Ridiculing Those Who Ridicule

A woman this week tried to use her child as a prop to trip up Rick Perry on the subject of Evolution. By her fear of asking the question herself or by her thinking the exchange would be more newsworthy coming from a child, she allows Perry to give the answer in childs terms - a general answer that should avoid the potential of making the news rounds branding Perry as a science hater.

I must say that in recent years, my personal view of religious things has taken a beating. Some of the views and methods of the strongly religious have opened the door both ridicule as well as opening the door to more easily discredit some on the right with easy soundbyte hits. However, when it comes to the science / evolution issue, I think the views and methods of those playing gotcha against politicians that Creationism / Intelligent Design open them to similar ridicule and discrediting.

We have the champions of the so called "establishment clause". We have those that do not view Creation / Intelligent Design as a science. There are those that do not believe in any Higher Being. I get them. I understand them. What I do not understand is the successful marginalization of those who espouse any view but a godless evolution.

According to this About site on Atheism, 79% of Americans claim to believe in God. That is a large number, an overwhelming majority. In fact Gallup is more generous putting the number at 92%. Either number or even taking the average is again, overwhelming. Why that even means that a significant portion of left leaning people believe in God.

What seems ridiculous and silly to me is the notion that God exists, yet He has had no hand at all in any details of how the universe turns out? He is there with more power than we have, yet He just lets everything happen by total chance? Matter just somehow came into being on its own. All the galaxies and solar systems formed by chance. The 3rd rock from the sun formed at just the right place, with just the right raw materials for all this natural beauty and life to form. All the variety of beings: plants and animals just happened.

All the while, this powerful Being - God just watched and stroked his long white beard and was perhaps entertained with all the changes that just happened. Man came along and began communicating, socializing, making laws, building civilizations and this Being just looked on with never a hand in the way anything turned out?

What a ridiculous thought. Of course if such a Being existed, He would have at the very least a hand in how things went from nothing to how they exist today. Then when we look at everything and see repetitive, complex building blocks such as DNA. Such amazing unfathomable things with astronomical odds of happening on their own like the human eye, sexual reproduction, or the germination of a seed. What an interesting and intellectual study to look and find evidence of a master planner. The amazingly broad spectrum of worthless elements of today's education, and yet such a study is ridiculed and marginalized? Maybe the science class is not the best place for such study, but to rule it out altogether and ridicule those who believe it while fully accepting those who believe in God but think He did nothing to bring about the world we live in.

The point of this post is not to promote a view in the evolution / creation debate. My point is that people are so easily swayed by the power of ridicule of those who espouse a creationist view, while at the same time ignoring the exposed flank that to believe in God and believe He has more power than us, but does nothing with it is tremendously open to ridicule.