bekolay.org

Believe it or not, there was a time that I cared about things. One of those things was the intellectually destructive phenomenon of religion. Normally, religion is easy to ignore, like someone silently farting in a crowded elevator, but at times it gets all up in your grill, like someone dropping trou and turning the elevator into a German porn shoot.

Comfort has also made the claim that once one pops, they are rendered unable to stop.

One of the aforementioned poop-analogied cases is the evolution "debate," where fundamentalist Christian groups argue that it is all a bunch of bull-hockey and that life is intelligently designed.

Recently, some dude named Ray Comfort (pictured, right) released a version of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species with an intro containing, in Wikipedia's words, "evangelical musings, which include creationist arguments." These books are being given out at universities across the United States and Canada.

Not really a fantastic read, actually.

Perhaps rather than criticized, Comfort should be lauded for proving that thought is not matter, for in this book thought and anti-thought coexist without canceling each other out.

And while all of Darwin's works are available online for free, at least he's printing them out for you. Which is a good service unless you care about the environment or whatever.

I'm not really up in arms about this though. Whether you start reading his undoubtedly biased introduction with a belief of your own, your reaction isn't "are his arguments sound," it's "do I like what this guy is saying?"

This is a muddy concept that I'm trying to de-mud here, so bear with me. When we read (or watch, or play, or listen to) cultural artifacts, we're not only evaluating the experience, but also the creator of it. If we like that experience, it's quite likely that we would like the party creating that experience. Of course, most of us can't actually interact with those experience-creators (at least, not until Twitter) so we settle by seeking out those who have similar reactions to cultural artifacts.

Which, in my mind makes perfect sense: what better a barometer of someone's personality than whether or not they like Arrested Development? I am not joking.

But, this process in which people find like-minded individuals for the purposes of friendship and more-than-friendship means that your views are at the same time unchanging and changeable: you will only like somebody if they have enough similar views as you, at which point your views will change to closer match the views of those you like.

Religion (like politics) is one of those views more useful for finding like-minded individuals and less likely to be changed once a relationship ensues. That's why I don't think you'll see a lot of people convinced by Comfort, or Dawkins, or any other fundamentalist, you'll just see a lot of people feeling vindicated.

At least, that's how I see things.