Frankendesign

Pulling away from Jackson, Mississippi, I was tuning the radio dial to lower frequencies hoping to find some listenable community radio when I came across an evangelical mouthing this gem: “Ladies and gentlemen, evolution is dead from the starting gate...(amen)...” And on the long road of nothing that is between Jackson and Mobile we had to stop in Lucedale for lunch. If I believed in miracles, that's what I would call the discovery of a veggie burger on the menu at an old gas-station-turned-diner. There was however a multitude of local miracle believers who boast the town's claim to fame that is a city garden made as an exact replica of “the holy land,” whatever that means. Have I ever spoken out loud that I think the South should have won their independence? Let's just split this Union in two so the evangelicals can have everything south of the Mason-Dixon. I guess we'd force a negotiation over Texas — Austin is worth saving and people are rebelling (for our side) in Houston. Nebraska, Kansas, they can have. You could never Lysol the Wal-Mart Christian funk out of Colorado Springs, so we can cede Colorado if we keep Wyoming — I'm not giving up Yellowstone or the Tetons.

Michael Shermer of the Skeptics Society puts it beatifully in his interview for Salon.com. He actually reasserts that we humans are electric meat, but that meat plus electricity equalling a consciousness is more awe-inspiring than any religious concept of an external force throwing us together and then collecting us back after our physical expiration date has passed. There's nothing simplistic or reductionary about Darwinism. And it takes much more of a moral compass to be a Darwinist than a theocratic fascist with hand-me-down values.