flog

"Dawkins, like Provine and some other prominent evolutionary biologists, is proud to proclaim his atheistic proclivities. the very title of Dawkins's book--The Blind Watchmaker--an overt reference to natural selection as the biological equivalent of the Creator-God of the Judeo-Christian tradition, is, of course a deliberate red flag in the face of creationists. The penchant of some scientists--especially those with a wide public following--to agree with creationists like Phillip Johnson that the naturalism of science indeed implies that the Judeo-Christian God does not exists, strikes me as crass and rather stupid. For one thing, it is almost incredibly parochial, saying, in effect, that evolution and a Johnsonesque personal God are the only alternatives in the entire earthly domain, rather than acknowledging that the entire "debate" is a peculiar and bizarrely outdated excresence of (in its greatest part) English and (increasingly) American dated culture--as should by now be obvious to any fair-minded person who has read this far, and as I'll endeavor to characterize further in the next chapter."

-- From, "The Triumph of Evolution and the Failure of Creationism", Niles Eldridge, p 206

It is no great surprise to learn that this note in the back of Eldridge's book irks me to a moderate degree. I haven't come across any "atheistic" evolutionists who suggest there's a dichotomy (either Jesus or evolution). What they point out is that a literal reading of Genesis requires the creationist to accept certain falsifiable statements (the earth is 10,000 years old; fossils (assuming they were created during the Flood) should not follow an orderly sequence of deposition; there is no particular reason to expect to find all of life related in a nested hierarchy (in fact, other examples of "intelligent design" suggest that you definitely will not find life organized in a nested hierarchy)). Pointing out that none of these "hypotheses" is consistent with reality is neither crass nor stupid, but simply the response any reasonable person has to nonsense. Eldridge hardly has any cause to whine when atheists punch so many holes in these arguments; it is hardly Dawkins's fault that creationists have hitched their deity to the anti-evolution wagon.

The inexorable onslaught of Christmas into the months whose names don't end in December continues this year. I walked into a Home Depot on October 2nd and had to dodge a multi-sensory assault from the Christmas section: blinky lights, colorful decorations, pre-snowed upon Christmas trees, and pine cones that smell like a whore's vagina (well, if the whore douches with potpourri). Thankfully no aural assaults...yet.

I did a flog-search and last year the first offense was reported on October 8th (a K-Mart commercial), so it's good to see that for a second year running, Wal-Mart has some competition in the crass commercialization of the sacred birth of baby Jesus. It's reassuring to know that someday, Frankenmuth's "Christmas in July" won't be kitschy.

(Home Depot sucks, by the way - if you prefer to shop at Home Depot instead of Lowes, I suspect your mother may have enjoyed a few too many Kahlua and Vodkas when you were a fetus. FYI, this parenthetical note is really just a joke; I have no particular fondness for any hardware store - I just find FAS humourous. Almost as humourous as the notion that a whore would actually douche - I mean, that cummed in cunt smell is an integral part of the experience of utilizing a prostitute).