Wednesday, March 14, 2007

All in the Family; and
Who Is God's God?

I know some of you are just down-right embarrassed, and would rather think you came from the dirty sneeze of sky god than be related to apes, chimps, and monkeys, but those are your own self-worth issues to get over...

But it seems our cousins, the great apes, have been observed using tools to hunt prey!

No fewer than 22 times, researchers documented wild chimpanzees on an African savanna fashioning sticks into "spears" to hunt small primates called lesser bush babies.

In each case a chimpanzee modified a branch by breaking off one or two ends and, frequently, using its teeth to sharpen the stick. The ape then jabbed the spear into hollows in tree trunks where bush babies sleep.
Granted, it's not a Craftsman with a lifetime warranty--hell, it's not even a bowie knife (Enter Crocodile Dundee: "Now this, this is a knife!")

Of course, all you people who would rather be dirt than a primate will look at this and say, "So?" Which is fine, I suppose. Most of us think you have dirt for brains, so it's no skin off our backs that you refuse to show up for the family reunions. It just means more bush babies for the rest of us...

I congratulate our fellow primates and henceforth wish to declare this a national holiday--National Bush-Baby Killing Day! Okay, maybe that's going too far. But this is a case of seeing logic and reason in such a way that few other creatures have done before... And shows just one more clue into the early history of our common ancestor.

"Looking at our closest living relatives in a habitat that is fairly similar to what we see characterizing early hominids six million years ago" can help researchers understand early human ancestors' behavior and ecology, she said.

USC's Stanford likens chimpanzees to a window to a past poorly preserved in the archaeological record.

Hunting "is something that the chimps do that almost certainly early, early hominids did too. They were just using a material—wood—that does not leave any archaeological trace," he said.
Enter the shaking of the fundie's head: "How can he believe we came from monkey's and not dirt? I just don't get it..." And I'd just like to restate for the record: We do not come from monkeys. We share a common ancestor! That said, you could believe we came from the pinball machine of an alien race for all I care--just find some, some type of scientific evidence to back it up, okay?
As another passing thought on how we "must have been designed": Who the hell made sky god? Isn't he always claimed to be ten times, a hundred times, a thousand times more complex, more infinite, more godlike than we? So if we had to have been designed, than what other argument is there than that sky god must have been created by an intelligent designer? (Cue inner dialogue: Don't laugh out loud--DON'T LAUGH OUT LOUD!) It's a lot like that hole the Catholics have dug themselves into: Jesus was born without sin. But sin is genetic. It's passed on through the mother (I actually learned this in Bible college--without, of course, science to back up such ridiculousness--even the above link asserts this is the case!), and since Jesus had an earthly mother, how did he get to be "without sin"? Why, Mary must have been born sinless as well! But then, wait--how was she born sinless? Well, I suppose it follows to reason that her mother must have been sinless as well! And so on and so forth until we're back to the fairy tale first-couple who would have had to be sinless for Jesus to even make such a claim... But then if God just made Mary sinless, why did Mary need to be sinless for Jesus to be born sinless? How does that make sense? And if Mary was sinless, why couldn't we nail her to a cross instead of sky god's kid? Yeah, you people need to think this shit out more before you start teaching it to the masses...

So if we are so "complex," and "intricate," and "well designed" (Ha!! My appendix must not have gotten that memo!), who made the creator that created us, eh? (Knowing that many beliefs in sky god do not follow logic or reason, I expect nothing but the most arbitrary answers to these questions...)

No comments: