Rhinocrisy

You might want to check out this column in the Guardian lamenting a recent poll which found 30% of British school kids believe in Creationism or “intelligent” “design”.^* Personally, the response this evokes in me is a desire to run outside, find the nearest religious nut and sucker-punch him in the gut until he explains the workings of his mind to me.

The other day I met a born-again Christian who was willing to cop to the charge - but she refused to tell her audience why she became born-again, because she was afraid we would think it was hokey. This really blows my mind… if you, yourself find your beliefs hokey, why in the name of Christ do you hold them?

I’m also unable to appreciate the disconnect between the otherwise rational behavior of religious types, who as far as I am able to tell can operate can-openers, make their way through revolving doors and drive manual transmission automobiles, and their absurdist, counter-intuitive belief systems. I would honestly be much happier if the religious people in the world moved in constant trepidation, afraid that their dog might, without a moment’s notice, change into a sofa (or vice-versa), that the fibers of their living room throw rug would spontaneously de-interlace and crawl worm-like into the corners of the room, or that the color of the sky is constantly cycling like someone is fiddling with its “hue” tuner. This, at least, would be consistent, and consistently crazy. As it is I have to believe one of two things:

• They are all putting me on.
• There is a “religious nuttery” mental faculty that I am missing that allows this dissonant state of mind to exist.

Perhaps it’s better to gawk than to experience first-hand, but religious people seem to enjoy what seems to me to be an addled state. I can’t help feeling I’m missing out.

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^* Yes, they’re doing way, way, better than we are. I am crying in my soup as I write this.^†

^† I am not actually eating soup. I am eating chocolate s’mores!^‡

^‡ No, not that either. But who wouldn’t want to eat a nice chocolate s’more? Why, I remember in my youth, when I would go on camping outings with my Boy Scout troop^§, we would roast s’mores over the campfire and enjoy their creamy, chocolatey goodness while we sang hymns in praise of Lord Baden-Powell. Ah, memory… tis enough to make a man cry into his soup.

^§ Actually the only thing I remember being roasted at a Boy Scout outing was a live chipmunk some disgusting little puke had caught and thrown in the fire. What a travesty… I bet Lord Baden-Powell is looking down from Heaven right now, crying in his soups’mores.

Meant to post this a while back, but it seems the West African Black rhino^* is extinct. As a species we’ve managed to eliminate most of the amazing megafauna in the world - only a few left! Let’s keep trying, people.

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^* So called to distinguish it from the White rhino, “White” being taken from the Afrikaans “weit” for “wide”, to describe the latter’s wide mouth.