Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Groaning Pains

Many of you probably remember Kirk Cameron from his 80's gig as a sit-com star.  If not, well, you're not missing much. Apparently he didn't think that yukking it up for 22 minutes a week wasn't funny enough so now he's branched out into a whole new line of comedy: creationist fundamentalism.

[I'll pause here while I wait for you to finish laughing.]

Ok, welcome back. He and a loony named Ray Comfort have decided that the 150th anniversary of the printing of Darwin's "On The Origin of Species" would be a good time to reprint the book.  So far so good, right?  Only theirs comes with a 50-page fundamentalist introduction explaining the evils of evolution and modern society versus the holiness of creationism and fundamentalism.  Seriously!  Oh, it gets better: they're going to give away 100,000 copies of this book at "the top 100 colleges and universities" in the US. All you, the rabid believer, need to do is log onto their web site and (wait for it.......) donate money so they can, uhm.. "print more books".  And of course laugh all the way to the bank.  It's a money-making ploy, plain and simple.

Speaking of laughing if you want to spend the rest of the day in stitches spend some time googling Ray Comfort.  To get you started what the man does with a Banana will have your mouth hanging open.  Don't worry - this actually *is* safe for work. Further hilarity is left as an exercise for the reader.

Best of all there's a six minute video (feel free not to watch it - the last thing they need is more youtube hits, but I put the link in there to be fair - and, uhm balanced) they put together starting the child star that will have you alternating between incredulity, laughter and anger.  I was working on a blog post to point out the inanity of the whole thing is but someone has already done a far better job than I ever could.  Watch her video - it's worth the six minutes.

What the Christina doesn't address is how toxic this whole stream of obsessive religion has become.  Let me be clear: I have no objection to honest, individual religions or religion as a whole.  If people find comfort and happiness in their faith that's wonderful: the world needs more of both.  But that's where it stops.

I happen to love progressive heavy metal music but I don't want it taught in schools, blared out of speakers in the courthouse, played before football games or shoved down the throats of anyone who isn't one of my brothers.  (Incidentally both of whom have thanked me for introducing them to that particular genre, but I digress).  What's so destructive about the fundamentalists is how they are insistent that their way is the only way to the exclusion of not only other faiths, but of science.  Further advancement of the very science that created our modern way of life is threatened by ignorance, mysticism and superstition. In most civilized countries around the world that medieval nonsense is on the decline, but here in the United States it's growing like a fungus and it must be stopped lest we join the third world countries where this sort of thing is already prevalent.

Fortunately this fungus is easily defeated through ample application of intelligence, knowledge, education. What are you going to do today to shine a light on stupid?

5 comments:

  1. You know what kills me about blog posts like this? It's that you have so perfectly covered every point, I have nothing clever or productive to add.

    Kirk Cameron is a freak - Check
    Fundamentalists are scary - Check
    Fundamentalists who think they need to "fix" everyone else are dangerous - Check
    Ignorance is bad - Check
    Shine a light on the fungus - Check

    So, I'm left with just saying ...

    Well said. On all points. :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Kirk Cameron is such a douche. I'm embarrassed that I had a crush on him before he went all fundamentalist-insane.

    ReplyDelete
  3. ZM: Thanks! Tell your friends!

    B: Thank you for your honesty. You may be absolved by saying three hail Sciences and teaching the Pants about evolution.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Where have you been? Kirk Cameron has been doing this for years. He was even in that ridiculous movie about the rapture called "Left Behind." That was a pretty silly.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Good point JM. I figured that making silly movies for the mouth-breather demographic was fine as long as they kept relatively to themselves. But trying to derail science and education can have a direct impact on the rest of us so it definitely rises to the level of absurdity.

    And there's the fact that this blog didn't exist until recently so with my trusty flux capacitor in the shop (stupid tesseract fluid shortage) I couldn't post on it until now. I know: details, details...

    Welcome to the AA comments section, by the way!

    ReplyDelete