So I went to see the March of Penguins with my mother and grandmother.
Now, Grandmother’s been very concerned about my family’s “spiritual health” ever since I came out of the Genesis Closet & declared I was an unapologetic evolutionist, and furthermore, I believed anyone who still believed in literal creationism was quite uneducated in the sciences. Note that she’s been concerned about “my family”, not only me. She hasn’t figured out that I don’t speak for my parents, and she’s been showering my parents in AiG & ICR videos and books. That I do feel guilty about, because my parents are YECs, they just don’t believe anymore that you’re going to hell if you’re not an evolutionist.
(Bear with me. This does have relevance. Really.)
Anyway… after the movie (which was, btw, the only “wow, that was GOOD” movie I’ve seen since Return of the King… damn Hollywood), my mother commented that Grandma made a point of making statements along the line of “wow, isn’t God wondrous” with that movie, and she felt that Grandma was trying to impress on her that the penguins couldn’t possibly have evolved on their own.
Anyone who’s familiar with creationist theology knows that one of the biggest reasons why YECs are, well, YECs is that they believe that physical death entered the world with sin. So I responded sarcastically: “Yeah, God designed them to be really efficient killing machines.”
Mom didn’t get it, never having been too involved in YECism–she never partook any of Grandma’s propaganda literature–so I explained, “The main reason why creationists believe evolution is heretic is because they believe physical death didn’t happen until the fall. Plus the whole world was very warm and tropical back then. These penguins are not designed to eat plants, they’re designed to kill fish and to live in extremely harsh climates.”
She saw the YEC logic (such a contradiction in terms, “honest politican” now sounds almost plausible) and then said, “Maybe after the Flood, God designed them to eat meat, just like he told Noah to eat meat.”
I said, “So God took away the ability to eat vegetables too? Mom, these penguins were never vegetarians.”
“The Bible says his ways are not our ways. We can’t comprehend how he thinks blahblah elided”
“So, you’re basically saying that our observations contradict with the Bible and the world makes no sense at all.” Note: Paraphasing
At this point she got the deer-in-headlights look. A bit too forcefully, she said, “Well, look forward to how much we’ll find out when we get to heaven! It’ll all make sense then!”
At this point, my “you’re beating a dead horse” alarm began pegging and I give up and I say, “…yeah, you’re right…”
Fuck you Mom, you’re smarter than that. The whole Godworksinmysteriouswaysisn’thewonderful is for stuff like “why did Fido run away” or “why did God kill 200,000 people in that Boxing Day tidal wave”? Mom, you work 50 hours a week, you’re the most professional, hard-working, take no-nonsense woman I’ve known. You’ve never been judgmental that I know of, and everyone loves you because you’ve never had a thought for yourself, you always think of everyone’s problems and you truly care for your employees and family. You exemplified the ideal Christian, in my mind. Yet… in that short conversation, you’ve basically admitted that you’ve never critically thought about Christianity. If you’ve not found what it means to be a Christian, Mom, no one has.
Over the last year, two things changed me greatly: first, that I eschewed European/Buchananist economics (there, I’ve offended everyone!) & became an anarcho-capitalist, wherein I not only accept the reality of foreign competition but I now welcome it, which I feel has put me giant leaps ahead of many programmers who refuse to accept that their cheese’s moved (or however that analogy goes–been a long time since I read that book). The other change is that I came to conclude there’s no Abba in the sky, period. “Abba” as in “Daddy in the Sky” who is actively involved in my life. Now, that in itself does not make the New Testament invalid… it simply invalidates a good many Christians’ view of God. However, Mom’s commentary and the sad conclusion I drew from it has me concluding that, no, God does not exist after all. First thing I’m doing when I arrive in my new city is to remove that Jesus fish from my car. They’re becoming too much of a political statement anyway.
Sigh…
