Darwin Day

I emailed the sponsoring Professor of the Anthropology club's Darwin Day display in the university library. Darwin Day is February 12. The display contained books, articles, quotes, pictures, all quite appropiate, except for multiple stickers depicting "icthus", the Christian fish symbol, with added legs and labeled "Darwin". I took a cultural anthropology class once for my religious studies minor. The most astute and useful observation I made was in noticing the consistent hypocrisy among some of those who presumed themselves to be observing human behavior objectively without noticing the blatant double-standard they held due to their own biased contempt for anything nominally Christianity. For the cartoon show South Park to parody anything possibly held sacred by any group in America, religious or otherwise, is comical and even progressive, but for Christian missionaries to unwittingly disrupt an indigenous culture's social structure by bringing gifts of axes for chopping firewood is contemptible, an inexcusable act of ethnocentric hubris, condescension typical of white Americans. And so it was with the Anthropology club's display: biased contempt, not objective Science, betrayed by the inability to resist an inflammatory signal to the less educated bible-thumpers. In a "Christians are Stupid Day" display, the modified Jesus fish would be appropriate; in a Darwin Day display, they are insidious. I begin to wonder if Darwinian Evolution can even be disconnected from anti-religious agenda. I think as an experiment, Christian fundies should begin to zealously advocate rapidly occurring macro-evolution as the only reasonable explanation as to how every species of non aquatic animal could possibly have appeared from Noah's ark, and then watch how quickly "respectable" science vacillates.