Monday, 8 December 2008

A Fish Sorely Misused

Yesterday I saw one of these. At first I took it for some kind of car thing (I don't understand cars), but 'Darwin' seemed an unlikely indicator of superior speed and sexiness. It was a while (the car was parked) before I twigged - it is, literally, a badge of faith, the Darwinist version of those slightly queasy-making fish badges some evangelical Christians put on their cars. Since when was Darwinism - or any other scientific theory - a faith to live by, like any other, like Christianity? I suppose the answer is, since militant atheists contrived to polarise the whole Science-Faith issue (if it really is an issue) into an increasingly strident, stupid and irrelevant shouting match between narrowly literal Creationists and closed-minded Darwinists.
And then, by way of further proof of what has happened, there's this...
It really does seem increasingly irrelevant, all this - a self-gratifying diversion for those who flatter themselves that they're the thinking classes - while the zeitgeist, shaped by recession, hard times and a growing sense of threat, is already, I suspect, beginning to turn to, rather than away from, Christianity. But that's a big subject for a less work-whelmed day...

9 comments:

  1. It's an American thing, the Darwinfish bumper sticker, been around for ages there but obviously barely penetrated this country. They have a 'debate' about creationism v evolution in the States. Strange place.

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  2. It's a kind of invitation that's hard to resist - thinking it might be helpful to let down a couple of their tires and leave a note on the windscreen saying "Trofim Lysenko was here".

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  3. Oh, Brit. You are starting to sound like Philip Walling with this anti-America stuff. I haven't seen the Darwinfish sticker you're talking about and I LIVE here. Of course, a sticker has to be really good to catch my eye. The last one that did read: "I'm having a really good day; don't f*ck it up."

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  4. Only stating facts, Susan.

    Also, because I'm pro-American I'm allowed to be as anti-American as I like.

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  5. Oh, well if *Wikipedia* is where you get your facts, you MUST be right. But I still have never seen one and I live in the U.S. in a major city and drive a car.

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  7. As it happens, an American once bought me an American book about this interesting American phenomenon.

    It's like pregnant women - you'll see them everywhere now.

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  8. I also live in America and I've seen plenty of them in both Texas and California. It's not an anti-American thing to comment upon it at all.

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  9. There are loads of cars with fish on in and around Cambridge which, perhaps surprisingly, is a seething hotbed of Evangelism. I'm looking forward to seeing my first Darwinfish and, with any luck, a good punch-up at the traffic lights.

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