I should write for Jack Chick:

375 million years ago, on the planet earth...a transitional critter scientists have dubbed "Tiktaalik roseae" (Note to Leah: pronounced tic-TAH-lick) emerged from a sinful and wicked pool, in search of a cabana boy and an abortion doctor as it prepared to hate troops and liberty wherever they arrived waving American flags.

A New York Times' article by John Noble Wilford with the headline "Fossil Called Missing Link From Sea to Land Animals" begins thusly:

"Scientists have discovered fossils of a 375-million-year-old fish, a large scaly creature not seen before, that they say is a long-sought missing link in the evolution of some fishes from water to a life walking on four limbs on land.

And so now I will rant about fundamentalists.

The transitional fish story is a bit like finding the body of the god: aha! Here it is! But evolutionary science has been established and quantified for so long it doesn't matter as much (to me) as what these kinds of stories do to Creationists and their World Views. Put another way: when so-called Darwinists find the bones it is a Eureka moment that the True Believers find abhorrent. What's this "375 million years ago" nonsense? What's this "science" and "transitional fish" garbage? Why, just more Satanic tricks, no doubt.

Absent biblical literalism, a star many believers have needlessly hitched their wagons to, the belief systems of True Believers suffer and sputter along, and like an injured animal will turn and bare its fangs when approached. Here is the proof of evolution: Lies! All lies! Satan had fins! Are we seeing among religious extremists the affirmation of belief or the atavistic seizures of a mode of thinking that has outlasted its shell?

Realize please that the same approach that many so-called Christians have to life they have also to their God: they don't trust the idea very much at all. It is in fact so frightening a prospect that True Believers have imposed limitations on the history of such a god, on the gender, on the words, etc. Such a god cannot manifest through evolution (see above), such a god cannot break free from the constructs of Bronze age tribal priests. Those who would promote a spiritual relationship with an all-powerful deity will not allow that deity to grow metaphorical legs, to crawl out of the primoridial soup and change and reach and sing new songs and laugh and soar in the light of a new day. What the creationists/ID crowd do not understand is that what they do to ideas and human beings they don't approve of they also do to their God.

Christian religious extremists manufacture the nails that keep their god exactly where they can keep an eye on him, and should he get any ideas about evolving or breaking loose from the bonds of biblical literalism they will kill him again and again, lest the light of eternity blind them all. Their god, shorn of the mercurial powers of creative life, is kept in chains, its messages proscribed, its poetry muted. Those who cry about their religion the loudest kill the idea of God with every bullet and bomb, with every judgment passed, with every dotted "i" and ruined heart.

It didn't have to be this way. Some say that progressives aren't religious enough, or that they don't respect religious traditions. Do conservative Christians really want to bring progressives into the passion plays, into the firmaments? I can just see it: progressives standing on the altar, cutting the bonds of the messiah, setting free the god who promptly vanishes with a howl and a moan. Are fundies ready to liberate god from their clinging grasps, their attachments?

If I could prove that god suffers in every heart that cannot see god in all things, would the congregation rise and feel the holy spirit and never again follow blindly the manipulative preachings of their leaders? Would Progessive thoughts of equity, fairness and compassion become their new gospel?

I don't think so. All the talk about the Left being antagonistic to religion is hogwash. Religion is antagonistic to religion. No one really wants to open the Ark, or set free the Mysteries: preachers would rail and call it the Devil's work. There is nothing to win with fundamentalists, for no one is blinder than those who are willingly controlled.

As for me, the mystery of life is manifested in all things, and surely what some call God is in the tidal pools. Let's see what's in the soup. Now there's a sermon where God sings!

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