A Sequel to A Vacuous Faith

Yet another aspect of the Christian faith that used to cause me to ponder is the aspect of saving the lost from the fiery grips of hell. If the Christian really believes in the concept of eternal torment in hell, why are the vast majority of them so nonchalant about taking every opportunity to warn and plead with the ‘heathen’ to turn from their wickedness?

For example, we all have close relatives that we would never want to see in any form of danger. The Christian should be losing sleep over the possibility that a loved one may experience hell for all eternity. If the Christian really believes in hell, they should be pleading with the nonbeliever—both day and night— to consider Jesus. Yet oddly enough, years can go by without a single word about Jesus.

Death, where is thy Sting?

A person could die at any given moment and the Christian, well aware of this, does nothing to convince them to repent from their evil ways. This would be analogous to a family member knowing that there was a serial killer lurking in your neighborhood but saying nothing to you about it. Most of us wouldn’t wish an eternal punishment on our worst enemies, yet most Christians seem so indifferent when it comes to their loved ones eternal consequences. They either don’t care enough to bother with pestering their unsaved family members or they, in what I think is more probable, don’t really believe it themselves.

They cannot fathom the notion that a god, whom they admire, could possibly send someone to eternal torment. It goes against their innate sense of decency and justice. When I was a Christian, I often wondered why I wasn’t more of a crusader when it came to sharing the gospel so nobody had to go to hell. I wondered why most of the people I knew, who were professing Christians, weren’t unrelentingly knocking on doors and pleading with everyone they came in contact with to repent. It seemed bizarre that most of us would bend over backwards to warn someone if they were about to go into a burning building, but we didn’t have any sense of urgency as it applies to keeping others out of hell. I think it’s because most Christians can’t believe that such a fate is possible for the good people in their lives. Many other Christians just disassociate from the whole prospect and believe that someone else will probably tell their family member instead. I doubt that anyone seriously believes that the Christian would act the same way if they knew that a loved one was about to walk into a ‘real world’ death trap, unaware of the stark circumstances about to unravel.

Holy Casper to the Rescue

I began to study on the Holy Spirit, that ultra-mystical thingy, to see if that was the motivational trigger I needed to become the ‘gun toting’ adventurous Christian that I thought I should be. This Holy Ghost part of the trinity was supposed to enter me at the time of salvation, or—if you believe in speaking in tongues—at the time of a ‘Pentecost type’ moment. I was never much for babbling nonsense so I thought that I must have already had the Holy Spirit but failed to utilize its powers. In the end, I noticed that even the best Christians around me were dissonant in their attitude about people going to hell. A Christian, who really believes in hell, should sacrifice every waking moment on proselytizing and have a voracious desire to keep others from doom. I don’t see such a stance anywhere.

What I see is a Christianity that is unconvinced of hell and/or is disassociated from it. People are too embarrassed of their faith to warn anybody of anything aside from preachers who have a financial interest in the matter. Most Christians don’t want to suggest that you’re going to hell simply for not believing. After all, people don’t believe in a lot of things when the evidence is lacking. No sane person believes in Big Foot, fairies or the Loch Ness Monster. There’s not a shred of archaeological evidence supporting slavery in Egypt, the Exodus, the empire of David, Solomon’s Temple, or the Walls of Jericho, so, if there is a god, shouldn’t he be a little bit merciful in light of the sheer lack of evidence for the Bible, which is his ‘divine’ revelation to us? Do we really deserve to burn in hell forever when the evidence is just not convincing? God supposedly gave us brains to reason with and to sort truth from fiction. How about the poor science observed in the Bible? It’s not a science book but it still is a book that is supposed to be true, isn’t it? For example, it says that unicorns and dragons exist so we should be able to find some. It says that the earth is flat so there’s no reason that god should have communicated otherwise. It wasn’t because the Israelites wouldn’t have understood the difference between flat and a sphere. It also plainly states that the earth was made before the rest of the universe when the opposite is true. I don’t know about you but I would prefer a book that is inspired by a god who has some good facts that hold up over the course of time and under sciences empirical validation. But I digress.

Concluding Comments

In the end, I have to challenge Christians on this matter. Why do you guys act so much like the rest of us; would you not warn your family if they were about to go into a building full of C-4? I think you would and I think you realize that your mom, dad or brother could die at any moment, yet you don’t act with the same fervor that you would in almost any other 'real world' situation. You’re either too embarrassed about your faith or don’t believe what the Bible says--or, you're simply passing the responsibility on to someone else who cares less about your loved ones.

A Christian must Believe #4

that even though the Law of the Conservation of Mass-Energy states that neither can ever be created nor destroyed, god still created all things in the heavens and earth.

A Christian must Believe #3

that god speaks to them through the Bible and dreams. When he speaks 'audibly', it's not their own brain tricking them. During dreams, it's not just a coincedence that some of them turn out true in the end despite the fact that we have many that don't. This is not a case of confirmation bias. Furthermore, God speaks to them through stories of infanticide and stoning just as much as he does in more palatable stories.

A Vacuous Faith

There were two other, not necessarily related, pertinacious concerns I had even back when I was a hapless Christian that I have yet to discuss: why do Christians, who firmly believe that god has 24/7 surveillance on their every move, continue to do things that seem in direct opposition to that a priori assertion, and why are Christians, particularly non-Charismatic, not concerned when Jesus said that those going on after him will do greater things than what he did (John 14:12)? Yet, there continue to be scarcely any miracles which science and reason don’t continually falsify.

Constant Surveillance

Let me expound on the first problem that I was already dealing with in my Christian walk. I think a simple analogy would suffice in making this scenario more lucid. Most of us have a boss that we must answer to when we get caught with ‘our hand in the cookie jar’. But, most of us do not have bosses that micromanage us to the point of watching our every move, including bowel movements; they do not listen to every derogatory comment we make to our co-workers, even the ones that are undecipherable to the human ear due to muttering; they are also incapable of ‘hearing’ every thought that we make. Yet, the omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent god of the Christian faith is supposedly fully capable of being privy of everything you do and say, including ‘thought crimes’.

Therefore, it seems rather ridiculous that the vast majority of Christians would never do anything in front of their bosses that could potentially get them fired, but Christians tend to ignore the whole concept of being watched at all times by god. Why are Christians more concerned about a man than the creator of the universe if they really believe in his ever watchful eye?

For example, I know a guy at work that is a Christian. He prays before each meal in a very conspicuous manner; he wears Christian apparel as well; he is really a nice guy to be around etcetera. We also have a policy against using the cell phone, but this guy will violate this rule quite often. You may notice him looking around to make sure no one is watching before he pulls his phone out. This just doesn’t make sense to me, nor did it when I was a Christian. I would have conversations with my mom about it quite often. I would tell her that we should be acting like god is in the room watching our every move, just like the Bible infers. I would ask her why she doesn’t act more carefully. She drinks, cusses and gossips about others but certainly wouldn’t do any of that around certain people. She would usually just say—something along the lines of— that she knows she should do better and we all have to work on that. Would any Christian use the same excuse if they absolutely knew that their boss was monitoring everything they did? I don’t think so.

Most Christians would make certain to cover their ass in a superfluous fashion. They would be on their best behavior at all times. Why then, do Christians make a massive cognitive blunder when it comes to god who can even read their very thoughts?

Where are these Promised Powers?

“I tell you the truth. The person that believes in me will do the same things I have done. Yes! He will do even greater things than I have done. Why? Because I am going to the Father. And if you ask for anything in my name, I will do it for you. Then the Father's glory will be shown through the Son. If you ask me for anything in my name, I will do it.” –(John 14:12)

You know, I must say that I have never even been able to mimic a single supernatural thing that Jesus did in his earthly sojourn. Yet, Jesus makes it clear that we should be able to do what he did and accomplish even more impressive feats. Likewise, I have never seen anybody else do anything that could not be explained in a more parsimonious fashion. Why are Christians not more perplexed about the inconsistency here?

It seems like many denominations that have more liberal leanings tend to avoid this verse all together. Charismatic’s, on the other hand, continue to be the charlatans that they are infamously already well known for. There has not been a single documented case of a miraculous occurrence that hasn’t been disproven by science or simple common sense. Where are Christians who can raise people from the dead and run, instead of walk, across water? Was Jesus lying or does nobody have the faith that miracles like this demand? Or, is all of this a bunch of bullshit? I’m going with bullshit until we can get some convincing evidence.

On an aside, Jesus did many ‘miracles’ among thousands of people but nobody bothered to document any of these miracles who were contemporaneous to the event. I don’t know about you, but I think that it would have been worth noting if I saw a man literally transform five loaves of bread into five thousand, or if I saw a whole squadron of deceased bodies walking about the town post resurrection. The practice of writing was invented some 4000 years before Jesus rolled into town so that shouldn’t have been a problem. Today, people claim that amazing miracles are happening all around us. When one person survives a airplane crash, we call it a miracle despite the fact that 150 others died. Indeed, miracles are easy to find these days because the word no longer even has the same meaning. All it would take is for one scientifically documented case of a person regenerating legs after praying to Yahweh, and it would give evidence that we need to confirm that something truly amazing is working behind the scenes.

Instead, we get stuff like this which I obtained from a guy I went to high school with. He always impressed me as the most authentic Christian in school and this is an excerpt from his blog: “Last week, I started giving words of knowlegde for healing for people. The first time I did it was on a television program. That night, I preached in a church in Blanchard where someone's back and something else was healed. (I'm forgetting already).

Then saturday I started the day by giving a word of knowledge to someone on facebook and his right foot was healed after I called him and prayed for him. That night in Ponca City, God healed a woman's wrist and leg.

Sunday morning in Ada, Ok was AWESOME!! A couple people with back problems were healed. When I said that someone with a injured right ankle/foot would be healed...a woman stood up and said that it was impossible for here to be healed because she had a metal rod and pins in her ankle. All pain left after we prayed for her. A woman with carpal tunnel syndrome was healed. I prayed for a man with head aches for healings...and then later that night there were more healings at Oil Center where again, wrists, knees, bones spurs, shoulders and other things were healed. Mostly they were immediately healed after I prayed for them, but somethimes it would take 2 or 3 times of prayer.

Last wednesday, 3 or 4 people with a deaf ear were healed. Amazingly, someone who was not present but who we prayed for was healed. His mother sms'ed a message 5 minutes after we prayed for him and said that he was at the doctor's office and that suddenly his hearing was perfect. They did not know that we had just prayed for him.

This morning it was the same. I spoke at a youth rally in OKC of hispanic kids and a couple kid's knees were healed, a man's hand was healed and a guys elbow was healed of pain. Then this evening in claremore, I prayed for shoulders. 3 or 4 men were instantly healed. There was one guy who seemed to still have some pain. The cool thing is that I have a friend of mine coming with me and he is now starting to pray for the sick and believing that he too can hear God's voice. Tommorrow we go to a couple of other churches and we expect to see more people touched through God's healing hand. God healed me as a child of cerebral palsey, and now I am excited to see God use my life to bring his healing power into other people's lives. I humbly thank God that I get to see this taking place.”

Notice that the vast majority of these healings are concentrated around aches and pains. Some of them refer to deaf people regaining their hearing. I would bet you a hundred bucks that those cases are either fraudulent or unreliable. If we visited those deaf people today, we would find that they are still just as deaf as before, or they were never completely deaf to begin with—if they were ever deaf at all. There’s always a catch to every one of these so called healings. People fall into the emotion and the hyper suggestibility involved in these ‘healing’ services; they start off feeling better for a while and then the emotions wear down and the ailment returns. One wonders why god will heal minor aches but can’t seem to restore an amputee’s legs.

Benny Hinn once gave the Christian Research Institute a medical report of some of the best healings he performed. They turned out to be fraudulent. He supposedly heals millions of infirmities on any given Sunday but even the ‘cream of the crop’ comes up short. We should be observing godly people literally moving mountains, raising the dead by the thousands and leaving doctors without a job if Jesus’ words were legit. Instead, we see just what we should expect if the world is devoid of anyone with miracle working powers.

In Conclusion

Anyhow, these were a few issues that I had to suppress while living as a Christian. They were uncomfortable reminders that I was living under a nebulous and contradictory philosophy of life. We should see Christians acting like god is watching their every move if they believe in his omnipresence and we should be seeing miracles that go beyond Jesus’ best. But, we don’t so it’s just another reason to discard the Christian faith and recognize it for the spurious work that it is.

Charismania

My mom told me about her latest visit to her favorite pastor’s church over the weekend. This is the same dunce who told the entire congregation that NASA had confirmed the Mayan prediction pertaining to the end of the world being in 2012. NASA had adamantly denied such nonsense before the pastor ever spoke about it in the first place. But, the pastor supposedly has a direct line of communication to god so they naturally are going to believe him over any misinformed scientist. There must be some kind of bizarre conspiracy or cover up going on that only the pastor is privy of.

Anyway, the pastor approached her before the service began and stated that he had a “word from the lord” to share about her after the service was over. My mom was most distressed about what he was going to say so she was less than attentive throughout the rest of the service. One wonders why god doesn’t just tell you what he wants you to know. Why does he have to go through a middle man? Finally, the moment she was waiting for came and he prompted her onto the stage. In front of many eager and curious onlookers, he told her that she was going to have a “five-fold blessing” everywhere she went from here on out as long as she followed the Lord. She would be in high favor regardless of where she travelled or whom she encountered. He stated that her husband, who is suffering with Parkinson’s, would be healed and that his business would not fold. Basically, he, like so many psychics, told her everything she wanted to hear and increased her devotion to the church in the process. You’re not going to hear any bad news from a prophetic word these days unless it’s accompanied with a recipe for correcting the situation. And, the member is already in a convenient place to get the problem dealt with. The correction almost always involves repentance of sin and a renewed commitment to the church and generous tithing. This seems to be the method to the Charismatic churches madness. Either way, the pastor and his family benefit because prophetic words almost always increase faithful attendance and, naturally, faithful tithing. After all, you can’t be blessed without faithful tithing according to the pastor who hammers this home every single Sunday before the offering.

The prophetic word is usually very positive or it’s an appeal to bring the wandering sheep back into the fold. The pastor may give a stern warning that the wayward church member needs to do x, y and z so that a, b and/or c doesn’t happen. This has the positive side effect of increasing the interrelatedness, unquestioning devotion and group cohesion of its members. I’m sure there is a positive correlation between prophetic words and increased tithes on behalf of the member receiving the message. Also, there seems to be a deeper commitment made on the church member’s part. It makes the member more eager to attend, and tithe, each Sunday so they can get another encouraging word from god. This is important to the church since tithing keeps the lights on.

A message from the tribal leader, the pastor in this case, carries the most weight. The fact that the church member believes that the pastor is getting a word directly from god makes it even more appealing. Although I don’t have the statistics to back this up, prophetic words undoubtedly have a direct impact on increased tithes and increased book, CD, DVD and other related material sales. Who doesn’t want to hear a favorable word from a higher power? The fact that the members think the pastor has direct access to god makes him all the more marketable. First and foremost, the modern church is a business and it has many competitors—especially here in the Bible belt. The charismatic denomination is second in its number of members, just behind the Catholic Church. A good reason for this is because it appeals to our wants and desires. A great proportion of Charismatic Pastors tell us that we are not meant to be poor and we can obtain heaven here on earth. Who wouldn’t want a little piece of heaven now? Unfortunately, the only one getting wealthier is the pastor and his inner circle of mob-like devotees. Anyway, just thought I would briefly share my mom’s latest experience in the wacky and crazy world of Charismania.

A Christian Must Believe #2

That humanity is more proactive about helping those who are suffering and in pain than a god who asserts that he loves them infinitely more.  Furthermore, that our love and affection for those whom we hold dear, which helps motivate and fuel the desire to want to help, are not strong enough to move god toward a similar action that would be instrumental in alleviating the unnecessary pain of the sufferer.

Desmond Morris' Thoughts on Homosexuality

So, I’ve been reading a couple of books by Desmond Morris recently. The first book I read was entitled The Naked Ape and the second was The Human Zoo. Morris is a provocative and relatively easy read. I didn't find myself in an often befuddled state as I do while reading Stephen Hawking, for example. I was particularly interested in finding out what his thoughts were about how homosexuality manifests itself. Morris, being a zoologist, focuses on areas like the behavior of a given species and often draws comparisons in behaviors between two often closely related species.

According to Morris, homosexuality generally occurs in one of four ways. It can occur when a person, being male or female, lives a fairly isolated and sheltered life. They also lack any significant sexual experiences before engaging in their first encounter. When the first encounter involves a member of the same sex, a mal-imprinting can occur where the person forever finds themselves attracted to a member of the same sex. A fixation on that particular sex, in the case of two boys, becomes powerfully imprinted in the young man’s mind. The case works in much the same way when the conditions are altered and two females are involved in a sexual encounter. This is a process referred to as exposure learning and it is very influential and generally irreversible. One Christian philosopher I talked to recently would like us to assume that, with a heavy dosage of counseling, homosexuals can lose their desire for the same sex. This is important to some Christians because Yahweh thought homosexuals deserved death and Jesus thinks they deserve ever-lasting torment. The Christian philosopher assured me that purgatory was available for the person incapable of resisting his urges and hell is not really so bad after all. But I digress.

Other instances of homosexuality may emerge when the child has an overbearing, domineering mother and a passive, weak father according to Morris. The child may get the roles of his parents confused and reversed thus seeking out the wrong sex as a pair-bond partner later in life. Furthermore, homosexuality may occur when one gender sees the opposite sex as less than appealing because of some form of abuse perpetrated by the opposite sex. They may begin to resent the opposite sex and seek intimate relationships with their own. Lastly and most simply, it may occur as a result of not having convenient access to the opposite sex like in the case of being confined in a prison.

Morris describes mal-imprinting as something which “occurs widely in the world of man/animal relationships”. During the initial sensitive period of life, humans and other animals are particularly impressionable to exposures regarding such things as who their mother is and what sort of pair-bonds they may acquire later in life. For example, animals which are reared by another species from birth may not find their own species attractive and thus make advances toward their caregiver—whoever that may be. Most of us have had the unpleasant experience of being dry humped on the leg by a dog. Morris tells the story of a giant panda he once encountered in Moscow. She wanted nothing to do with the male giant panda or his eager sexual advances, but she was very responsive to Morris when he merely patted her on the back. She responded by “raising her tail and directing a full sexual invitation posture”. The difference between the two pandas is that the female was isolated much earlier on in life than the male panda.

Fetishes are often born out of experiencing a first time orgasm while playing with an inanimate object such as a velvet piece of cloth. This mal-imprinting may be so powerful that the person has a hard time achieving orgasm for the rest of his or her life without the accompanying object being present. Morris tells the story of a male who had his first orgasm while an older female was wearing high-heels. She put her foot over his crouch, he ejaculated and the powerful experience has forever left a mal-imprint. He has since convinced more than one hundred females to repeat the experience. The reason fetishes are important to mention here is because they can act in much the same way as homosexual tendencies do.

Morris recognizes that many heterosexual men and women have homosexual experiences early on in their life, but the majority of them don’t end up as homosexuals. The difference comes down to how properly socialized the person may have been previously to the encounter and how blank their “sexual canvas” is at the time of the encounter. Morris says “Most boys have, as it were, a sexual blackboard on which things are lightly sketched, rubbed out and re-drawn. But the inward-living boy keeps his sexual canvas virginally white. When finally something does get drawn on it, it will have a much more dramatic impact and he will probably keep the picture for life”.

Since the publishing of The Human Zoo, science has found some genetic relationships to homosexuality. A host of studies throughout the 1990s observed that, in the case of identical twins, there is over a 50% chance that the second twin is homosexual if the first one reports in the affirmative. Researchers have found a gene related to homosexuality to be passed down from the mother. There is a higher likelihood among homosexual brothers of inheriting the same genetic sequence on the region of the X chromosome called Xq28. Clearly, there are some genetic factors that must be further explored but this isn’t the main point of my posting. As of yet, there is no such thing as a “gay gene”.

All in all, I am satisfied with the theory that various genetic and environmental factors converge and contribute to a person having homosexual leanings. I am also satisfied with the idea of allowing them to live happily and unhampered lives without any infringement on their rights whatsoever. They are doing no harm to anyone else and if they are fine living without the prospect of birthing children than so am I. They can always adopt at some point if the laws will give them credence. It’s very sad that so many homosexuals feel strongly pressured to change for the petty sake of religious intolerance. They are often ostracized, demoralized and ridiculed in one form or another just for their sexual preferences. Bigotry such as this should 'go with the wind' like so many other forms of hatred ranging from racism, sexism, social status intolerance or physical attractiveness.

Some Questions about Kenneth Miller's Arguments

I’ve been reading Kenneth Miller’s books and definitely respect many of his scientific insights, but have questions about some of the conclusions he makes regarding faith. He states that we will never be able to predetermine the movement and positions of certain particles, like photons, according to Quantum Physics. Likewise, he states that we will never be able to predetermine the outcome of an evolutionary process, like the outcome of a given mutation. There seems to be enough unpredictability in each of these given fields of science that we may be able to understand gods nature based on their erratic behaviors. But, isn’t it important that we “never say never” as a honest part of the scientific process? And, are we not just moving the goal post further back and allowing god a place in areas of science that are just now emerging? It seems like this is the dubious outcome of such assertions to me. This has some appeal to Miller because it ascribes to the notion that the unpredictability of life may point to a god who provides us with free will and not predeterminism. Furthermore, we don’t have to support the absolute materialism espoused by the likes of a Dennett or Dawkins. We can leave areas like culture, religion and language as undetermined and not based on the same meaningless mechanisms which drive biological evolution. Stephen Jay Gould might conclude that they are by-products of having a larger brain but not the direct result of natural selection--the whole spandrel effect. Otherwise, every sort of human behavior could be explained by the means of strict biochemical evolutionary processes and Miller detests that notion.

Miller also discounts creationism, in part, because it makes god out to be a magician that magically “poofs” things into existence—as if to say— the virgin birth, the feeding of five thousand, and walking on water are not examples of magic tricks. As a Christian, he accepts those events as fact but discounts the Adam and Eve story based on science. Where is the scientific merit for the aforementioned events? Evidently, we have to be able to tell the difference between what is to be taken literally and what is metaphorical. I’m still waiting for god’s copy of CliffsNotes for the Bible because I’m finding it very difficult to ascertain what is literal and what isn’t literal.

He also points to the anthropic principle and the big bang as possible indications that a deity is working mightily behind the scenes. He states that the Multiverse theory and the Big-Bang/Big-Crunch cycle theory are no more plausible than the theory of god being the great initiator. He quotes scientific juggernauts like Stephen Hawking as fellow proponents of the religious relevance of the Big-Bang. ‘“The odds against a universe like ours emerging out of something like the Big Bang are enormous. I think there are clearly religious implications,’” says Hawking.

I’m no scientist by any stretch, but aren’t good theories those consistent with what is most parsimonious? Is a theory based on a natural explanation not always better than one based on the supernatural one? It would seem that the highly speculative Multiverse theory and Big-Bang/Big Crunch cycle theory are both more plausible than a supernatural explanation. It seems like another god of the gaps fallacy to me. Furthermore, doesn’t this throw the problem just one step further back in an infinite regress? After all, everything seems to have a cause, so who made god in the first place?

The Beauty of Evolution

“The story evolutionary science can tell is grander and more sweeping than any just-so narrative concocted by the pretenders of intelligent design. Evolution tells us that we have a history on this planet, a history we share with every living organism. Our ancestors survived the great extinctions that nearly stuffed out life on planet Earth. They found a body plan that could produce limbs adapted for walking, running, climbing, swimming, and even flying. These adaptations explain why even today the genes that produce our forelimbs are the same ones that control the development of fins. They explain why the same DNA sequences that tell human cells to become photoreceptors will produce eyes in a fly, and why the same proteins that control cell division in yeasts will work in humans. We not only know where we came from, but increasingly we know how we got here, too.” -Kenneth R. Miller, emphasis added.

Dr. Miller, perhaps, captures the beauty of evolution like no other and there are many inspirational paragraphs in his book Only a Theory but this one seemed to leap out at me for whatever reason. I feel a special kinship with fellow animals present and extinct that shared this planet at one time or another. It's truly amazing that the meteorite explosion most likely responsible for the destruction of the dinosaurs didn't kill all the smaller mammals that inhabited the earth at the time. They rose in prominence and became powerful testaments of the beauty of evolution on land and in sea. There is little doubt that the species of this planet would be different today from what we see if we played the story over. But as Dr. Miller suggests, there is little doubt that a species would eventually emerge that could ponder its own existence and place in this vast universe. It's truly a blessing that also infuses a great deal of responsibility. We have a larger capacity to invent than do other species, but we also have the intellect to destroy through inventions such as nuclear bombs. Scientists can assess the consequences of our current actions on mother earth and we have the responsibility to protect her for our own sake and the sake of other species around us. Most species only survive for a period of several million years before new ones emerge. In fact, 99% of all the species to ever exist are now extinct.

Homo sapiens are a privileged few who can make our time on this rock a beneficial one to ourselves and the other animals we share it with. We are most fortunate to have made it this far and our ancestors all had to be "winners" in this game of life, so that we might have the "luck" of experiencing it for ourselves. This is really an amazing feat to ponder and evolution has never looked so beautiful to me. Our relationship with other animals is written in our DNA and in the many similarities that we share. Intelligent Design (ID) attempts to strip us of this interrelatedness and common history. I hope that science and objectivity will reign supreme in the end while ID, which seeks to redefine science, is thrown into the waste bin.