Creationism > Evolution

Until recently, I regarded creationists with the same reaction I exhibited when I heard that Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes became engaged - a slight gagging noise followed by a spittle-projected you have got to be kidding me. But I've now realized how wrong I was about creationism (I stand by my TomKat reaction), and how sometimes when we consider ourselves to be enlightened and intelligent, we misjudge other belief systems that on the surface seem to be so outlandish.

The piece of literature that opened my eyes to the superiority of creationist beliefs? It's right here.

How could I ever have overlooked a belief system that pits the Angel of Evil against the Angel of the Lord by way of dinosaurs? I mean, look at the picture for Scene 1! Those dinosaurs are fucking pissed!! Even the herbivores like the triceratops are out for sacred blood! This has really made me feel like a daggone fool all these years, putting all my faith in the slow, booooring process of evolution that involves random mutations over hundreds of thousands of millions and trillions of years, when really, a Braveheart-type dinosaur showdown was the answer all along.

But speaking seriously now, I am getting really sick of all these creationism/evolution arguments that this country is still having. This post is not about being anti-religion* or anti-God, but you would think that after over a century since the publication of Origin of the Species**, the Christian fundamentalists would have allowed us to put this behind us so we can move on to the next God-versus-science debate. It boggles my mind that this - THIS - is still an issue (and a big one at that) that is given time and energy in this country. At the very least you would think that more people could incorporate elements of evolution into their religious beliefs (crevolution?) and not completely denounce scientists as godless heretics, but no. That is too much of a hell-bound consideration.

What really burns my bananas though, is that the author of the dinosaur-showdown theory had the gall to use us Chinese as evidence of his crackpot ideas. This made me cry. Did he really have to taint our word for "boat" (the explanation of which is incorrect, by the way) just to implicate the rest of us in his the-Bible-speaks-truth belief system?

The pro-creationism arguments keep coming back to the same old points, which I think are addressed wonderfully in this article at Scientific American dot com. The one point that has really been vocalized by the religious...enthusiasts (to use a friendly term) is that evolution is only a theory, not proven fact. There was a great article in the Washington Post several months ago by a researcher countering this point, and I regret that I can't post a link to that, but the Scientific American article does a decent job explaining the same ideas. Please take a moment to read the SA arguments, if not to convince yourself then to educate yourself so you can convince someone else.

But I have to admit, dinosaurs attacking a giant ark is pretty fucking cool.

*I considered adding the AIM conversation between Chris Canary and I in which he suggests that we ship all creationists to a deserted island, and I add that following said exile we should explode the island, but I thought that might be in poor taste, so that conversation will not be included.

**See "10 Most Harmful Books" link in previous post.