I just recieved a chain e-mail... A Christian chain e-mail... a well travelled Christian chain e-mail... It was a guilt assuagin', sublimatin', righteousness ratin', great way to judge the quick and the dead! I love it!! Lemme explain. Basically, it had a few pictures of starving children, some ugly lanscapes and a guy with his head up a cows ass. I assume these were meant to be examples of the desperation and lack of food, but they simply reminded me of two basic facts about humanity:
1) We suck! You know the photogragher had his lunch with him! Put down the flash and give the kid a sandwich.
2) We are sick. If your face is up a cow's ass, I am not going to assume you are there for the nutrition, so why did the author, publisher, and the photogragher draw that conclusion?
These pictures were Pharissidicaly (I couldn't think of a word for "obsequiously promoting and advertising one's one self righteousness in a manner reminiscent of those assholes Jesus seemed to have so many problems with", other than "Christian".) encircled by the email addresses of all those who chose to forward this email. Oh yeah, and some instructions: Pray that this suffering will end. Pray that God shows his light upon these poor people." So on and so forth blah blah blah. So, have you figured out the beauty of this email or are you still wondering why they put a picture of a guy with his head up a cow's ass on there? I was stuck on the latter mystery myself until I had an epiphany. Here goes- I've been reading a growing number of articles lately about the Theory of Evolution's closest competition, "Intelligent Design" or "Creationism" to us old school types. Apparently it has become "Fascist chic" to unearth Dark Age Text Books and pit them against modern theories with nothing more than an "It must be true if we're still talking bout it!" argument to back them up. I'll spare you the full on "WTF?" and just agree with the crazy guys, it's easier. OK, you may be right... Just maybe, the whole Universe was created by some absolute being. Maybe there is a scheme to things, a divine plan. I can accept the possibility, but why does it have to be yours? Fine, i'll give you the Intelligent Design, but I refuse to snowball that into a full Personality. It's a Leap of Faith to believe in a higher power, a Leap of Ego to believe you know it best.
Meanwhile, back at the Ranch... er chain letter: The beauty of this remarkably pharissidic peice of crap was it's inherent paradox. The basis of "creationism" is this ; God made it this way by his own grand design. Being infallible, the world is exactly the way he wants it. Why then would it be acceptable to pray to him and inform him that you would like him to make changes to his masterpiece. Any attempt at revision would be going directly against the Will of God! This emial is heresy!
