7 posts tagged “creation”

October seems like a good month to think about bats, and Lauri's profile pic of little white bats under a leaf started my daily internet wandering.  I strolled around on Google, looking at leaf-nose bats and vampire bats and fruit-eaters and flying foxes.  All so cute and amazing.  Then I ran across two completely opposite things, one of which definitely counts as internet weirdness.

It's a website dedicated to debunking the myths of evolution, carbon dating, and geological layering.  The main points are: humans and dinosaurs lived together, the earth isn't that old, and evolution is silly.  Among the highlights are a very brief photo essay proving that some stalactites and stalagmites don't take very long to form.  Yup.  (Never mind that some do.)  As proof--a stalagmite formed over a dead bat that formed before the bat could decay!  Gasp!  Of course, in tradition of nutjob hyperbole, the headline that goes with the photo is: Bat "Caught" by Stalactite.  It's hard to ferret out exactly what this proves.  Unless the photo is upside down, what we're really looking at is a stalagmite, formed over a dead bat on a cave floor.  If it is a stalactite, well, even if it took years to form, tendons take years to decay.  A bat's foot tendon is what keeps it clinging to a cave ceiling when it's asleep, and yes, after it's dead, too.  So, no matter how quickly stalactites can form, it's unlikely that the bat was "caught," isn't it?

Another highlight is the proof offered at Angkor Wat that humans and dinosaurs co-existed.  Here it is:

I don't know if the people who run this website don't understand that this is artwork, or if they're willing to accept artwork as proof while they dismiss science.  Look, as an artist, I appreciate their faith in the truth of art and literature, but really?  Does this mean unicorns co-existed with humans in the 15th century?
Ah, well, we've had a few laughs, so let's move on to the second thing I found in my search for cute bat pictures:some photos of bat embryos.

Look at him!  Wif his widdle hand up over his face.
Interesting, though, how hard it is to tell an early stage human embryo from an early stage bat embryo.  As though we mammals are passing through the history of our genetic forebearers as we grow in the warmth of our mother's womb, as she flies through the night, devouring insects.

It makes a mockery of the idea that evolution isn't real, and the belief that evolving from an earlier mammal form would somehow make humans less wonderful.  In truth, it makes us more amazing.  We are a work in progress.  (Or in progress of splitting into new forms, if you believe Oliver Curry.)  Which brings me to my last internet discovery for the day: an essay by Lee Silver about what makes a human a human.  Are we human the instant sperm and egg meet, or does it take something more?

After a parent challenged a school's plan to show Al Gore's film on global warming, a British judge has declared that An Inconvenient Truth can be shown in British schools.  However, it must be accompanied by instruction documenting the "nine errors" contained in the film. 

I'm not here to dissect the judge's interpretation of scientific data in the film (or even his capacity to evaluate that data.)  Rather, I would like to applaud an education system in which there is an interest in evaluating education materials for accuracy.  So different from the US, where the Kansas Board of Education changed the science curriculum to remove any mention of "biological macroevolution, the age of the Earth, or the origin and early development of the Universe."  In short, how refreshing to see a culture interested in education based on science and verifiable facts, as opposed to education based on superstition and religious bias.

It's a discussion that's been brewing a while: what kind of rights do the great apes have, if any?  They're not humans, so we can't say they have human rights, but it's hard to deny that they're nearly human.  I'm not going to waste my time talking about how much DNA we "share" with apes--after all we "share" a lot of our DNA with a banana.  On the other hand, I'm not in denial about what I am.  You don't have to spend too much time watching a chimpanzee or bonobo or gorilla family to realize that they're a lot like us.  They may not have the physical capacity for complex verbal communication, but we have discovered they have the mental capacity for language that goes beyond the sound recognition that dogs use.

A lot of people still cling to the idea that there is some ethereal division that separates human from ape--a magical line drawn in the spiritual realm.  For many people that division was drawn by the hand of a god.  For thousands of years, people have chosen to believe that all animals were put here for the use of humans, and that has fueled a lot of the anger of evolution.  If you accept the likelihood of evolution that magical line disappears into primordial mud.  We are to the chimpanzee what the chimpanzee is to the marmoset--smarter, stronger, more adaptable.  No more, no less.  We are just a more advanced evolutionary stage.

The proof of that divine separation for most people is morality.  Steve Jones, professor of genetics at University of London, claims that apes "don't have a moral sense of what's right or wrong," but the proof he offers is poorly reasoned: "Rights and responsibilities go together and I've yet to see a chimp imprisoned for stealing a banana."  True, but that hardly addresses the issue of whether a chimp knows right from wrong.  All that means is that he doesn't know legal from illegal.  If you're truly hungry and don't have any money (as most monkeys don't), I don't accept that it's wrong to steal a banana.  It's just that apes are ill-informed of English Common Law prohibiting the theft of bananas. 

Let Dr. Jones go on professing what he knows about genetics, but I'd rather look to sociobiologists and primatologists to answer the question of whether apes can have morals.  In fact, some of the observational evidence suggests that gods or religious faith don't provide the only route to morality.  Rather, it looks like even animals have a sense of right and wrong, an urge toward compassion, an ability to empathize.  Apparently the Golden Rule applies broadly throughout the animal kingdom.  Primatologist Dr. Frans de Waal observes that "all social animals have had to constrain or alter their behavior in various ways for group living to be worthwhile."  While religion and philosophical thought have given us ways to develope elaborate, abstract, and often absurd moral codes, the basic morality of not hurting others and behaving fairly crops up in all kinds of social animals.  (As there are in human groups, there are always exceptions.  Just as human groups do, a chimpanzee tribe may have a brutal dictator male who kills those who oppose him.)  Morality is mostly for the greater good of the community and when everyone behaves respectfully, the community thrives.

So while I'm not in favor of giving the great apes the vote (after all, my people only got it in 1920), I wouldn't give the vote to an 8-year old or a mentally challenged 40-year old.  Neither would I approve of using that 8-year old or that 40-year old in scientific experiments.  Ditto for my monkey brethren.

No, not that Word.  If you're interested, I went over to Northern Sun Merchandising and they do indeed have the bumper sticker I mentioned yesterday.

Of course, they have a lot of other cool stuff that you might rather have.  If you're interested in sporting a little sustained outrage, they've got you covered. They've got your Support the Troops, Impeach Bush sticker, or one that declares My Ten Commandments are the Bill of Rights.  They've got any kind of political/religious/peace/environment shirt you could ever want, including that old gem from my college days: Another Skinhead for Peace.  (Go Ghandi!)
And then they have one of my all time favorites:

You can't make shit like this up, people.  As someone who  has quite a bit of personal and professional experience with making up unbelievable shit, I'm telling you that what is about to follow could only exist in the non-fiction world.  No self-respecting fiction publisher or editor would let a thing like this fly.

A few days ago I happened across a post by Miss Scotch about her exciting days as an English tutor for the child of some Italian yoga Hindu cultists.  She posted a picture of their guru that got me started on one of my random internet searches.  That random internet search brought me here: Woman Thou Art God, The University of Mother God Church, presented by its one true prophet, Rasa Von Werder. 

I like having a little fun with religion, and cults are even more fun than mainstream religions, but sometimes...sometimes you don't have to do anything to make a cult funny.  In fact, in some cases, parody is redundant.  (Take Landover Baptist--it isn't a bit funnier than the real Baptist churches it mocks.)

In detailing her many visions and conversation with Jesus (and several other historic religious figures, this is what the website of  Woman Thou Art God has to say:

In 2002 Rasa dreamed about being married. This always means Jesus because Jesus has actually betrothed her with three rings in 1978, and married her in a mystical experience in 1982. In this dream, she's looking at her husband who is standing next to a fireplace. He is dressed in black, and He is Tom Selleck, suddenly she is shocked because she has not really seen her husband so beautiful as if she was blind before. The next scene he is on top of her making love, she knows his penis is inside of her but there is no feeling of grossness...only a feeling a divine love.

That's right, folks, Jesus appeared to her as Tom Selleck.
Here is what Rasa has to say about why Jesus appeared as Tom Selleck:

By the way, Jesus rarely appears rarely looking like the long-haired, robed person in classical art. He appears as we said, as the most handsome, sexiest man that Rasa can conceive of. Handsome and sexy means beauty, and God is beauty. On the other hand, the devil is ugly, and when he appears he is always ugly except in rare cases when he tries to fool you with outward appearance and appears attractive, but there is a sinister feeling to his looks.

Thanks, crazy lady, because regular religions don't already stress the "evil is ugly and ugly is evil" theory.  You're really breaking new ground here.  Had enough?  Me neither, let's read on:

There is a saint named Baba Muktananda that Rasa has had the closest relationship with, next to Jesus.  [One] night, [Baba] was on top of her and he was transmitting the lotion of consciousness into her being. She didn't feel anything like sex or penis, but his being on top was a symbol and a sign that he was downloading grace into her. Another time he appeared as Jean Claude Van Damme, one of Rasa's favorite stars and yet another time as the star from "The Highlander" -another super-handsome man.

Or how about Mohamed came to her in a dream as David Hasselhoff, and he was naked, holding two puppies.  Like this:

Alright, that last one, I made that up...and yet it is not as wacky as the real stuff.  Oh, and to Crixpy or Christina L'Estrange, whoever you are, who originally brought this photo to my attention: you need help.

Perhaps the bizarre part is that beyond all the total fruit and nut religious visions and spiritual sex, the website has some interesting articles on women's empowerment issues, like breastfeeding and polygamy.  

You know why I hate everyone? Because I'm bleeding out of a hole in my body.

That's my answer to anyone who'd like to suggest that there's such a thing as intelligent design. Once a month, I bleed copiously out of one my orifices. That sounds like a fucking design flaw to me.

Imagine you buy a new car, and the first 27 days are heavenly. You're driving around in a state of honeymoon ecstasy. It rides like a dream and it smells like new car. On day 28, though, you notice a whole bunch of oil leaking out from under the car, and over the next few days, it just goes on leaking oil. It's embarrassing, and you fold up some old rags and stuff them under the hood to absorb the oil until it finally stops leaking. 28 days later, it happens all over again, and the car, it doesn't smell so new anymore. You'd be pissed, wouldn't you? You'd make some nasty phone calls to the dealership and the manufacturer, and then you'd be psychotically pissed off to hear the answer to your complaint: "But that's part of the design. It's meant to do that." You'd want to kill somebody, maybe a whole bunch of somebodies. That's how I feel.

Motherfucker.

I hate Kansas. I love Kansas. I hate Kansas. I love Kansas. I could go back and forth all day. For everything about Kansas that I love passionately, there is something to hate with equal passion.
I love:

• the flat lands,


• the no-accent slow-talking,


• my sisters (all born there)


• the church-supper friendly folks,


• John Brown


• K-State (Go Rhodes Scholars!)


• county fairs

And then, they have to go get all God-crazy again.
For the second time, the Kansas Board of Education has voted to promote the teaching of "Intelligent Design" and downplay the teaching of evolution.  Because people don't think we're stupid enough already...it's like the Board of Education thinks we're in a contest with Alabama or something for most backwater hick state.

True story about my childhood in a small town in Kansas: In my freshman biology class, we were studying evolution, when the biology teacher brought up "Creationism." This was long enough ago that they hadn't developed that new catch phrase intelligent design. Far away from the bastions of learning in the east and bulwarks of liberalism in California, my teacher didn't hesitate to tell us that evolution was a bunch of hogwash.

It has been proven, he said, that the earth is only about six thousand years old.

As a hardened skeptic of fourteen, I raised my hand and said, "What about the dinosaur bones? Carbon dating shows that they're a lot older than 6,000 years."

The dinosaur bones? my college-educated biology teacher said. God put them there to fool the Unbelievers.

"God went to all that trouble just to fool me, a fourteen-year old girl?" I said. "That's pretty pathetic."
I'm lucky I managed to pass that class at all.

The happy ending to all of that? I got a degree in English from K-State, instead of a degree in...biology.