The afternoon tranquility was shattered by blaring sirens and lights flashing on the wall display of our Retard-o-tron™. The blinking letters on the wall said WorldNetDaily.
WorldNetDaily (WND) is the flamingly creationist, absolutely execrable, moronic, and incurably crazed journalistic organ that believes in and enthusiastically promotes every conspiracy theory that ever existed. WND was an early winner of the Curmudgeon’s Buffoon Award, thus that jolly logo displayed above this post.
The Retard-o-tron™ directed us to this article: ‘Grace’ insufficient. At first we were puzzled, because it’s a review of a play on Broadway — not our usual material at all. But as we scanned it, we understood what had tripped the alarm.
The reviewer is Tom Flannery, and his article is a WND exclusive. If it hadn’t been for the Retard-o-tron™ we would have missed it. Most of this thing doesn’t interest us, but we’ll excerpt the parts we found amusing, adding a bit of bold font for emphasis.
Flannery begins by complaining about “the version of Christianity that is continually offered up by Hollywood and the arts community/entertainment industry at large,” which he describes like this:
Christianity is a pernicious religious philosophy that requires such mind-altering faith that it ultimately ends up twisting the minds of those who blindly embrace and profess it. And the end result is always the same, as the Christian is at some point forced to confront all of the insoluble contradictions of his belief system, which in turn triggers a descent into madness and violence.
We haven’t seen too many movies or plays like that (our taste runs to Clint Eastwood westerns), but apparently Flannery has. Anyway, he’s all worked up over a new Broadway play named “Grace.” He says:
“Grace” tells the story of Steve (played by Paul Rudd), who apparently views his evangelical Christian faith as little more than a merchandising opportunity. He has a get-rich-quick scheme to develop gospel-themed hotels that offer such amenities as “Promise Keepers strength training” and answer the fundamental question: “Where would Jesus stay?”
We might care if it were a play about the promoter of a creationism museum, but it’s not. We’ll skip to the good part. Here it comes:
But the two main lines of attack in the play against Christian faith, as in life, are first of all the matter of evil, suffering and death, and secondly the challenge of science.
As you know, the problem of evil has been a serious concern for theologians through the centuries. Flannery disposes of it in a few sentences:
In Genesis 1 and 2, we read that God created this world in perfection, but then in Genesis 3 man ruined it all by rebelling against God and opening the door for sin to invade this world. Consequently, since we are all Adam and Eve’s descendants, we are born with a sin nature …
You know how that goes. Okay, one problem down. Now lets get to the play’s second line of attack against Christian faith:
As for the challenge of science, it’s really the challenge of pseudo-science that Christians face.
What’s he talking about? Let’s read on:
True science contradicts Darwinian evolution across the board, whether it’s the fossil record and the absence of intermediate links; the fact that life at the most basic, cellular level is encoded with a literally mind-boggling amount of information which is expressed in language (DNA); modern discoveries like irreducible complexity (as outlined in Dr. Michael Behe’s seminal book “Darwin’s Black Box”), which shows certain life systems must be fully formed from the start to function properly – and therefore never could have evolved – and so much more.
Wow — Flannery has not only brushed aside the problem of evil, but also the challenge of science. It’s all bunk! No problems!
Let’s see now … is there anything else in Flannery’s review that’s worth our attention? [*Scanning*] Not really. Well, in the final paragraph he says this:
Because, truth be told, a reasonable, rational, scientific exploration of the overwhelming evidence is actually the last thing that the creators of these caricatures and complete works of fiction want.
That’s about it. So there you are, dear reader — another first from your Curmudgeon: a creationist Broadway review! Now we’ve seen it all.
Copyright © 2012. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.
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The Sensuous Curmudgeon 
Certainly not the kind of play I would pay money to sit thru. Too complicated. The plot needs to be a great deal simplified if it is going to tackle the tricky subject of theodicy.
And speaking of dice, what would reviewer Flannery have to say about the Broadway musical Guys and Dolls based on the Damon Runyun in which the Salvation Army doll can acquire souls by shooting dice?
“In Genesis 1 and 2, we read that God created this world in perfection”
No, He didn’t. He said it was “good” (Genesis 1:4,10,12,18,21 & 25) and “very good” (Genesis 1:31), not “perfect”. Oh, wait, let me guess, “good” means “perfect”?