Thursday, February 09, 2006

Intelligent Warming?

Is anyone else amused when evangelical Christians suddenly embrace science? Why this sudden fear of global temperature increase? It was in the news this week - a consortium of evangelicals have united against this human-generated apocalypse. But why now? I'm tempted to say its because of all the SUVs they've purchased to haul around their personal Armies for Jesus (e.g., their brainwashed children). Are they feeling the pang of personal responsibility instead of hiding behind their faith?

This reminds me of the bumper-based war of pursuasion that rages on our roads and highways. First came the Christian fish symbol - an identity badge. I am not sure why it became important to announce one's faith to other motorists, but I suspect it may act as a warning for the rest of us. The response of the rationals was to give the Christian fish legs and place the word Darwin inside the body. The Christians, without much thought, responded by forcing their fish to consume the legged fish of Darwin, while also placing the word Truth inside the body of their icon. Clearly, the debate, if it could be called that at all, died at this moment, since the Christians stole a concept from biology ("the big fish eat the little fish") and thus, seem to have inadvertantly defended Darwin's ideas about natrual selection. It seems logical that if you reject the life sciences, you can't in turn leverage the life sciences to make some sort of point about an irrational worldview. As the evangelicals continue their bid to repurpose our language (e.g., turning theory into a naughty word), they also seem quite willing to repurpose science to do their own, inscrutable bidding.

No comments: