some guy’s vein popping in his forehead as he screeches “I ain’t come from no goddam ape!!” I’m like easy dude – we’re talking about millions and millions of years of slow, sloooooooow evolution. Nobody’s saying your mother humped an ape. Relax.
Hell, you’d think with our natural sense of competition, we’d be thrilled that we started at the same place as monkeys and have come out so far ahead! Why does this thinking work in NASCAR but not with evolution? Look how much better off than an ape you are right now. You get to do things like pay billionaire’s taxes for them and fight in pretend wars. You can drive a car and play Ms. Pac-Man. You can Photoshop Madonna weeding your garden while Lindsey Lohan brings in a McRib platter in a French maid outfit. Monkeys and apes? They swing in trees and throw their own poop around. Relax! You won!!
Another funny thing I picked up from the NOVA show was these people that insist on an “alternative” to evolution being taught in the first place, alongside evolution. “Hey,” they say “it’s not the LAW of evolution, it’s the THEORY of evolution!” They allow evolution to be taught as long as an alternative is also taught alongside it. But why stop at evolution? I can’t wait to have a kid so I can show up at a school board meeting horrified that the theory of gravity is being taught as fact. I’ll say “Whoa whoa whoa…I don’t mind gravity being taught, as long as an alternative is taught alongside it!” Liiiike, I’m theorizing that the reason things fall to the ground is because we’re all equipped with some sort of invisible, gummy substance to the bottom of our feet. I dunno! Just a theory!
Intelligent Design also claims that different species throughout time apparently just “poofed” into existence. Primates all of a sudden appeared, then later on fish, etc etc. But if God (thinly disguised here as “The Intelligent Agent”) is the all-knowing and almighty, wouldn’t he have created all species all at once? Hell, even according to the Bible-thumpers, he knocked everything out in only 6 days. Are we to believe God’s sitting back admiring what he’s created, thinking “oooooh, yeah, pretty effing sweet….lookit all that…man am I – hold up…where are the cats? Don’t tell me I forgot to create cats?!?!?!? Aw, humandammit!!!!! I’m such an IDIOT!!!” Makes no sense to me. Any other way you’d have to chalk up to at least a variation of natural selection/evolution, no?
But the kicker was, more than one person the interviewed said the Bible tells it how it is because it’s, and I quote, “direct from the mouth of God.” Really? But it was written by…dudes. And nobody disputes this. And it wasn’t even written by a single dude in a burst of enlightenment, it was written over the course of time by many many dudes. It’s kinda like a reverse slam book, isn’t it? “God Rules, pass it on!! – Mark”. They go through the trouble of putting this book together, full of miracles and extraordinary happenings, then tell us it is the word of God and our lives should therein be ruled by it, buuuuut then have no problem telling us it was actually written by the Elks Club. Wtf.
