We present to you, dear reader, a letter-to-the-editor titled A prodigal nation wallowing with the hogs, which appears in the Shreveport Times of Shreveport, Louisiana. We’ll copy most of today’s letter, but we’ll omit the writer’s name and city. We’ll also add some bold for emphasis, plus our usual Curmudgeonly commentary between paragraphs. Here we go:
Most of us are familiar with the biblical story of the prodigal son. A grown son, living comfortably with his father, begins to question the benefits of that life and asks for his inheritance. His father gives it to him. He promptly wastes it on riotous living. A famine comes and he winds up scrambling among the pigs for food.
We’re off to an exciting start! But what does this have to do with The Controversy between evolution and creationism? Let’s read on:
The prodigal son’s fall began when he abandoned the values of his father. He saw something attractive outside his father’s house. He pursued debauchery and riotous living. He wound up wallowing with the hogs.
Similarly, we have abandoned the values of our fathers and our forefathers. Those values were rooted in their belief in God. Our Congress, on Sept. 12, 1782, passed a resolution praising the publication of the first American edition of the Bible in English. In that same resolution, Congress recommended “this edition of the bible to the inhabitants of the United States.” Wow, have we come a long way!
A resolution of Congress? Not even a law? Hey — the letter-writer says this was back in 1782. That was in the days of the Articles of Confederation, years before the Constitution was drafted. That’s it? We continue:
Today, high school biology teachers tell our children they evolved by chance from an ape-like ancestor and all living things similarly evolved from a common ancestor that was birthed accidentally, somewhere, somehow, from inorganic matter. In reference material recommended by the Louisiana Education Department as an aid to biology teachers, our National Academy of Sciences tells our children that this atheistic explanation of man’s origin should be treated as fact, not theory.
The letter-writer is worrying needlessly. Louisiana’s legislature and creationist Governor are struggling to fix that. See Who Sucked the Brains out of Louisiana? Here’s more:
If atheistic evolution is fact, our churches should sell their property and shut up. If the God they preach didn’t create all that is, he is not God.
Whoa! Getting a bit carried away here. Moving along:
If teaching that something other than God produced all living things is somehow beneficial to our children, bring biology teachers into our churches and give the adults the benefit of that instruction. Have the local board members who regularly sit in the pews explain to the congregation why teaching children a godless explanation for their existence is beneficial.
Rather than do any of these things, churches wallow with the atheist hogs.
The letter-writer appears to be in deep despair. But wait — it gets worse:
We have abandoned “Father Knows Best,” “Leave It To Beaver” and “I Love Lucy.” Young and old alike are now entertained by and enthralled with reality shows starring young sluts who achieved instant celebrity status by releasing sex tapes on the Web. Public drunkenness, drug use, promiscuous sex and homosexuality now characterize our “American idols.”
We wallow with the lascivious hogs.
What is to become of us? This is how the letter ends:
The prodigal son bottomed out and came to his senses. He said, “I will arise and go to my father and will say unto him, father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee and am no more worthy to be called thy son, make me as one of thy hired servants.” He remembered his father’s values, his father’s God and recognized his own sin. That story had a happy ending.
[Writer’s name and city can be seen in the original.]
What can we say? How about: Oink! Oink!
Copyright © 2010. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
The Sensuous Curmudgeon 
If anyone is interested in the facts of that Congressional approval of a Bible, and the reasons for it, they are easily found on the web. I see that this letter writer manages to leave out most of the information about it. Hardly surprising. Facts tend to get in the way of agendas, particularly creationist agendas.
I always had trouble with this story, even as a child I took the moral of the story to be take loads of money off your family. Blow it on wine, women, and drink, and then come home where all is forgiven. I bet his brothers felt like idiots for not doing the same thing as him.
Byrd is such a tease—“enthralled with reality shows starring young sluts who achieved instant celebrity status by releasing sex tapes on the Web.”
The one thing he left out that would of added value is where he has been viewing those tapes. Anyone know which website has these?
The “S” word he uses to describe these instant celebs….well, I would never use. Of course, I am not a Xian.
The letter writer thinks those past shows were wholesome? It just goes to show that you can include the line “don’t you think you were a little hard on the Beaver last night” in practically every episode, and some people still won’t get the joke.
I wonder if the letter-writer considers the story of the prodigal son actual fact or instructive allegory.
I wonder if the letter-writer considers the story of the prodigal son actual fact or instructive allegory.
I’ve probably mentioned this before, but I use this on biblical literalists frequently. Were the prodigal son, the guy who built his house on sand, the twelve virgins with lamps, etc, real people and real events? If not, did that make Jesus a liar and the other things he said unreliable? If the parables are not necessarily real events, but do not lose their moral force for that, then why is the same not true for Genesis?
or are most of the parables just shabby bad re-writes of earlier Hellenic morality tales like Aesops Fables, popular at the time the Bible was first written by a bunch of Judeo-Hellenic scholars and scribes?
Just like the Deluge myth is a bad re-write of Gilgamesh…….
Squeeeeel little piggy!
Hmmmmmm……..
bring biology teachers into our churches and give the adults the benefit of that instruction.
That’s not a bad idea. The church is probably not the right venue, but it’s clear that so many adults in the country need education on the topic and to understand why it’s important. And if the adults of today are lost causes (maybe, maybe not) then we need to ensure that the adults of tomorrow are prepared by teaching evolution to children today.
At the risk of being flamed, let me say that I find myself on the opposite side of the fence from most of what I read here. Yes, I am an evangelical Christian, but I am an engineer from a top-rated national school and have spent more than 25 years working in a national lab. Most of my career has been spent studying how complex systems work and, more importantly, how they can fail. More than my religious beliefs, this experience with systems has caused the notions advanced by the intelligent design community to appear increasingly plausible to me. When I look both at the numerous interconnected mechanisms that are required to implement even narrow functions within “biological machines” and then at the structural complexity of the any one of these mechanisms, I just find the notion of incremental accumulation of these mechanisms driven by biological advantages to be utterly fantastic. I now find myself viewing evolution as a theory in search of evidence (and research grants). I am especially disturbed by the marriage I have heard in evolutionary discussions between metaphysical naturalism and evolutionary science. It is one thing to say that science is about what we can observe. It is another thing altogether to assert that what we can observe is all that exists. It is not a problem for me if people hold to this view of reality but I seen folks who believe in a creator derided for “mere religious views” from scientists when, in fact, it is really the scientists’ own naturalistic philosophy that is motivating the attacks.
My reason for even posting here is to say that, while it may be nice to think of us on the other side of the fence as uneducated bumpkins, it just ain’t so. Admittedly, I hear a lot of apologetic arguments in the religious circles in which I move that start with a presupposition about the lack of validity in evolutionary thought and then try to assemble (sometimes very weak) evidence to prove their positions. At the same time, much of what I have read from the evolution crowd has the same feel. We would all do better to admit our personal biases, to say this is what I believe and why, and to be frank about what we really don’t know.
Personally, I suspect that ID is the first wave of the kind of transition that Kuhn describes in The Structure of Scientific Revolution. I don’t know where it will all eventually lead but I hope it is to a world more given to scientific discussion of opposing views and less given to the use of slanderous rhetoric.
My reason for even posting here is to say that, while it may be nice to think of us on the other side of the fence as uneducated bumpkins, it just ain’t so.
You’re not uneducated, sir, but you’ve spent all of your time listening to DI talking points without giving nearly the same attention to the evolution side. We can tell by the catchphrases you use (“metaphysical naturalism and evolutionary science”).
What you say you are “troubled by” among “evolutionists” is simply not what happens. You have been told it happens, and you have not bothered to learn what “evolutionists” have to say for themselves.
Rick, if that’s the evidence needed to persuade you of intelligent design, I’m not trusting my life to anything you helped engineer.
Yes, Rick, the “Salem Hypothesis” exists to describe the tendency of engineers (and some others) to take up ID pseudoscience.
We know that you’re impressed by “complexity,” without bothering to notice that the complexity of life “just happens” to be ordered as entailed by non-teleological evolution theory. Somehow, the mere fact that people who deal with design for a living rarely knowing much at all about biology, and who also tend to be far more religious than most academics, think that “design” is an impressive answer to life’s complexity does not especially impress those of us who cared to learn about the evidence.
You mean that you’re disturbed by evolutionary science being done like other sciences. Not that your “metaphysical naturalism” is any more than ID cant, but of course evolutionary biology is no more inclined to invoke magic than is physics. That you want special privileges for non-evidence for your “science” indicates how really biased you in fact are–along with your using creationist catchphrases like “metaphysical naturalism.”
And who says that, except lying IDiots about people that they regularly and hatefully smear?
Well it might have helped if you showed any real knowledge about the controversy, rather than having apparently adopted virtually all of the dishonest talking points that the Dishonesty Institute puts out. As it is, there is nothing odd to us about well-educated people who know little about biology and an axe to grind against the science that they believe threatens their religion adopting the pseudoscience that claims to be able to counter that science.
Yes, you who know nothing to speak of about it and who are apparently also biased against it gets the “feel” that evolutionary theory is in the same boat as stark raving pseudoscience. I am totally unimpressed by your lack of knowledge about these matters.
I wish you would admit your biases. My biases are toward science. Evolutionary theory was certainly not produced to serve any agenda except for scientific explanation, which is why religious and non-religious people accept it. Virtually no non-religious folk accept ID, because it has no explanatory ability.
You mean that you blame us for calling utterly wretched lies what they are. And you do so because you don’t know anything wrong with what we say, but because you “feel” certain ways, and think that your degree in something very unlike biology gives you authority to speak about what you don’t understand.
Your opinion is noted, and dismissed for its inanity.
I worked in the space industry, and probably the most evangelically religious person I worked with was literally a rocket scientist. Very smart guy, and a disciplined, rigorous, by-the-book engineer.
It is fairly easy to see how someone who works with the design of very complex systems such as rocket engines would be receptive to the idea that intelligence must be involved in the “design” of very complex biological systems. From their perspective, it’s common sense. The difficulty for an engineer is in the understanding that design can result from a non-deliberate process such as selective pressure. It IS counter-intuitive, and it’s especially counter-intuitive for someone who has many years of difficult college courses and who works daily on designing complex structures and systems.
However, recently the evolutionary model of selection pressure acting on a variable population is beginning to be adopted by some engineers as another design tool:
(this is from “New Scientist”, a pop science magazine/website)
Related to the design of an ion propulsion system for NASA…
The problem is, ions that bump into the grid instead of passing through it cause erosion, which limits the average NASA ion engine’s lifespan to about 3 years. To extend the engine’s lifespan, Cody Farnell, a space flight engineer at the University of Colorado in Fort Collins, used genetic algorithm software to randomly produce values according to the geometry of the grid and the voltages running through it. Genetic algorithms, or software that reenacts evolution, work by sending random sets of geometry/voltage values, akin to genetic material, into a simulator that communicates the grid’s efficiency with any given combination, or “mutation.” The simulator tests generation after generation for effectiveness until it stops improving. After 100 generations, the software produced a combination of values that increased the ion engine grid’s lifespan to 5.1 years in the simulator.
I suspect that as more engineers use similar software and tools in their design processes, the more they will begin to appreciate the power of evolutionary processes to create complex and effective (and sometimes unexpected) outcomes. These programs will become much more common in the next few years, and may help temper the influence that the watchmaker argument currently has with engineers. We may never artificially evolve a watch, but the basic principles will become part of the engineering toolkit and it won’t be such an intellectual leap for engineers to view biological design as a result of evolution mechanisms.