Snarky theology 3: Evolution, Creationists, and other Irritants.

The third in our Snarky Theology series for Lent.  Round one was on how Catholics are Cannibals.  Round two was some simple (Perhaps even simple minded.) thoughts on Lent itself.  I had considered making this about sex, but after last week, I think I'll hold off on the incendiary topics for another week.



This week, let's take a look at evolution ... No, I don't think it's an incendiary topic.



Evolution: the premise that humans came from other species.  Monkeys seem to be at the top of the list of suspects.



Apparently, it's quite important to some people.



Seriously, deeply, psychotically important.



You have the really weird creationist museum. Which should either be there as comic relief, or set on fire. Pick one.



But I've noticed there's two sides to the so-called debate, where they take the idea of evolution and decide to apply it to religion.



Really, people? What is your problem?

 Creationists: The Bible is literal, but we have dinosaurs, which weren't in the bible.  Which indicates a time period before the Bible, but the Bible is the end all and be all of all of history? NOOOOOOOO.  How can we reconcile dinosaurs with the book?  I know, dinosaurs in the Garden of Eden!  Let's have Adam and Eve and a VELOCIRAPTOR! BWAHAHAHA!!



Evolunatics: God is dead! The Bible was meant as a literal chronology of all of human history, but we have dinosaurs!  It's all wrong!  All of it!  MUWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!



Then I roll my eyes, sigh, and shake my head.  At the end of the day, I look at both sides, and decide that this particular asylum isn't being run by the psychologically stable.



Does it matter where we came from? Scientific research might benefit from such knowledge, sure. But, from what I've noticed, there's enough conflicting evidence to show that it's a nice theory, not a dead-certain fact. 

However, evolution has become a religion. It's sort of like man-made global warming—which is hard to prove considering that our evidence is the geological equivalent of a eyeblink in the history of the universe.  And, living on the East coast this winter, I would really, really like my global warming already.



How does evolution effect me, a Catholic?



Not at all.  Not a bit.  Not even for thirty seconds.



Looking at genesis, God made the world in six days, rested on day seven. While I think it is a very nice generation of a story based on the theology of the day (over two thousand years ago), I don't think that God needs a nap.



If there is a God, qualities He should have include omnipotence—naps should not be required.



Do I think it's more likely that someone wrote the story with the concept that “well, we're supposed to rest on the Sabbath, the seventh day, therefore, so did God”? Yes.



Then there's the Garden of Eden and Adam and Eve. I, and the Vatican, last I checked, look at the story more as a parable: the first sin that man ever committed was pride, the first time that someone said “I am more important than my neighbor / God / insert someone here.” There's a reason that, in most mythology, Greek, Roman, et al, pride kills about as often as all the other causes put together.



I can look at the story of Genesis and easily reconcile it to the Big Bang.



“The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.” Expand “Earth” to “everything” and that sounds like a good enough description of nothingness as I could generate.



“And God said 'Let there be light.' ” Sounds like an explosion to me.



And before this degenerates into a line by line reconstruction of Genesis via science, I'm going to end it with saying, simply: if God fits the model generated by Thomas Aquinas, He is eternal, and thus outside of time; who's to say what a day is to Him? Six days, sixty billion years, same difference.



The difference between Catholics and some evangelical / fundamentalist Christian groups is that Catholicism rejected literalism as a heresy over fifteen hundred years ago.



As for evolution: if the premise is right, then fine, great, it is merely the mechanism God used to create people. As Cardinal Baronius (1598) said, “The bible tells us how to go to Heaven, not how the heavens go.”  (Googling this, I had about four different citations to the quote, so don't shoot me.)



But, right now, what does it matter? Seriously, as Sherlock Holmes once said, "What the deuce is it to me?.... [Y]ou say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work."



And, until my works of science fiction become publishable, the solar system doesn't matter to me, either. Evolution will probably never become important to me and my work … if only because James Rollins already wrote that book (Altar of Eden).



Science likes to talk about how it's been a poor, persecuted field of endeavor, starting with Galileo ...



Well, Galileo was prosecuted for two things. One, he taught a theory as though it was a fact.  Saying that the Earth goes around the sun was unsubstantiated at that time for several reasons.  1) We could not observe stellar parallax (if the Earth moves, we should be able to see the stars change position relative to each other; stellar parallax was unobservable until the mid-eighteenth century).  2) If the Earth is moving at a thousand miles an hour, why doesn't feel like it's moving; and why haven't we flown off it yet? Science is still shaky on these points.



What else was Galileo prosecuted for?  Well, it could have had SOMETHING to do with the fact that he publicly made fun of the Pope, who had been his friend, and, well, you know what happens when good friendships go sour, they end badly.  He had never once been threatened with being burned at the stake.  He was sentenced to house arrest.  According to letters with his daughter, a nun, he actually agreed with his jail sentence as a just punishment ....



And yes, I am a nerd of many colors.



Evolution has it's own "martyr" in John Scopes.  For those unfamiliar with the The State of Tennessee v. Scopes, it was made into the play "Inherit the Wind"-- a teacher was put on trial in the southern United States for teaching evolution in school.  William Jennings Bryan, three time presidential candidate for the Democrats, argued for the prosecution, while Clarence Darrow ran the defense.



Here's the problem: atheist scientist Daniel Dennett is on the side of the prosecution in that case, because the evolution of Mr. Scopes called for sterilization of rednecks, and other "undesirables."  The book Scopes used is called Civic Biology.  I particularly like the section called "The Remedy."



Creationists: You want to take every single word of the Bible literally? Fine, then why aren't you all Jews for Jesus?  Evolution isn't a threat to you if you put five seconds of thought behind it.  And you people are putting way too much money into defending something that's really rather stupid.  Most of you are in Kansas (what is the matter with Kansas, anyway?  First Creationism, now Fred Phelps. Is it something in the water?).



Evolunatics: if you're right, any sensible person of faith should dismiss evolution as simply “God's mechanics.” And even if you are right, stop using the Scopes trial as a stigma to beat a dogma.  Anyone who reads Scopes' textbooks will not be on your side.  If you wish to back Scopes to the hilt, eugenics and all, Cold Spring Harbor and Auchwitz are both thataway (points East).



On the one hand, with "Intelligent Design," I think it's an uncessary argument, due to the paragraph above.

As for evolution ... Evolution is a nice theory. From what I've seen, it assembles most of the puzzle pieces that evidence has handed over. Is it a fact according to the rigorous standards of science that I was brought up with? Not last time I checked. Then again, with the standards of science I grew up with, you practically needed video evidence of something happening to prove that it happened and how it happened, and sometimes not even that is enough evidence.



We have audio recordings of echoes from the big bang, and even that isn't enough for some people. Why? "Oh dear, if there's a definitive start to the universe, someone might use that to prove there's a deity" .... I'm actually serious on that part. Stephen Hawking dedicated a whole theory on the start of the universe that involves time loops, making the universe a self-sustaining phenomenon ... and I just lost you, didn't I? I'll put away the Star Trek terminology now.   The short version is that some scientists would rather come up with badly written science fiction then even have a good scientific theory that might, may possibly, give ammunion to all of those "annoying God-people."



While Aquinas had an argument for God called the argument from causation, I wouldn't expect any good scientist to say the equation is "Big Bang = God." I would expect a good scientist to come up with scientific reasons following evidence they have.  Self-sustaining time loops do no count as good science. I don't even think they are good science fiction.



But, as far as evolution goes, it isn't even a significant portion of the puzzles pieces that are my life, and I seriously, seriously wonder about people on both sides of the issue. The creationists are really rather weird. On the other, you have the evolution crowd who want to declare that God is dead because of evolution.



I think they're both invalid arguments.



So, to the creationists and the evolunatics, I say: Calm down, the both of you.  Not only are you both embarassing yourselves, you've both spent enough time and energy fighting over this that you could have cured cancer by now.



(And, oh, yeah, Kansas, if you spawn another delusional, foaming at the mouth band of lunatics, I'm going to start a petition to have all of the floride in your water system replaced with thorazine.  Capisce?)



[Update: It has been pointed out to me my Mr. Gerrity (below) that some topics have been shafted in this article.  One, I thought that creationism had been linked to within the document, for those people who are not already familiar with the BS involved.  Two: this is called snarky theology.  I'm trying to entertain as well as give a slight education.  If you desire more on this topic, and in a more serious manner, then please say so below.  I will not write a new, serious, piece of apologetics that will probably make my own eyes glaze over if only one person is going to read it.  And, three, Richard Dawkins will get his own, special blog, much much later.]

Snarky Theology 2: FAQs about Lent.

For those of you who aren't Catholics, or for those Catholics who don't care, Lent has already started.  In fact, it started last Wednesday.  I suppose standard procedure would have been to post it then, but I had someone post a link I wanted to respond to, and I needed a few days for my blood pressure to come down.



So, what is Lent?  Lent is a part of the Catholic calender that is, essentially, a forty-day warm up to Easter. I've already started living on yogurt and berries.



As part of my Lenten series of sort-of religious blog posts, here are some FAQs about Lent.



FAQ: Why is Lent when it is?



A: Read the Bible. Pick a gospel, any gospel. While they can't agree on what Jesus' last words were, one thing they all agree on is that Jesus was nailed to a day of 2x4s the day after the Passover meal. The only reason Passover isn't always the same time as Easter: the math is different (literally, different astronomy, Judaism uses a lunar calender for such calculations, Catholics don't. Greek Orthodox do, however). 

FAQ: What's with giving up stuff?



A:  Religious reason: Traditionally, you give up stuff for the forty days of Lent because it's part of mental and spiritual discipline. Not to mention that Jesus got nailed to a set of 2x4s, we can give up Oreos for a few weeks.  And, forty is the running gag of Biblical numerology, so it's as good an idea as any.



However, giving up "stuff" isn't supposed to be the point.  Giving up any bad habit, sinful behavior, reflecting on your spiritual life, is supposed to be where the emphasis lies.  If you look at the question sheet my parish handed out, it's focused on spirituality, etc.  Giving up stuff isn't even mentioned -- the start of Lent is marked by "What are your resolutions."  Giving up material things isn't necessarily required.



“Real world” reason: Look at the time frame. Lent falls in late winter, early spring. Basically, when you start Lent, most of the world will be coming to the end of their winter stores of food. Lent took a problematic reality and turned it into a religious duty. Who says a religion can't be practical?



Modern "real world" reason, for the West: think of it as extra incentive for all of those new years resolutions you couldn't get through.  See above: Jesus got nailed to a set of 2x4s, we can give up Oreos for a few weeks.



FAQ: Catholics giving up “meat” on Fridays during Lent, yet eat fish? What, fish grow on trees now?



A:   I assume that no one who asks that question has ever done their own shopping. “Meat” is in one aisle, “Fish” in another.



The Latin word for meat is “Carne,” which translates more literally as “guts.” Meat, in the original language version, was anything that had internal organs. This is pretty much why fish is allowed on Fridays. I can't say that I've ever been able to identify any internal organs in any shell fish I've ever opened up; and any non-shelled aquatic animal tends to be gutted.



And, another "real world" reason: if you live near a large body of water, you could probably always find something to eat.  "Out of season" fish is a reletively recent concept.



Q: Why do you make children participate in Lent?  They're Children, they know nothing of sacrifice!  They can't understand!  This is child abuse!



A: Honest to God, I've seen this argument, I can't make it up.  I must thank Matt for this one.   He posted a link on his Facebook page, and I followed it through. 



Now, while this guy brought up some excellent points about Vatican II (which was administered by abject morons, and as well-timed as a pork roast at a bar mitzva), he shows about as much thought to the concept of religion and children as Richard Dawkins, whom he cites.....



I read the article. I found it a lovely piece of evidence that, while Catholic education is great for teaching reading and writing, they suck on teaching things like, oh, BEING CATHOLIC. I know, I went, and I had to look up everything myself.



The article author talks about fish not being meat [Again:  Carne (meat) meant "having guts." I've seen the internal organs of shellfish, they look less like guts and more like mush. Therefore they're "not meat."  And other fish are gutted]



Also, the article itself is a little confusing.  At the start of the article, his ten-year-old-self seems to understand everything about Lent, and does it quite well. By the end, he's whining that "no ten year old can understand" the concept of sacrifice; yet, at 13, he seemed to want a MORE stringent guideline. Someone should have told him that no one was going to stop him. He could have even gone to a pre-Vatican II church, Mel Gibson's father is part of one.



I liked how he seemed to have grasped the basics, until "Oh No!  It's Vatican II!"  Suddenly, he can't understand any of it, because "Vatican II radically changed the way Catholics practiced"..... 



Um, no, not really.  That may have been the way it was filtered down to this guy, but congratulations, it means that you're doing mass in English. You don't have to learn Latin, and the Vatican figured out that, gee, you don't have to fast every day of Lent anymore, since half of the planet is no longer in starvation mode by the end of winter -- the Church changed the bare minimum, that's all.



Vatican II (V2: Repentance Day) was supposed to have the church address the "modern world," instead of this guy's thought that we were losing members. The irony is that Rome hemorrhaged members AFTER V2, not before. There were enough internal memos that made it to the public, V2 looked like Obama's foreign policy during Egypt, for much the same reason. The Pope who called V2 wanted the church to keep up and adapt to the world. The argument the article gives is that nothing in the Bible, or Jesus, or any text, had changed, is true -- but the entire world had.



And so, V2, "Oh, we're going to bring the laity into the decision-making process."  Thanks, I've been through that process.  I'd sooner take the nuns.



The parts of Lent modified by V2 turned religious duties into mandatory minimums, since they were no longer harsh realities for half the planet.



After reading this twit's suddenly inability to comprehend, I wonder ... Does that mean I was a very bright eight-year-old, or does that make him a really dumb thirty-year-old?  I understood Lent while growing up, and so did he -- but, sometime between the start and the end of the article, he got confused, and fell down.



To actually answer this nitwit, I would like to direct him to my answer to the second FAQ.  I used a specific phrase:  the modern real world reason for the west.  Because, guess what, this isn't all about him. Screaming "child abuse" doesn't work, when you consider that the original, practical reasons for stringent fasting still apply to parts of the world he wouldn't be caught dead in. 



Now, I don't know if that makes him a provincial, small minded, "ugly American," or if that makes him a cranky Catholic who no one explained stuff to.  And, considering that half the kids in America are butterballs, taking away their junk food for forty days might, just MIGHT, be a good idea.



Not to mention that, oh, dear, Michelle Obama is also trying to make kids sacrifice food ... all year round .... I must have missed his article when he screamed that the First Lady was abusing our children. 



Oh, and, again, giving up stuff is a surface sign of faith, and is not the main point-- modifying behavior for the better, enhancing faith, is the point, and that is where the emphasis lies; maybe that's what he didn't, and doesn't, understand.



I also like the assumptions inherent there.  "I don't understand something, so why should I be expected to do it?"  Little kids sometimes don't understand the concept of "don't steal" (have you ever seen one with toy bins in Kindergarten?), or don't lie, or "don't touch the burner on the stove," or "don't stick that up your nose,"  "your face will freeze like that," and "Look both ways before crossing the street."  We expect them to do all that, though. This guy wants to cry abuse at "inflicting Lent on children."  Hey, Michelle Obama wants to legislate what they serve kids in public school, maybe he wants to bitch about that, too.



The complaint seems less a matter of "Lent is stupid" and more a matter of "Lent should be harder."  Someone should have told him that he could make it as hard on himself as he likes.



Unfortunately, I can't even blame this moron for his ignorance. Did I say he made excellent points about Vatican 2? Sorry, I meaant to say he's a perfect example of what went wrong with Vatican 2. Welcome to post-V2 Catholic education by the laity: "Just do this, we won't even attempt to explain it to you, because we don't believe it or understand it ourselves .... assuming we tell it to you in the first place."



I think this article and his author are great examples of arguing for more, better Catholic education.



And, for Lent, I'm going on a variation of his stringent fasting. I'm going to survive on fish, veggies, and yogurt. Since I'm overweight to start with, how's that for making a religious duty out of a practical necessity?



UPDATE:

As my friend Jason has pointed out, Jews + Fasting = Yom Kippur and Passover.  Catholics also took the same religious traditional definitions of fish and meat from Kosher laws.  Hmm, maybe the twit from that article wants to talk about Kosher as child abuse too. Hmm...

Snarky Theology 1: Catholic Cannibals.

Right now, I am not certain if I have have yet made this point explicit; but, just in case, I need to be clear about something.....

A Pius Man, this blog, and myself, are not here to convert anyone.

One more time.

I'm not here to convert anybody.

To start with, I'm not a Jehovah's Witness. For another thing, the bulk of my friends are Jewish. It wouldn't go over well.

Not to mention that I wouldn't drag anyone into the mishegas that is the Roman Catholic Church, unless they were really patient.

Let's look at my religion for a moment.

I believe that a strange visitor from another realm came to Earth, with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men. As He grew up, His powers developed, until He could walk through crowds as though He were invisible, could calm tempests, turn water into wine, walk on water and multiply food to feed a few thousand people. He's also such a pathetic Deity that He would later get nailed to a set of 2x4s.  Even more pathetic, when He does something interesting and comes back from the dead, it's done in such a low-key fashion that it could easily be reported as "someone misplaced the body. Oops."

Welcome to the church that follows Yeshua bin Joseph. AKA Yeshua bin YHWH. AKA Joshua Carpenter, AKA Joshua, son of Joseph. Better known by his Greek alias, Jesus the Christ.

Welcome to the rabbit hole I live in.

Now, the above is just how I phrase this sort of stuff.  I'm sure most Christians wouldn't phrase it quite like that.  However, if one is looking at it objectively, it's probably quite insane. According to sociologist Rodney Stark, the major reason Christianity received ANY converts was that the early Christians themselves were big on charity. They had a tendency to stay in areas that smart people left -- areas like plague-infested towns, when even the doctors fled.  When things were so bad that the intelligent people left the others to their fate, Christians were the only ones dumb enough to stick around. It's a good thing they were too, otherwise Christianity would be a small sect in some unknown corner of the world no one ever heard of.

But wait, there's more.

My particular subsection of Christianity, known as Catholicism (from catholic, meaning "universal"; IE: Catholics, everywhere you don't WANT us to be, and "We'll take anybody.... no, really, anybody"), has a special tenet.

One tale of fellow Jesus had Him grabbing the bread at the Passover dinner, and He said "Take all of you and eat it. This, my body" (apparently, the Aramaic version is far more direct about it). 

He also did the same thing with "the cup" (probably the one left for Elijah) and called it His blood.

We Catholics took this tale, and we took it literally. In fact, we play Swallow the Leader every Sunday.  It's technical term is transubstantiation. .... aka Swallow the Leader.

Yes, you got it, Catholics are cannibals.  We eat our Savior as a sacrifice, drink his blood.  Insert evil laughter here ....

No, not really much on the evil laughter, but still ...

One of the better uses of this transubstantiation concept comes from the pen of F. Paul Wilson, horror writer and Fordham University product ... um, graduate. At one point, Wilson had some fun with a vampire story -- since the Catholic mass serves the body and blood of Christ, the vampire took his daily feeding from the chalice.  Now, technically, Wilson is not a Catholic, since Fordham is, after all, a Jesuit school, and any relationship between the Jesuits and Catholicism is tenuous, at best (Sorry, inside joke.  See "Attack of the Vatican Ninjas" for details).

Amusingly, there are some people within the Catholic church who have problems swallowing this last bit of theology (pun intended). "Jesus is supposed to be ACTUALLY IN the bread and wine? No way!"

Yes, because turning water into wine, telling a tempest to shut up, walking on water and COMING BACK FROM THE DEAD are simply sooooo much easier to believe. But Jesus being actually in the bread and wine, using it as a guise for body and blood?  No way dude!

This is of course, right up there with Joseph Campbell complaining that if Jesus physically ascended into Heaven, we should still be able to pick Him up on radar ... If you're already part of the whole Christianity thing, and you're presuming that Jesus is, oh, the Divine Being, Creator of the Universe, etc, et al, then one would have to figure "Hmm, if God created the laws of physics, I wonder if He could bend and/ or break them."

Or, as my father put it, from God's point of view, "It's My game, My ballpark, My rules."

I have occasionally had people justify their lack of believe in this (or any) part of the faith under the heading of "cafeteria Catholicism," where they pick and choose whatever random parts they want to believe in. Which is odd, because by now, I think there's a Protestant group of every sort that has some variation on the faith.

Shop around a bit, you can become a member of whatever theological system you like.  Including a Christian group without Christ (they're called Unitarians). I also enjoy people who enjoy saying they are Catholic, yet believe NOTHING of the Vatican's teachings.  Which is odd, I didn't think Catholics were so cool that people hung around, despite not believing a word, or The Word. 

Right now, there are so many varieties of Christianity, I think being a "shopper" within a faith is sort of like saying "No, I joined this militia because I couldn't find a gun club. I like the shooting, but this whole 'overthrow the government' part is just not my thing.  Honest. Why are you arresting me?"

Now, as I said before, I can objectively look at all of the above elements of faith.  From the outside, it looks positively insane.  There's a reason there are three references to Alice in Wonderland in the above text. And I can give you all sorts of reasons why I, a moderately intelligent fellow, believe in all of the above insanity.

Gutters #22

But that's about twenty pages (small print, small spacing, really small margins), of Really Boring Garbage. And, as I said, I'm not here to convert anybody. If I can explain to people what Catholics believe, and the reasoning behind it, I'll be happy. The phrase is "apologetics"; not saying "I'm sorry," but explaining why. In Greek, apologia meant a legal defense.

That's one reason I have occasionally referred to A Pius Man as apologetics in-between the bullets.

Though no matter how much I explain it, it'll all still look insane. There's a reason I used a description from Superman in reference to Jesus ...

Although in the first Superman film, his spaceship did look like the Star of Bethlehem. I guess we can blame that on Godfather author and Catholic, Mario Puzo. He must have made Hollywood an offer they couldn't refuse.