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.

    ReplyDelete
  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".

    ReplyDelete
  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."

    ReplyDelete
  4. Only stating facts, Susan.

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

    ReplyDelete
  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.

    ReplyDelete
  6. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  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.

    ReplyDelete
  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.

    ReplyDelete
  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.

    ReplyDelete